Bankman-Fried: My FTX testimony won’t satisfy lawmakers

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is warning Congress that his upcoming appearance before the House Financial Services Committee is unlikely to contain many bombshells about how his Bahamas-based crypto exchange went bust.

In a Twitter Spaces event on Monday, Bankman-Fried said he wanted lawmakers to know that his remote appearance on Tuesday was "going to be frustrating and underwhelming in some ways, because I wasn't gonna be able to answer questions that I would really want to be able to and — frankly — really should be able to."

Bankman-Fried — who, along with FTX, is the subject of multiple criminal and civil investigations — balked at an invitation from Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) earlier this month and agreed to testify after she threatened him with a subpoena. The former billionaire and political megadonor had been one of the crypto industry's most high-profile executives in Washington before his company ran aground amid allegations of fraud and mismanagement last month.

While he has recounted the collapse to multiple media outlets, he has also repeatedly claimed that his lack of personal access to FTX records has made it difficult to answer for the specific failures that contributed to the company's eventual bankruptcy.

“I wanted to make sure that it was clear to Reps. Waters and [ranking Republican Patrick] McHenry — and to the committee … that they were not going to be getting a lot of the answers they're looking for by having me testify,” Bankman-Fried said.

FTX’s new CEO and restructuring officer John Ray III, who’s also scheduled to testify on Tuesday, has said the scale of the company’s lack of corporate controls is “unprecedented.”

Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and top Republican Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) have made similar threats, but Bankman-Fried on Monday said he doesn’t expect to testify on Wednesday at a Senate hearing covering the FTX debacle.