MicroStrategy ex-CEO Michael Saylor spoke Tuesday in an interview with Patrick Bet David about the “devilish” practices that took place at FTX. According to Saylor, Sam Bankman-Fried committed financial fraud with the FTX Token (FTT) and then used the asset as collateral to gamble away his clients’ funds.
“The sin of shitcoinery”
If you’ve been in the industry for any length of time, you’ll know that Saylor is a bitcoin maximalist and dislikes altcoins. The former CEO of MicroStrategy goes so far as to say that buying altcoins is a sin, a moral crime. Saylor himself calls it “the sin of shitcoinery”.
“Sam and most people in the crypto world are guilty of pumping up and promoting unregistered securities. That is clear to the SEC chairman and most politicians,” Saylor continues. The issue that Saylor raises here is also central to the lawsuit between the SEC and Ripple Labs.
Saylor believes that FTX’s FTT token qualified as a security, meaning that it should not be allowed to be put on the market just like that. In principle, a company then has to go through all the steps that normal companies have to go through in order to have shares listed on the stock exchange. That did not happen, which means that a law has already been violated.
Shitcoin as collateral
Furthermore, Saylor says that using his own FTT token and other tokens as collateral is particularly diabolical. According to Saylor, traditional banking giants such as Goldman Sachs would never lend money with these kinds of financial assets as collateral. After all, as soon as the bubble deflates, there is nothing left of the collateral, as it now appears again.
For that reason, Bankman-Fried did not visit parties such as JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, but himself. He simply turned to Alameda Research. Through Alameda Research, he was able to use his clients’ funds to gamble using a diabolical scheme.
“He generated $10 billion with an unregistered security and then borrowed $10 billion from his users. With that, he gambled, traded and spent, only to lose it in the end,” says Saylor about SBF in the interview.