American journalist Michael Lewis mentioned something controversial about Binance’s CEO in his new book “Going Infinite”.
Michael Lewis is a popular American author & financial journalist. Recently in an interview he indirectly claimed Binance CEO CZ was responsible for the downfall of the FTX crypto exchange and for that statement, he faced huge criticism from the crypto proponents, as FTX former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was the main culprit behind the bankruptcy of the FTX.
In the new book published by Lewis, we can see a small financial discussion between Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) & FTX’s former CEO SBF.
According to the book author, in mid-2021, SBF had requested CZ to repurchase the FTX shares that Binance purchased for $80 million in late 2019. At the time, CZ proposed a price of $2.2 billion & SBF agreed but just before the signing of the deal CZ again asked for a $75 million increment and SBF agreed too.
The former Binance chief finance officer Patrick Hillman responded to this controversial discussion between SBF & CZ and said that people must keep in mind the fact that the author of this book is a spokesperson for SBF.
SBF vs CZ
Following a report by the CoinDesk media people came to know about the actual financial position and that created a type of fear among the FTX customers.
Also with that news, CZ came to know about the whole situation and decided to sell all the FTX tokens (FTT), the amount that Binance received from the FTX exchange when sold FTX stakes.
Following the CZ’s announcement, FTX customers started to withdraw their funds rapidly & finally, within 24 hours FTX exchange collapsed badly. A few days later, FTX filed for bankruptcy as the exchange was not holding the customers’ funds.
CZ cleared everyone on this matter and confirmed that he was not against any crypto platform.
It is a bitter truth that FTX’s ex-CEO misused customers’ funds for personal benefits & high amounts of political donations and this was the main reason why the exchange collapsed badly but SBF many times claimed that CZ was responsible for FTX’s downfall.
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