But it seems the court was not convinced of his claims. “When not lying, he was evasive, hair-splitting, trying to get the prosecutors to rephrase questions for him. I’ve been doing this job for close for 30 years. I’ve never seen a performance like that,” Judge Kaplan was quoted as saying by Inner City Press.
FTX was one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world at one point and even launched its own token, while Bankman-Fried made it to the covers of magazines for being one of the world’s youngest self-made billionaires and his effective altruism pledge. He also made fat donations to political campaigns and even struck celebrity endorsement deals with the likes of Larry David, Tom Brady, and Gisele Bundchen. He was also seen hanging out with Hollywood hotshots and even shared the stage with the likes of Bill Clinton.
In its last days, FTX inked a nonbinding deal with Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, as a last-ditch rescue effort to get out of its liquidity crunch. The goal was a full acquisition, but merely a day later, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao backed out of the deal as regulatory scrutiny heated up in the FTX saga. FTX’s sentencing once again puts the spotlight back on the notoriously fragile world of crypto assets championed by the likes of Bitcoin and flooded with tokens that capitalize on anything from a meme dog to a token about British Royal Kate Middleton’s cancer revelation.
