The Binance CEO has stated that Kevin O’Leary is making baseless or illogical claims during his interview with CNBC.
On Squawk Box, a CNBC pre-market news program, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO and co-founder of Binance, accused Kevin O’Leary, a Canadian investor and businessman, of lying.
During a senate hearing on the FTX scandal on December 14, Kevin O’Leary accused Binance of driving FTX out of business in order to become a global monopoly. O’Leary pointed out that some of the funds from FTX ended up at Binance when Sam Bankman-Fried acquired FTX shares from Binance. In response, Changpeng Zhao,
The CEO of Binance, expressed surprise at O’Leary’s remarks and called them “nonsense” and lacking in logic.
Despite the fact that O’Leary’s entire investment in FTX appears to have been lost, Zhao stated that he was not concerned about the funds of O’Leary or other FTX users. He also suggested that he does not believe O’Leary would have invested in FTX without being aware that Binance was a shareholder.
CZ dismissed concerns about $2.1 billion worth of funds from FTX
During the interview, Zhao was asked if Binance was willing to return the $2.1 billion payment it received from FTX when FTX exited its 2019 Series A investment, which later resulted in bankruptcy.
According to the US bankruptcy code, any beneficiary in a two-year lookback period may be required to return payments to the bankruptcy trustee if it is determined that the payment was fraudulent or the beneficiary should have had reason to know that the payment was fraudulent.
Zhao stated that Binance is “financially ok,” but that he would leave it up to the “capable” lawyers to handle the situation.
He also disclosed that the repayment was made in a combination of BUSD, BNB, and FTT, and added that the FTT portion of the repayment was substantial, but that Binance had “forgotten” about it.
