In San Francisco in 2021, every visitor to this West Coast city will find huge FTX advertisements everywhere in the core area of the city. The advertisements are Sam Bankman-Fried and his signature haircut. "Who is this Afro?" Tourists often ask. "Oh, that's SBF," the locals will tell them with pride. "He is a kid who grew up in the Bay Area and is now the CEO of the best exchange. Do you know Bitcoin?"
Photo source: CNBC
At that time, FTX was unparalleled in the United States. The bull market in the crypto world made this company that started out as derivatives The U.S.-backed exchange is riding the wave. Not only is it firmly positioned as the world's second exchange, its valuation has also reached an astonishing US$32 billion, which is approximately equal to the total national output of El Salvador (yes, the country famous for Bitcoin) in one year. All of this is the result of SBF and his team within 5 years. SBF became the "Poster Boy" in the circle as he wished. People called him the King of Cryptocurrency and followed his "influentialism". At the same time, he made a lot of money on FTX using multiple times of leverage. The bowl is full. This is what a bull market looks like.
If you adjust your news search to 2021, you will find that its image is completely different from today’s Jiexiawei. At that time, SBF was no longer content to be a successful person in the encryption circle, but was trying to build itself into a rising star integrating politics and business. He has become a frequent visitor to Congress and Washington, donating $5.2 million to Biden's presidential campaign, ranking second among donors, and has publicly declared his willingness to support higher taxes on high-net-worth individuals. At that time, many media, both inside and outside the circle, were proud to visit SBF.
At that time, it was only 7 years after he graduated from MIT as an undergraduate.
The following is the history that readers are familiar with.
In 2022, Coindesk released information about Alameda Research’s balance sheet, and market confidence began to waver. A tweet from CZ officially started the selling wave of FTT. Even though SBF proved itself on Twitter and told investors over and over again that their funds were safe, FTX inevitably went into a run. FTT lost more than 80% of its value, and SBF went from a young and famous CEO to "one of the largest financial fraudsters in American history" overnight.
On November 11, 2022, Alameda declared bankruptcy and SBF announced its resignation on the same day.
A year later, the jury faced the estranged SBF and declared him guilty on all seven charges.
On March 28, local time in the United States, the judge announced that Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud and must pay a fine of $11 billion. That sentencing standard was said to be less than the 40 to 50 years in prison federal prosecutors wanted, but far more than the five to six-and-a-half years his lawyers had recommended.
The judge in charge of the case, Kaplan, said he had never heard SBF express any remorse for the serious crimes he committed. He said that in his 30 years as a federal judge, he had "never seen anything like" SBF's trial testimony. Odaily Planet Daily previously reported that SBF said "I don't know" hundreds of times during the trial testimony, avoided several key questions, and was even speechless when asked by the prosecutor's lawyer. To the jury, this is tantamount to an admission of certain factual issues.
Before handing down SBF's 25-year prison sentence, Judge Kaplan said there was a risk "that this guy might do something very bad in the future (after being released from prison), and that's not an insignificant risk." "
What SBF and his lawyers have been doing is to create the image of SBF himself as a nerd. Not only was this the previous trial strategy, but up until trial day, SBF attorney Marc Mukasey was also trying to project an image of harmlessness when asking Kaplan for leniency, and FTX was an honest mistake made by the nerdy scientist. "Sam is not a ruthless financial serial killer who goes out every morning and hurts people," the lawyer said. Instead, "he is a clumsy math nerd" with a "relentless work ethic." He said SBF should not be kept in "a four-by-four iron box".
The lawyer said that judging from SBF's diary, he "felt no joy or happiness."
Prosecutor Roos stated that FTX’s collapse at the end of 2022 was not due to “a liquidity crisis or mismanagement.” The prosecutor said: “It was the theft of billions of dollars in customer funds around the world.”
In court on Judgment Day, SBF had a chance to speak for himself. At this moment, speaking has actually become an embellishment after the overall situation has been decided. When the lawyers' arguments are over and the judge has basically set the tone, there is actually very little that SBF can do. So he spent about ten minutes speaking a lot in basically syntactically unsyntactic English, which also gave us a glimpse into the mental state of this once-famous man once the dust had settled.
SBF は、大きな出来事の 1 つは FTX の同僚であり、彼らが構築したものを私は無駄にしたと言っています。彼らはがっかりしています。ごめんなさい、すべての段階で起こったことをごめんなさい…私がすべきだったこと、私が言ったこと、私がすべきではなかったこと…私はすべてを本当に気にしています。
彼は、かつてコアチームの一員であり、現在は自分に不利な証言をするために証言台に立っている3人を許すことを選択しました。同氏は、「業界全体がゲイリーのモデルに基づいて再構築し、彼が確立したものの多くが業界標準となった。アラメダが崩壊の危機に瀕したとき、問題を解決する方法を教えてくれる匿名のメッセージを受け取ったが、それは明白だった」と語った。それは謙虚なことで有名なニシャドからのものでした。そしてキャロラインは素晴らしい人で、ほぼ独学で学んだのですが、従業員の評価についてのアドバイスを求めて私のところに来ました。私は彼女のある人物についての評価を読み、多くのことを学びました。彼らは心と魂を注いで、 「それからすべてを捨てました。私は一連の間違った決断を下しました。これらの決断は利己心から下されたものではありません。」
彼はまた、私が元 FTX CEO であり、私がリーダーであるとも言いました。つまり、最終的には私に責任があるということです。あなたが CEO であれば、なぜ物事がうまくいかなかったとしても、責任はあなたにあります。結局私は一番大切な人ではない…私の耐用年数は終わったのかもしれない。与えられるものはもう与えました。
最後に、彼は力を振り絞ったかのようにこう言いました。 「私が今していることではありません。もし人々が世界のために最善を尽くせば、私自身の失敗だけでなく彼らの成功を見ることができれば幸いです。」
ブルームバーグはそのシーンを、黄褐色の刑務所のジャンプスーツを着たSBFであると表現した。裁判中の短髪とは異なり、髪は再び伸び、両手を前に組んで立っていたが、裁判官が判決を読み上げる間、無反応で伏し目がちだった。母親のバーバラ・フリードさんは窓の外を眺め、父親のジョー・バンクマンさんは両手で顔を覆った。
「私たちは悲痛な思いをしていますが、息子のために戦い続けます」と、SBFの両親は判決後の声明で述べた。
刑務所コンサルタントのクリストファー・ズーキス氏によると、SBFは中程度のセキュリティ施設に送られる可能性が高いという。ズーキス氏は、SBFはネバダ州境近くのFCIハーロングか、パロアルトの実家から南東約135マイルのFCIメンドータに最終的に到着する可能性が高いと述べた。
連邦刑事事件では、仮釈放の可能性はないものの、善行によりSBFには25年の刑が減刑されるチャンスがある。元連邦検察官のミッチェル・エプナー氏は、SBFが利用可能なすべての減刑を利用した場合、最低でも12年半の懲役刑に処される可能性が高いと明らかにした。連邦刑務所の受刑者は通常、善行を認められた場合に年間最大54日間の刑期休暇が与えられるが、これは刑期の15％減刑にほぼ相当する。そして、2018年に刑務所改革「第1段階」法案が制定されて以来、非暴力の連邦刑務所受刑者の刑期は最大50パーセント減刑される可能性がある。さらに、通常は医学的な特別な理由があれば、裁判所は刑を軽減することもできます。
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