jakiro
Author: jk, Odaily Planet Daily
When a young man was a teenager
In San Francisco in 2021, every visitor who comes to this West Coast city will find huge FTX ads everywhere in the heart of the city, including Sam Bankman-Fried and his iconic hairstyle.
“Who is this explosion head?” Visitors often ask questions.”Oh, that’s SBF,” the locals would tell them with pride, “a bay-area kid who is now the CEO of the best exchange. Do you know Bitcoin?”
At that time, FTX was in the limelight in the United States. The bull market in the crypto world made this American background exchange that started with derivatives ride the wind. It not only firmly ranked as the second largest exchange in the world, but also reached an astonishing 320 valuation.billion US dollars, which is approximately equal to the total national output value of El Salvador (yes, that country famous for Bitcoin).
All of this is the result of SBF and his team within 5 years.SBF became the “Poster Boy” in the circle as she wished. People called him the king of crypto, chasing his “effective altruism”, and at the same time, she made a lot of money with several times of leverage on FTX..This is probably the case in a bull market.
If you turn the news search to 2021, you will find that his image is very different from his current prisoner.At that time, SBF was no longer willing to be a successful person in the crypto circle, but tried to build itself into a new star that integrates politics and business.
He became a regular visitor to Congress and Washington, donating $5.2 million to Biden’s presidential campaign, ranking second among donors; he publicly declared his willingness to support high tax rates for high net worth individuals.At that time, many top media, regardless of inside or outside the circle, were proud to be able to interview SBF.
And then, it was only 7 years before he graduated from MIT.
And then there is history that readers are familiar with.
In 2022, Coindesk released information about Alameda Research’s balance sheet, and market confidence began to shake.A twitter by CZ officially started the FTT sell-off wave. Even if SBF proves itself on Twitter and tells investors that the funds are safe over and over again, FTX inevitably goes to a run.
In a short period of time, FTT lost more than 80% of its value, and SBF went from becoming a young CEO to “one of the biggest financial fraudsters in American history.”
On November 11, 2022, Alameda declared bankruptcy and SBF announced its resignation the same day.
A year later, the jury faced the betrayal of SBF and declared his seven charges convicted.
Judgment Day
On March 28, local time in the United States, a judge announced that Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud and was required to pay a fine of $11 billion.That sentencing standard is said to be less than the 40 to 50 years in prison that federal prosecutors hope to sentence, but far more than the five to six and a half years recommended by his attorney.
The judge in charge of the case, Kaplan, said bluntly that he had never heard SBF express any remorse for the serious crimes committed.He said that in his 30 years as a federal judge, he “never seen” a “performance” like the SBF’s trial testimony.
SBF said “I don’t know” hundreds of times during the testimony of the court, avoiding several key questions, and was also speechless by the prosecutor’s lawyer.This is tantamount to the jury’s recognition of certain factual issues.
Justice Kaplan said before announcing the SBF’s 25-year jail sentence that there was a risk that “this person may (after being released) do something very bad in the future and that’s not a trivial risk.”
And what SBF and his lawyers have always done is to make SBF himself a nerd.Not only was the previous trial strategy, but until the trial day, SBF lawyer Marc Mukasey was also working hard to create a harmless image when he asked Kaplan for leniency, and FTX was an unintentional mistake caused by the nerdy scientist.
“Sam is not a ruthless financial serial killer who goes out every morning to hurt people,” the lawyer said. Instead, “he is a clumsy math otakus” with a “relative work spirit.”He said SBF should not be locked in a “four by four iron box.”
The lawyer said that, as far as SBF’s diary is concerned, he “can’t feel happiness or happiness.”
And prosecutor Roos said FTX’s collapse at the end of 2022 was not due to “a liquidity crisis or mismanagement.” Prosecutors said: “That was a billion-dollar theft of client funds globally.”
The final confession
In the court on the day of the trial, SBF had a chance to speak on its own.At this moment, speech has become an embellishment after the overall situation has been decided. With the lawyer’s arguments over and the judge has basically set the tone, SBF can actually do very little.
Therefore, he spent about ten minutes and spoke a lot in English with basically no syntax, which also allowed us to see the psychological state of this former pride of heaven after the matter was settled.
One important thing is my colleagues at FTX, I wasted what they built, SBF said.They were disappointed.I feel sorry for this, I feel sorry for what happens at every stage… what I should do and what I say, what I shouldn’t do… I really care about everything.
He chose to forgive the three people who were once the core team but now stand in the witness stand to identify him.He said, “The whole industry rebuilt itself in the Gary model, and many of the things he built became industry standards, and when Alameda was in danger of collapse, I received an anonymous message telling me how to solve the problem and that was obviousIt was posted by Nishad, who is famous for being humble.
And Caroline, quite remarkable, mostly self-taught, and she sought advice on her employees’ evaluations.I read her evaluation of a person and I learned a lot.They were all in it and I threw all of it away.I made a series of bad decisions.These decisions are not selfish.”
He also said that I was the CEO of FTX and I was the leader of it, which means that ultimately I was responsible.”If you are CEO, no matter why things get worse, the responsibility is on you. I’m not the person who matters most in the end… My useful life may have ended. I’ve given what I can give.
He finally said as if he had tried his best, “There was an opportunity to do what I once wanted to do for the world, and that was not what I did now. If people do what they want to do for the worldYes, hopefully I can see their success, not just my own failure.”
Bloomberg described the scene at that time as SBF wore a tan prison jumpsuit, unlike the short hair during the trial, his hair grew out again, his hands crossed in front as he stood, and he was unresponsive when the judge read the verdict, with a low look on his eyesDrooping.His mother, Barbara Fried, looked out the window, while his father, Joe Bankman, had his hands on his face.
“We are heartbroken and will continue to fight for our son,” SBF’s parents said in a statement following the verdict.
According to prison counsel Christopher Zoukis, the SBF is likely to be sent to a medium-level security facility.Zoukis said the SBF is likely to end up being placed in FCI Herlong, close to the Nevada border, or FCI Mendota about 135 miles southeast of his parents’ home in Palo Alto.
In federal criminal cases, despite the possibility of parole, through good conduct, SBF has the opportunity to reduce his 25-year sentence.
Former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner revealed that if SBF uses all available commutations, he may be required to serve at least 12.5 years in prison.Federal prisoners usually receive up to 54 days of sentence relief per year for good conduct, which is approximately 15% of sentence reduction.
而自 2018 年的“第一步行动”监狱改革立法实施以来，非暴力联邦囚犯的刑期可能减少至多达 50% 。此外，特殊理由，通常是医疗原因，也允许法院减少刑期。
