Sam Bankman-Fried Allegedly Spread Fake Rumors to Attack Binance CEO

According to Binance's Chief Strategy Officer Patrick Hillman, Samuel Bankman-Fried, the founder of the FTX crypto exchange, was accused of spreading false or racist rumors about Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, before FTX's collapse.
Hillman’s tweet on April 20 suggests that SBF targeted Zhao to promote his scam.
A great read by @WilliamCohan at @PuckNews. One thing they missed, Sam was CONSTANTLY spreading fake rumors about @cz_binance, because shading him as an "evil Chinese" was critical to his scam. You can't pretend to be Luke Skywalker without Darth Vader.https://t.co/oi9JxsqPyz
— Patrick Hillmann (@PRHillmann) April 20, 2023
Hillman’s statement was in reference to an article in Puck magazine, which describes the collapse of FTX and SBF’s purchase of a $45 million ownership stake in Skybridge Capital.
During SBF’s meetings with officials in Dubai, he bad-mouthed CZ, according to Puck. CZ had publicly suggested that he consider selling his $500 million investment in FTT tokens.
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SBF and CZ have a long-standing personal rivalry, and Binance had offered to rescue FTX in a $1 billion buyout, which it later backed out of after doing due diligence.
CZ had accused SBF of trying to depeg tether, a stablecoin, but SBF denied the accusation. Hillman also denied on Twitter that the animosity between SBF and CZ caused Binance to back out of the rescue deal or sell its holdings of FTT.