Beginning on November 14, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX before it went bankrupt, started a peculiar Twitter thread that attracted the interest and speculation of the cryptocurrency world.
The most recent tweet that Bankman-Fried had tweeted as of the time this article was written was posted by him on November 15 at 5:30 AM UTC. In it, he said that
“This is all as I recall it, although my recollection could be wrong in sections.”
The other tweets, which were made repeatedly throughout many hours, spell out “What HAPPENED.”
During an interview on November 14 with the New York Times, he was questioned about his cryptic tweets. Bankman-Fried said,
” I am creating it up as I go,” and that the collection of tweets is “going to be more than one word.”
When asked why, he said,
“I don’t know,” and added, “I’m improvising here.” “I believe the moment has come,” apparently declining to elaborate more.
Alex Berenson, Stephen Findeisen, and Others View
Cryptocurrency YouTuber Stephen Findeisen said he was “on the amphetamines again“ in response to the tweets, which may have been a reference to Bankman-Fried discussion on a podcast about experimenting with the amphetamine Adderall. Twitter users immediately began to speculate on the meaning of the tweets after they were posted.
At the beginning of the unusual sequence of tweets, several people joked that Bankman-lawyer Fried’s physically interfered to prevent him from writing anything that may be considered damaging if legal action is taken.
Alex Berenson, a journalist, and author, stated that Bankman-tweets Fried’s could be an act to possibly defend his actions by claiming insanity or that he was under mental duress if brought before a court.
Berenson’s comments were made about the possibility that Bankman-Fried will be brought before a court.
Bankman-Fried has previously removed potentially incriminating tweets, the most notable of which was a string of tweets written on November 7 that said FTX and its assets were “great.”
The crypto insights platform The Tie published a document on November 15 claiming that Bankman-Fried deleted at least 118 tweets over the previous year. The document also stated that additional tweets might have been missing because their software records tweet every 15 minutes.
It was hypothesized by the independent crypto security researcher known as “Officer’s Notes” that the originator of FTX was experimenting with steganography, which is a technique for concealing information inside another message, also known as a hidden code.
https://twitter.com/officer_cia/status/1592291954557341699?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
An influential cryptocurrency trader named Gurgavin Chandhoke believes that Bankman-Fried is trying to communicate with Sam Trabucco, who used to serve as the CEO of FTX’s sister trading business, Alameda Research.
According to Chandhoke, Bankman-Fried is supposedly sending a message to Trabucco by perhaps trying to spell “what occurred.” As proof, Chandhoke points to a sequence of previous tweets of Trabucco’s that read, “what happened?”
Still, many believe Bankman-Fried is engaging in Clickbait and only cares about the response his postings get.
According to information obtained from the social media analytics site Social Blade, the number of people following Bankman-Fried on Twitter increased by more than 202,000 between November 7 and November 13, roughly coinciding with the beginning of the FTX story.
The first tweet he sent in the strange thread is the one that has received the third most likes.
