The day before, details of Bankman-Fried's troubled relationship with Binance CEO Changpen Zhao surfaced online. It turns out that Sam has been spreading untrue rumours about Zhao and even allowed himself to make racist remarks about him. And it's funny enough, because when problems arose, Bancman-Fried turned to Changpen for help. Recall that just before the bankruptcy of FTX company Binance wanted to buy the platform, but eventually declined such a decision, citing the financial difficulties of "crypto-imperium" Bankman-Fried.

The relationship between Sam and Changpen has not been good for a long time. As an illustration of this, one can recall Bankman-Fried’s tweet of 30 October 2022, which he eventually deleted. At the time, Sam stated that Zhao could represent the cryptocurrency industry and communicate with regulators in Washington, as Bankman-Fried himself does. He then questioned whether Changpen would even be allowed in there.

Sam thus made it clear that Zhao was allegedly not doing enough to promote the industry. Overall though, such accusations sounded rather odd, as Binance is not focused on the US market in the first place. On top of that, after the collapse of FTX, it became clear that Bankman-Fried is very far from perfect, and his communication with government officials has not been good for the digital asset niche.

Why Sam Bachmann-Fried is disliked

Information about Sam’s unethical behaviour was found in a recent tweet by Binance head of strategy Patrick Hillmann. Here’s what data he shared.

Sam was constantly spreading fake rumours about Changpen Zhao. Trying to make him look like an “evil Chinese” was very important to Sam’s scam. You can’t pretend to be Luke Skywalker without Darth Vader.

Zhao had previously really highlighted how Sam's close circle Bankman-Freed attacked the Binance exchange and made it look like a Chinese platform. In particular, in December 2022, Changpen went after Canadian millionaire and TV presenter Kevin O'Leary, who was receiving money from Sam while openly alluding to Binance's ties to the Chinese government. Zhao was very annoyed by this - also because Changpen is a Canadian citizen.

In the tweet, Hillman referred to an article about the collapse of FTX published in Puck magazine. The publication is written from the words of Anthony Scaramucci, head of hedge fund Skybridge Capital. The article describes how Sam bought a stake in Skybridge for $45 million, and how Scaramucci then invested $10 million of that amount in a native token of the bankrupt exchange called FTT. The bankruptcy of FTX in November led to an almost complete devaluation of that investment.

According to The Block’s sources, Scaramucci also confirmed information that Bankman-Fried had allowed himself to be publicly insulted by Zhao. Here’s an excerpt from the article.

During Sam’s meetings with officials in Dubai, he spoke ill of Changpen Zhao, the founder of Binance and a rival cryptomagnate. Scaramucci did not attend these meetings, but his Skybridge colleague was there and informed him.

Zhao was aware of what was going on – the words spoken by Sam through a chain of acquaintances and colleagues had reached him. This information is unlikely to be confirmed, but Scaramucci believes that Bankman-Fried’s appalling behaviour was another reason why Binance management decided to sell all FTT tokens from its reserves. Recall that this event was one of the first triggers to the collapse of the exchange.

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Obviously Bankman-Fried was ultimately to blame for both the FTX bankruptcy and the tainted relationship with Zhao. They were competitors, but in big business no one rules out mutually beneficial cooperation. Perhaps the story could have gone a very different way if Binance had found a way to help FTX in due course. And if Sam and his colleagues hadn’t made a backdoor in the FTX exchange to stealthily withdraw user funds, that would have been even better.


That said, Changpen Zhao has repeatedly warned Sam that his actions could end in serious disaster. In particular, the day before FTX officially declared bankruptcy, Zhao accused Bankman-Fried of selling $250,000 worth of Stablecoins. He believed this was the start of an uncontrolled process to liquidate the assets of FTX's "crypto empire".

The exchange-affiliated trading company Alameda Research did start selling the coins. Although the volume of these sales was minuscule compared to the total volume of transactions in the entire market, such actions could still cause panic among investors.


Changpen Zhao ended up reacting to the publication of the news of Sam Bankman-Fried’s targeted rumour-mongering. Here’s his rejoinder from Twitter.

Never seriously worried about this.

Paying attention to the users and the product.


We think this situation generally reflects Sam Bankman-Fried's approach to doing business. He didn't care much about the ethics of his own actions, which includes confirming the disappearance of several billion dollars of FTX users along with accusations against Binance. However, as time shows, Sam should have focused on his own trading platform rather than "competitors".