SBF Refutes He Tried to Attack Tether and “Hunted” Terra Positions of Three Arrows

Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, has refuted many of the accusations made against him since his resignation, but he was clear today that he did not target Terra or Tether’s stablecoins.

“This year, I made a lot of serious mistakes. However, this wasn’t one of them,” Bankman-Fried said in a tweet posted early on Friday. “There is no proof because it never happened. Please, please, pay attention to your own home.”

I made a lot of big mistakes this year.

But this wasn't one of them. There's no evidence, because it didn't happen. Please, please, focus on your own house. https://t.co/tlcQu9zFdf

— SBF (@SBF_FTX) December 9, 2022

Su Zhu, a co-founder of the defunct cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, tweeted in response to a question about why he and TerraForm Labs co-founder Do Kwon have become so vocal since FTX’s demise at the beginning of November.

The company initially experienced trouble after it emerged that Alameda Research, a sister company, had billions of illiquid FTX Token (FTT) on its balance sheet. Then, Binance decided against it, claiming that FTX was beyond its “ability to help,” and two days later, the cryptocurrency exchange filed for bankruptcy.

Former rivals are now blaming the founder of FTX for their own failures, including Three Arrows Capital (3AC).

Since my July Bloomberg interview, I have firmly asserted that we were being hunted. Read it again. Simply the truth, but one that was so uncomfortable that at the time, my own advisors advised against me saying it for fear of creating “bad optics” and appearing to be “deflecting.”–Su Zhu

He has repeatedly expressed his conviction that other significant participants in the cryptocurrency market are “hunting,” or attempting to press the firm’s TerraUSD position into a liquidation. The algorithmic stablecoin, known as UST, lost its 1:1 peg to the US dollar in May, wiping out $40 billion in value as it descended to zero.

Zhu has made this claim numerous times since FTX filed for bankruptcy even though he didn’t express it in July when Terra collapsed and 3AC lost $200 million on UST.

Not just Zhu believes there is evidence that Bankman-Fried may have manipulated the markets.

Federal prosecutors are looking into the former FTX CEO to determine whether Bankman-Fried attempted to undermine Kwon’s TerraUSD (UST) and Luna, the network’s governance token, for personal gain, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation.

Bankman-denial Fried’s is consistent with what he previously told The New York Times regarding Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, who claimed that he attempted to manipulate markets to get Tether, the biggest stablecoin by market capitalization, to sever its tie to the dollar.

The day before FTX filed for bankruptcy, on November 10, Bankman-Fried was a part of a group chat on Signal that Zhao shared with the NYT. Binance had just withdrawn from its non-binding offer to buy FTX if the company’s books were approved by their due diligence team at the time.

Zhao charged Bankman-Fried in the texts with attempting to manipulate the value of the stablecoin issued by Tether, which bears the same name as its issuer.

According to CoinGecko, Tether has accounted for $30 billion in volume over the past day, which is almost as much as the combined volume of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Tether is by far the most significant stablecoin in the cryptocurrency market and arguably its most significant asset overall. The stablecoin and its issuer, however, are not without controversy of their own.

Since receiving harsh criticism for it last year, the company has been working to get rid of commercial paper, also known as corporate debt notes, from its treasury. Chinese real estate developer Evergrande faced the possibility of defaulting on a $300 billion debt load in September 2021. Corporate paper, which at the time constituted 50% of Tether’s reserves, came under fire as a result. Later, the business claimed that none of its commercial paper was connected to Evergrande’s debt, and it has since completely eliminated it.

Regardless of whether they are accurate, Zhao believes that Bankman-Fried may have used Tether as a target for manipulation.

According to Bankman-Fried, who was quoted by the NYT, “Trades of that size would not have a material impact on Tether’s pricing, and to my knowledge neither myself nor Alameda has ever attempted to intentionally depeg Tether or any other stablecoins.” “Over the past year, I have made a lot of mistakes, but that is not one of them,” the speaker said.

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