He made wild bets during his time at the top of the crypto industry. Now he’s facing consequences for treating it all like a game.
Sam Bankman-Fried was uncommonly comfortable with gambling and taking risks. Today, he received a sentence of 25 years in prison, and a judge determined he was sorry for making bad bets—but not remorseful for playing his dangerous game.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Out of the Game
Sam Bankman-Fried is a notorious gamer. He has played video games in the company of journalists, at meetings with his investors, and even, reportedly, during a Zoom call with Anna Wintour.
At the height of his success, Bankman-Fried’s ability to game while carrying on serious conversations was framed by admirers as evidence of how quirky and smart he is. But in a Manhattan federal courtroom this morning, Judge Lewis Kaplan concluded that Bankman-Fried ran his failed cryptocurrency exchange like a game. The judge suggested that Bankman-Fried had gambled with people’s lives and money, and that he was not remorseful for committing crimes but regretful that “he made a very bad bet about the likelihood of getting caught.” The judge sentenced Bankman-Fried, who is 32, to 25 years in prison—a term shorter than the 40–50 years prosecutors had argued for, and substantially shorter than the maximum 110 years his crimes carried. (Bankman-Fried, whose defense had asked for a sentence of no more than six and a half years, plans to appeal the verdict.)
Wearing a loose brown prison uniform in the courtroom this morning, Bankman-Fried sat still for most of the proceedings; gone was his signature fidget. When he stood up to address the courtroom, flanked by a United States marshal, he professed sorrow for all the customers and employees who suffered. Bankman-Fried admitted that he had made “bad decisions.” But he fell short of expressing true contrition. He sounded almost dazed, peppering his halting speech with ums. Speaking at some length, he rambled about why people hadn’t been paid back yet, and insisted that FTX had enough assets to repay its customers all along.
Saying you made an error is not the same as saying that you wouldn’t attempt something similar if given another chance.
