2023-11-03 17:47:42
Voices rose from the cryptocurrency community on Friday to celebrate the conviction of the former darling of the sector, Sam Bankman-Fried, convicted of fraud, with the hope of turning a page, without illusion.
“This verdict should hopefully mark the end of a dark period for our industry,” commented on X (ex-Twitter), Yat Siu, president of Animoca Brands, video game publisher and investor in projects linked to blockchain, the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies.
A New York jury found Sam Bankman-Fried guilty on Thursday of the seven counts brought once morest him, mainly fraud, criminal conspiracy and money laundering.
“SBF” used, without their knowledge, client funds deposited on its cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX to fuel the risky investments and transactions of its investment company, Alameda Research.
Alameda will have drawn up to 14 billion dollars from FTX users, who noticed that 8 billion were missing at the time of the platform’s bankruptcy in November 2022.
His sentence is due to be handed down on March 28, 2024. He faces more than 100 years in prison.
“This unanimous verdict confirms what we already knew: that SBF deceived many people, customers, employees, partners and investors, including myself and Sequoia,” commented Alfred Lin, partner at the latter, one of the Silicon Valley’s most renowned private equity firms.
The decision rendered Thursday “means that bitcoin has gotten rid of a new dead weight. It’s a good thing. (…) Let’s move forward.”, reacted, on X, Jeff Ross, founder of Vailshire Capital Management, a company which invests in particular, on behalf of its clients, in cryptocurrencies.
The implosion of FTX punctuated a sequence that began in the spring of 2022 and was marked by the failure of a series of companies and platforms linked to cryptocurrencies.
This period saw the value of bitcoin divided by three (-67%) between the end of March and the end of November 2022. The queen of digital currencies took almost a year to recover and has only regained momentum in recent weeks .
“This is not a day to party,” said Hayden Adams, founder of Uniswap, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange platform.
“Billions of dollars that belonged to (FTX) users were lost and the reputation of our industry took a big hit,” he argued. “The only winners were a few law firms and crypto opponents.”
“Private equity, which entrusted hundreds of millions of dollars to SBF, is declaring victory following this verdict,” wrote Nick Tomaino, of the investment company 1confirmation, who denounced the “horrible” lack of discernment of a sector and “the greed that caught them in this massive fraud”.
“In the next cycle, our industry must do better,” urged Hayden Adams. “Focus on technology and our values, spot the warning signs, and avoid sociopaths and their cult of personality.”
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