Former FTX executive Ryan Salame hints at possible book 

Earlier this week, Salame was the first of the FTX insiders (aside from Sam Bankman-Fried) to face sentencing, and Judge Lewis Kaplan — who also oversaw the trial and sentencing of SBF — didn’t go easy. Kaplan’s sentencing exceeded the prosecutor’s recommended five to seven years.

Of all of the insiders to cut deals with prosecutors, Salame has been very quiet. His former colleagues Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh were all present at Bankman-Fried’s trial. The trio gave insight into how Bankman-Fried operated FTX and Alameda, and what the downfall looked like from the C-suite.

Salame wasn’t present back at the November trial, though prosecutors said he handed over some information prior to its start. Not enough, however, they added, to make a sizable difference.

But we don’t really know what was shared back then, and we don’t have Salame’s perspective from the final days of FTX. Bits and pieces of Salame’s side have trickled in through memos to the court from his team, prosecutors and witness letters like the one I mentioned in a previous Morning Riff from his good friend and former colleague, Sam Trabucco.

Salame’s final tweet — before it all went south — indicated that nothing was wrong. Though in all fairness, it wasn’t as bad as SBF’s infamous “assets are fine” tweet.

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After his sentencing, Salame admitted that he’s “cringed reading it nearly every day” since the November 2022 collapse.

Even before Salame admitted that his tweet was “terrible,” Salame posted about a media interview in what seems to be him opening the door for his narrative.

Though he’s teased a couple of details already, like his claim that he didn’t know about the $55 million loan.

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There’s still a lot we don’t know.

We’ve heard bits and pieces from Singh about the political donations, and Salame could, theoretically, offer some more insight into them. In legal filings ahead of the sentencing, his team also said that he was the “first person” to tell Bahamian authorities about FTX’s fraud.

Overnight, Salame seemed to point to possibly authoring a book — though not on the subject of FTX — when he asked X, “Can someone make a book of the best memes for the next few years and sell it on Amazon. Asking for a…”

Now, whether Salame’s looking to get a book deal about memes or testing the waters for a potential tell-all about the downfall is unclear.

Salame’s publicly admitted that going to prison is “like being alive for your own funeral” and he seems to be bitter that he didn’t sell off his crypto holdings instead of “listening to multiple lawyers and borrowing from Alameda against it” so we’ll see how he approaches the next few months — and the seven years after that.

But it’s only fair to point out that Salame’s not the only crypto executive to take up writing either during or before a prison stint, as former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao also teased a potential book earlier this month.

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