Illustration: Maxime Mouysset for Bloomberg Businessweek
11 Hours With Sam Bankman-Fried: Inside the Bahamian Penthouse After FTX’s Fall
Billions of dollars of customer money is missing, investigators are circling, and the 30-year-old ex-CEO admits his company broke its own rules.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s $30 million Bahamas penthouse looks like a dorm after the students have left for winter break. The dishwasher is full. Towels are piled in the laundry room. Bat streamers from a Halloween party are still hanging from a doorway. Two boxes of Legos sit on the floor of one bedroom. And then there are the shoes—dozens of sneakers and heels piled in the foyer, left behind by employees who fled the island of New Providence last month when his cryptocurrency exchange FTX imploded.
“It’s been an interesting few weeks,” Bankman-Fried says in a chipper tone as he greets me. It’s a muggy Saturday afternoon, eight days after FTX filed for bankruptcy. He’s shoeless, in white gym socks, a red T-shirt and wrinkled khaki shorts. His standard uniform.