FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is about to be sentenced for committing fraud

The former crypto billionaire’s punishment could have huge implications for the industry.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been found guilty of seven counts, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Bankman-Fried founded FTX because he was frustrated with other exchanges used by his crypto trading firm Alameda Research, according to a profile from FTX investors Sequoia Capital. But FTX was a fraud “from the start,” the Securities and Exchange Commission wrote, as SBF and other executives misused customer funds to make billions of dollars of investments, buy $200 million of real estate, and repay Alameda’s lenders while representing the business as a safe place to invest.

On March 28th, he returned to the courtroom for sentencing.

The scheme started to fall apart rapidly after CoinDesk published a blockbuster article about Alameda’s balance sheet. It showed that FTX and Alameda were very closely linked and that a lot of the balance sheet consisted of the FTT token, which was issued by FTX. That article led to Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao — a former investor in FTX — saying he would sell his holdings of FTT. FTX’s bankruptcy and Bankman-Fried’s resignation from the company followed.

One year to the day after CoinDesk reported on the balance sheet, a New York jury returned a guilty verdict against Bankman-Fried on all of the charges he faced.

You can follow along below for all the latest updates and regular updates from the trial and sentencing.