According to Patrick Hilmann, the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) at Binance, a leading crypto exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), founder and former CEO of now-defunct FTX, frequently criticized Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), prior to FTX’s collapse. Hilmann referred to SBF’s behavior as “shading.”
In a recent tweet, the CSO revealed that SBF spread rumors about CZ and referred to him as an “evil Chinese.”
SBF Constantly Shaded CZ
A great read by @WilliamCohan at @PuckNews.
One thing they missed, Sam was CONSTANTLY spreading fake rumors about @cz_binance,
because shading him as an “evil Chinese” was critical to his scam. You can’t pretend to be Luke Skywalker without Darth Vader.— Patrick Hillmann (@PRHillmann) April 20, 2023
Hilmann’s tweet was inspired by a report by William Cohan, a veteran business writer. Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital, shared his thoughts on his relationship with SBF before FTX’s collapse. Scaramucci mentioned that he and SBF were on a $1 billion fundraising trip to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the lead-up to the saga.
FTX was trying to raise $1 billion to increase its valuation to $32 billion and to assist other companies affected by the “crypto winter.” SBF met with some officials in Dubai, including the UAE Sovereign wealth fund. However, Scaramucci was informed that SBF was bad-mouthing CZ during these meetings.
A Norm
Scaramucci believed that SBF’s remarks were inappropriate since politeness was important in the corporate world. He also pointed out that CZ could easily find out about SBF’s comments. Moreover, SBF’s remarks may have led CZ to announce that he would liquidate his $500 million investment in FTX’s native token, FTT. However, Hilmann clarified that CZ’s decision was not influenced by SBF’s behavior since such comments were normal.
