CZ says SBF asked for billions ‘like a Bologna sandwich’ as FTX collapsed

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Finance

What to know:

  • Zhao says he never seriously considered buying FTX, describing SBF’s approach as “indirect and wishy-washy” and the LOI as a pure formality to assess whether users could be protected.
  • He identifies Caroline Ellison’s public offer to buy FTT at $22 as the moment FTX was doomed, arguing that it gave professional traders a floor price to short.
  • A Signal group called “Exchange Collaboration,” set up by FTX’s Zane Tackett, later drew DOJ and SEC scrutiny for potential collusion, which Zhao flatly denies.

Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, gave us a peek behind the curtain of the FTX disaster, and it’s just as glamorous as you’d expect from a bunch of overconfident billionaires fumbling around in the dark. According to Zhao, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) called him up and casually asked for “a couple billion dollars” like he was ordering a bologna sandwich at a deli. No biggie. You know, just a couple billion to rescue the sinking ship that was FTX. Totally normal.

In his new memoir Freedom of Money, which sounds like a title written by someone who definitely has enough money to know the meaning of freedom, Zhao admits he had zero intention of taking over FTX. “I didn’t want to own it, and honestly, I didn’t really care about helping SBF,” he writes. “But, hey, we might have to step in to protect the users and the industry.” So, he signed a non-binding Letter of Intent, but just as a formality-because, you know, billion-dollar deals are just a casual, friendly handshake when you’re in the business of saving the crypto world.

Then, the fun really began. Zhao makes it clear that the house of cards collapsed when Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda, publicly announced she was willing to buy Binance’s FTT holdings at $22 each. Zhao says she made a “fatal mistake” by revealing the floor price, which, to be fair, sounds more like a rookie mistake in a game of financial chicken. As soon as the market got wind of that, traders started shorting FTT like it was going out of style. The token plummeted to $15, then $10, then $5-like watching a very expensive stock market reality show unfold in real-time. Within 72 hours, $6 billion had evaporated from FTX.

In the midst of all this drama, Zhao mentions a Signal group called “Exchange Collaboration” set up by FTX’s Zane Tackett during the Terra/LUNA collapse earlier that year. The group included Zhao, Bankman-Fried, Brian Armstrong from Coinbase, Jesse Powell from Kraken, and others. You know, just a casual chat about how to avoid getting caught in a market collapse. Naturally, this group piqued the interest of the DOJ and SEC, who were itching to find any sign of collusion. But don’t worry, Zhao assures us there was nothing shady going on-just a bunch of highly influential crypto figures chatting like they’re planning a casual dinner party.

By November 9th, Binance pulled the plug on the whole FTX deal. Binance’s FTT holdings, which had once been worth $580 million, were now “basically worthless.” It was like the company’s $1.6 billion wipeout from the LUNA fiasco was just a warm-up. No big deal, right?

And then came the bank run. On December 14th, $7 billion was withdrawn from Binance in a single day. If that sounds like a scene from a thriller movie, it wasn’t. Zhao spent the evening dining with friends. “I wasn’t worried,” he wrote, because, well, all user funds were already in reserves. Clearly, he has a different definition of ‘crisis mode.’ Within a month, users had deposited that money back-plus some. Because, of course, crypto enthusiasts have an endless supply of confidence and a knack for bouncing back, even from total chaos.

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2026-04-08 02:58