Sam Bankman-Fried’s Trial Goes Into Day Two
- The prosecution tried to paint FTX’s founder as someone who deliberately deceived his customers to get rich, and noted that he directed all activities that led to the failure of the company.
- The defense’s claimed SBF was an entrepreneur whose plans simply “didn’t work out”, and tried to cast the blame for Alameda’s downfall to its former CEO Caroline Ellison.
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The second day of Sam Bankman-Fried’s (SBF) trial began with opening statements from the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and SBF’s defense, and continued with a witness introducing the jury to crypto trading.
During their opening statement, the prosecution portrayed Sam Bankman-Fried as a person who deliberately deceived his customers and investors in order to get rich, and later directed all of the activities of his companies that led to their failure. The DoJ also alleged that SBF used FTX customer’s dollars and crypto deposits to backstop Alameda Researches bad bets on the crypto market.
The first DoJ witness was Marc-Antoine Julliard, a commodities trader from London, who explained to the jury that he was only a spot trader — a person who buys and sells crypto tokens — and never agreed to lend out its assets to FTX. The second witness was Adam Yedidia, a college fried of SBF who worked with him in Alameda and FTX, who testified that he resigned from the companies the moment he “learned that Alameda Research had used customer deposits to pay back lenders”.
Mark Cohen, who is part of SBF’s defense, tried to paint his client during his opening statement as an entrepreneur whose plans just “didn’t work out”. He claimed that SBF did nothing illegal, and tried to cast blame on Alameda’s former CEO Caroline Ellison, saying she was responsible for the lack of risk management at the firm.
During the ongoing trial of the former FTX CEO, the crypto wallet address linked to the FTX exploiter moved roughly $37 million worth of Ether (ETH). The crypto exchange became a victim of a hack — who many believe was an insider job — hours after filing for bankruptcy, with around $600 million leaving the platform on 11 November 2022.
- The New York Jurors took 4 fours of deliberating before pronouncing the former FTX CEO guilty of all seven charges of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud.
- Bankman-Fried will now have to appear in court on 28 March, 2024, where he will face a potential maximum sentence of 115 years in prison.
Former CEO of FTX Sam Bankman-Fried leaves the Federal Court in New York after pleading not guilty, 3 January, 2022.
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- A little over $13 million in altcoins were sent to crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase in the past 24 hours, which is in accordance with a September court order.
- The court ordered a phased liquidation process, which allows the bankruptcy estate to sell $3.4 billion worth of digital assets over a certain period of time.
- Joseph Pimbley, a member of litigation consulting firm PF2 Securities, will try to rebuff testimonies from Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, Nishad Singh, and Adam Yedidia.
- During his testimony Pimbley will try to establish a timeline for the FTX-Alameda line of credit, and convince the jury it fluctuated between $1 billion and $3 billion between 2021 and 2022.