Sam Bankman-Fried’s downfall is complete

IT TOOK AFTXftxftxftx ftx jury just four hours to deliberate on the seven, complicated charges of financial fraud facing , the founder of , a cryptocurrency exchange. They had to parse what would make him guilty of defrauding his customers and his lenders; and of conspiring with others to commit securities fraud, commodities fraud and money-laundering. After 15 days of testimony they had clearly heard enough. They convicted him of each and every count. He faces a maximum sentence of 110 years in jail.Only a year has elapsed since In its heyday the exchange was one of the world’s largest, with millions of customers and billions of dollars in customer funds. It was seen as the future of crypto—a high-tech offering from a brilliant wunderkind who wanted to play nice with regulators and usher in an era in which the industry went mainstream. But on November 2nd 2022 CoinDesk, a crypto news outlet, published a leaked balance-sheet. It showed that Alameda, ’s sister hedge fund also founded by Mr Bankman-Fried, held few assets apart from a handful of illiquid tokens he had invented. Spooked customers began to pull holdings from the exchange. Within days it had become an all-out run and had stopped meeting withdrawal requests. Customers still had $8bn deposited on the exchange. After frantically trying to raise funds, Mr Bankman-Fried placed into bankruptcy.