Jailing Bankman-Fried ends the Wild West era of crypto

In September 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried's face was on the cover of Fortune magazine, the name of his company was splashed across stadiums, and he was in talks with Elon Musk to help finance the takeover of Twitter. As the head of the world's biggest crypto exchange, he had become the world's richest person under the age of 30 and was being touted by Silicon Valley investors as a future trillionaire.

- ANTHONY CUTHBERTSON

Just three months later, the man dubbed the “Crypto King” was arrested and charged with fraud and money laundering that ultimately resulted in the collapse of the FTX exchange. In that moment, he may also have broken a record for going from billionaire to broke in the shortest amount of time.

This week, after more than a year of legal proceedings, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his crimes. Judge Lewis Kaplan, who handed Bankman-Fried the sentence in a New York courtroom on Thursday, said the 32-year-old had never uttered “a word of remorse for the commission of terrible crimes”.

As the founder and head of FTX, which was at one point handling daily trading volumes of $21bn (£16.6bn), BankmanFried had positioned himself as one of the industry’s figureheads. In December 2021, he had appeared before Congress to offer politicians his thoughts on how best to regulate the space. “He presented himself as the good guy, all in favour of the appropriate regulation of the crypto industry,” Judge Kaplan said. “In my judgement, that was an act.”