FTX Rescued Struggling Crypto Companies To Keep Industry Healthy, Says CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried says the company has been acquiring stakes in other crypto firms for the sake of keeping the industry strong.

In a new interview during the Bloomberg Crypto Summit, Bankman-Fried says that in the short-term, FTX’s profitability stems from market volatility and volume.

In the longer term, however, the crypto billionaire says that the company needs a strong, burgeoning industry to bring in a steady growth of new users.

With that in mind, the FTX boss says that during the crypto bear market that has pushed many entities out of the space, the firm is making an attempt to keep multiple large players afloat regardless of profit potential.

“The explicit sort of working principle we had in a number of these, was like, it’s okay to do a deal that’s like moderately bad in bailing out a place. The bar was not ‘is this a good return on investment?’ The bar is like ‘this is not that bad of a return on our investment,’ or ‘we are incinerating a relatively smallish amount of money in doing this.'”

FTX has made multiple acquisitions since crypto markets first started weathering severe downside volatility, including lending platform BlockFi. The company reached an agreement for $400 million in revolving credit facility plus an option to acquire BlockFi at a variable price of up to $240 million.

BlockFi said,

“Ultimately, we found a great partner in FTXUS, who shares our commitment to clients. This represents the best path forward for all BlockFi stakeholders and the crypto ecosystem as a whole.”

Bankman-fried also says that propping up struggling companies in the space may also be socially responsible and a good look for FTX.

“You could say look, it’s being healthy that would cause it to be popular. Ultimately it’s the popularity that would matter but there’s a flow-through from health there, which is sort of the operative thing. I think there’s also just a thing of like, we need to be a good constructive factor in this space. If we’re not, it’s just bad on many levels…”