- >News
- >BREAKING: FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Found Guilty on All Charges
BREAKING: FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Found Guilty on All Charges
Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been found guilty on all charges laid against him in arguably the biggest trial in crypto history. The verdict was delivered to a packed courtroom in New York on Thursday evening.
Prosecutors successfully argued that Bankman-Fried, or SBF as he’s known in crypto circles, orchestrated a scheme that that stole as much as $10 billion from customers.
The 31-year-old was found guilty on all seven charges of fraud and conspiracy. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 110 years. Bankman-Fried’s sentencing is set for March 28.
End of the Road for “Warren Buffet of Crypto”
The verdict on Sam Bankman-Fried comes on the anniversary of FTX’s spectacular collapse.
Trouble started brewing for the exchange when CoinDesk published a report that alleged FTX’s sister firm Alameda Research held much of its balance sheet in FTX’s native FTT token. As the value of the token collapsed, so did the future of FTX and Alameda.
Bankman-Fried made a last-ditch effort to sell FTX to rival Binance but CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao got out of the deal when he realized the sorry state of FTX’s finances.
Founded in the Bahamas in 2017, FTX, exploded in popularity during the crypto boom of 2021, and held billions of dollars in customer’s funds while paying for flashy Super Bowl ads that included the likes of Tom Brady and Larry David.
Bankman-Fried’s meteoric rise inspired publications like Fortune to label him as the “Warren Buffet of Crypto” among other titles.
Ultimately FTX grew incredibly fast and crashed even faster.
FTX is still in the throes of bankruptcy with customer’s still hoping to regain some of their funds from the failed institution.
The crypto market appears unmoved by the news of SBF’s conviction with major coins like Bitcoin , Ethereum and Solana (SOL) basically flat.
The Last Bad Actor to Fall?
The conviction of SBF comes at the seeming tail end of a devastating crypto winter that saw the incineration of billions of dollars in value and the collapse of numerous crypto institutions including Terra Luna, Three Arrows Capital, Celsius Network, Voyager, BlockFi and others.
Crypto has since recovered significantly since then and Bitcoin is up a remarkably 71% since the end of 2022. Coins like Solana and XRP have recovered even more.
It’s anyone’s guess where crypto goes from here but one thing is clear: A lot of bad actors have been removed from the industry. Nothing is 100% in crypto but, for the time being, it seems unlikely there will be any more major players to fall. And with more restrictive regulation coming there’s definitely a chance we never see quite the same market conditions as 2022.
