Sam Bankman-Fried accuses crypto giants of indifference toward ailing firms

The head of the FTX bitcoin exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried, said on the Decrypt podcast Decrypt, that he does not want to be the only one saving the ‘ailing’ companies in the cryptocurrency industry.

According to him, other giants in the digital-asset space offered no support.

“I would be glad if others did this. I would be very happy if others took this on instead of me. To be honest, I am doing this because I am unsure what someone else will do,” Bankman-Fried explained.

He said that FTX approached other unnamed crypto companies to pool efforts to “save” the industry. According to him, most of them declined the offer.

Binance co-founder He Yi explained to Decrypt that the firm is interested in investments in long-term players who will benefit the industry and users.

“Last week, Binance announced $7.5 bn in its venture arm. We are working on a number of deals that we will announce when the time comes,” she added.

Earlier, CEO Binance Changpeng Zhao said the company will hold ‘rescue talks’ with more than 50 firms. In his view, crypto-winter is an excellent time to expand the team and to grow the business through various acquisitions.

In June, FTX opened a $250 million revolving credit facility for the crypto-lending platform BlockFi. A few days earlier, Alameda Research, affiliated with Bankman-Fried, provided Voyager Digital with a loan of $500 million.

Subsequently, the US arm of FTX extended BlockFi with another revolving credit of $400 million, obtaining an option to acquire the platform for $240 million.

In August, Bloomberg reported interest from Bankman-Fried and Justin Sun in acquiring 58% of Huobi’s bitcoin exchange.

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