Brett Harrison, the former US president of FTX, the crypto exchange which has filed for bankruptcy, tweeted at the end of a long thread :

Brett I am proud to be an investor in your new company. Go forward. Don’t look back. Wishing you the best.

— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) January 14, 2023

In November last year FTX Ventures, a multi-stage venture capital fund owned by FTX, announced the  acquisition of a 30% stake in SkyBridge Capital, the global alternative investment firm founded by Anthony Scaramucci. SkyBridge said at the time it would use a portion of the proceeds to purchase $40m in cryptocurrencies to hold on its corporate balance sheet as a long-term investment.

Harrison’s entire thread follows:

2/49 I worked at FTX US for seventeen months. When my resignation was made public, those unfamiliar with my plans were surprised, and some questioned whether I’d been fired. It seemed as though I’d left a dream job abruptly after a very short tenure.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

4/49 My relationship with Sam Bankman-Fried and his deputies had reached a point of total deterioration, after months of disputes over management practices at FTX.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

6/49 Sam asked me to join FTX US casually over text in late March 2021. He was my former colleague at Jane Street and I had fond memories of his presence there.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

8/49 I’d known Sam to be a conscientious junior trader at Jane Street who’d done well in the programming-for-traders course I taught there, in which he’d been my student. In manager meetings about Sam’s performance the senior traders on his desk indicated he had promise.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

10/49 My negotiations to join FTX US moved quickly, a welcome contrast to the 4-6 months they’d taken for every move I’d made in traditional finance. I’d built software for Jane Street’s crypto desk in 2017 but hadn’t worked on crypto since. I was excited to dive back in.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

12/49 I made plans with the LedgerX team, built out legal, compliance, and operations departments with first-in-class lateral hires, and began setting up and building a US-regulated retail stock brokerage.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

14/49 But from the start, I noticed that while Sam was rarely engaged on the US business, decisions impacting the US would come, without warning, from the Bahamas.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

16/49 I saw in that early conflict his total insecurity and intransigence when his decisions were questioned, his spitefulness, and the volatility of his temperament. I realized he wasn’t who I remembered.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

18/49 Like many of us, I have family and friends who live with addiction and mental health problems, and I’ve seen how these problems often manifest without much warning in early adulthood. I thought that might be a contributing factor, and initially felt sympathetic.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

20/49 There was tremendous pressure not to disagree with Sam, but I did so anyway. At that time, and for all of my time at FTX US, his influence over the media, FTX’s partners, the venture capital industry, and the traditional finance industry was pervasive and unyielding.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

22/49 I wasn’t the only one at FTX US who disagreed with Sam and members of his inner circle. FTX US was staffed with experienced professionals from US finance firms, law firms, and regulated exchanges.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

24/49 Over the ensuing months, I further argued for enacting a sensible hiring policy, for staffing FTX US with a C-suite of experienced officers, for transparent communication between Sam and FTX US leadership,

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

26/49 Sam was uncomfortable with conflict. He responded at times with dysregulated hostility, at times with gaslighting and manipulation, but ultimately chose to isolate me from communication on key decision-making.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

28/49 In early April 2022, my eleventh month, I made one last try. I made a written formal complaint about what I saw to be the largest organizational problems inhibiting FTX’s future success. I wrote that I would resign if the problems weren’t addressed.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

30/49 That event solidified my decision to leave. I knew an abrupt departure would be harmful to the company and my FTX US reports, and I wanted to best position the company for future success after I left.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

32/49 And with that, I shifted my focus to the future and to my own company.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

34/49 I raised concerns at the company believing that the management and organizational issues I saw were typical of growing start-ups, and that my role, as an experienced financial services executive, was to correct them and unlock the next stage of the company’s growth.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

36/49 It’s clear from what has been made public that the scheme was held closely by Sam and his inner circle at FTX. com and Alameda, which I was not a part of, nor were other executives at FTX US.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

38/49 If any one of us had suspected let alone learned the truth, we would have reported them immediately.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

40/49 Ancient forms of greed and dishonesty destroy trust and corrupt progress. The scale of this particular instance of this lesson is difficult to comprehend, but far from exceptional in the twelve years of my professional experience in finance. It’s a strange dissonance.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

42/49 After that, many conversations eventually came around to the same kind of apology: “We know you weren’t involved in what Sam and others did, but we can’t take on the PR risk of associating ourselves with FTX, no matter how capable you are or compelling your idea is.”

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

44/49 It will also be difficult to forget the frenzied and baseless accusations leveled against me on social media.

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

46/49 Or that I’m seeking a plea deal even though I haven’t been accused of wrongdoing and am not a target in any investigation. Or that while at FTX US I colluded with Citadel to manipulate tokenized stock prices (yes, people are actually saying this).

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

48/49 They helped me cut through the noise and remain focused on the future, even as they themselves had been harmed by the tragedy of FTX’s collapse. I credit them, along with my family, with getting me through the most devastating and destabilizing event of my professional life

— Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 14, 2023

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