REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
- Sam Bankman-Fried has previously said "I would never read a book," and prefers blog posts.
- But since he's been under house arrest, SBF has written over 1,000 pages, the FT reported.
- Bankman-Fried passes his time writing and speaking to his lawyers, the paper said.
Sam Bankman-Fried has written over 1,000 pages reflecting on the collapse of his crypto exchange, the former CEO of FTX told the Financial Times.
That's despite the former billionaire previously admitting his disdain for lengthy writings, as LitHub reported.
Last September, in an interview with Sequoia Capital, a major investor in FTX, Bankman-Fried said he was skeptical of books as a concept, saying: "I would never read a book."
"I think, if you wrote a book, you fucked up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post," he added.
The interview has since been deleted, but remains available on web archiving services.
Bankman-Fried is currently living under house arrest at his Stanford professor parents' home in Palo Alto, California, after being charged with eight counts including fraud and money laundering. Their $4 million home has also been posted as collateral for Bankman-Fried's $250 million bail. He pleaded not guilty to all charges last month.
The FT reported that SBF spends most of his time in a "book-lined room," and passes the time writing and speaking to his lawyers.
Michael Lewis, whose book "The Big Short" explores the 2008 financial crisis, has been working on a book about Bankman-Fried since last May, according to The Ankler.
Now, it looks like Bankman-Fried may have his own book in the works as well, though it is unclear what, if anything, he intends to do with his 1,000 pages of prose.
FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11 after it came to light that the crypto exchange had overly-close ties with Bankman-Fried's hedge fund, Alameda. Lawyers handling the bankruptcy case said last month that Alameda had a $65 billion line of credit to draw on customer deposits, and they "bought planes, houses, threw parties, made political donations."
In January, SBF started posting on Substack, piecing together his account of how FTX collapsed. "I didn't steal funds," he said, sharing balance sheets to claim that some customers could still be reimbursed.
A spokesperson for Bankman-Fried did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, sent outside US working hours.