I’m no Madoff, insists FTX founder

THE founder of FTX has claimed the implosion of the cryptocurrency exchange was “very different” from Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme amid allegations that customer funds were misused.

Sam Bankman-fried, chief executive of the world’s second largest digital coin exchange, rejected comparisons to the biggest ever investment fraud.

Mr Bankman-fried told ABC: “I think it reads very differently. When you look at the Bernie Madoff story … there was really no business there. It was just one big Ponzi scheme. FTX was a real business.”

Madoff, who was chairman of the US Nasdaq exchange and ran a leading asset management company, defrauded clients of $65bn (£53bn) by fabricating gains for decades at his fund. He was sentenced to 150 years in prison and died in 2021.

Mr Bankman-fried has been accused of overseeing the use of customer deposits to prop up risky, loss-making trades at a cryptocurrency hedge fund, Alameda Research.

FTX collapsed with an $8bn black hole in its accounts and more than one million creditors last month.