Sam Bankman-Fried told Reuters he is still in the Bahamas, as rumors spread overnight that the embarrassed ex-CEO of the now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX had run off to South America.
FlightRadar24 tweeted early Saturday morning that the crypto billionaire was flying from Nassau to Argentina.
Reuters asked Bankman-Fried whether he had flown to Argentina, and he replied, “Nope,” by text. He added that he remained in the Bahamas, which became his full-time residence last year.
On Thursday, Bankman-Fried tweeted that he would be ditching his trading house, Alameda Research, and then on Friday, FTX — the digital asset exchange that Bankman-Fried founded in 2019 — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. That same day, Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO. The Financial Times is reporting that a day before filing for bankruptcy protection, FTX’s global exchange had $900 million in “easily sellable assets” against $9 billion of liabilities.
Before the collapse, the exchange was valued at $32 billion, and Bankman-Fried. Now, its ex-CEO is reportedly facing probes by the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
