Elon Musk hails Twitter's coverage on FTX collapse while appreciating memes on meltdown

Cryptocurrency platform FTX has caused a meltdown in the market after former company CEO Sam Bankman-Fried filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States on November 12. The collapsed company is out of capital and according to new CEO John J. Ray, who took over after Bankman-Fried quit, revealed that FTX has only $564M in unrestricted liquidity whereas the gap between assets and liabilities could be over $8 billion. 

FTX's downfall has sent a shockwave across the cryptocurrency market, which according to Twitter CEO Elon Musk is being poorly covered by 'old-school media'. "Coverage of FTX meltdown is incomparably faster *and* better quality on Twitter than old-school media," Musk tweeted adding "Not to mention the sickkk memes lol (sic)". 

Reports suggest that FTX was the world's third-biggest exchange platform just a week before Bankman-Fried filed for bankruptcy. According to AP, the company collapsed after customers fled the exchange over fears about whether FTX had sufficient capital, and it agreed to sell itself to rival crypto exchange Binance. 

Musk's feud with FTX founder

Bankman-Fried, who was a Wall-Street trader, founded the company in 2019 with ex-Google employee Gary Wang and his company soon amassed billions in net worth ($32 billion before the collapse, per New York Times). Once compared to top investors John Pierpont Morgan and Warren Buffett, Bankman-Fried ran into a feud with Musk over an investment offer on Twitter. 

Citing Coindesk, Daily Mail reported that Musk recently appeared in a Twitter Spaces audio chatroom where he revealed that the ex-FTX CEO offered $3 billion to finance the purchase of Twitter. Musk said that the two talked for about half an hour and he suspected 'something was wrong'. Recently, Musk even allegedly fuelled the 'conspiracy theory' that Bankman-Fried's FTX was laundering money for the Democrats, as the former CEO is considered one of the biggest donors for the party.

According to the said conspiracy theory, Ukraine, which is embroiled in a war, received $18.2 billion of security commitments from the U.S. and an unknown amount of donations through a website of the Ukrainian government launched with FTX in March this year, Forbes reported. As many believe that the Democrats laundered this money for the 2022 midterm elections, Musk recently tweeted that it is a "question worth asking".