FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried prepares for fight of his life in U.S. trial

financialpost.com:

A year ago, billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, then 30 years old, posted a 14-tweet thread on the balance of “safety vs freedom” in cryptocurrency regulation. Now, a different kind of freedom is on the line when he walks into a Manhattan courtroom to face criminal charges that carry a combined maximum sentence of more than a century in prison.

1) As promised:

My current thoughts on crypto regulation.https://t.co/O2nG1VrW1l

Bankman-Fried’s trial, which is set to begin with jury selection on Tuesday and last for six weeks, marks the ultimate reckoning for the disgraced tycoon who was once welcomed by lawmakers in Washington and Silicon Valley investors as the responsible face of cryptocurrencies, and a respected voice on the future of disruptive digital assets.

He is accused of having defrauded dozens of the world’s top investors as well as millions of customers at his FTX cryptocurrency exchange, and stealing billions of dollars entrusted to his custody.

The shambles left behind by FTX’s US$40-billion bankruptcy in November 2022 have been described as worse than Enron, and Bankman-Fried’s alleged crimes have been likened to those carried out by legendary Ponzi scheme architect Bernard Madoff. U.S. prosecutors called his alleged scheme “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.”

The trial will feature millions of pages of evidence and will probably include testimony by Bankman-Fried’s closest friends and romantic partners. It represents the first big test for U.S. authorities in their efforts to bring to heel the lawless world of offshore crypto trading.

“This is a hugely important case. This is the biggest trial we have seen in the crypto world,” said Sarah Paul, a former federal prosecutor and partner at law