FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was the darling of U.S. politicians and regulators until just before the crypto scheme collapsed. FTX was seen as the U.S. answer to the “Chinese” threat posed by Binance. With the criminal and regulatory charges, some regulators are embarrassed, like the CFTC Commissioner Caroline D. Pham or the former CFTC Commissioner Mark Wetjen. CFTC recently filed a fraud lawsuit against FTX and those responsible. Pham took to Twitter to comment.
In April 2022, Caroline D. Pham posted (and then deleted) a selfie of herself with SBF and the former CFTC commissioner Mark Wetjen who later joined FTX to lead its public affairs efforts as Head of Policy and Regulatory Strategy. On February 28, 2023, after the CFTC announced the fraud charges against FTX co-founder Nishad Singh, Pham turned to Twitter to say that she would “have urged CFTC to take a leading role in pursuing digital assets wrongdoing & ensuring individual accountability.“
Pham quickly deleted the embarrassing tweet from April 2022, complimenting SBF‘s hair nicely. Mark Wetjen deleted his Twitter and LinkedIn accounts after the FTX collapse. It begs the question, as a Commissioner of the CFTC, shouldn’t you keep some distance from the firms and individuals they supervise?
The CFTC and SEC have since brought fraud charges against responsible FTX individuals. However, it is questionable to what extent the regulators are partly to blame for the FTX crisis. They have looked the other way for too long, fraternized with FTX and SBF, and failed to do their job – supervision.
