How Binance played a key role as FTX collapse unfolded
www.theguardian.com

...
Tuesday 8 November

In an apparent cessation of hostilities, Zhao announced that Binance would buy FTX and rescue it.

"This afternoon, FTX asked for our help," tweeted Zhao. "There is a significant liquidity crunch. To protect users, we signed a non-binding [letter of intent], intending to fully acquire FTX.com."

Bankman-Fried confirmed the deal on Twitter: "Things have come full circle, and FTX.com's first, and last, investors are the same: we have come to an agreement on a strategic transaction with Binance for FTX.com (pending DD etc)."

The DD -- or due diligence -- was going to be the most consequential phrase in that tweet.

Wednesday 9 November

As rumours grew of a hole in FTX's balance sheet, Zhao suddenly pulled the plug and tipped Bankman-Fried's enterprise into full-blown crisis. Having looked under the bonnet, Binance said it could no longer push ahead with the deal.

"In the beginning, our hope was to be able to support FTX's customers to provide liquidity, but the issues are beyond our control or ability to help," Binance said in a statement.

Zhao tweeted that it was a "sad day".
...

11 Hours With Sam Bankman-Fried: Inside the Bahamian Penthouse After FTX's Fall
www.businesstimes.com.sg

...SAM Bankman-Fried's US$30 million Bahamas penthouse looks like a dorm after the students have left for winter break. The dishwasher is full. Towels are piled in the laundry room. Bat streamers from a Halloween party are still hanging from a doorway. Two boxes of Legos sit on the floor of one bedroom. And then there are the shoes"dozens of sneakers and heels piled in the foyer, left behind by employees who fled the island of New Providence last month when his cryptocurrency exchange FTX imploded.

"It's been an interesting few weeks," Bankman-Fried says in a chipper tone as he greets me. It's a muggy Saturday afternoon, eight days after FTX filed for bankruptcy. He's shoeless, in white gym socks, a red T-shirt and wrinkled khaki shorts. His standard uniform.

This isn't part of the typical tour Bankman-Fried gave to the many reporters who came to tell the tale of the boy-genius-crypto-billionaire who slept on a beanbag chair next to his desk and only got rich so he could give it all away, and it's easy to see why. The apartment is at the top of one of the luxury condo buildings that border a marina in a gated community called Albany. Outside, deckhands buff the stanchions of a 200-foot yacht owned by a fracking billionaire. A bronze replica of Wall Street's Charging Bull statue stands on the lawn, which is as manicured as the residents. I feel like I've crash-landed on an alien planet populated solely by the very rich and the people who work for them.

Bankman-Fried leads me down a marble-floored hallway to a small bedroom, where he perches on a plush brown couch. Always known for being jittery, he taps his foot so hard it rattles a coffee table, smacks gum and rubs his index finger with his thumb like he's twirling an invisible fidget spinner. But he seems almost cheerful as he explains why he's invited me into his 12,000-square-foot bolthole, against the advice of his lawyers, even as investigators from theUS Department of Justice probewhether he used customers' funds to prop up his hedge fund, a crime that could send him to prison for years. (Spoiler alert: It sure looks like he did.)

"What I'm focusing on is what I can do, right now, to try and make things as right as possible," Bankman-Fried says. "I can't do that if I'm just focused on covering my ass."...

The lawyer for notorious fraudster Bernie Madoff has some timeless advice for FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried: Shut up
fortune.com

....The lawyer who represented Bernie Madoff has this advice for Sam Bankman-Fried: shut up.

Enough with this whole media apology tour, says Ira Sorkin, lead defense lawyer for Madoff, late mastermind of one of the greatest Ponzi schemes of all time.

As authoritiessift throughthe wreckage of FTX, Bankman-Fried's collapsed crypto empire, the man known as SBF, has been talking to everyone from The New York Times to the ABC talk show Good Morning America.

Again and again, he's denied intentionally commingling client money or trying to swindle anyone. Federal authorities are investigating exactly that. Neither FTX, Alameda Research or any of the former top executives involved have been accused of any wrongdoing by US authorities.

"It was just a f" up," Bankman-FriedtoldBloomberg Businessweek. "A huge f" up."

Sorkin says Bankman-Fried should listen to his lawyers and stop talking immediately. Anyone who's watchedLaw & Orderknows that.

"That's the first order of business: don't talk," says Sorkin. "You're not going to sway the public. The only people that are going to listen to what you have to say are regulators and prosecutors."

Bankman-Fried conceded this week that the publicity blitz flew in the face of legal advice but he had a "duty to explain what happened." Before an hourlong interview with the New York Times DealBook on Wednesday and a Good Morning America segment on Thursday, he agreed to a video interview with Axios and a Twitter conversation published by Vox. "F" regulators," he wrote.

"Sometimes clients believe they are smarter than their lawyers. This guy is 30 years old, and he is not smarter than his lawyers," Sorkin added. "They should be telling him every five minutes to shut up, but sometimes clients don't listen."

Representatives for Bankman-Fried and FTX didn't immediately respond to a request for comment....

As I've said, this saga is going to go on for a while.

Get yer popcorn.