After the downfall of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, Musk claimed his "bullshit meter was redlining" in a previous meeting with him.
At 2:30 a.m., Musk made a statement. The conversation was with 60,000 people. Shortly after news broke on Friday evening that FTX was investigating "abnormal transactions" in an apparent hack, the discussion started.
The new CEO said he had never heard of him. A lot of people told me that he had a lot of money that he wanted to invest in the deal. I spoke to him for about an hour. My bullshit meter was redlining. I thought this guy is bullshit.
FTX announced on Friday that it was going to file for Chapter 11. Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO, lost most of his net worth, and apologized on social media. FTX's decline was caused by high customer withdrawals and his incorrect assessment of the company's debt.
One day before the company announced it was filing for bankruptcy, FTX had just $900 million in sellable assets against $9 billion of liabilities.
It's not clear when the meeting between Musk and Bankman-Fried took place, but it appears to have been in the early days of Musk's plans for a takeover of the social network. Musk now says he felt something wasn't right during the discussion.
Everyone was talking about him like he's walking on water and has a lot of money. There's something wrong with that guy, and he doesn't have capital, and he won't come through. Musk said that he was the one who predicted it.
A crude meme of Bankman-Fried was posted by Musk early Saturday morning.
—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 12, 2022
The comments come as other leaders speak out about their own interactions with Bankman-Fried, including the CEO of Coinbase, who told CNBC earlier this week that the FTX founder reached out to him to raise emergency funds for the struggling company.
It felt like a bad situation that we wanted to avoid.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
