NEW YORK — FTX founder Samuel Bankman-Fried’s interview at a financial conference here Wednesday drew a crowd of protesters, some of whom had lost sizable portions of their life savings in the collapse of his crypto platform FTX earlier in November.
“This guy robbed me,” said Anthony Canelo, who stood outside the event hosted by the New York Times, where Bankman-Fried spoke via video link from the Bahamas.
Canelo held a sign that read “SBF and Gary G robbed us all,” referring to Bankman-Fried as well as U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, who has been under pressure to clamp down on the loosely regulated cryptocurrency sector.
“I lost over $10,000. I’m 36-years-old. Do you know how much money that is for someone like myself? And this guy gets to talk? Everyone knows that he took customer funds,” Canelo added.
“If you look at it, this is a classic scam,” he continued. “You have opaqueness of books, you have a so-called charismatic leader, you have top-tier sponsors. This is outrageous that he’s even allowed to speak here.”
Bankman-Fried was interviewed during the event by New York Times reporter and CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin, who said he’d received numerous letters from people who’d experienced financial hardship from the collapse and were angry the FTX founder was being given a high-profile platform to explain himself.
“One of the letters I got I want to read to you, Sam, because it’s from a gentleman who said he…
