'I screwed up,' says Sam Bankman-Fried. Top 10 quotes from first public appearance since FTX collapse

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried speaks during the New York Times DealBook Summit.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the fallen founder of cryptocurrency platform FTX, made his first public appearance on Wednesday since the collapse of the cryptocurrency firm last month. He said he “didn't ever try to commit fraud on anyone”. The 30-year-old lost his billionaire status overnight as his personal wealth plummeted nearly 94 per cent to $991.5 million in a single day. The fall in his fortune came after he announced that his crypto exchange was being bought by rival Binance. Binance later pulled out of the deal.

Sam Bankman-Fried was speaking at the Dealbook conference hosted by CNBC and The New York Times. He apologised for a "lot of mistakes" in the sudden collapse of FTX.

Here are top 10 quotes of Sam Bankman-Fried from the conversation:

1. “Clearly, I made a lot of mistakes or things I would give anything to be able to do over again. I didn't ever try to commit fraud on anyone…I was shocked by what happened this month. And you know reconstructing it were there things I wish I had done differently.
2. “Look, I screwed up. I was the CEO of FTX. I was responsible ultimately for doing the right things and I mean, we didn't. We messed up big.”
3. “A lot of what we ended up doing and focusing on was a distraction, to some extent, from one unbelievably important area that we completely failed on and that was risk.”
4. “We lost track of a really important part of the business and of the product. And so, there absolutely were management failures, huge management failures, like their responsibility for that there were oversight, failures, transparency, failures, reporting.”
5. “My donations were mostly for pandemic prevention This was not looking at donating to one party to beat the other one in the general elections… not only was it on both sides, but even within each side, it was between two candidates in the same party and you’re looking at pandemic policy.”
6. On the Bahamas property: “I don't know the details of the house for my parents, but I knew that it was not intended to be their long-term property. I know it was intended to be the company's property. I don't know how that was papered in. I think that was where it was, was it will, end up.”
7. “I had my first sip of alcohol after my 21st birthday, and I have, maybe, half a glass of alcohol a year, roughly speaking. There were no wild parties here. When we had parties, we played board games.”
8. “I didn’t see any illegal drug use around me here at the office at these parties. And when I say parties, like, you know, having people over for dinner is what that meant.”
9. “I don't have any hidden funds. I have one working credit card left. I think it might be $100,000 or something like that in that bank account.”
10. “There are certainly times when I was acting as a representative, as a marketer for FTX and when I was looking for a way, which is truthful, to paint FTX as compelling a way as possible, as exciting and optimistic a way as possible… I obviously wished that I’d spent more time dwelling on the downsides and less time thinking about the upsides.”