Sam Bankman-Fried says he never attempted to commit fraud” at FTX.

Sam Bankman-Fried said he “never tried to commit fraud” but admitted he made “many mistakes” before the collapse of his $32 billion cryptocurrency empire, which caused significant financial losses to users of his popular FTX trading platform.

The founder of now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX denied “knowingly” commingling customer funds with those of Alameda Research, his own trading group.

“Obviously I made a lot of mistakes or things that I would give anything to be able to do again,” Bankman-Fried said during an interview at the New York Times Dealbook Summit.

Bankman-Fried, appearing virtually from the Bahamas, grinned nervously, tapped his foot repeatedly and appeared to shake involuntarily as he faced wide-ranging questions on topics such as FTX employees' use of prescription drugs and improper transfer of funds, whether he knowingly disregarded risks and compliance rules that put customer accounts at risk.

"I have positions and position risks in the stock market and in particular Alameda and . . . I significantly underestimated what the scope and speed of the [crypto] market crash would be," he said.

"There is a significant discrepancy between the true, audited financial data . . . compared to what the dashboards we displayed for Alameda's account significantly understated the size of the positions."

Bankman-Fried gave the interview just weeks after FTX, previously the darling of the global crypto industry, filed for US bankruptcy protection. FTX's collapse was triggered by panicked customer withdrawals and ricocheted across crypto markets. It was eventually discovered that up to $8 billion in funds were missing.

The FTX collapse is being investigated by law enforcement and financial regulators in the United States and the Bahamas.

The 30-year-old admitted his lawyers had told him not to agree to interviews with journalists amid multiple investigations and pending court cases. “I think I have a duty to speak and explain what happened,” he said. “I don’t understand the point of sitting in a room and pretending the outside world doesn’t exist.”

“That’s not what I’m focused on,” he said when asked if he was worried about possible criminal liability. “I’ve had a bad month,” he added to laughter from the audience.

After filing for bankruptcy, Bankman-Fried was replaced as FTX's chief executive by John Ray, a restructuring expert who represented plaintiffs in the Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford fraud cases and helped wind down Enron. Ray said he had never seen “such a complete failure of corporate controls.”

“The [company] did not have the type of withdrawal controls that I believe are appropriate for a corporation,” Ray said in court papers, adding that company funds were spent on purchasing homes and personal items for FTX employees and advisors.

During Wednesday's interview, Bankman-Fried defended his position as one of the U.S. Democratic Party's most prolific donors in the last election cycle.

“My donations were primarily for pandemic prevention, and they addressed primaries where there were candidates who were outspoken about doing things now to prevent the next pandemic.”

Bankman-Fried will continue to face questions and accusations from prosecutors, regulators, investors and up to 1 million creditors over FTX's missing funds. Asked if he would leave the Bahamas to come to the U.S., he said he "wouldn't be surprised" if he were asked to testify at one of the numerous hearings into the stock market collapse.

A class action lawsuit filed Wednesday on behalf of investors in the US alleged that FTX is "really a house of cards, a Ponzi scheme where [FTX] shuffles customer funds between its opaque affiliates."