Sam Bankman-Fried agrees to testify before House committee

The FTX founder said on Twitter that he would appear before a House committee next week, but remained silent about a similar request from a Senate committee.

The response to whether embattled FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried will appear before two congressional committees next week is being played out on Twitter.

In an early morning Twitter post on Friday, Bankman-Fried said he would appear before the Financial Services Commission on Tuesday. the House after being evasive for days on the issue. The hearing will focus on the sudden collapse last month of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange founded by Mr. Bankman-Fried, amid allegations of embezzlement of billions of client money.

Mr. Bankman-Fried, 30, said in a Twitter post that "there is only so much I can say, and I won't be as helpful as I would".

Since FTX and its associated companies filed for bankruptcy last month, Mr. Bankman-Fried has been holed up in his residential compound in the Bahamas, where FTX was based. He has given numerous media interviews, either in person in the Bahamas or via Zoom to talk about the collapse of the once popular cryptocurrency trading platform.

It is not known whether he will appear in person before the House committee.

Mr. Bankman-Fried did not respond to a separate request from the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee to appear before senators the following day.

In a letter sent Wednesday, the Senate committee gave Mr. Bankman-Fried until 5 p.m. Thursday to respond to a request that he testifies next Wednesday. Committee leaders released a statement Thursday night saying that Mr. Bankman-Fried's attorney had missed that deadline.

Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio and chairman of the committee, said in the letter to Mr. Bankman-Fried that if the cryptocurrency trader was unwilling to speak to the committee, he was prepared to issue a subpoena to compel him to testify.

A spokesperson for Mr. Bankman-Fried and his attorney Mark Cohen declined to comment beyond the Twitter post. Senate committee officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Over the past two weeks, Mr. Bankman-Fried has been on something of a media tour , giving interviews to various news outlets and posting messages on Twitter. He has repeatedly said that he never intended to defraud anyone, including FTX's estimated million customers.

M . Bankman-Fried said he was not directly involved in business decisions for Alameda Research, a hedge fund he co-founded and largely owns. Just before FTX filed for bankruptcy, it was revealed that billions of money from the exchange's customers had apparently been transferred to Alameda. the risks are far greater for Mr. Bankman-Fried testifying before a congressional committee than speaking to the media. Statements he makes to a journalist do not carry the same legal weight as testimony given before Congress.

Mr. Bankman-Fried was active in politics, having donated about $40 million to federal campaigns and committees that primarily supported Democrats, according to Federal Election Commission records.