Disgraced Ex-FTX Chief Will Appear at New York Times ‘Summit’ Event

The New York Times’s decision to keep the former chief executive of a disgraced cryptocurrency exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried, on the roster of speakers of its upcoming Dealbook Summit is sparking criticism on social media platforms.Mr. Bankman-Fried confirmed via tweet that he would be going forward with his appearance at the Times’s annual business conference. He will participate “from the Bahamas,” a Times representative told MarketWatch.“I’ll be speaking with @andrewrsorkin at the @dealbook summit next Wednesday (11/30),” Mr. Bankman-Fried tweeted.The tweet triggered invective directed mostly toward the Times for seemingly endorsing the disgraced crypto entrepreneur. The fall of FTX, which has since been likened by at least one disappointed investor, Edwin Garrison, to a “Ponzi scheme,” left thousands of investors who used the exchange unable to recover their funds. In some cases they lost what amounted to life savings, Mother Jones reported.The Dealbook Summit, hosted by journalist Aaron Ross Sorkin, also will feature Benjamin Netanyahu; the Meta chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg; President Zelensky; Mayor Adams; and other leaders in government and commerce.The cost to attend the Dealbook Summit is $2,400 a person. The summit’s sponsors include “Accenture as premier sponsor, U.S. Bank as associate sponsor, T. Rowe Price as supporting sponsor, and Brex and Walmart as contributing sponsors,” the Times Company website says. The Times and Accenture did not respond to requests for comment.“The owner of the New York Times Company, Arthur Sulzberger, is making money from this conference,” an entrepreneur and investor, Balaji Srinivasan, tweeted. “So, all profits should go towards recompensing FTX victims.”“Canceling my @nytimes subscription,” a philosophy professor at Reed College, Troy Cross, tweeted. “I like the crosswords, but can’t support an org that honors one of the most devastating criminals of his generation. It’s a @nytimes event. Their President and CEO is appearing. It’s a premeditated and deliberate and disgusting choice.”“$100 says the FBI picks him up on the way out of the @dealbook summit. They let him speak, get it all on tape, then perp walk — SCENE!” investor Jason Calacanis tweeted.The question of whether the Times would go forward with Mr. Bankman-Fried’s appearance at the event has been the subject of speculation on Twitter over the past weeks since FTX collapsed. Mr. Bankman-Fried, who is based out of the Bahamas (where FTX is headquartered), has not made his whereabouts publicly known.Mr. Bankman-Fried has not been detained, or charged with any crimes, by the American government. Yet that the New York Times would feature Mr. Bankman-Fried as a speaker alongside luminaries of business, tech, government and banking raises questions about ethical boundaries between the media and a much-ballyhooed subject of its coverage.Mr. Bankman-Fried contributed heavily to brand-name media outlets, Tablet Magazine reports, including ProPublica, to which Mr. Bankman-Fried pledged $5 million, Vox, and the Intercept. The Associated Press reports Mr. Bankman-Fried was an “initial investor in Semafor,” the news startup led by a former New York Times media columnist, Ben Smith. The investment became the subject of a heated exchange between Mr. Smith and Elon Musk on Twitter, with Mr. Musk repeatedly asking Mr. Smith “how much of you [Semafor] does SBF own.”Mr. Bankman-Fried was celebrated in the press outlets over the past two years, with the Times crowning him “crypto emperor” in one article. The admiring coverage extended to dozens of publications, whose collected reporting on Mr. Bankman-Fried painted a picture of a zany financial genius driven to use his resources for good.Fortune magazine put Mr. Bankman-Fried on its cover with the suggestive question, “The Next Warren Buffett?” appended below. Forbes similarly featured Mr. Bankman-Fried on the cover of its 2021 Forbes 400 Special Issue, making him the face of global ingenuity and wealth. In the end, it was not a mainstream newsroom that broke the story of FTX’s purported insolvency but a number of Twitter accounts, including that of an investor at crypto venture capital firm 1confirmation, Richard Chen.In addition to being a major financial contributor to the media, Mr. Bankman-Fried was a supporter of the Democratic Party. Axios reported that Mr. Bankman-Fried donated about $37 million to the Democratic Party during the last election cycle. He previously pledged to donate $1 billion by 2024, though later walked back those comments.

Disgraced Ex-FTX Chief Will Appear at New York Times ‘Summit’ Event

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