'There's no one left to talk to': Sam Bankman-Fried says he's 'deeply sorry' in apology to FTX employees

• FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried apologized to employees for the crypto exchange's failure.
• "You were my family. I've lost that," he wrote in a letter, adding he had no one left to talk to.

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried apologized in a letter to employees of his failed crypto exchange, partly blaming its collapse on the brutal market selloff earlier this year.

In the letter first reported by CoinDesk, he wrote: "I feel deeply sorry about what happened. I regret what happened to all of you."

"I didn't mean for any of this to happen, and I would give anything to be able to go back and do things over again. You were my family. I've lost that, and our old home is an empty warehouse of monitors. When I turn around, there's no one left to talk to," Bankman-Fried added.

The letter was posted on FTX's Slack by a staff member because the former CEO is no longer an employee of the company, CoinDesk reported.

According to Bankman-Fried, a brutal sell-off in cryptocurrencies earlier this year halved FTX's collateral to about $30 billion, while liabilities were $2 billion.

A combination of a credit squeeze, a further crypto sell-off and a "run on the bank" then reduced collateral to $9 billion before FTX filed for bankruptcy, he said.

"I did not realize the full extent of the margin position, nor did I realize the magnitude of the risk posed by a hyper-correlated crash," Bankman-Fried added.

His letter did not address claims that client funds were redirected to his company Alameda Research, or that Alameda lent funds to FTX executives including Bankman-Fried.

FTX, once worth $32 billion, went bust earlier this month after a liquidity crisis embroiled the exchange, while Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO over allegations of mishandling client funds. Its collapse triggered fear across the crypto industry and put pressure on some of the world's largest tokens.

In the letter, however, Bankman-Fried said there was still a chance to save the company: "I believe that there are billions of dollars of genuine interest from new investors that could go to making customers whole."