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- Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said he wasn’t sparring with former FTX head Sam Bankman-Fried.
- But days after a public spat, FTX filed for bankruptcy and Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO.
- “I still don’t think I have that much influence,” Zhao told TechCrunch, while downplaying his clout in FTX’s fall.
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the CEO of Binance, has downplayed his influence in the fall of FTX, saying he wasn’t sparring with anybody in the events leading up to the exchange’s collapse.
“We don’t focus on other smaller exchanges,” Zhao told CNBC on Thursday. Zhao heads up Binance, the world’s largest cryto exchange by trading volume, according to CoinGecko, an analytics platform.
Zhao’s comments came after two weeks of turmoil in the crypto market, during which cryptoexchange FTX filed for bankruptcy and Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO.
The events followed a public spat between Zhao and FTX founder and Bankman-Fried, which spiralled into an explosive liquidity crisis at FTX.
Bankman-Fried said in a Sunday interview with New York Times that he regretted the feud with Zhao, saying that him criticizing Zhao “was not a good strategic move on my part.”
But Zhao said he wasn’t sparring with FTX and that Binance just wanted to liquidate all its FTT tokens — a crypto token native to FTX — which he announced on Twitter on November 6, citing “recent revelations.” This triggered a rash of withdrawals at FTX, causing a liquidity crunch that eventually led to FTX’s downfall.
“We were never in a battle with him. He may think he is in a battle with us,” Zhao told CNBC. “We didn’t even notice.”
Zhao told tech news site TechCrunch on Thursday he didn’t know his words could cause such a major fallout as the FTT tokens he held only made up a small percentage of its overall supply.
“I still don’t think I have that much influence. I think we were the last straw that broke the camel’s back,” Zhao told TechCrunch. “To be honest, even if I didn’t make that tweet, this whole thing could still happen,” he said, adding there was a “build-up in a lack of trust in FTX and people’s suspicions.”
Zhao said the turmoil in the crypto market now would impact its business and the industry as well, although that could help the industry boost transparency in the long run.
“The regulators all around the world will be scrutinizing us very heavily going forward, and getting new licenses around the world is going to become much harder,” he told TechCrunch.
Binance did not immediately respond to a request from Insider for further comment.
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