Sam Bankman-Fried Won't Be the Last Crypto Mogul Behind Bars
The culture surrounding Bitcoin and other forms of digital money remains toxic.
Sam Bankman-Fried faces a lengthy jail sentence after being convicted of fraud.
Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Justice has been served – and swiftly, too. A jury found fallen crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy after just five hours of deliberation, markedly less time than it took for jurors to puzzle over Elizabeth Holmes’ Theranos scandal or Raj Rajaratnam’s insider trading at hedge fund Galleon. And while this is certainly crypto’s biggest case of fraud, it undoubtedly won’t be the last.
If the 31-year-old’s culpability for the “pyramid of deceit” behind FTX’s collapse seemed so obvious, it’s partly because he was prosecutorial gold. You didn’t have to know what a blockchain was to comprehend his former lieutenants saying that the $8 billion of missing customer funds happened on his watch and with his knowledge. Nor did you have to grasp GAAP accounting to see that the frizzy-haired wunderkind’s own testimony contradicted his communications and electronic records. Bankman-Fried had no filter, though his lawyers might wish he had.