FTX 2023.10.3……【Press】【U.S.】Live: The Trial of FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried
When Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto exchange collapsed, customers lost billions of dollars. A New York court will decide whether it was fraud.
➤【美国】FTX加密货币交易所
直播:FTX 创始人 Sam Bankman-Fried 的审判
当 Sam Bankman-Fried 的 FTX 加密货币交易所崩溃时,客户损失了数十亿美元。纽约法院将决定这是否是欺诈。
大家,早安。欢迎收看我们对 FTX 创始人 Sam Bankman-Fried 审判的现场报道。我们将在法庭内外全程报道整个审判过程。《连线》杂志的安吉拉·陈 (Angela Chen)和安迪·格林伯格 (Andy Greenberg)将在纽约进行报道,乔尔·哈利利 (Joel Khalili)将在伦敦报道该审判的后果和更广泛的影响。
法院外的场景
这是一个美丽、晴朗的早晨,县法院和联邦法院外的福利广场上有一个美丽晴朗的早晨。纽约警察局设置了广泛的钢路障来管理交通,阻止行人在法院附近行走,并为媒体设立区域。
法院正前方有一个特殊的围栏,员工可以步行进入,当天的潜在陪审员也在那里排队。警察正在排队提醒他们,需要拿出传票以供检查。邻近地区媒体密集,广播新闻的卡车停在弗利广场周围。
萨姆·班克曼-弗里德审判中的陪审团可能会被要求重点关注意图问题。FTX创始人是否故意欺骗投资者和客户?
在法庭之外,在风投公司、主权财富基金和其他在该交易所迅速崛起时向该交易所投资数亿美元的机构中,有必要回答一个更大的问题:为什么专业投资者不断陷入欺诈?答案可能很平常。太多的钱追逐太少的好交易;即使是高素质的投资者也容易傲慢和害怕错过机会。
今天,法庭的焦点是陪审团的选择,预计将于明天进行开庭辩论。
审判可能会持续长达六周,不过很可能会在美国感恩节(即 11 月 23 日)之前做出判决。
诉讼程序有短暂的中断。SBF确实剪了头发。进展缓慢,陪审团的选择可能不会在今天结束。
如果今天陪审团遴选结束——而且仍有机会结束——那么明天首先将开始开庭辩论。
在复杂的欺诈审判中,检方通常会试图避免让陪审团因细节而不知所措,而是尝试建立一个易于理解的叙述。这意味着他们可能会将受害者的证词置于案件的中心。然而,许多受害者几乎没有机会追回自己的钱。
FTX 积极向亚洲、拉丁美洲和非洲新兴市场的客户推销自己,许多客户将加密货币视为对冲当地货币波动或安全存储资金的一种方式。
正如印度 FTX 客户阿南德 (Anand)告诉《连线》杂志的那样,“我所做的事情不应该有风险。如果我把钱存放在一个不正当的交易​​所,而它却破产了,我就有错。但 FTX 是排名前两名的交易所之一。”
陪审团遴选将于明天继续
尽管刘易斯·卡普兰法官早些时候乐观地认为,如果运气好的话,再加上“顺风顺水”,当天的陪审团将会选出,但整个过程确实会在明天早上继续进行。
不过,现在有足够的合格人员,首先可以从中选出所需的 18 名陪审员(12 名陪审员和 6 名候补陪审员),双方预计将进行总计约 90 分钟的开庭陈词。

Live: The Trial of FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried
When Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto exchange collapsed, customers lost billions of dollars. A New York court will decide whether it was fraud.

WELCOME TO OUR live coverage of the trial of FTX founder Sam-Bankman-Fried. Check out our explainer for everything you need to know about the trial. And follow along here each day as we report on the drama inside and outside the courtroom.

The Scene Outside the Courthouse
It’s a beautiful, clear morning in Foley Square outside the county and federal courthouses. NYPD has set up a broad array of steel barricades to manage traffic, keep pedestrians from walking near the courthouses, and create zones for the media.
There’s a special pen directly in front of the courthouses that employees can walk through to enter and where the day’s potential jurors are lined up. Police are walking the line reminding them that they need to have their summons out and available for inspection. Media are densely packed in an adjacent area and broadcast news have trucks parked around Foley Square.

The jury in Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial will likely be asked to focus on the matter of intent. Did the FTX founder deliberately deceive investors and customers?
Outside the courtroom, in the venture capital firms, sovereign wealth funds and other institutions that invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the exchange on its meteoric rise, there’s a need to answer an even bigger question: why do professional investors keep falling for frauds? The answer could be mundane. There’s too much money chasing too few good deals; and even highly qualified investors are prone to hubris and FOMO.

No phones or laptops are allowed inside the courtroom—though some updates will trickle out during breaks. SBF will be allowed to use an air-gapped laptop to take notes during his trial.
Today, the focus of the court is on jury selection with opening arguments expected tomorrow.
The trial could last up to six weeks, though it’s likely there will be a verdict just before Thanksgiving in the US—which is on November 23.

There’s a brief break in proceedings. SBF did indeed get a haircut. It’s slow going and jury selection might not wrap up today.

If jury selection is wrapped up today—and there’s still a chance of that—then opening arguments will begin first thing tomorrow.
While that process is ongoing, here’s a first glimpse inside the courtroom. In this sketch, you can see Bankman-Fried next to his attorney Christian Everdell.
And here’s Bankman-Fried, seated second from the right in the front row, surrounded by his attorneys with prospective jurors seated behind him. The court will need to decide on 12 jurors and six alternates before opening arguments can begin.

Before his arrest in December, Bankman-Fried ignored the most basic legal principle: say nothing, or risk incriminating yourself. Instead, the FTX founder embarked on a parade of media interviews, appeared on podcasts, tweeted, and started his own Substack. In the process, he handed prosecutors a pile of material to inform their case against him.
At trial, the defense will need to consider the risk that Bankman-Fried could make a similar mistake, by incriminating himself on the stand. The default advice for almost any criminal defendant is to plead the Fifth and decline to testify.
The defense strategy, legal experts say, is likely to be built around the idea that negligence, not a criminal intent to defraud, was the cause of the multi-billion-dollar hole. Testimony from Bankman-Fried isn’t necessarily required to make that argument—and may even undermine the approach. “I don’t know that I’d want to be on the stand having to make the case that I’m an idiot,” says Jason Allegrante, chief legal officer at crypto custody firm Fireblocks.

In complex fraud trials, the prosecution will often try to avoid overwhelming the jury with detail, and instead try to set up a narrative that’s easy to follow. That means they’re likely to place victims’ testimony at the center of their case. Many of those victims, though, will have little chance of ever recovering their money.
FTX actively marketed itself to clients in emerging markets in Asia, Latin America and Africa, where many customers saw crypto as a way to hedge against volatile local currencies or store their money safely.
As Anand, an FTX customer in India told WIRED, “What I did wasn’t supposed to be risky. If I had kept my money in a shady exchange, and it had gone bust, I would be at fault. But FTX was among the top two exchanges.”

Jury Selection to Continue Tomorrow
Despite Judge Lewis Kaplan’s earlier optimism that— with some luck and “the wind at our backs”—the day would end with a jury selected, the process will indeed continue tomorrow morning.
However, there are now enough qualified people from which to select the required 18 people (12 jurors and 6 alternates) first thing, and both sides expect to give opening arguments totaling about 90 minutes.

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