His employees told him he ‘should stop asking questions because it was distracting.’
Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers are done calling witnesses in the big FTX fraud case over the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse last year. The lawyers are likely preparing to make their closing arguments, and Elizabeth Lopatto will have more reports from the courtroom later today, following last night’s story on all the things SBF conveniently doesn’t remember.
One of the books, Zeke Faux’s Number Go Up, was given to Bankman-Fried on the witness stand yesterday (He did not recall anything he was quoted as saying, naturally). The author of the other, Michael Lewis, was sitting in the gallery.
As an avowed John Lanchester fangirl, you can imagine the delighted, high-pitched noise I made when I saw he’d reviewed both books.
[London Review of Books]
Bankman-Fried gets a shot at his side of the FTX story — then promptly shreds his own credibility with the jury.
In a document published Monday, the UK government outlines how it intends to regulate the digital asset industry, stating that it wants crypto companies and activities to fall under the same regulations as traditional financial services, like banks.
One of those rules would require disclosures on all crypto assets available in the UK, which could include information about the token’s code, known vulnerabilities, and dependencies. The government plans to introduce the new regulations to the Parliament in 2024.
Said Sam Bankman-Fried, as reported by Inner City Press and the New York Times, on the stand testifying as he faces fraud charges over the collapse of his failed crypto exchange FTX.
He was explaining the advantage of marketing his exchange by buying stadium naming rights instead of Facebook or Google ads, and why he picked the Miami Heat’s arena over several others... and allegedly paid for the deal with FTX customer funds.
[The New York Times]
However, unlike yesterday’s testimony, the jury members who will rule on the multiple fraud accusations he’s facing are present too. As Elizabeth Lopatto reports, what he’s said so far shows his defense is going to rely on an argument that he was operating on the advice of his lawyers, and we have some guesses about how well that might work out.
Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs has been awarded over $1.5 million in damages, plus lawyer’s fees, for the trademark infringement lawsuit it won in April against Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen, who had launched a copycat version of the NFT collection.
Defendants intentionally infringed Yuga’s BAYC Marks with a bad faith intent to profit from their use of those Marks. Indeed, even after Yuga filed this action and after the Court issued its April 21, 2023 Order, Defendants continued to market and promote their infringing RR/BAYC NFT collection and their Ape Market.
Somehow, the least suspicious parts of his defense are the 288 auto-deleting Signal conversations.
The prosecution’s case against Sam Bankman-Fried had a lot of collateral damage.
Remember when we told you how one guy lost the password to $220 million? Wired reports that hackers have finally figured out how to crack the encrypted IronKey thumbdrive where those Bitcoins are stored.
But get this: the owner doesn’t (yet) want their help. Intriguing!
The mix in the courtroom for the Sam Bankman-Fried / FTX trial has been reporters, occasional members of the general public, curious lawyers, crypto influencers... and one very devoted degen. Fellow line-stander David Yaffe-Bellany profiles Taco, who politely refused to tell me his government name.
[The New York Times]
The platform is going to roll out “Collectible Expressions,” which let you slot in your Collectible Avatars into “a library of expressions created by Reddit” to use in post comments, starting October 26th. Here’s a GIF of what they look like, and I included a screenshot below. They still don’t make me want to get one of the avatars.
Reddit is announcing this just after saying that its blockchain-based Community Points will be going away.
