Everyone got duped by Sam Bankman-Fried's big gamble
Sam Bankman-Fried has been convicted of stealing billions of dollars from customers of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX. It's a spectacular downfall for Silicon Valley's dishevelled wunderkind, who rubbed elbows with celebrities like Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady.
They testified that while promising to safeguard customer funds and clean up the industry, Bankman-Fried was directing them to commit fraud, opening up a back door between Alameda and FTX so he could use FTX as a personal piggybank. The money fuelled his rise, as he splashed out on property, billions in investments and some $100m in political donations - not to mention helping to cover billions in debts owed by Alameda.
His physical appearance, too, was contrived, Ms Ellison testified - his messy hair and cheap car deemed "better for his image", because it made him look more authentic than a typical trader. But that down-to-earth image belied his intense ambition, she said.
"He thought there was a 5% chance he would become president someday," Ms Ellison said at trial. "Of the United States."
While many have watched the trial as a sort of comeuppance, former FTX employee Natalie Tien has looked to it for closure, and is one of the few former employees to attend the trial regularly.
On the one hand, it was a relief to realise that her own doubts and questions about some things - like extravagant spending on celebrity sponsorships - had been justified. The last time she communicated with her former boss, in December 2022, he had just been released on bail and sent her a music video of Eminem, rapping "Without Me" to celebrate.
But the 33-year-old also felt some parts of the story - especially around his schedule and his use of private jets - were being taken "out of context".
"He did lie and he took the money, yes, but I don't think it's because he was greedy," she said. "Because I actually saw him every day wearing crappy old T-shirts with no shoes and driving a shitty car."
"It was not an act," she said.
Bankman-Fried now faces up to 110 years in prison, and an indelible reputation as one of the greatest fraudsters in US history. Lawyers working on the bankruptcy case have said they have recovered more than $7bn in missing money.
"I think it says more about us than it does about him," Mr McKenzie said.
"He got so far, I think, in many ways because of his lineage, because he is the son of Stanford professors, because he did go to MIT, because he worked on Wall Street. The myth of Sam Bankman-Fried grew in relation to the myth of crypto itself, right?"
-bbc
