In a never-posted thousands-of-words long Twitter thread, Sam Bankman-Fried assessed his predicament in blunt terms, the New York Times reports. “I’m broke and wearing an ankle monitor and one of the most hated people in the world,” he wrote. “There will probably never be anything I can do to make my lifetime impact net positive.” Bankman-Fried is the founder of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. After Bankman-Fried was arrested, charged with fraud over FTX’s collapse and placed in home detention in December, he wrote hundreds of pages of sometimes rambling self-justifications, ranging from childhood memories to mathematical calculations. He criticized some of his closest colleagues, interspersing his arguments with photos from his high school years and stock images of popcorn and a garden maze.
Once a prolific poster on Twitter, Bankman-Fried labeled the thread “a draft of a draft of a draft of an idea” and included links to 29 other files about FTX. One document, titled “Inception V2,” is a lengthy attack on the company’s bankruptcy lawyers. The 250 pages of documents offer new details about his possible legal defense beyond what his lawyers have said in court, shedding light on how he may justify his actions when his trial starts on Oct. 3. Prosecutors have charged Bankman-Fried with orchestrating a scheme to funnel FTX customer funds to a hedge fund he founded, Alameda Research, so that his companies could make venture capital investments, buy real estate and donate to politicians. Once hailed as a trustworthy force in the loosely regulated world of crypto, FTX imploded in November, costing customers billions of dollars and devastating the industry.