Original source: David Yaffe-Bellany,New York Times

Original translation: Joy, PANews

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, gave a blunt assessment of his predicament at the end of his never-published 15,000-word Twitter post. Im broke, wearing an ankle monitor, and one of the most hated people in the world, he wrote. I will probably never be able to do anything to make a positive difference in my life again.

He added: The truth is, I did what I thought was the right thing.

SBF was charged with fraud in connection with the collapse of FTX and was arrested in December 2022 and subsequently released on bail and placed under house arrest. He then wrote hundreds of pages of sometimes disjointed self-defense, covering everything from childhood memories to mathematical calculations.

In a draft of his unsent post, which he formatted as a series of tweets, some 70 typed pages, he criticized some of his closest colleagues and interspersed his arguments with photos from his high school days. and pictures of popcorn and a garden maze. Every few pages, key moments in the narrative are accompanied by links to music videos by Alicia Keys, Katy Perry or Rihanna.

SBF, 31, who has been a prolific poster on Twitter, marked the post as a draft of ideas and included links to 29 other relevant FTX files. One document, Inception V2, is a lengthy attack on the companys bankruptcy lawyers and contains screenshots from the 2010 Christopher Nolan film. A separate link opens a spreadsheet listing SBFs Amazon orders from 2021.

The roughly 250 pages of documents, which have never been reported before, provide a window into SBFs state of mind during the eight months he spent in home detention after a judge revoked his bail as recently as August. They also provide new details about his possible legal defense, beyond what his lawyers have revealed in court, revealing how he will justify his actions at his trial, which is scheduled for October 3. of.

Prosecutors accuse SBF of orchestrating a scheme to transfer FTX client funds to Alameda Research, a hedge fund he founded, so that his firm could make venture capital investments, buy real estate and donate to politicians. He had previously pleaded not guilty because he faced decades in prison if convicted.

While under house arrest, the SBF sent the documents to Tiffany Fong, a social media influencer who has a YouTube channel about the crypto industry. Fong shared these with The New York Times.

He liked that I didnt work for anyone, she said. He thought I could draw my own conclusions.

Representatives for SBF declined to comment.

In several documents, SBF accused his ex-girlfriend and one-time deputy Caroline Ellison of fueling FTXs collapse. He called her incompetent for the job he gave her as head of Alameda, claiming she once cried during a meeting with him and refused to develop a trading strategy that would have protected his business from a market collapse.

“She continually avoided talking about risk management—avoiding my advice—until it was too late,” he wrote in a document titled “Alameda’s Hedging Failure.” Every time I suggested it, it just made her feel worse. Im sure being an ex didnt help.

In the Twitter draft, SBF also criticized Alameda co-CEO Sam Trabucco. Documents say Trabucco and Ellison didnt get along well. While Trabucco had good instincts about risk management, by the end of 2021 he was in the process of quietly exiting.

SBF writes that Trabucco prefers to date a ton of men while sailing around the world. He then linked to Rihannas music video for Cheers (Drink to That).

Ellison and two other SBF executives have pleaded guilty to fraud charges and agreed to testify against him. Separately, a fourth man pleaded guilty this month without promising to cooperate in court. Trabucco has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

Attorneys for Trabucco and Ellison declined to comment.

Once hailed as a trusted force in the unregulated world of cryptocurrencies, FTX collapsed last November, costing users billions of dollars and delivering a devastating blow to the entire industry. After his arrest, SBF was released on bail and allowed to live with his parents, both longtime Stanford University law professors, at their home in Palo Alto, California. They had a German shepherd named Sandor as his guard dog.

For several months, SBF has hosted guests such as the author Michael Lewis, who is completing a book about him, as well as several journalists.

Few people have as much access as KOL Fong, who developed an online rapport with SBF before FTX failed. Fong said she visited SBF at his parents home more than a dozen times and recorded conversations with him that she may eventually publish.

Fong said that while under house arrest, SBF spent most of his time in his study, where he played computer games, set up chess boards and sometimes slept on the couch. Most days, she said, he was writing the legal defense, documenting his thoughts on the case in hundreds of pages of Google documents. SBF also told her that his family was installing a pickleball court for him in the yard.

The SBF handed the documents to Fong in late January this year. Its unclear what he wanted her to do with them. Fong, who suffered losses in the collapse of cryptocurrency firm Celsius Network, said she sympathized with FTX’s victims and was skeptical of many of SBF’s claims. She sent a document to former Alameda engineer Aditya Baradwaj, who gave a point-by-point rebuttal to Mr SBF, noting that Alamedas hedging would be irrelevant if FTX had not misused customer funds.

In a draft Twitter post, SBF traced the evolution of his business from his childhood in Palo Alto to the penthouse he purchased in the Bahamas near FTX headquarters. He recalled meeting Trabucco at math camp, when he and his future colleagues snuck out after curfew to bake cheesecake brownies, and he described his early admiration for Ellison, calling her extremely smart. He also inserted some personal photos, including one showing him holding a T-shirt Trabucco bought him in high school.

In another segment, SBF posted a link to a document he wrote in 2019, Tonight We Are Young, which he interacted with Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (aka CZ) at a conference in Taiwan reports. (He also added a link to Fun’s “We Are Young” music video.)

Tonight was a night about alcohol, women, lasers and loud, pounding music, but there was a strange microclimate that seemed to stick with me, SBF wrote. I walked by CZ a few more times, and each time he took his eyes off other things and hugged me: people think a lot about us.

Last November, CZ’s posts triggered a run on withdrawals that caused FTX to collapse. Binance representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

Some SBF documents detail the arguments his lawyers made in court. In documents titled Inception V2, Inception V3 and Inception Evidence, SBF claims that Sullivan Cromwell, the law firm that oversaw FTXs bankruptcy, made up the story that he misappropriated user funds.

They played very well, he wrote. If it doesnt destroy everything I care about in life, I take my hat off to them.

A spokesman for law firm Sullivan Cromwell declined to comment. Prosecutors argued that SBFs claims about the company amounted to innuendo.

In several documents, SBF also dissected his history with Ellison, writing that their relationship ended just like how most of my relationships end.

They wanted more intimacy, commitment and publicity than I did, he wrote in the post, and I felt claustrophobic.

In a separate filing, he said that despite his urging, Ellison refused to hedge Alamedas aggressive trading strategy. At one point, he recalled, he sent her a message that amounted to the meanest thing Ive ever said to her. (He said he no longer had a record of the message.)

Had Alameda hedged, it would have remained solvent and avoided the entire unfortunate story, he wrote.

SBF wrote in a Twitter draft that his concerns about Alameda intensified in the spring of 2022 as he packed his bags for Washington. A group of employees, including Ellison, were frantically discussing a possible deficit in the companys accounts. SBF wrote that he was only half-involved, but he heard enough to realize that the focus of the conversation was an account labeled fiat@ — which the regulator said FTX executives used to move client funds to other projects.

Ive heard the name before, but I never knew what it was, he wrote.

Ellison pleaded guilty and said she and SBF conspired to use clients money to shore up Alamedas finances. He denies misuse of funds.

In general, I dont lie, he wrote in a document titled The Truth. Thats something I believe in quite a bit.