NEW YORK — Sam Bankman-Fried, testifying at his fraud trial Friday, cast himself as a bumbling cryptocurrency visionary who knew nothing about the industry when he started FTX or about marketing when he became the face of his company and not enough about his businesses to see they were $10 billion in the hole until shortly before they collapsed.
In Manhattan federal court, the onetime cryptocurrency golden boy denied defrauding anyone.
Bankman-Fried, 31, acknowledged some failures, saying he made mistakes, large and small, but he also contested testimony by four former top executives who blamed him for the collapse of his businesses last year when a rush of customers withdrew their money, exposing that billions of dollars were missing.
“We thought that we might be able to build the best product on the market” and move the crypto ecosystem forward, he said.
“It turned out basically the opposite of that. A lot of people got hurt — customers, employees — and the company ended up in bankruptcy,” Bankman-Fried said.
Asked by his lawyer, Mark Cohen, if he defrauded anyone or took customers’ funds, Bankman-Fried answered, “No I did not.”
Mostly unemotional on the witness stand, Bankman-Fried, who could face decades in prison if he is convicted of all charges, said: “I don’t tend to show a lot of freakoutness.”
As the day wore on, testimony focused on what happened as Bankman-Fried’s businesses sank deeper in debt, even as he spent hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing that included a 2022 Super Bowl commercial featuring comedian Larry David, a partnership with quarterback Tom Brady and a firm that linked him to celebrities.