The bitter end for the world's second largest cryptocurrency exchange tycoon FTX

The Manhattan Federal Court in the Southern District of New York, USA, on March 28 (local time) sentenced defendant Sam Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison and confiscated $11 billion in assets.

CNBC said the prison sentence was significantly lower than the 40-50 years that federal prosecutors had sought, but still much higher than the 5-6.5 years that lawyers had proposed.

FTX cryptocurrency exchange was founded by Sam Bankman-Fried in 2019, headquartered in the Bahamas (an island nation in the Caribbean). During its development, FTX officially surpassed Coinbase to become the world's second largest electronic exchange in terms of market share, just behind Binance in May 2022.

Just six months later, FTX ran into trouble when it ran out of reserves to meet the wave of users withdrawing $6 billion from the platform in just 72 hours. As a result, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange was forced to file for bankruptcy, and FTX’s collapse led to a series of consequences in the cryptocurrency market.

Founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX Sam Bankman-Fried. Photo: CNBC

Court records show that FTX has more than one million creditors, including many leading technology companies such as Apple, Meta, Netflix, LinkedIn, Adobe, AWS. Of these, the 50 largest creditors account for about $3.1 billion.

Judge Lewis Kaplan charged Sam Bankman-Fried, born in 1992, with causing a total loss of $11 billion, including $1.7 billion from investors, $1.3 billion from loans at the Alameda fund, and a loss to FTX exchange customers of $8 billion.

"A lot of people feel really disappointed. I'm sorry about that," the founder of FTX said after receiving a 25-year prison sentence. "I'm sorry for what happened. There were things I should have done and things I shouldn't have done. I threw it all away with my own hands. Now, everything haunts me every day."

In addition to the prison sentence, the judge ordered the forfeiture of $11.02 billion in assets belonging to Sam Bankman-Fried, which will be used to pay victims’ debts during FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/cai-ket-dang-cho-ong-trum-san-tien-so-lon-thu-hai-the-gioi-ftx-196240329154858844.htm