Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman, the parents of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was convicted after the exchange collapsed, used their first television interview to challenge the core premise of his conviction, arguing that no customer funds were ultimately lost.
“The money has always been there,” Bankman said in an interview with CNN’s Michael Smerconish over the weekend. “These are very profitable companies with billions of dollars in additional assets.”
The timing is no accident. At the end of March, the FTX Recovery Trust Fund will distribute approximately $2.2 billion in its fourth disbursement, bringing total recovery to approximately $10 billion. Several categories of U.S. customers will reach 100% recovery, with one category reaching 120%. For Bankman-Fried’s parents, these numbers should mean SBF’s exoneration.
“Everyone is happy with 18% to 43% interest,” Fried said.
All distributions are denominated in U.S. dollars and are fixed at asset prices as of the time of the bankruptcy filing in November 2022, when Bitcoin was trading near $16,800. FTX collapsed in late 2022, upending investor confidence and triggering a wave of regulatory scrutiny across the industry.
Since then, Bitcoin has been on a rollercoaster ride, surging to over $126,000 in the fall of 2025 and currently trading around $69,000, well above its late 2022 price.
However, FTX clients holding one Bitcoin receive the dollar value of the claim plus interest in 2022, rather than the asset or its current price. The estate returned approximately 119% of the frozen claim at a fraction of current market value.
FTX creditor representative Sunil Kavuri publicly rejected the framework, writing that “FTX creditors are not complete.”
FTX Actual Cryptocurrency Bankruptcy Recovery Rate
FTX creditors are not complete
9% to 46%: True cryptocurrency terms recover, but may actually be lower because crypto prices are higher when 143% is paid
I also saw some on CT:
1) Protect known scammers/liars/fraud
2) Attack those who help… pic.twitter.com/pUcjIPFsnv— Sunil (FTX Creditors Champion) (@sunil_trades) November 2, 2025
The parents’ defense also runs counter to the regulatory framework put in place to deal with the collapse. Bankman said the transfer of client funds to sister firm Alameda Research was routine.
“They were borrowed by Alameda from FTX,” he said. “Alameda acted like everyone else, investing money and borrowing money.”
If this argument is accepted, then the mixing of client assets with proprietary trading firms would be normalized, a practice now prohibited by new rules in Hong Kong, the European Union and proposed legislation in the United States. The logic that excuses Bankman Fried is the same logic that regulators want to eliminate.
Fried went a step further, calling the prosecution “political in nature” and arguing that the Biden administration “has decided to destroy cryptocurrencies.”
This political framing reflects broader clemency toward President Donald Trump, as Bankman-Fried continues to support White House policies through posts on X while in prison.
Smerconish noted that Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over SBF’s criminal trial and sentenced him to 25 years in prison, is also the federal judge overseeing E. Jean Carroll’s civil case against Trump, saying this “is not lost on” the Carroll family.
Asked what she would say to Trump, Fried called her son “one of the smartest, most talented young men of his generation” and said it would be “a huge benefit to the economy” if he were released.
But that door appears to be closed, at least for now.
Trump said in a January interview with The New York Times that he would not consider pardoning Bankman-Fried, even though Trump has granted clemency to other cryptocurrency figures, including Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht and former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.
Polymarket bettors put the chance of this happening at 12%.
Bankman-Fried’s appeal remains pending, and his motion for a new trial faces opposition from prosecutors, who dismissed his claims of political bias.
