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It’s week 4 of the Sam Bankman-Fried trial…and he’s taking the stand at present at 2 p.m. So preserve an eye fixed out for extra protection.
This marks the second time Bankman-Fried has spoken out publicly within the courtroom after saying “yes,” on the primary day in response to Judge Lewis Kaplan asking if he understood he had the fitting to testify if he wished to.
This is the primary day the protection offered their arguments after a number of weeks of prosecutors making their case with rising sheafs of proof.
The prosecutors rested their case round 10 a.m. on Thursday. Mark Cohen, Bankman-Fried’s lead lawyer, requested a movement for acquittal on all seven counts in opposition to his consumer, calling the federal government’s case on the costs “insufficient” with “materiality not shown.” Prosecutors opposed the movement and Judge Kaplan declined it.
The trial was on recess from October 20 till at present. But Wednesday morning, there was a digital listening to between Judge Lewis Kaplan, the prosecutors and protection to border the remainder of the case.
During the decision, Cohen mentioned that the protection has three potential witnesses and added “our client will be testifying.” Before the protection makes their case, the prosecutors plan on bringing out yet one more witness, FBI agent Marc Troiano, to “summarize certain documents” targeted on FTX and Alameda, Assistant United States Attorney Thane Rehn mentioned.
The protection additionally filed a letter to Judge Kaplan on Wednesday requesting permission to ask Bankman-Fried’s “good faith” about sure components of FTX and Alameda. Some of the occasions regarded inner and exterior authorized counsel implementing knowledge retention insurance policies, like auto-deletion insurance policies for Slack and Signal, in addition to loans created from FTX and Alameda to executives, drafts of phrases and providers and different areas.
“Bankman-Fried’s understanding that auto-deletion policies were instituted under the guidance of lawyers would be directly relevant to rebut the inference that these policies were instituted for improper purposes,” the protection letter wrote.
Cohen mentioned on the digital name he expects Bankman-Fried’s testimony to be the identical size as that of his former colleagues, who pleaded responsible: FTX co-founder and CTO Gary Wang, Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX head of engineering Nishad Singh. He additionally mentioned that it’ll take a “good part of Thursday, maybe all of Thursday,” with potential for Friday cross-examination.
Even although the trial was on pause, particulars have been nonetheless transpiring, and we have been nonetheless placing out extra content material. Details under.
SBF trial
- As SBF plans to testify, former SDNY federal prosecutor sees it as a ‘Hail Mary’ (TC+)
- Ex-SDNY prosecutor says Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh most likely received’t get jail time
- Third Point managing director doubles down on SBF investor fraud in trial testimony
This week in web3
If you’re getting SBF trial fatigue, listed here are some articles on what else is going on within the wild world of web3.
- Bitcoin is now value over $34,500 — however will it maintain? (TC+)
- Walmart and Outlier Ventures’ web3 accelerator launches with 5 startups
- There’s ‘great hope’ for bitcoin spot ETF approval in 2024, says Bitwise’s normal counsel (TC+)
The newest pod
For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Josh Naftalis, accomplice at legislation agency Pallas Partners.
He’s a longtime legal professional who represents firms, boards and executives in circumstances for white-collar felony protection, regulatory enforcement issues, inner investigations, disaster administration and extra.
Prior to Pallas Partners, Josh was a federal prosecutor and served over a decade as assistant U.S. legal professional within the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. While on the SDNY he led quite a lot of authorities white-collar prosecutions and trials, and was a senior member of SDNY’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force. Josh dealt with conditions starting from cryptocurrency to insider buying and selling and market manipulation to company and accounting fraud. His work additionally concerned coordination with different businesses just like the SEC, CFTC and FBI.
While on the SDNY, Josh secured convictions in each federal felony trial that he led as an assistant U.S. legal professional. So we noticed him as the proper particular person to dive into the eye-grabbing trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, who’s combating seven prices associated to cash laundering and fraud. SBF’s trial can also be happening at SDNY the place Josh labored.
We talked about all of the nitty-gritty particulars of SBF’s trial: the prosecution’s technique, the protection’s technique, how this case compares to ones that Josh beforehand led and how probably it’s that jurors will attain a responsible verdict.
We additionally talked about:
- How a few years SBF may face
- Importance of jurors
- Best witness testimonies thus far
- Sentencing for different FTX execs
- Why he thinks SBF will testify
Subscribe to Chain Reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite pod platform to maintain up with the newest episodes, and please go away us a overview should you like what you hear!
Follow the cash
- Avalanche-focused gaming studio Neon Machine closed a $20 million Series A spherical
- Singapore-based crypto funds startup Triple A raised $10 million in a Series A spherical
- Ethereum onchain privateness startup Nocturne raised $6 million in a seed spherical
- Binance led $12 million funding spherical for InfinityStakeChain
- Web3 healthcare platform Rymedi raised $9 million in a Series A
This listing was compiled with info from Messari in addition to Ztoog’s personal reporting.
What else we’re writing
Want to department out from the world of web3? Here are some articles on Ztoog that caught our consideration this week.
- Why 42 states got here collectively to sue Meta over children’ psychological well being
- AI is lastly leading to actual development for Big Tech (TC+)
- Carta’s CEO reaches out to prospects about unhealthy press, alerting them to unhealthy press
- Will X’s addition of audio and video calling create stickiness within the app?
- Robotaxis ‘do not belong in the city of Los Angeles,’ lawmaker says
Follow me on Twitter @Jacqmelinek for breaking crypto information, memes and extra.