Sam Bankman-Fried had a smile on his face as he gotin court on Tuesday earlymorning – attired in a black fit and an uncharacteristically tame (read: carefully cut) mop of hair. After 9 long months, the disgraced crypto creator will lastly have the opportunity to safeguard himself versus a broad range of federal scams and conspiracy charges connected to the collapse of FTX, his crypto and futures exchange, and Alameda Research, the crypto trading company he established and – according to districtattorneys – utilized to unlawfully re-invest FTX user funds.
The veryfirst day of the Bankman-Fried trial was all about voir alarming, the procedure by which a judge, defense, and prosecution worked together to filter more than 80 New Yorkers to a last group of 12 jurors and 6 alternates. Judge Lewis Kaplan, the judge managing the case, peppered the jury swimmingpool with concerns.
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Underscoring the trial’s place in the heart of New York’s monetary district – and the scale of Bankman-Fried’s once-giant crypto empire – the preliminary list of capacity jurors consistedof individuals whose occupations overlapped with Alameda and FTX. One capacity juror stated she had worked upuntil justrecently at Signature, the crypto-friendly bank that collapsed earlier this year and had ties to Alameda and FTX. Another member of the jury swimmingpool stated her company had invested straight in Alameda and FTX.
“Did your company make or lose cash as a outcome of their financialinvestments?” asked Kaplan. “Lost cash,” stated the juror.
The objective of Kaplan’s concerns was to suss out which of the lotsof potential jurors would be able to serve impartially – a especially complex undertaking offered the headline-grabbing nature of Bankman-Fried’s crypto collapse, as the judge acknowledged at the st