I Visited FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried. Here's His Story...

Before Sam Bankman-Fried was placed under a gag order last week, I visited him at his parents’ house in Palo Alto to discuss the prospects of a possible interview.

I showed up to the home near Stanford’s campus on a Sunday and was immediately greeted by a security guard who informed me I’d have to leave all electronics with him outside. As was discussed in detail during recent court hearings, those are the conditions of SBF’s bail arrangement, along with having to record visitors on a pen register.

I had interviewed Sam before plenty of times, just never after being wanded down with a metal detector and certainly never while he was under house arrest. But this time I wasn’t just there to pitch an interview – I was there to pitch Sam on a new way of getting to the truth.

Three hours later, I’d leave with Sam agreeing to answer questions from the Coinage community – and something else I was never expecting to get: Pages of documents outlining his defense strategy and exactly what he says led to FTX’s downfall.

As a community-owned Web3 media outlet, Coinage will be breaking down everything we received together and curating still unanswered questions in our token-gated channels. (The chances of being able to deliver on an interview have now diminished a bit, given that prosecutors are pushing to revoke bail and detain Sam ahead of his trial. Nonetheless, as his defense team fights to maintain Sam’s ability to respond to press requests, we at Coinage want to be prepared. You can join in submitting questions here by minting a Coinage Caucus membership pass to co-own our outlet via our DAO/Cooperative.)

I realized after our meeting that Sam has been speaking with a number of journalists at various publications while under house arrest. A court hearing last week revealed Sam held more than 1,000 calls with members of the media, including more than 100 calls with a reporter at the New York Times. While the New York Times did not explicitly tell its readers how it received excerpts from Caroline Ellison’s private diaries, prosecutors learned from SBF’s defense that they came from SBF himself.

Our intent over the next few weeks is not to blindly publish Sam’s defense in his own words, nor is it to play a part in a larger “strategy” prosecutors say Sam is weaving. Our intent is to look critically at new facts with our community members and outside legal experts and to curate questions to be asked in a future interview, should it still be possible. Given that the actual trial is set to begin on October 2, we also hope to inform people of expected arguments to come.

Analyzing SBF’s Defense

One of the main pillars of Sam’s defense is somewhat obvious in hindsight, given the decision to participate in the New York Times story that has now landed him back in court facing the threat of being detained…