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- Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto fraudster serving a 25-year sentence, spoke with Tucker Carlson from behind bars.
- Bankman-Fried is bunking near Sean “Diddy” Combs, who is facing sex trafficking charges.
- Bankman-Fried said he’s made friends and they play chess.
Sam Bankman-Fried talked life behind bars in a wide-ranging jailhouse interview with Tucker Carlson.
Between crypto chatter and sharing his strategies for making friends in jail, Bankman-Fried also opened up about living alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center where both men are being held.
“He’s been kind,” Bankman-Fried said of Diddy. The rapper was arrested last year and is awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Bankman-Fried was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in late 2023 at a criminal trial that dissected the fall of FTX, his defunct cryptocurrency exchange.
He is serving a 25-year prison sentence.
“I’ve made some friends,” Bankman-Fried told the former Fox News anchor. “It’s a weird environment. It’s sort of a combination of a few other high profile cases and then a lot of, you know, ex gangsters, alleged ex gangsters.”
The interview with Carlson prompted Mark Botnick, Bankman-Fried’s media representative, to resign. He told Business Insider he was not aware that Carlson was planning to interview Bankman-Fried and had no involvement with it.
On-camera interviews from prisons and jails are unusual in the United States. The Metropolitan Detention Center, where Bankman-Fried is incarcerated while appealing his criminal conviction, is equipped with video teleconferencing equipment typically used for inmates to communicate with their lawyers. A representative for the jail declined to comment on Bankman-Fried’s interview with Carlson but said that video interviews can be arranged with members of the media.
Here’s what Bankman-Fried and Carlson talked about:
Hanging out with Sean “Diddy” Combs
Carlson posted a video of the 40-minute interview on social media on Thursday. He called Bankman-Fried and Combs “two of the most famous prisoners in the world,” asking Bankman-Fried what it’s like living in such close quarters.
“I’ve only seen one piece of him, which is Diddy in prison. He’s been kind to people in the unit. He’s been kind to me. It’s a position no one wants to be in. Obviously, he doesn’t, I don’t,” Bankman-Fried said. “It’s kind of a soul crushing place for the world in general, and what we see are just the people that are around us on the inside rather than who we are on the outside.”
Bankman-Fried also said that other inmates have challenged his chess skills.
“They’re good at chess. That’s one thing I learned,” Bankman-Fried told Carlson. “Former armed robbers who don’t speak English and probably didn’t graduate middle school — a surprising number are surprisingly good at chess.”
The unflagging passage of time
Bankman-Fried turned 33 on Thursday but downplayed the milestone to Carlson.
“You’re not going to tell Diddy it’s your birthday tomorrow? I don’t believe you,” Tucker joked during the interview, which was apparently filmed Wednesday.
“Someone else might, but I’m not,” Bankman-Fried replied.
Bankman-Fried says he expects to be in his late 40s when released from prison — if he’s not pardoned first.
When Carlson asked whether he thinks he’ll make it that long, the ex-crypto mogul said he didn’t know.
Jail economics
In a world with no money — much less cryptocurrency — inmates use muffins as a medium of exchange, Bankman-Fried said.
Bankman-Fried said he hoards muffins as part of the “muffin economy” but doesn’t eat them. He sticks to rice and beans and ramen noodles, he said.
“The scale of everything is so diminished in prison, you see people fighting over a single banana,” Bankman-Fried said.
Crypto policy under Donald Trump’s presidency
Trump has overseen far friendlier crypto policies than former President Joe Biden, having already dropped numerous cases against crypto companies.
Bankman-Fried, who was found guilty of defrauding customers and investors of his cryptocurrency exchange, said less government involvement in individual finances is a good thing.
“If you look at what Trump said going into office, there are a lot of good things,” Bankman-Fried said.
But he said that, in order to shift things in the right direction, Trump would have to take on financial regulators.
“Changing the guard helps. But financial regulators — they’re big, giant bureaucracies in the federal government,” he said.
Having children
Bankman-Fried discussed his effective altruism philosophy with Carlson, explaining that he prioritized actions that did the most good to the most people.
Carlson asked Bankman-Fried where children fit into his worldview.
“Is having children part of your effective altruism philosophy?” Carlson asked Bankman-Fried.
Bankman-Fried responded that he felt like his employees at FTX were his children.
“For five years, I felt like I had 300 children, most days: my employees. Obviously, I couldn’t be a father to all of them. But I felt responsible for them.”
Carlson took the point further.
“Have any of those 300 employees visited you in jail?” Carlson asked.
Bankman-Fried said that none had.
“Probably ought to have some real kids at some point, don’t you think? Because when things go bad, they tend to stick around,” Carlson told Bankman-Fried, who is set to spend the next two decades in prison.
