'This dude is bulls**t': Elon Musk reveals he turned down FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's offer
NASSAU, BAHAMAS: Tesla owner Elon Musk has taken a dig at disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and said he "set off his bulls**t detector." The new Twitter head also revealed that Bankman-Fried had offered him to help finance his Twitter takeover last spring. “To be honest, I'd never heard of him,” Musk said this during a Twitter Spaces audio chatroom on Saturday, November 12. He added, “But then I got a ton of people telling me [that] he's got, you know, huge amounts of money that he wants to invest in the Twitter deal.”
Musk then shared what he made of him after a long conversation with him as reported by CoinDesk, “And I talked to him for about half an hour. And I know my bulls**t meter was redlining. It was like, this dude is bulls**t – that was my impression.” Bankman-Fried on Friday, November 11, quit as the CEO of FTX amid the crypto exchange company filing for bankruptcy. Reports are also floating that up to $2 billion in client funds had disappeared from the books of the organization, according to the Daily Mail.
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Accurate. He set off my bs detector, which is why I did not think he had $3B.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 12, 2022
“Then I was like, man, everyone including major investment banks – everyone was talking about him like he's walking on water and has a zillion dollars,” Musk continued. “And that [was] not my impression…that dude is just – there's something wrong, and he does not have capital, and he will not come through. That was my prediction.” He even tweeted a meme that may not be to everyone’s taste, depicting Bankman-Fried as the actor in a pornographic film, “Man F***s 5 Million People At Once.”
FTX is a Bahamas-based firm that filed for bankruptcy on Friday before several customers withdrew earlier this week. The firm did try to close the floodgates by getting into a rescue deal with rival Binance, but that didn’t work out. This had led to crypto’s "highest-profile collapse" in recent times. Bankman-Fried told Reuters via text messages that he "disagreed with the characterization" of the $10 billion transfer, which many reports allege.
“We didn't secretly transfer. We had confusing internal labeling and misread it," he said without explaining. When the agency asked about the missing funds, Bankman-Fried replied, “???”
After resigning as CEO of the firm, he tweeted, “piecing together” what had happened at FTX. "I was shocked to see things unravel the way they did earlier this week. I will, soon, write up a more complete post on the play by play.”