Sam Bankman-Fried shot a MasterClass video about crypto trading months before FTX collapsed, report says

• FTX cofounder Sam Bankman-Fried shot a MasterClass video on crypto last year, per The New York Times.
• He recorded the video last summer, months before FTX collapsed, according to the report.
• MasterClass announced a series of crypto classes in December, but SBF's wasn't included.

FTX cofounder Sam Bankman-Fried is thought to have shot a video for MasterClass, which offers classes taught by celebrity experts, just months before his crypto exchange collapsed.

Bankman-Fried made the tutorial on cryptocurrency last summer, The New York Times reported. After FTX fell apart in November, his lesson was not included with others presented by crypto and blockchain experts that the company announced in December, it added.

In a lengthy report about Bankman-Fried's relationship with Hollywood agent-turned-investor Michael Kives, the newspaper detailed the connections that Kives facilitated between SBF and various celebrities, politicians, and companies such as MasterClass.

According to the report, Kives introduced Bankman-Fried to people at MasterClass, citing three people familiar with the matter.

The decision to abandon Bankman-Fried's crypto class was reportedly made sometime after it was shot in the summer, and the December announcement of MasterClass' "Crypto and the Blockchain" suite of lessons.

The group of lessons features figures including Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao; Coinbase COO Emilie Choi; Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman; and investor Chris Dixon.

Coinbase and Binance are the latest in a string of crypto exchanges and companies to face increasing scrutiny from US regulators, after each was charged with securities law violations earlier this month.

MasterClass offers more than 180 lessons on subjects from cooking with Gordon Ramsay to chess with Garry Kasparov and writing with "The Handmaid's Tale" author Margaret Atwood, per its website.

The existence of Bankman-Fried's MasterClass had only been a social media rumor around the time FTX collapsed prior to The Times' report.

It also details how Kives connected or tried to connect SBF with figures including Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Bill Clinton, Elon Musk, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Ron DeSantis.

FTX's bankruptcy lawyers recently filed a lawsuit against Kives and his venture capital firm, K5, to recover the estimated $700 million Bankman-Fried had invested in it, according to the newspaper.

Bankman-Fried faces several fraud charges related to the collapse of FTX and allegations that he and other employees illegally moved money between the crypto exchange and his trading firm, Alameda Research.

MasterClass, Bankman-Fried and Kives did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider, made outside normal working hours.