The previous president of FTX US dishes the filth on his falling out with former Jane Avenue colleague Sam Bankman-Fried and predicts the spot Bitcoin ETF will far outshine the record-breaking success of the Bitcoin Futures ETF.

Who is that this man anyway?

The ex-president of FTX US, Brett Harrison, tells Journal that he didn’t say a single phrase to Sam Bankman-Fried throughout the two-month discover interval after he resigned, which was solely months earlier than the entire change blew up. Even getting a message to SBF to say he was resigning within the first place was laborious work.

“I needed to discuss to different individuals within the firm to formally resign. I wrote one textual content to Sam and I bought again a single coronary heart emoji. That was the final I heard from him,” Harrison declares.

Harrison and Bankman-Fried had been colleagues years earlier at quantitative trading agency Jane Avenue, the place Harrison noticed his potential whereas instructing SBF in a course on programming for merchants. However issues went south actual fast between them at FTX.

Harrison claims it was because of Bankman-Fried’s inflated ego and his reluctance to just accept any suggestions or recommendation.

“Sam hated criticism and, in consequence, refused to speak with me. It drove my choice to stop even additional,” he says.

But, Harrison says he had no clue of the storm about to engulf the corporate with FTX declaring chapter just a few months after he bailed from the U.S. arm of change.

1/ An announcement: I’m stepping down as President of @FTX_Official. Over the subsequent few months I’ll be transferring my duties and shifting into an advisory position on the firm.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) September 27, 2022

“The remainder of us, particularly within the U.S., had been blindsighted. We had been working with regulators, high legal professionals, and to have the entire group fail due to one particular person’s greed, will stick with us for the remainder of our life.”

Nevertheless, he feels justice was executed within the latest fraud trial towards his former boss.

“I do really feel the end result was completely simply, and I’m glad that justice was served shortly; I believe it was important that Sam was held accountable for his actions,” he declares.

In the meantime, Harrison wasted no time diving into a brand new challenge.

He co-founded Architect.xyz, a DeFi platform that focuses on bridging all of the completely different alternatives within the digital asset area for each institutional and retail traders.

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Harrison is a little bit of a brainiac and has a pc science diploma targeted on synthetic intelligence (AI) from Harvard College. So, who higher to ask concerning the potential for AI to take over the world?

“I don’t suppose AI is a menace to humanity,” he declares, declaring that AI has been in improvement for for much longer than individuals suppose:

“Numerous individuals at the moment are seeing AI for the primary time, they don’t admire the many years of progress that has gone into it.”

Harrison is extra involved about people utilizing AI to drag off scams and swipe identities extra effortlessly.

“It actually is simply linear algebra,” he says. “The concept that linear algebra is a few existential menace to our survival simply feels considerably fanciful to individuals who have been practitioners within the area for a protracted time.”

Bloomberg is basically loving AI for me today.

Not a foul factor, however is that this actually an correct or consultant description of what my firm is doing? pic.twitter.com/z5IHSvp0fq

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) July 19, 2023

What led to Twitter Fame?

Harrison is a great man who drops fascinating stuff on social media that individuals appear to dig.

However let’s not dance round the truth that the FTX connection is what blew up his follower numbers, along with his rely hitting its highest weekly peak when FTX took a nosedive in November 2022, when he gained 2,140 followers, in accordance with knowledge from Social Blade.

Again in January, his lengthy rant about his departure from X bought practically 3 million eyeballs. He mentioned he wasn’t canned from the FTX gig; it simply wasn’t his dream job, and SBF was an “insecure, prideful supervisor.”

1/49 Many have requested questions on my time at FTX US and why I left once I did. As I indicated earlier this week, I’m pleased to start sharing my experiences and perspective publicly.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

Content material individuals can count on

In the event you scroll by Harrison’s timeline through the years, you’ll discover his glam life-style has toned down significantly for the reason that FTX days. 

Again then, he was usually seen hanging out with celebs and former prime ministers.

These days, it’s far more low-key. Moreover throwing in some market discuss, Harrison’s been sharing snippets about his household life currently. 

He’s even flexing about saving toys from the FTX US workplace that one way or the other dodged the entire chapter drama.

What sort of content material does he like?

Harrison loves the mix of genius and goofiness on Crypto X — getting a each day repair of humor and high mind.

“One of many issues I really like about Crypto Twitter  is the proper mixture of extremely mental cerebral, both Market construction or political commentary, and degenerate memes.”

Nevertheless, after we requested concerning the accounts he’s into, he’s not that forthcoming. 

After performing some gentle digging, it seems he’s following 2,100 accounts, and guess who’s within the combine? None apart from Bankman-Fried’s pal Tiffany Fong.

it was an honor for me as nicely, I actually admire each your expertise and your meme recreation ❤️

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) September 27, 2022

Bitcoin predictions?

Harrison used to keep away from making predictions, saying he’d by no means have predicted the occasions that occurred to him. However that was when issues had been going too easily, and that’s all modified. 

Originally of 2021 I might have assigned a low likelihood to virtually each main factor that’s occurred in my life this 12 months: that I’d depart tradfi after 11 years, that Sam would find yourself hiring me, that I’d assist construct a crypto change, that I’d open a twitter account…

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) December 31, 2021

Harrison declares there’s a very “high likelihood” {that a} spot Bitcoin ETF will get accepted within the first quarter of 2024.

As for value predictions? Harrison isn’t tossing out any six-figure numbers immediately.

“In Q1 assuming there’s an ETF that’s accepted. I believe one thing within the $50,000 to $55,000 vary feels fairly possible,” he states.

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He doesn’t see Bitcoin hitting six figures till “towards the top of 2024 or early 2025 on the earliest.”

He factors to the primary day of Bitcoin Futures ETF as just a bit trace of how optimistic he’s concerning the spot Bitcoin ETF:

“In the event you keep in mind the day when a Bitcoin Futures ETF was listed the inflows had been among the highest ever seen within the historical past of ETFs. I believe we’re going to see much more information damaged for a spot Bitcoin ETF.”

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Ciaran Lyons

Ciaran Lyons is an Australian crypto journalist. He is additionally a standup comic and has been a radio and TV presenter on Triple J, SBS and The Challenge.