Sam Bankman-Fried wishes 'we'd bitten off a lot less' after distressed crypto exchange FTX imploded: NYT

• FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried told the New York Times he had his fingers in too many pies.
• Seemingly apologetic, he said he was doing too many things and didn't catch signs of troubles at FTX.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of distressed crypto exchange FTX, admitted he was probably spreading himself too thin.

"Had I been a bit more concentrated on what I was doing, I would have been able to be more thorough," he told the New York Times in an interview on Sunday, following the stunning collapse of FTX which filed for bankruptcy on Friday.

"That would have allowed me to catch what was going on on the risk side," he added.

And the 30-year-old had a lot going on. Other than running the FTX exchange as CEO — a position he relinquished on Friday — he was also involved in a range of other activities such as founding the non-profit FTX Foundation, investing in other companies, and making political donations.

Bankman-Fried told the Times he wished "we'd bitten off a lot less." He added "the venture stuff was probably not really worth it given the attention that it took."

Once worth $26 billion, Bankman-Fried's entire fortune was wiped out in mere days, after a crippling liquidity crisis sent Bahamas-based FTX into meltdown last week.

The crypto exchange is now under investigation by the Bahamas police, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and the US Department of Justice amid reports Bankman-Fried had transferred $4 billion from FTX to his trading firm Alameda Research earlier in 2022 without telling anyone.