Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty in the first hearing of the FTX trial

Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty in the first hearing of the FTX trial.
Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to all counts during the first hearing of his fraud trial.
During the first hearing of the trial that sees him accused of defrauding investors and clients of his companies, Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to all eight counts. Sam Bankman-Fried is the founder and former CEO of FTX , which until a few months ago was considered the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world (as well as one of those judged to be the most secure and reliable).
Sam Bankman-Fried is accused of having handled his clients’ funds in an unscrupulous way, which would have been channeled into a single cauldron with the assets of Alameda Research, a company that is theoretically independent but which in fact – so it is assumed – it was acting as the trading division of FTX. The collapse of the SBF empire, as it was known in the cryptocurrency scene, is owed to Alameda.
Alameda Research allegedly used funds from FTX clients to conduct some risky cryptocurrency investment deals, ending up burning billions of dollars. The opaque relations between FTX and Alameda came to light after a site specialized in cryptocurrencies obtained and published the latter company’s alleged financial statements.
The collapse of FTX and Alameda had important and serious consequences on the cryptocurrency market, for example causing a collapse in the value of the Solana cryptocurrency .
During one of his latest statements, SBF had admitted that he had made mistakes, claiming that he was “willing to do anything to be able to go back in time and do some things differently”, adding however that he never acted with the interest to defraud his customers.
The former cryptocurrency mogul will testify before the US Congressional Finance Committee next week.