FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Publicly Refuses to Testify in US House Committee – Here’s What Happened

FTX Regulation Sam Bankman-Fried

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Ruholamin Haqshanas

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Ruholamin Haqshanas

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Ruholamin Haqshanas is a contributing crypto writer for CryptoNews. He is a crypto and finance journalist with over four years of experience. Ruholamin has been featured in several high-profile crypto...

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October 22, 2023

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Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO and founder of collapsed crypto exchange FTX, has publicly suggested that he might not appear in the upcoming U.S. House committee’s hearing to testify on the collapse of his crypto empire. 

In a tweet to the Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters and the committee, Bankman-Fried said he is still not finished with “learning and reviewing what happened,” thus he might not be ready to participate in the hearing.

“Once I have finished learning and reviewing what happened, I would feel like it was my duty to appear before the committee and explain. I’m not sure that will happen by the 13th. But when it does, I will testify,” he said.

The statement came in response to a tweet by Current Chair and Congresswoman Maxine Waters and the committee that asked him to appear in the hearing on December 13 and talk about the collapse of FTX. 

.@SBF_FTX, we appreciate that you've been candid in your discussions about what happened at #FTX. Your willingness to talk to the public will help the company's customers, investors, and others. To that end, we would welcome your participation in our hearing on the 13th.

— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) December 2, 2022

As reported, the US House Financial Services Committee announced last month that it plans to hold a hearing to investigate the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX. The committee said they expected to hear from the companies and individuals involved, including FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, Alameda Research, Binance, and more. 

At the time, Waters said that the collapse of FTX hurt over one million users, many of whom were retail traders who invested their “hard-earned” savings into the platform, only to watch it all disappear within a matter of seconds.

“Unfortunately, this event is just one out of many examples of cryptocurrency platforms that have collapsed just this past year,” she added. “[I] know that we need legislative action to ensure that digital assets entities cannot operate in the shadows outside of robust federal oversight and clear rules of the road.”

Lawmakers’ lack of seriousness in their probe into FTX and its leaders has attracted the ire of crypto community members who believe that Bankman-Fried, who has allegedly misappropriated billions of dollars from customers, is getting away with one of the largest frauds in history with little to no scrutiny.

Notably, there have been speculations that SBF could have donated as much as $1 billion to Democrats. As per available data, SBF was the second largest donor to the Democratic Party, after billionaire George Soros, in the 2021-2022 election cycle, donating $39,884,256 to Democrats.

Will Manidis, cofounder and the CEO of ScienceIO, has even cited the donations as a reason why SBF is not under regulatory scrutiny. In a recent tweet, he said Bankman-Fried did “one of the highest ROI trades of all time” by donating $40 million and not going to jail for stealing over $10 billion in user funds.