Coinbase CEO: Even The Most Gullible People Should Not Believe SBF

Samuel Bankman-Fried took Do Kwon’s spot by becoming the most talked-about and arguably hated person in the cryptocurrency industry in November when his empire collapsed, and the community found out about his dirty laundry.

The latest to join the bashing fest is Coinbase’s CEO – Brian Armstrong – who had some strong words to say about people believing SBF’s most recent story.

Don’t Believe SBF

After a few weeks of staying quiet in the dark, Bankman-Fried finally broke his silence and made multiple public appearances, in which he made some shocking revelations about FTX, Alameda, and everything in between.

Among those was an attempt to explain one of the elephants in the FTX room – $8 billion, which was somehow missing from the company’s balance sheet and ultimately prevented the sale to Binance.

SBF claimed that he and his executives made an accounting error, which led to the loss of $8 billion. However, very few people are actually buying his explanations, and Coinbase’s CEO is not among those.

I don’t care how messy your accounting is (or how rich you are) – you’re definitely going to notice if you find an extra $8B to spend.

Even the most gullible person should not believe Sam’s claim that this was an accounting error.

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) December 3, 2022

After urging people not to believe Bankman-Fried’s story, Armstrong said what many in the community have speculated with over the past several weeks – that the $8 billion is actually “stolen customer money used in his hedge fund.”

Recall that SBF had a hard time answering a direct question about whether he knew about the user funds being transferred from FTX to Alameda, even though the latter’s former CEO recently confirmed this.

Some People Actually Believe SBF

While SBF has been unable to prove any of his claims, and people like Brian Armstrong and Mike Novogratz tried to call him out on these, there’re some prominent figures that have stood with the former FTX chief.

Among the first to cast his public support was the billionaire hedge fund manager – Bill Ackman. Kevin O’Leary – the Shark Tank co-host, as well as a respected Canadian investor, echoed Ackman’s words. This was even more surprising since he admitted to losing “millions as an investor in FTX,” and he was also a paid spokesman who famously said that the exchange is as safe as it gets earlier.