On 2 November 2023, after a month-long trial in the Southern District of New York, a jury found Sam Bankman-Fried guilty on all seven counts: wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud against FTX customers and against Alameda Research lenders, plus conspiracies to commit securities fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan took the verdict. Sentencing was set for 28 March 2024 — later, and not this day’s lede.
The collapse and bankruptcy were November 2022. The arrest was December 2022. This week is the jury saying the government’s story about customer funds and a hedge fund next door was proved beyond a reasonable doubt. It is not a software release.
What happened
Prosecutors said FTX customers thought they had assets at an exchange and that those assets were used to prop up Alameda and a lifestyle. Cooperating witnesses from the inner circle described the hole. Bankman-Fried testified that he had not meant to defraud anyone. The jury was out for hours, not weeks, and came back guilty seven times.
If you were an FTX customer, you already knew the operational fact: a company wallet is a claim on a company. A verdict does not move coins. If you were not, a red or green candle the next morning is weather.
Why it matters
Celebrity, Super Bowl ads, and “effective altruism” branding did not replace an audit trail. Mixing customer deposits with a trading desk is not a DeFi innovation. See why Bitcoin’s weekend move is not a strategy — our FTX-weekend piece — for the custody lesson dated to the bankruptcy week. See how crypto wallets actually work if you still need the split between a login and a key.
What happens next
A sentencing memo, a number of years, appeals, and a bankruptcy estate that will take longer than a news cycle. We will not treat a fraud verdict as a buy signal for “the remaining honest exchanges”. Nothing here is legal advice, and it is not an instruction to buy, sell, or hold anything.
