FTX’s demise caused massive disruption and a severe impact on the entire market. Justice was partially served after Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested. Yet, he was granted a whopping $250 million bail and is currently under house arrest. While his parents were part of this bond, the other two guarantors remained under wraps. However, that might change soon going forward. According to sources, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered that details pertaining to these individuals can be made public.
The identities of these individuals were concealed after SBF’s parents were subject to threats. That wasn’t all. The possibility of the two being dragged to “media scrutiny” and “harassment” despite having no connection to the FTX case was highlighted. However, Judge Kaplan said,
“The information at issue is entitled only to weak presumption of access, yet the countervailing factors are not sufficiently persuasive to overcome even that presumption.”
It should be noted that the Judge believes both sides of the argument did not contain much weight. Yet, he went ahead with the applications “for the limited purpose of asserting the public’s claimed right of access” to the identities of SBF’s guarantors.
To enable an appeal, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan pushed the implementation of his order until Feb. 7.
Additionally, several media houses including Associated Press, Bloomberg, CNBC, Dow Jones, The Financial Times, Insider, and the Washington Post previously penned a letter to Judge Kaplan regarding the same. The attorneys of these media firms further said,
“…the public’s right to know Bankman-Fried’s guarantors outweighed their privacy and safety rights.”
So Who Are SBF’s Guarantors? Cryptocurrency Community Takes a Guess
A majority of the community speculated that it was Shark Tank’s, Kevin O’Leary. Time and again, “Mr.Wonderful” had defended SBF in public after the fiasco. O’Leary also called out rival exchange, Binance during the same period. Therefore, some users suggested that he might be one of them despite enduring a loss of $15 million.
American billionaire investor Bill Ackman’s name also surfaced as he previously backed SBF amidst the fall. In addition to these names, the community jokingly suggested that SEC Chairman Gary Gensler could be one of them.