Ryan Salame wants the world to know he’s not so bad

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—by Protos Staff

Former Co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, Ryan Salame, who just got sentenced to 90 months in prison for conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions and defraud the Federal Election Commission, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, has returned to X (formerly Twitter) to plead his case to the public — and it sounds like he’s blaming anyone but himself.

Shortly after he was sentenced, Salame said, “Hot damn, this is going to get interesting” and “Who should I do the first public interview with? Top vote wins.”

He then spent hours replying to trolls, influencers, and former FTX customers, essentially suggesting that there was far more to the FTX/Alameda collapse than met the eye. He didn’t clarify how.

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Salame needs an interview

According to a tweet from Brian Krogsgard, Salame has reached out to Krogsgard to see if he and Jordan Fish (the hosts of popular cryptocurrency podcast UpOnly) would be willing to have him on for an interview before he begins his prison sentence. It’s unclear if they’ve accepted his request.

While Salame has publicly acknowledged that he’s pled guilty, he’s also attempted to downplay his knowledge of the crimes that took place at FTX and Alameda. Indeed, he’s attempted to blame the exchange’s lawyers for his prison sentence, stating, “Sucks that if I had just sold off my pile of crypto like I was going to instead of listening to multiple lawyers and borrowing from Alameda against it [sic] instead, I likely wouldn’t be going to prison for seven and half years.”

It isn’t obvious what Salame means here, as his personal pile of cryptocurrency didn’t lead to his conviction. Rather, it was the fact that he conspired with Bankman-Fried to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, and unlawfully used FTX, Alameda Research, and an entity called North Dimension to transmit FTX customer funds without a license.

He also made false statements to US banks to maintain unlawful businesses and made campaign contributions that he knew were illegal.

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