Sam Bankman-Fried Goes on the Offensive
NEWS | 29 November 2025
On September 23, for the first time in more than six months, an X account belonging to disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried published a post. It simply read, “gm”—internet slang for “good morning.” The account has been posting consistently since. Bankman-Fried—known widely as SBF—is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence in California. In November 2023, he was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy by a jury in the Southern District of New York over his role in the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX. Immediately after his sentencing, Bankman-Fried signaled his intention to appeal. In spring, he spoke to a handful of reporters from prison. But otherwise, he has largely receded from public view. Distracted by the arrival of US bitcoin exchange-traded funds, a memecoin goldrush, talk of national bitcoin reserves, and the prospect of an easy ride under US president Donald Trump, the crypto industry moved on too. However, since September, Bankman-Fried’s X account has been causing a stir. (Though Bankman-Fried does not have access to the internet in prison, a friend is supposedly posting on his behalf.) The posts lob criticism at the administrators of the FTX bankruptcy estate and focus on alleged misconceptions about the condition of FTX’s finances when it fell; they claim that the money was never missing, only stuck in illiquid assets. From prison, Bankman-Fried has also been sitting for interviews with media outlet Mother Jones, published in October, during which he largely promoted the same perspective. His mother, the legal professor Barbara Fried, recently launched a Substack. Her first and only post, published in late October, is a 65-page treatise entitled “The Trial of Sam Bankman-Fried,” in which she makes the case that her son neither committed a fraud nor received a fair trial. (Bankman-Fried’s representatives confirmed that Barbara Fried authored the Substack paper; they said they had no information about the X posts. They did not respond to a request for further comment.) Bankman-Fried’s reemergence appears to reflect a two-pronged approach to securing his release from prison. In the courts, Bankman-Fried is pursuing a formal appeal; elsewhere, he is appealing to public sympathy. The prevailing sentiment toward Bankman-Fried will have no bearing on the appeal case, former prosecutors claim. But it could influence his reported campaign to secure a presidential pardon from Trump, who has absolved various crypto figureheads since returning to the White House in January.
Author: Joel Khalili.
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