Crypto Exchanges
By Bruce Buterin
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What the Original Trial Actually Showed. The conviction itself came in November 2023, when a Manhattan jury found Bankman-Fried guilty on…
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Pardon Bids and What's Left. With the appeal gone, Bankman-Fried's options are basically two: a Supreme Court petition or a…
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Sam Bankman-Fried is running out of moves. A three-judge panel at the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan upheld his 25-year prison sentence Friday, shutting down his…
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The ruling came in a 42-page opinion. Judges Barrington Parker, Eunice Lee, and Maria Araújo Kahn weren't gentle about it either — they described the evidence against…
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The conviction itself came in November 2023, when a Manhattan jury found Bankman-Fried guilty on two counts of fraud and five counts of conspiracy — seven counts total.
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Three of Bankman-Fried's closest deputies flipped and testified against him. They admitted on the stand to draining customer deposits to plug financial holes at Alameda.
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The losses hit multiple layers of the FTX ecosystem — customers who trusted the exchange with their funds, venture investors who backed the company, and lenders tied to Alameda's…
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With the appeal gone, Bankman-Fried's options are basically two: a Supreme Court petition or a presidential pardon. Neither looks promising right now.
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Read also: AudiA6 Crypto Mixer Charged Over $389 Million Bitcoin Laundering Network
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He's been trying the pardon route for a while. There was a social media campaign, public statements endorsing former President Donald Trump's policies, and what seemed like a…
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And that's a problem, because the legal path isn't much better. A Supreme Court appeal is technically still available, but getting the court to take a case requires clearing a…
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So where does that leave him? Sitting in prison, with a projected release date of 2044. He'd be in his early fifties by then.
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The political strategy was always a bit of a long shot. Bankman-Fried had donated heavily to political causes before FTX collapsed — he was one of the biggest donors in the 2022…
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Read also: SEC Eyes Rule 611 Scrapping, and Alex Thorn Says Tokenized Stocks Win Big
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His legal team argued throughout the appeal that procedural problems at trial compromised his ability to mount a proper defense.
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