Events leading up to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's conviction
By Luc Cohen
(Reuters) -Sam Bankman-Fried's fraud conviction on Thursday marks the culmination of a yearlong legal saga stemming from the dramatic collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange he founded.
Below is a timeline of key events leading to the verdict:
2017
Bankman-Fried, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, quits his job as a quantitative trader at Jane Street Capital and launches Alameda Research, a trading firm focused on cryptocurrency.
MAY 2019
Bankman-Fried and former Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) employee Gary Wang found FTX as a new platform to trade crypto tokens and derivatives.
OCTOBER 2021
FTX raises $420 million in venture funding, valuing the company at $25 billion. Bankman-Fried debuts on the Forbes billionaires list, which estimates his net worth at $22.5 billion. The magazine's assessment of his wealth would rise to $26 billion by the end of the year.
FEBRUARY 2022
The NFL Super Bowl's broadcast is heavy on cryptocurrency advertisements, signifying the height of the craze for the booming asset class. FTX's «Don't Miss Out» spot features actor Larry David, whose skepticism about the platform is portrayed as akin to an early human doubting the importance of the wheel.
JUNE-JULY 2022
Bankman-Fried emerges as the cryptocurrency sector's so-called «white knight» amid a collapse in the prices of Bitcoin and other digital assets. Alameda gives crypto lender Voyager Digital a $200 million credit facility, and FTX gives lender BlockFi a $250 million loan.
NOV. 2, 2022
Crypto news website CoinDesk publishes a leaked Alameda Research balance sheet showing that much of its $14.6 billion in assets is held in FTX's own token, called FTT. The token subsequently sheds around $400 million of its market cap,
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