Crypto Could Be a Mystery to Jurors in Bankman-Fried Case

livemint.com:

When jurors size up FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried for the first time, they might not know much about the world of cryptocurrencies. The prosecution and defense each could try to use that to their advantage.

Jury selection gets under way Tuesday morning in the criminal case against Bankman-Fried, 31, who is on trial for a series of actions that allegedly led to the abrupt meltdown of the FTX crypto exchange last year. Bankman-Fried is charged with stealing billions of dollars from customers of the FTX crypto exchange and using the money in large part to cover risky bets by its sister hedge fund, Alameda Research.

The case involves some complex financial transactions, including allegations that Bankman-Fried instructed a deputy to take a big position in a digital token to manipulate its market price. As both sides have hurtled toward trial, the case has raised questions of legal strategy: How do you teach jurors about crypto? And do you need to even teach them at all? For prosecutors, the answer might be no.

“A big part of what the government will try to do is make this simple," said Rebecca Mermelstein, a former federal prosecutor now at firm O’Melveny & Myers. “Confusion is the friend of the defense lawyer, because if the jury can’t understand what was happening, they can’t convict." Instead of giving the jury a crash course in crypto, the government will likely use a familiar playbook: tell a straightforward story about lying and stealing.

At a recent white-collar conference, a Justice Department lawyer supervising the prosecution said that bringing a crypto case to trial often isn’t that different from prosecuting a matter of traditional fraud. “The real question is, was the defendant making misrepresentations, was the