Disgraced former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was furious in an interview at media speculation about the polyamorous lifestyle of himself and his peers.
During a phone conversation with crypto influencer Tiffany Fong and YouTuber Stephen “Coffeezilla” Findeisen, Bankman-Fried lamented that the “media metric is clicks.”
Earlier this month, it was revealed that Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend and CEO of one of his companies, Caroline Ellison, wrote about being polyamorous while she and other executives lived together in a house in the Bahamas.
Excerpts of the November 16 call were released by Findeisen on Twitter today, and Bankman-Fried could be heard saying how he was fed up with speculation about his love life and that of his colleagues on the board.
They come just as the former FTX employees revealed the exorbitant expenses Bankman-Fried and his colleagues have made on the company’s penny, including massive dining stipends, massages and even private jets hauling Amazon shipments to their luxury office in the Bahamas .
FTX filed for bankruptcy earlier this month after reports it owed billions of dollars to clients.
Disgraced former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was furious in an interview at media speculation about his polyamorous lifestyle and that of his peers
Bankman-Fried told Fong and Findeisen that the media focused on “provocative” issues so they could avoid a “boring story” that “won’t sell.”
The problem is that at the end of the day, their metric is clicks. That’s what they need to get and it’s ok it is what it is but it means a boring story won’t sell and so they’ll try to ask me questions in the most provocative way possible, ‘ he said.
He said he thinks “society” has spent enough time speculating about the love lives of himself and his colleagues, who live at the Albany Resort in the Bahamas.
“We as a society have, in my opinion, in my humble opinion, spent about enough time this week trying to figure out if someone who lives in Albany is polyamorous,” Bankman-Fried said. “I feel like I’ve answered that question many times, and the answer is too boring for people to believe.”
Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, the CEO of FTX’s sister company Alameda Research, became the focus of rumors surrounding FTX’s polyamorous romantic world
In her now-deleted Tumblr in 2020, Ellison wrote under the name Worldoptimization, “When I first got into poly I thought it was a radical break with my traditional past, but honestly I’ve settled on the only acceptable style of it.” Poly is best characterized as something like “Imperial Chinese Harem”.
Bankman-Fried looked harried in the Bahamas in November as FTX collapsed around him
Rumors of the sexual antics of Bankman-Fried and his fellow Bahamas roommates surfaced as FTX began to collapse.
According to a November report in CoinDesk, all of the occupants of the home were or used to be connected.
Among them was Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, the CEO of FTX’s sister company Alameda Research.
In a February Tumblr post, she wrote about her “foray into poly,” saying that in a polyamorous relationship, everyone should have a “ranked list of their partners” and “vicious power struggles for higher ranks.”
She said: “When I began my foray into poly, I felt it was a radical break with my traditional past, but honestly I’ve come to the conclusion that the only acceptable style of poly is best described as something like ‘imperial Chinese harem’ can be characterized .’
‘None of those non-hierarchical cops***; Everyone should have a ranking of their partners, people should know where they stand in the rankings, and there should be vicious infighting for the higher ranks.’
Albany, the resort in the Bahamas where Bankman-Fried established FTX headquarters
Bankman-Fried lived with his FTX headquarters in a luxury home in the Albany Resort in the Bahamas
The luxurious home in the Bahamas where Bankman-Fried set up FTX headquarters
When Bankman-Fried complained about media speculation about the romantic environment at FTX, former employees revealed the outrageous spending they enjoyed there.
Food was delivered daily at the Bahamas headquarters, and employees enjoyed “free groceries, barbershop pop-ups and bi-weekly massages,” a former Financial Times staffer said. In the US, workers were allowed to pay $200 a day for DoorDash.
There was also a “full suite of cars and petrol for all employees”. [and] Unlimited, fully funded travel to any office worldwide.’
Amazon doesn’t ship to the Bahamas, so FTX chose to charter private jets to bring in the employees’ packages.
‘[It was] Kids leading kids,” said a former employee. “The entire operation was idiotically inefficient, but equally fascinating.”
“I had never seen so much money in my life. I don’t think anyone had that, including SBF.”
Responding to reports that Bankman-Fried and his associates regularly partied hard with drugs or relied heavily on amphetamines to work long hours, the former CEO said such things never happened.
“There were no wild parties.” He told the New York Times on Wednesday. “We play board games at our parties. Twenty percent of people would drink a quarter of a beer each and the rest of us would drink nothing.”
He said he was prescribed certain medications to help him work. “I think they help me focus a bit,” he said.