FTX Founder ‘Destroyed it All,’ Says Former FTX.US President
- Former FTX US President Brett Harrison said that he was a mentor to Sam Bankman-Fried at Jane Street.
- Harrison confirmed that SBF knew how to code while adding that he also taught Caroline Ellison.
- “That was completely false, one of his many lies,” Harrison said about SBF’s claim that he “couldn’t code.”
- He said that multiple “sound and promising businesses” were being built, but “Sam destroyed it all.”
The former president of the US arm of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, Brett Harrison, came out to reveal some shocking facts about Sam Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF in the digital asset space. Harrison revealed that he taught Bankman-Fried, an intern, programming at Jane Street, a proprietary trading firm. After graduating from MIT, he went to work there full-time.
“I knew Sam from Jane Street,” said Brett Harrison, who was the president of FTX.US until September 2022, when he announced his departure from the crypto trading platform. In a recent interview, Harrison pointed out the “many lies” of Bankman-Fried, the former crypto billionaire who has now been found guilty on seven counts and is awaiting sentencing that will take place in March 2024.
Harrison also confirmed that Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s former girlfriend and also the ex-CEO of Alameda Research, a controversial trading firm, was also his student at Jane Street. The former FTX executive confirmed that he didn’t interact with Ellison much but worked with SBF multiple times.
In an exclusive interview, Harrison, who is now the founder and CEO of institutional-grade crypto trading platform Architect, revealed, “Sam was one of my programming students at Jane Street, Caroline too.” Interestingly, Bankman-Fried made a statement last year that he “doesn’t know how to code.” However, Harrison claims that he taught SBF how to code.
“That was completely false, one of his many lies,” Harrison said about the FTX founder’s claim that he “couldn’t code.”
After SBF resigned from his position as FTX CEO, he held a series of lengthy conversations with crypto content creator Tiffany Fong, and in a November 6, 2022, statement, he said that he doesn’t know how to code. Fong asked Bankaman-Fried about the “backdoor” that reportedly allowed him to “execute commands that could alter the [FTX] company’s financial records without alerting others.”
Bankman-Fried said at that time, “And this is something I would be doing? That I can tell you is definitely not true. I don’t even know how to code. […] I literally never even opened the code for any of FTX.”
Additionally, Harrison also confirmed that there were multiple “sound and promising businesses” being built before the implosion of FTX, but “Sam destroyed it all.”
A crypto journalist with over 3 years of experience in DeFi, NFT, metaverse, etc. Parth has worked with major media outlets in the crypto and finance world and has gained experience and expertise in crypto culture after surviving bear and bull markets over the years.
