on October 31, 2025, Sam Bankman-Fried’s (SBF) X page (formerly Twitter) posted a document on his behalf. It claims that the FTX exchange was still solvent at the time of the bankruptcy, and that the team managing the process simply took over the company.
[SBF says:]
This is where the money went. https://t.co/HVRwEw5Z1k https://t.co/5DrA13L5YE pic.twitter.com/O6q77DvmTn
– SBF (@SBF_FTX) October 31, 2025
Who is SBF and what happened to him?
Sam Bankman-Fried is the former CEO of crypto exchange FTX. In November 2022, the company collapsed. The exchange’s management was later charged with fraud and conspiracy to defraud investors and money laundering.
SBF was found guilty. In March 2024, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison, after which he repeatedly tried to appeal the court’s decision.
He gave a wide-ranging interview in March 2025, after which his conditions were tightened. A certain friend, whose name does not appear in the press, is known to be posting material from his account.
New details
The file, dated Sept. 30, 2025 and posted on SBF’s page, claims the company had $14.6 billion in assets at the time of its bankruptcy.
That said, according to Bankman-Fried, or whoever drafted the document on his behalf, all affected customers have been or will be compensated between 119% and 143%. And allegedly 98% of users have already been credited with a payout averaging 120% of their deposit.
“After paying out $8 billion in claims and $1 billion in attorneys’ fees, the company still has $8 billion left. In fact, FTX has never been insolvent. There have always been enough assets to fully repay all debts owed to customers — both in November 2022 and today,” the paper said.
The situation that FTX faced in November 2022, SBF calls a liquidity crisis. While it allegedly would have been overcome by the end of the month, the previous management was removed from running the company.
SBF says FTX, including stakes in Anthropic and other portfolio organizations, could have been valued at $136 billion as of today had it not collapsed.
He said that when he and other top executives were removed from management, the exchange had already allegedly begun paying off outstanding customer claims. Meanwhile, the company continued to generate up to $3 million in commission revenue daily, the document alleged.
SBF said FTX was allegedly able to repay all payments in kind, avoiding the delay and dollarization of deposits when users received their assets at November 2022 prices. However, he lost control of the company and it collapsed, followed by litigation.
The main reason for this, according to Bankman-Fried, is the “takeover” of FTX by lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell. They are the ones who initiated the bankruptcy process.
“These lawyers were given significant incentives to file for bankruptcy. Once FTX became the debtors’ estate, which they managed, the lawyers were able to pay themselves discretionary fees out of FTX’s billions of dollars,” the document says.
In doing so, they provided inside information to the court, even though SBF remained their client.
They sold some of the company’s assets allegedly at undervalued prices, laid off staff, made a number of “false” claims and delayed the process in every way possible, SBF said. As a result, customers and shareholders suffered about $120 billion in losses, the document emphasized.
“FTX was not a fraudulent scheme and could have paid off all customers as early as 2022. The main reason for the company’s depreciation was the actions of lawyers and external management, not a shortage of funds,” the SBF summarized.
Preparing for a pardon?
In February 2025, Sam Bankman-Fried said he would like to receive a pardon from US President Donald Trump. A month later, The New York Times published an article stating that those close to SBF were lobbying for the decision, but there is still no information about an official pardon.
Against this backdrop, CoinDesk, which reportedly started the FTX collapse, said that the published document was an attempt to “score points in its favor”.
In the community, the material was received coldly. In particular, a well-known crypto detective under the nickname ZachXBT stated the following:
“The fact that illiquid investments are worth more today is just a coincidence. You clearly haven’t learned from your time in prison and are repeating the same misinformation as before.”
He also added:
“SBF is simply trying to take advantage of the fact that all FTX assets/investments have increased from peak prices in November 2022, when they actually couldn’t pay users any money at the time of bankruptcy, and instead point to the bankruptcy team as the true villain.”