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Changpeng Zhao (Changpeng Zhao), founder of the largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, revealed in his memoirs “Freedom of Money” that former head of the bankrupt platform FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried (Sam Bankman-Fried), requested several billion dollars from him in November 2022.
According to Zhao, during a phone call, Bankman-Fried “casually asked for a couple of billion dollars—as if it were a ham sandwich.” In exchange, Bankman-Fried offered him a stake in the cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
“I had no interest in owning FTX. I also wasn’t striving to help Sam. But perhaps we would have had to intervene to protect users and the industry,” Zhao noted.
He admitted that after this conversation, he signed a letter of intent (LOI) regarding a potential deal, but it was of a formal nature and did not imply any obligations on the part of Binance.
“I explicitly stated that we were not taking on any obligations. Our team would simply evaluate the metrics and then make a decision,” Zhao emphasized.
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In his view, the collapse of FTX became inevitable after statements by Caroline Ellison (Caroline Ellison), head of the exchange-affiliated company Alameda Research, who publicly offered to buy back FTT tokens from Binance at a price of $22. Zhao believes this marked the floor price, triggered the opening of short positions, and consequently accelerated the decline in the token’s value. As a result, the price of FTT dropped from $22 to $15, then to $10, and below $5. Within 72 hours, users withdrew approximately $6 billion from the platform.
By November 9, Binance had abandoned the deal to purchase FTX. Zhao characterized the FTT assets on the company’s balance sheet, which had reached a peak value of $580 million, as “practically worthless.”
According to him, the consequences also affected Binance: on December 14, users withdrew approximately $7 billion from the exchange in a single day. However, Zhao stated that this did not cause him concern, as the funds returned to the platform within a month, and the inflow of deposits continued.
His memoirs also mention the “Exchange Collaboration” chat in the Signal messenger, created, according to Zhao, by FTX employee Zane Tackett (Zane Tackett) during the Terra/LUNA crisis. The chat included Zhao, Bankman-Fried, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong (Brian Armstrong), Kraken founder Jesse Powell (Jesse Powell), and other representatives of major cryptocurrency exchanges.
Later, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) became interested in this chat, investigating potential signs of collusion or market manipulation between the exchanges. Zhao emphasized that “nothing like that” occurred in the chat.
In 2023, Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud and conspiracy. It is estimated that FTX customers lost approximately $8 billion, investors lost $1.7 billion, and Alameda Research creditors lost $1.3 billion. In 2026, Bankman-Fried filed a motion for a retrial, stating that the exchange was not bankrupt.
