Sam Bankman-Fried testified before a jury that he thought FTX would have a 20% chance of success

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) testified before a judge and jury during his criminal fraud trial in which he explained that he thought his crypto exchange, FTX, would fail and not be successful. 

The prosecution stated that FTX, “was built on lies,” and that SBF took the money from his company's clients to purchase beachfront property in the Bahamas and to pour money into political campaigns in the U.S., according to CNN.  

Defense lawyers argued that SBF was "building the plane as they were flying it," and that “it’s not a crime to be the CEO of a company that later files for bankruptcy.”

Bankman-Fried testified that he had originally envisioned selling FTX to the Crypto giant Binance because he did not know how he would get customers, according to the outlet. 

Binance ended up using an internal team to build out its own cryptocurrency exchange platform. Bankman-Fried, age 31, said this made him more optimistic that FTX could grow. 

“I thought there was maybe a 20% chance of success and an 80% chance it would shut down after a few months, he told jurors, according to the outlet. “Even that 20% chance was a huge opportunity, given that the biggest exchanges at the time were multi billion-dollar companies.” 

FTX declared bankruptcy last year following reports that the exchange was in financial trouble, which resulted in investors rushing to take out their money followed by the collapse.

Bankman-Fried is currently facing seven fraud counts and if convicted of all of them, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.