Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced co-founder and former CEO of collapsed crypto exchange FTX, took shots at the company’s marketing efforts, saying they amounted to a “bunch of bullshit” to try and make the exchange look good.
The comments were made in Bankman-Fried’s interview at The New York Times’ annual Dealbook Summit Wednesday evening—his most prominent public interview since the exchange imploded in dramatic fashion last month.
In response to a question about whether his charitable beliefs were fabricated, Bankman-Fried, commonly known as “SBF,” said: “[There] are a lot of things that I think have really a massive impact on the world…Separately from that, there is a bunch of bullshit that regulated companies do to try and look good.”
He went on to specify FTX’s practice of deploying “a PR campaign sort of masquerading as a do-gooderism,” comparing it with other insincere efforts like greenwashing, which is when a brand makes an unsubstantiated claim that its products are environmentally friendly.
“These are not looking at saving thousands of lives. You know, these are the kind of like, you know, if like three different quarterbacks throw a touchdown in the same game for the same team, we will donate two used cars to charity-type campaigns. Where it’s not going to happen. It’s never happened. There’s no expectation of a car getting donated,” he said.
Bankman-Fried did not cite any specific initiatives as examples, but his company had a history of branding efforts. Earlier this year, supermodel and the former wife of Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, was appointed as FTX’s head of environmental and social initiatives.
The move, which was promoted with a print campaign, was announced after her role as a celebrity brand ambassador alongside her then-husband. The couple starred in a TV spot in 2021 all about pressuring friends to invest in crypto.
FTX also made several efforts to promote crypto education, also by using a recognizable name. There was a deal with the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team, for example, aimed to teach student-athletes about digital assets in return for them acting as brand ambassadors. Another campaign with Miami Heat player Udonis Haslem billed itself as increasing crypto accessibility to the local area; the effort was a small piece of a $135 million partnership with the Heat organization, which granted FTX naming rights over the team’s arena.
In the DealBook interview, Bankman-Fried also said: “We had promotional campaigns. We had marketing slogans. We thought about ourselves as legitimately trying to do good, but we also thought about what we could do to make sure that our image reflected that. There is a lot of unimpactful things that ultimately, I think, in some circles, got more attention than actually impactful things.”
FTX had one of the most attention-grabbing marketing strategies of any crypto company. From a Super Bowl ad with Larry David to numerous TV spots with Brady, as well as ambassador deals with Stephen Curry, Naomi Osaka, Shaquille O’Neal, and branding rights on MLB umpires' uniforms—the exchange had its hand in numerous pies. This approach has not only come back to bite FTX amid its collapse, but also its partners, who were recently sued in a class-action lawsuit decrying their endorsement of the allegedly fraudulent platform.
The last several weeks have seen the unwinding of FTX’s many partnerships. Esports organization TSM suspended its deal with the exchange and removed branding from its uniforms, the Miami Heat ended the naming rights agreement over its arena and Visa shut down its FTX debit card program.
