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Just 16 months ago, Shark Tank judge Kevin O’Leary announced that he had taken an equity stake in the crypto exchange FTX, a deal that also paid him nearly $15 million to serve as a corporate ambassador. At the time, he assailed much of the cryptocurrency landscape as “fraught with risks that I can not take.” But he said that FTX stood out as a beacon of responsibility that satisfied O’Leary’s “own rigorous standards of compliance.”
On Thursday, anchors of the CNBC program Squawk Box questioned O’Leary’s rosy assessment in light of FTX’s rapid implosion last month, and a ceaseless series of revelations demonstrating that its compliance protocols were abysmal.
“We all look like idiots. Let’s put that on the table,” O’Leary conceded, referring to himself and other investors. “We relied on each others’ due diligence.”