The Wolf Of All Streets - Breaking: SBF Sentenced To 25 Years! | Crypto Town Hall
Episode Date: March 28, 2024Crypto Town Hall is a daily X Spaces hosted by Scott Melker, Ran Neuner & Mario Nawfal. Every day we discuss the latest news in crypto and bring the biggest names in the space to share their insight. ... ►►TRADING ALPHA READY TO TRADE LIKE THE PROS? THE BEST TRADERS IN CRYPTO ARE RELYING ON THESE INDICATORS TO MAKE TRADES. USE CODE ‘2MONTHSOFF’ WHEN VISITING MY LINK. 👉 https://tradingalpha.io/?via=scottmelker ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/ ►► OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $10,000! 👉 https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER ►►NGRAVE This is the coldest hardware wallet in the world and the only one that I personally use. 👉https://www.ngrave.io/?sca_ref=4531319.pgXuTYJlYd ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/ ►►NORD VPN GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hey man.
Have you looked at the Q coin coin since the,
like has it recovered since the announcement? I haven't checked.
I haven't looked at all. I literally don't know if you saw,
I got done with my show.
I was like hanging out and went over to check out banter.
Obviously I checked out ran and there was like his stream cut and there was a
copyright or something
violation of content. Uh, and then, so it was dead.
The chat was going insane. I don't know if he got something.
And they came back on for one second and said, shit,
I hope we didn't get a strike. And then it went dead and they deleted it.
So the scary, scary YouTube, you know, coming after people for, I don't know.
I don't know what it was.
I'm curious to hear from him.
Shit.
Okay.
Is his account up still?
His account's fine, but they took the video down immediately.
I don't know if they were going to get a strike or they wanted to make sure that they didn't.
I think the topic was like, man, Bitcoin about to hit $4 trillion by next week. These three altcoins are now worth more than Jeff. I don't know,
because us, but whatever those topics are, but anyways,
he was doing an all coin show about three, three coins.
I don't know what would have been a copyright violation.
Yeah. I'm just, I'm just entering invite.
Now it's probably just in world mode in the office.
I would imagine so. Yeah.
Have you ever had any copyright strikes?
I mean, for crypto, no.
For music, copyright strikes ended my entire music career, actually,
on SoundCloud, and I got sued by Universal Music back in the day for remixes.
Apparently, it's a really bad idea to remix the entire Beatles catalog without
permission. Who knows?
Yeah, I mean, that's the beauty of X. I love being on here. There's also Brian Rose
who had a big channel on YouTube. He's big in crypto now. He had a big channel on YouTube
and he got it all. He got three strikes. I don't know what the third one
was for, but he was very vocal against the vaccines and stuff.
And his account got removed.
London Real?
London Real, yeah.
Yeah, you did that interview with him recently.
He actually was just, he just sent me a WhatsApp message the other day
saying he was running for mayor of London again.
Yeah, yeah. I saw that.
But yeah, I did the interview with him.
There's the man of the hour.
We got to find out what happened.
We should say, I don't know if he can hear us because he's connected.
Just remove him and then DM
and say, bro, hey, I think you've been copyrighted
here as well. We're not allowed to invite you.
Hey, Rand.
Dude, I signed on to your channel and
the police came after you.
I mean, I was just showing a humorous video and I even accredited it to the police came after you. I mean, what, like, I mean,
I was just showing a humorous video and I even accredited to the people that
made it. And I said, this was made by these people.
And I just showed a humorous video and then they,
they spaced off my stream midstream, bro.
In real time. I've never heard of that.
I've seen like somebody file a complaint and then like you get a strike for a
video that's been up i don't think i've
ever seen i literally went over to sign on and it that morning was up yeah i mean that's just crazy
that's crazy so so demotivating you spend the whole day preparing for an amazing show
there were 10 000 people on the stream live and then i saw that
but so is that a strike or you don't know i don't know i mean i haven't got a strike i think in in
order for there to be a strike the copyright then has to actually strike against you i think that
that's just an immediate they just removed it basically that's good that's at least long term
yeah i can't i'm just going on there i can't find your account it's crypto banter group uh
ryan i'm joking i think it was totally deleted, Mario. I think it's gone.
I think it's over for Ryan now.
I just didn't want to take it too far.
Mario ran, actually, Mario sent you a copyright strike
to get you on Spaces full time.
And it's such a cool show, though.
It's like, I don't know, I'm so demotivated.
It's such a great show.
What was it about
yeah well like we're talking about like um you know like the momentum of bitcoin the fact that
there's an options close out tomorrow which is like this huge options close out um uh and that
the price you know there's been like there will be lots of price action in the next couple of hours
then uh we spoke about AI and this
merger between the three tokens, which is quite a big move, I think. And then we were
going to go into speaking about Aptos and Suvi and we just took like a five minute fun
break to watch the very funny video, which I thought was hilarious. And I actually, as
I said, I even, I even credited the artist, like I said, like this is a video from this
person. Look how funny that is.
And then they took it down.
What's the, just on the, on the, I was going to ask what the video is,
but we can ask later. Can you,
can you just tell us the merger of these three coins?
Cause I read the news haven't dug into it. How does it work? How does, how,
how did three coins or three different projects merge how would that
look like so what they do um if you can give us a little break they're not merging the companies
they're not merging the companies they're just merging the three tokens so basically let's say
that there's three tokens there's three tokens in the market agix fetch.ai and ocean protocol those
are three tokens right and what they're going to do is they're going to merge them all into one token.
And so they've actually agreed the actual splits of the token.
I don't remember the splits offhand.
They have agreed the splits.
So upon approval, Fetch will become ASI with a total supply of 2.63 billion tokens
and a starting price of 282.
AGX will migrate to ASI at a conversion of 0.43 to 1
and ocean will do the same at a migration at a rate of 0.43 to 1. so they just they just agree
on like a token swap mechanism and so for every ocean protocol you have you will get whatever 0.4321 and it's a merge of tokens basically they'll create
one one monster token basically yeah i can see ocean um pumped in the last oh no i didn't know
she 24 hours steady but this announcement is from a few days ago yeah pumped a fair bit they kind of
retraced most of that pump and then bounced back up was the funny price action but it went up let's say about
10 15 after that news i haven't looked at the other two coins and let's see what's the purpose
of the merger i think just so they want to they want to decentralize ai they want to decentralize
ai um and you know in order to in order for ai to be decentralized you need to have a decentralized
data set you need to have decentralized decentralized, you need to have a decentralized data set,
you need to have decentralized infrastructure,
and you need to have decentralized learning models.
That's basically how you have a totally decentralized AI infrastructure.
So they want to build a totally decentralized full infrastructure.
And right now, if you look at the three components,
Fetch is very much an infrastructural layer.
The second one is Ajax, which is a marketplace for models.
And the third one is Ocean Protocol,
which is a data protocol, effectively.
So when you merge them all together, you get one token representing decentralized AI, decentralized
model, decentralized infrastructure, and decentralized marketplace.
And just in other news, I want to ask you a thought from the AI narrative,
because I know you said we're at the tail end. So SBF, do we have any lawyers on stage? Oh, we've got David requesting perfect timing. Has anyone looked at the SBF sentencing, which is supposedly an hour ago? were talking, but I haven't caught up far enough to see where they're at. I did just see that they said that the judge made a comment about that he was clearly witness tampering and committed
perjury or something to that effect. So that sounds bad, but I haven't seen what the actual
sentence is. Give me like three minutes. I'm going to catch up on this inner city press and
I should be able to update it. Maybe David has some insight. Yeah, please. Yeah, exactly. I'll
go to the panel. I'm just going to go a bit of back and forth on the markets and on the SBF trial if anyone's following it. David, have you been following the SBF sentencing hearing today?
No, I've decided that this is something I should ignore. It's not really important for legal crypto. You know, who really cares how much you get?
Okay, well, thanks for ruining it. I can tell you, let me say real quick, there's something I want to read. Yeah, there's something
I want to read to you because it's really interesting because people might remember
that a huge part of his recent sort of defense, and we had Martin Shkreli on here not that long
ago, by the way, who said, listen, my investors and my hedge fund made money and I still went to
jail, right? So, SBF's argument that everybody's being made whole, first of all, we know that listen, my investors and my hedge fund made money and I still went to jail.
So SBF's argument that everybody's being made whole, first of all, we know that they're not truly being made whole, but they are made whole and people are making money. That was his argument.
This is what the Judge Kaplan said 35 minutes ago. I reject the defense's argument about loss,
both on the law and on the facts. The assertion that customers and creditors will be paid
in full is misleading. Defendants equate loss with dollar volume in the bankruptcy case. Investors and
lenders were also injured parties. The crimes were included taking FTX customer money to which
defendant had no right and using it on speculative investments by Alameda and a variety of other
things. A fortuitous run-up in the value of some cryptocurrencies bears no relation to the gravity
of the crimes that were committed. A thief who takes his loot to Las Vegas and successfully bets
is not entitled to a sentencing reduction, even if paid back. So the judge is not having it.
Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, this is very simple. He is going, everyone keeps texting me
this morning, everyone wants to put bets down.
And I feel like public perception from non-lawyers is it's going to be less than 20 years. I think
it's going to be a lot more than that. I do think that people, and I think what Scott just said is
completely true. You know, they've been very clear. the crime happens the moment he steals the money.
Everything that happens after that doesn't matter.
And in this particular case, there's no mitigation for the fact that people in theory are going to get their money back.
And it's very important for everyone to understand what's about to break here is he did everything wrong from the moment it fell apart.
He didn't listen to legal advice.
He did the interviews.
He was accused, and the judge clearly believes he witnessed tampered.
All of those things take away the letter that his mommy wrote saying he's a nice boy and misunderstood.
So I say the hammer is going to fall in the gavel and it's going to fall hard and fast today
would the correct number of years be 21 give me a number 21 million
i'm gonna go in aggregate because you have to remember they're in law in lawyer speak there's
a big difference between consecutively served and concurrently served.
I think he's going to get more than 40 years in jail where it's going to have to be served year
after year. This is federal court, so there's really no good behavior. But at the end of the
day, I'm going 40 plus. 40 plus. Good thing he's young.
I don't think he's ultimately going to serve that.
I think there are going to be things that happen afterwards.
But I think that— What could happen afterwards, Dave?
What could happen afterwards?
You know, I remember early on, we were all speaking, and this was before CZ got indicted,
that he was going to roll on people.
I don't know who he can roll on right now,
but I do believe that there's going to be a lot of, and I have no knowledge of this,
but I do believe he still has a lot of inside knowledge of what happened, that he will be a
useful witness and be able to sell out everybody. There will be text. There will be signal. There's going to be things that just turn
up that are going to be very bad for a lot of people from years ago, from the time when crypto
wasn't what it is today. And I do believe he's going to be able to trade on that and get a
lighter sentence, a reduced sentence. Because again, in federal court,
you have to truly serve the time you're given,
but they can reduce it
if he does provide helpful information.
I think he tried his best
to get out of everything completely,
but at the end of the day,
he's going to jail for a very long time.
I don't think this is a 15-year crime.
This is much more.
They're allowing, just as I'm reading through the front thread Mario ran,
A, it's very clear that the judge, once again, is not buying any of it. Very clear,
like I said, witness tampering, three perjury findings, perjured himself at the trial, falsely testified
that repayment of third-party loans by Alameda would require Alameda to borrow more customer
funds, obstruction of justice. And then she's invited, excuse me, Judge Kaplan has invited
victims to address the court. And they're just absolutely eviscerating SBF
and FTX if you're reading through it
talking about how many people have
committed suicide, the real loss
that this is not being made whole
the point that Simon has continually
made here, this is interesting
Sullivan and Cromwell has trampled over our property rights
this is from Sunil, one of the victims
they have liquidated billions of dollars
of crypto assets, there's a token S&C sold at 11 cents.
It's now trading at $2.
FTX had 10 billion in Solana tokens.
They sold it at a 70% discount.
They're selling it to their own clients.
Galaxy is destroying customer value.
This is our property.
Then there's Anthropic.
Our assets were used to buy the state.
It's our property.
I objected and thousands of customers supported me. I mean is the point that uh simon has made over and over again
it's so nonsensical and we talk about people getting paid back in full um you know they're
talking about getting paid back in full based on the crypto value of their account at that time
but none of that upside is being captured by the creditors.
We're talking about Solana at $8 or $9, right? Solana now is trading just under $200. And now
VCs and investors are getting to buy that $200 Solana at a significant discount OTC from the
FTX estate, right? So third parties are coming in and getting all the benefit of the upside and
creditors are stuck getting paid, quote unquote,
back in full at $8 Solana or 11, whatever.
This is fucking mental. This is crazy. This is just so skewed. It's insane.
And just also, let's just imagine being SPF shoes.
Like he fucked up, he fucked a lot of people over.
And because of his greed
or whatever you want to call it,
he's sitting in jail now,
potentially for the rest of his life
while all of us are in the midst of another bull market.
And look at his investment.
I mean,
AI investments did really well.
And I think his customs are going to be made whole
at the, obviously, bear market prices,
but they're going to be made whole.
And nonetheless,
it just kind of gives you an idea
of how big of a fuck up
if any of you are getting greedy
in the audience
and how it could backfire
really badly.
But just to Carlo,
it's good to have you last second.
And Scott, I appreciate
reading the thread out.
I've asked my team
to kind of go through that thread
and post our updates as well.
I was doing it in the back channels and Scott posted.
Yeah. Mario, you cut out for me for a second, but the beginning. Yeah.
The top for anyone wants to read it.
Mario, you're, you're breaking out. You're breaking up pretty badly for me.
I can't actually pin it. mario you're breaking out you're breaking up pretty badly for for me hey good morning everybody am i lagging or am i good the day of reckoning has arrived
can you hear me am i lagging i can hear you now you were you were just cutting in and out but
carlo yeah welcome buddy yeah day of reckoning has arrived uh I got to sit in for some of this trial, as some of you may know, and I have been saying since day one of his arrest that I think this is going to probably be on a Bernie Madoff level. I don't think it'll be 110 years, but this is going to be a significant sentence based on the tone of the judge and the way this sentencing hearing is going on right now. Yeah, Carlo, I was just reading through the thread and the judge
is not giving an inch to the defense here. And Judge Kaplan just said he's increasing,
he's increasing rather than decreasing the sentencing guidelines. He's going for the
higher end is what's being reported in the last couple of minutes. Not at all surprised by that,
David. Not at all surprised by that. David. Not at all surprised by that.
Yeah, my assumption was always 100 plus years when we were first talking about it. And then we recently had, maybe it was even yesterday, we had panelists on saying it could be anywhere from
like 5 to 20. I don't remember what the numbers were, but I was really surprised at how low those
estimates were. I kind of did a breakdown and a thread I put up in the nest of the
respective responses, the government's request for 50 to 60 years. And then the defense recently
wrote a letter kind of dissecting the government's response and basically saying that it's really off
the rails and sort of broke it down with screenshots for anyone who's interested. But
I don't see the defense's arguments going getting anywhere with Judge Kaplan because he sat he's a sharp judge he was on top of this case uh as far as my observations and I don't think he's
going to cut SBF any slack today yeah I find it really interesting that the defense is just
falling back on the your honor he's just a misunderstood autist kid who was trying to
make the world a better place and didn't know what was going on when kaplan clearly saw through that bullshit like the entire time during the trial
it's falling back to that is bad yeah sorry it's right here he never sought out to be the king of
crypto this is uh i guess one of the one of his defense attorneys potentially but or someone else
who knows him he never sought out to be the king of crypto he just wanted to have the largest positive impact in the world but it was not and
justify the means that would harm the altruistic movement how is standing by him now who's standing
by him now not tom brady or katie perry it's the scientists that stand with him yeah he was
a billionaire unconcerned about material possessions he was living in a 40 million dollar
penthouse he was not unconcerned like and again it's just it's clear that kaplan knows that that's
all i don't understand why they are falling back on this i mean they don't have much else
to work with i mean i've been in their shoes i've been in their shoes and we don't get to make the
facts as criminal defense lawyers we have to work with what we have. And this case went to the jury.
So it's all on the table.
And, you know, they're working with the best that they can here as far as trying to make
chicken salad out of chicken shit.
Yeah, I mean, Kaplan's eviscerating them.
Oh, I mean, it's getting worse.
Kaplan's even getting he's attacking the defense lawyers now.
This is for the gambling people, like,
you know, for the last second money line, this is not going, this is going as poorly as possible
for any type of leniency at the moment. Well, if you read the, if you read the opening paragraph,
David, to the, to the defense team's response to this, I mean, they were pretty critical.
The government's memorandum is disturbing with marked hostility. The memorandum distorts really to support its precious, quote,
loss narrative and casts Sam as a depraved supervillain. It attributes to him dark and
maniacal motives that fly in the face of the record. It makes apocalyptic
prophecies of recidivism, and it adopts a medieval view of punishment to reach what
amounts to a death in prison sentencing recommendation. This is not justice.
That's their opening salvo in their response memo to the government.
I was in front of the judge who has the Coinbase case right now a couple of weeks ago.
And if I knew the Coinbase decision was going to come out yesterday, I would have tried to be on,
but been on a media blackout tour the last couple of weeks. But ultimately, that judge adopted
every, she adopted, we were suing Avax Labs on something, and she adopted verbatim our
motion, our opposition to the motion for summary judgment. And I think what you're seeing here is
Judge Kaplan almost adopting verbatim what the government said. And that's a bad, bad sign for
what's going to happen in the next 30 minutes to an hour.
When do we see the actual sentence?
Do you think it's 30 minutes to an hour?
Or how many victims are they going to let speak?
Do we have any idea?
I mean, is there any precedent for that, David? I'm usually thinking things are going to happen quicker.
So if I say 30 minutes to an hour, going on the David Silver wrong, 65% of the time will probably be three to four hours.
Oh, wow.
Sound this thing could take that long.
65% of the time, every time.
Yeah.
So Scott, John, just give us, is my mic working or is it fucking up again?
Yeah, you sound good now.
Yeah.
Can you just give us a recap just quickly for the people that joined?
What do we not know?
You've been going through the thread.
What do we know so far and what's happening today? So people haven't been following the story.
Yeah, effectively, this is the day of reckoning for Sam Bankman Freed. He's being sentenced for
his crimes. And there's been a wide range of predictions as to how long he would go to jail.
As the lawyers on stage just said, we've had a lot of non-legal opinions. You think you won't get much time. Most of the lawyers think he's going to get,
you know, 40, 50 years plus, if not even more.
Basically the defense for SBF had written a, you know,
strong worded letter saying that this was all insane and he didn't deserve
much. Everybody's getting paid back in full.
The judge has dismissed in aggressive language
every argument that the defense had made, said that he tampered with witnesses, that he perjured
himself, that they're not truly getting paid back in full, and that none of that really matters.
This was a very clear crime. And now they've had some victims speaking and his defense now is sort of falling back on that.
He's just a nice guy who's maybe a little bit autistic and can't make eye contact.
They literally say that he had to practice making eye contact, who didn't really know what he was doing.
And the judge is just every comment they make it.
You can see it's almost like Kaplan, when you read through this, is saying, you know, every time you guys open your mouth, I'm adding another year. That's what it feels like, you know, based on the comments. So
doesn't look like it's going well for him. And I guess we'll see how many people they allow to
speak before the sentencing happens. I've got to imagine, David, Carlo, does the judge know
what the sentence is already? I mean, what's the purpose of having victims speak?
Yeah, it's an important facet. It's critically important.
They have the right to be heard. And the judge is certainly entitled to take as much of that
into account. Yeah, he's probably got his mind made up to a certain extent. But I think the
more victims that come up and talk, the more it's going to justify his ultimate sentencing decision so the sole victim already spoke just this one victim
okay what did the so i would love to know what the victim said terence just quickly
for the audience i'm actually curious how many we did that we did that a while ago i don't know
if you remember scott we had a whole debate randall's there as well um on whether he'll even
you know end up in jail some people thought he'd avoid jail time altogether due to corruption or whatever,
bribing politicians and others, including David, you were there,
that thought he'd probably spend a few decades in jail.
I want to see what people's perception is now and whether they think the legal system...
To be clear, I and most people who are in the United States said they thought he was going to jail for a long time. We generally trust our legal system. And as corrupt as our politics may seem, the legal system generally has done right by the industry. You know, over the past year, they've obviously pushed back very hard against the SEC and others. So I think there was a perception, you know,
Rand obviously was one of them, as you said,
and like a lot of people maybe outside of the United States
specifically believed that he was just going to get off.
He knows Joe Biden, he's got the political connections
and anyone here kind of laughed that off
and said this dude's going to jail
for a very, very, very long time.
Yeah, and then we started debating
how many years we expected him
to go to jail for um and that's what i'm curious like before the sentencing comes in could be any
minute any hour but it's gonna be today how many years you guys in the audience uh do you expect
him to go to jail for i'm gonna go through the comments and i'm sharing the comments yeah sharing
the game if anyone anyone that gets the number exactly right the first person i see that got
the number exactly right we'll get a free one-on-one call with scott um scott will offer
this time for that so uh if you get it right you get'll get a free one-on-one call with Scott. Scott will offer just time for that.
So if you get it right.
You get to share a cell with SBF for one night.
And you get a call with Scott for half an hour, for 15 minutes,
15-minute call with Scott.
But I think someone was jumping in and talking about one of the sentences.
One of the witnesses was one of the victims was speaking, Terrence.
Well, the last thing I can say.
No, go ahead.
Go ahead, David.
And I'm actually curious, like, does, because, Carlo, you said it's pretty normal for victims to speak.
But has the judge already made up their mind and is this part of the process or that could impact the judge's decision?
It absolutely could impact the judge's decision? It absolutely could impact the judge's decision,
but I think the judge has pretty well made his mind up after reviewing the pre-sentence report and considering all the arguments of both sides. I think the arguments and the pleas from the
victims are just going to give the judge additional cover to justify whatever harsh
sentence he hands down. Yeah, I tend to agree with that.
I think ultimately this is one,
this isn't a typical situation.
Obviously this is an atypical situation.
There's a lot of, it's noise of people speaking today.
Kaplan has already made his decision,
has already written his order of what he's doing.
I don't want to say it's for show. He's letting people
speak so he can say both sides. The last person who spoke on Inner City Press that got updated
like a minute ago said, don't destroy the prime of Sam's life. Let him meet a partner and have a
baby. I don't even know how that's relevant to this. But I mean, Kaplan's letting people speak,
but this is a done deal. I mean,
he doesn't need to hear about what's going on anymore. I do believe that Kaplan is going to,
this isn't like the NFL draft. In the NFL draft, there's a lot of smoke before the draft where
people say things that they don't mean and try and elevate players so that teams will trade with
them or do things that help people like,
you know, is a quarterback going to go forth instead of in the second round?
Here, what Kaplan is saying, Kaplan means.
He's not trying to fake people out this morning.
He's being crystal clear and telegraphing how pissed he is at this, how pissed he is
at how Sam handled the process and how ridiculous he thinks the lawyers presented their arguments.
I don't think he's doing that at the last second to say, gotcha, fake out, only six years.
David, so SPF has actually been called to speak. So interesting. I'm updating on the thread. Like
you said, I mean, they're really trying to pull up the heartstrings. His mother said there's a terrific sadness at his core. His brother says
Sam would be uncomfortable giving me a hug, but I know he would give me a kidney if I needed one.
He's been the one of the worst prisons in the country for the last seven months. But then the
judge has now said, thank you, Mr. Bankman-Fried. I mean, do we want to read what SBF is saying?
It's happening live right now. I appreciate what Mark said about me.
I don't know that the most important thing today is my emotional life or hypothetical future kids.
This is so Sam. There are customers who I agree with most of what Sunil said,
what they've gone through about obviously money they didn't think they'd use. They are deprived
of the gains. They've been waiting for a year and a half. What matters are my colleagues at FTX.
Oh, it stops there.
So we're going to have to, I threw away what they had built.
They were let down.
I'm sorry about that.
I'm sorry about what happened at every stage.
Things I should have done and said, things I shouldn't have.
I care about everything too.
I mean, what is he even saying?
He's just mumbling.
Remember the colleagues, obviously.
They followed me across the earth, across continents, working past 2 a.m.
I remember there are so many of them.
Natalie taught herself to run a media department.
She was doing 10 people's jobs.
I gave my brother, who had a crazy idea how to save lives, it looked like it was going to work.
Gary sent me a message one day, a link to a crypto exchange.
The whole industry rebuilt itself in the image of what Gary had made. So many things about what he built
became industry standards. That's where it stops for now. This is literally like posted 30 seconds
ago. This is in legal parlance, the allocution stage of the case. Every defendant has an
opportunity to present allocution to the judge, and he's making his pitch personally at this point in allocution.
And could that have an impact on the judge's decision as well?
Of course, yes. Judge Kaplan's a very smart judge, and he's going to listen to everything
and not tip his hand as far as the ultimate sentence. He's going to listen to everything,
and part of the process is hearing from the defendant if the defendant chooses to address
the court.
Some don't.
But in this case, probably a desperate attempt to try and turn the tide.
No downside.
No downside.
His life is over.
Might as well.
So just another question, Carlo.
So now it's the judge's discretion to decide how long Sam will go to jail for.
Is that right?
At this stage?
Absolutely.
A federal judge has absolute discretion under the advisory guidelines in the United States
to sentence him within the guidelines or to depart upward from the guidelines.
The only cap on the judge's sentence, Mario, is the statutory maximum penalty, which is
if you add all the
offenses up is how they get to that 110 year mark. So he has wide discretion here. And as long as
they don't find on appeal that he in any way abused that discretion, his sentence will probably
hold up on appeal. This is insane. Just two seconds, Carlo. This is crazy. Obviously,
Sam fucked up. We're all against him. We all think he should go to jail. But
it's systemically one person has a decision to essentially end
someone's life, spend in jail for the rest of your life. It's
just it's just fascinating to imagine like being in the judges
positions like, whatever decision I make right now, this
person in front of me, their life has ended, their family's
life has changed forever. It's also crazy to kind of put yourself in the judge's shoes obviously being in sam's shoes
it's uh you know his life is over um and then in in his family's shoes as well be uh i don't know
how how were they complicit in any way guys his father and his mother i think his father was being
sued as well no yeah his father is the subject of a lawsuit,
and there was obviously the controversy about the donations to Stanford from FTX.
There was a lot of speculation about just how involved dad was.
Of course, it's all speculation, and who knows where it'll end up.
He had his mother involved.
They were CC'd on emails of lawyers.
Yeah, but to what level, Alex? They were CC'd on emails of lawyers. Yeah.
Yeah, but to what level?
I think to what level, Alex,
were they involved on the criminal side of things
or on some of the business decisions that were made?
I don't know.
I haven't looked into it.
But, Terrence, I'll let you jump in.
Scott, by the way, if there's more quotes from Sam,
just jump in.
Yeah, here's two.
Just let me give you, there's two new tweets since then,
and I'll just keep doing them two or three at a time as they come in.
But Alameda, he was obviously talking about what Gary had built
became industry standards.
That was FTX Exchange.
Alameda was in danger of falling apart.
I got an anonymous message of what I should do to fix it.
It was clearly from Yashad.
He's famously humble.
And Caroline, quite something, mostly self-taught.
She asked me
for advice on her reviews of employees i read her review of a person i learned so much they threw
themselves into it then i threw all that away it haunts me every day i made a series of bad
decisions they weren't selfish decisions those culminated with a bunch of other factors crisis
that's where it stops for now so continue i don't get why he's talking so much
about his colleagues and not about the victims and how he he's sorry about the victims and how he
destroyed their lives and it's deeply remorseful that seems like a big mistake so i'll answer that
one terence the answer that is the one thing Judge Kaplan feels that
didn't happen in this case was Sam showing remorse. And remorse, if you actually show remorse,
is one of the things that can lead to a downward departure in the guidelines. And he is attempting
to show remorse now. But it's very interesting. In order to show remorse, you usually have to show that you are taking responsibility for your actions.
And it's very clear that even of everything that Scott's reading now, he's talking about people and trying to humanize what happened.
And he's saying he's sorry for people.
But he still, even in what he said, has not shown remorse for what's happened here.
Also, yeah, go ahead.
I'm sorry.
I thought you were done.
Oh, it's my last thing here.
And I think Kaplan, that was the only thing today could have changed.
If for some reason Sam came in with a truly remorseful, taking responsibility and saying,
I did this all, I knew it, and he actually did something, that would have been the only
thing different.
We're just seeing more of things that haven't worked in the past and probably aren't going to work today. I knew it. And he actually did something. That would have been the only thing different.
We're just seeing more of things that haven't worked in the past and probably aren't going to work today. David, it gets worse. So the next message, obviously, he talked about the review
that you said. Here's where it's going to prove your point. He says next, and there's only one
more tweet so far. Alameda wasn't bankrupt. FTX wasn't. Alameda's gains were lost. It was more leverage
than it should have been. We had to liquidate to meet the run on FTX, then shutting it down.
FTX would have survived. Alameda would not have. An unpleasant few weeks.
Question, Scott. If that one-
If he'd been given a few more weeks he'd be fine that's what he said
yeah I know but
wait Scott click refresh because the next one's
even better
I'll get there in a second
yeah go ahead Mario
yeah but just
is that isn't that
if that run didn't happen
would FCS still be
here and a healthy position?
Assuming he doesn't keep fucking up because he'll keep leveraging.
Yeah. Only if enough people kept depositing.
Give me a fucking break with this.
You literally every dollar someone deposited,
you would send over to Alameda to try to bail them out or use for some
political donation or, or to buy a stadium or to put FDX on.
If anything, the whole could have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger
before things got better.
So if anything, it could have lasted.
Whatever.
Like, do we really believe that that day was the day he was going to change
his behavior and do everything right?
This is complete bullshit.
Here's the next one that David was talking about.
I made a lot of mistakes, but that's not how the story ended.
Customers weren't paid back.
FTX didn't survive that. Yeah, customers have been given conflicting claims that's caused how the story ended. Customers weren't paid back. FTX didn't survive that yet.
Customers have been given conflicting claims that's caused a lot of damage
that could have been paid back.
He's wow. He's just spitting lies and garbage. Like to be honest,
I think he's spitting the narcissistic story that he's told himself over and
over again, that he probably believes that, Right? I mean, I just don't.
Yeah, when you say he doesn't show any remorse, I don't think he has any
because I think in his mind he got, like, screwed by the bankruptcy system
or didn't have enough time to figure it out.
Right?
But not the case.
There's no mention of families destroyed, people who committed suicide, at least three
from this,
and marriages that were destroyed,
and all the people who suffered
because he stole customer
funds. He's not apologizing
for that specific action
in a way that is remorseful
or convincing because he keeps talking about
all these other things.
The new tweet just dropped too.
And he's out of his mind.
That there's enough assets to pay everyone back.
He's out of his mind.
Even though the judge already said there isn't.
I'll just read it.
There are enough assets.
And it's not because of a rise in the price of crypto.
That hasn't hurt.
There just was enough.
As Neil said, the emotional pain.
Why haven't they been paid back?
There was, to be fair, a liquidity crisis.
That was in part my doing.
Yes, the liquidity crisis was he stole everyone's money and sent it to Alameda and lost it on leverage bets.
This is literally insane that he is making this speech to a judge that objectively knows the facts.
What else is he going to say?
It's not insane.
What else is he going to say? He'd not insane. What else is he going to say?
He'll say, I'm so sorry
for what I did. These people
committed suicide because of me.
I lost everybody's money. I should
not have stolen customer funds. I certainly
shouldn't have given them to politicians.
I certainly should not have sent them to
Alameda to be lost on leverage bets.
I lost the money. It is not
there. It was lost and I'm so sorry. Please give me a line.
So Carla, would that work with that? Would that approach for a judge work?
Or would I know that you could say neither of them wouldn't work,
but that's the truth. And if he cares,
it doesn't matter who cares about the truth, where you're going,
he'd do anything to go to jail for less time.
It's like he gives a fuck about the truth right now.
He's going to spend the rest of the time in jail.
He wants to convince the judge to give him a lighter sentence. I was thinking,
is it better? What would work better? What he said now strategically to the judge or just apologizing? Because an apology, judges hear it all the time. But if they get made a good case,
like, hey, I fucked up, but it's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Obviously,
the judge is not stupid enough to believe that. Would that potentially work better? I'm just curious about whether his strategy is a smart one.
Well, I'll tell you my general practice when it comes to people who plead guilty in federal court and they want to get up and present allocution.
I don't generally advise clients to argue about what they've pled guilty to or been found guilty of because then you start fencing with the judge.
And that generally turns into a disaster. Now,
can you control a client like SBF and can he stay within the lanes and just apologize for his
conduct? Unlikely. It probably would be the better practice for him to apologize for his behavior and
ask for mercy. But also remember, he's banking on an appeal and he wants to be able to come back and get another trial. So he's probably very, he's very reluctant to acknowledge that he participated in this
fraudulent scheme and trying to distance himself. But no, that's not going to work with the judge
because now the judge is just going to keep pushing back on him and it's going to turn into
a train wreck. Quick question for one of the defense. There's also one other aspect of that where if he had taken that position from the beginning
it's more helpful in sentencing doing it today is meaningless in my mind it doesn't matter that
he's saying i'm sorry he's trying to appear if the way it works when you're remorseful and you
accept responsibility you don't get to accept responsibility after the trial at sentencing
and that's why and i agree everything carl's just said i mean at the end of the day what he's saying accept responsibility. You don't get to accept responsibility after the trial at sentencing.
And that's why, and I agree everything Carlos just said, I mean, at the end of the day,
what he's saying today is pretty meaningless. And acceptance of responsibility has flown out the window because he chose to go to trial. So he gets no benefit in the guidelines for accepting
responsibility because he put the government to task to prove he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. So there's no credit here for acceptance. There's just a plea for mercy. But if he starts
to really dig in here and try to change this narrative where he's going to retry this case
in front of the judge, in front of all these victims, Judge Kaplan's going to bury him.
I just, he's a sharp judge. Yeah. He's trying to do his second defense live
when the book has already been thrown at him. This isn't the time or place to tell the full story.
A good place to start with that is the affidavit of Dan Friedberg filed in the bankruptcy court a
year ago. He probably made enemies. Moskowitz has been fighting for them in court. Miss Roll in the
Bahamas a few days after the bankruptcy hack, there were a hack on the estate's office. I was
in the Bahamas that day. Christina Roll came to FTX headquarters to make sure they couldn't be further depleted.
It was a Saturday until 3 a.m.
What is he talking about?
It was inspiring.
There have been some customers who...
There have been some who have stood up for customers, but mostly they have been failed
by more people than I can count, not least of all myself.
I was a CEO of FTX.
I was its leader.
That means I was responsible at the end of the day.
So a ton of people are responsible.
I'm one of them.
That's what he just said.
I don't see this going well.
I just don't.
I mean, I would try the best I could to pull him aside at this moment and ask for a recess to sort of kind of redirect him.
I'm just curious.
Does empathy, like, why? to redirect him i'm just i'm just curious does empathy like why so so his mother for example
just going through i'm going through my tweets well well scott goes through the thread but i
think the team is using that thread to post out of it as well and the team posted about the mom what
she said where is it she said um the mother of one of the inmates reached out to me about three
months ago to quote asked me to pass along her gratitude to Sam, who she said has given her son a reason to live for the first time since his arrest four years ago.
So mom said that now in court.
The question I have for you, Carlos, what's the point?
Why is empathy even – shouldn't it just be objective?
These fuck-ups, these are the charges.
That's how many years you go to jail for.
Empathy shouldn't have anything to do with this. If someone doesn't have a mother that speaks well or doesn't speak well themselves,
they go to jail for longer than someone who has a great mother that is really well-spoken.
What's the point of trying to pull these empathy strings with the judge?
Now, good point, Mario. It's because under the statute that the judge has to weigh the sentencing options under
3553 of the United States Code, one of the factors is the defendant and the defendant's
characteristics. So the family is making the pitch. The judge can consider all of that
because in fashioning the sentence, the judge can consider remorse, can consider the defendant's
characteristics. And they're trying to make a case that there are redeemable qualities here and that this is someone who can be a productive
member of society. But if you send him away for the rest of his life, you're basically going to,
you know, you're going to impose an injustice here. So they are making a desperate plea under
those factors for compassion from the judge. And there is a component of this because the judge
has to consider the full scope. And anything positive is this is the time to put it forward.
Anything positive you can in trying to move the judge and move the needle.
Yeah, try just to continuing a few more statements here really quick, Terrence.
It doesn't matter why things go bad. If you're the CEO, it's on you. I'm not the one who matters
the most at the end of the day. My useful life is probably over. I've long since given what I
had to give. Thanks, Sam. I can't do it from prison. I can't impact if I get five years or
40 years. I know how the prosecutors see me, the court, the media. I understand it. You referenced
my test to the general counsel. I was trying to help. That's not how the prosecutor saw it. The
media, that's that. I want to address something Sunil said. I understand what he meant. It seems
like we were denying there was pain. I can see how it would read that way. Their focus may not
have been on the right place. Customers have been suffering. Well, then it stops there again. But I
mean, yeah, he's whatever. Terrence?
I just feel like he needs to show a lot more remorse.
I don't think this is...
Like, the other stuff is fine,
but without the remorse,
deep remorse and evidence of that,
it's not great.
I'm bringing up another member of our crack legal team
Zach by the way
so that we can get another legal
opinion here I'm sure he's connecting now
it's a bit difficult to read
the thread obviously as it's coming in tweet by
tweet
I'm just going to repeat one of the
things you've already read that the team's putting them
together so I'll read like a box at a time
for anyone that just joined so this is SPF a few minutes ago. There are customers who
I agree with most of what Sunil said, what they've gone through and obviously money they
didn't think they'd use. They are deprived of the gains, deprived of the gains. They
lost everything. They've been waiting for a year and a half. What matters are my colleagues
at FTX. Yeah, I understand now, whoever, Terrence, I think your point there where he's just kind of showing more
empathy with his colleagues rather than people that lost money.
I threw away what they had.
Ridiculous.
Go ahead, Scott.
Sorry, I thought you were done
reading there. I was going to say, yeah, it's clear that
he is saying, when he's talking about
deprived of the gains, your question
is they're being made, quote unquote, whole
in terms of the value of crypto. He's saying they didn't get the gains. your question is they're being made quote unquote, whole in, uh, terms of
getting the gains. The market has gone to 70,000.
They were selling Bitcoin at 17 or that's where you're paying.
If you're a creditor.
True. True. It's just, it's just a bit freaky.
Like they're being made whole at the time. So if crypto fell below those levels,
you'd be like, Hey, they made more money. So went above the made less.
You don't know if they'll sell or not.
But then the money wouldn't be there.
You know, it's, it's the fact that he can deny that,
but the fact that they're able to sell a lot of these assets at higher prices,
even though the customers are pegged to them is the reason partially that this
is whole, right? Those, if Solana didn't go up, if Anthropic didn't go up,
that money wouldn't be there. So that's why he's full of shit.
Yeah. I get he is full of shit, but, I get it. He is full of shit.
But I think the point he's making is that at least they made whole at the time
of the price it was at the time of the collapse.
It's not like they weren't made whole at that level,
which is better than nothing.
But as you're saying, Scott, the market is what?
Someone has a 200 was what? $10 back then.
So what matters are my colleagues. I threw away what they had built.
They were let down. I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry about what happened at every stage.
Things I should have done and said, things I shouldn't have had. I care about everything too.
They remember their colleagues, obviously. They followed me across the earth, across continents,
working past 2 a.m. I remember there are so many of them. Natalie taught herself to run a media
department. She was doing 10 people's jobs. So just quickly, Carlo, is he, and I know we've got Zach here
on stage as well, but Carlo, quick question there.
Could that just not be a strategy?
Could that just him be... Mario,
I'm fucking... Okay, I'm sorry
to interrupt. He's done. So I just want to read his
last two comments. Oh, crap.
It just got refreshed.
But they've moved on
to the jibes. So let me just find the last...
There was two more tweets here. Of course,, just reset when I was trying to refresh it. So I'll be there in two seconds, but yeah, he was talking, obviously, uh, you go ahead. Cause it's taking a while for it to refresh here. Oh, here we go. I got it. So he was talking about addressing something that Sunil said, obviously,
who was the victim. And then here's what he said after that. He said, at the end of the day,
it looks like customers will finally get paid current value of assets. It's true for lenders
and investors as well. I guess I wish I'd been able to do more to help that. I think I failed
at that. I'm not sure why, but I do think I did. I'm not sure why
you were stealing the customer's assets and sending them to the Miami arena, you douche.
Anyways, there's an opportunity to do what I thought I would end up and would do for the world,
not what I ended up doing. If people do what they can for the world, hopefully I can see their
success, not just my own failures. Thank you. And then Judge Kaplan said, thank you, government.
But I want to be clear here. I didn't hear a single time
in there where he admitted to stealing customers' assets or taking
anything they deposited and moving it literally anywhere. This guy is out
of his mind. That's probably why the
forever and stuff. I don't know. Go ahead.
I think that's definitely intentional. And like, look, if you think about what this exercise is about,
when you do a federal sentencing, there are guidelines based on just the facts that get
you to a number that the judge needs to consider to start, but it is not mandatory at all.
The judge then gets to exercise judgment about what's fair in this case. And when we're talking
about numbers as large as there are
in this case, the federal guidelines are come up with like a crazy high number. And the judge in
this case has already said she's going to depart downwards, which means not use what the guidelines
say. And so really, you need to think sort of psychologically, the judge is coming into this
hearing with a number, what can you possibly say you the lawyer and you the client who's speaking
to get that number lower. And I think for both the
lawyer and the client, it's been a spectacular failure. The lawyer, I think, overplayed his hand
and tried to paint Sam as this like wunderkind, good guy, altruist sort of Allah, the going
infinite book. I don't think that's going to fly. I don't think anyone believes it. If I were the
lawyer, I would be much more focused on, you know, things got out of Sam's control. You know,
it spiraled beyond what he was capable of.
And this was a big mistake rather than theft. Probably if I were Sam, I would be very remorseful
and focus on that same thing. Listen, this was a mistake more than it was a theft. But instead,
like the lawyer is trying to paint him out as a saint. And then Sam is focusing on the technical
details of what happened. The time for that was the trial or past the trial. He was already found
guilty. We're at the sentencing phase. I think he's not doing himself any favors here. And his lawyer also did
kind of a bad job. Yeah, I agree with that. This is going to be a case study on how
Sam Bankman Freed and his team screwed up. They had bad lawyers and really bad PR people, the lack of remorse or the kind of minimizing and not talking enough about
the victims, the customers whose funds he stole from is crazy. And the last thing I'd say is,
you know, on appeal, they assume the facts are correct. So all you're appealing is,
did the judge make some legal procedural mistake, right? So this has nothing to do
with the facts. They've been decided. So I don't know why he keeps bringing up
this other crap without showing remorse. I think it's delusional.
Maybe he's just being Mario.
Yeah, I just want to say, James, met a lawman I see here in the audience.
Maybe you're busy and can't speak, but if you'd like to come up,
just request it. I sent you a request.
And there's also more, there's more bits, more bits in the thread as well.
I'll get to that in a moment. Yeah. Let me refresh it. You guys keep going.
We need to teach you how to refresh a thread.
Question I had to any of the lawyers on stage is, is it possible that he's,
this is not strategic. This is just him being honest and that's it?
Yes, calculated.
Well, it might be calculated by him. I don't know a lawyer who would advise him to focus on the stuff he's focusing on.
100%. 100%. If I were in the lawyer's shoes right now, I'd try to recess this thing and turn it around. I'd try to pull Bankman aside and whisper in his ear that you need to get back on remorse
and get off this train of trying to relitigate the case. I think at the end, I think Terrence
said this a couple of minutes ago, a couple of minutes ago, ultimately, and Carlos said this
earlier, you have to deal with the client you have in front of you. We can criticize and talk,
but there was only so much that can be done after the initial days and weeks when Sam was out talking about everything before he was sent, before he actually had to go serve time behind bars for the witness tampering allegations.
So I'm not surprised by how this is playing out.
We're seeing more of Sam being Sam.
He can't be controlled by his lawyers.
He's telling his version of the story. He came as close to remorseful as he was going to get today.
And the lawyers are sitting there saying, you know, that's why we get paid hourly,
you know, to sit here and hear what our client wants to do. But sometimes this is one of those
cases. You just can those cases you just can't
change a person for who they are.
Sam has been remarkably consistent
with how he has tried to deal
with this, thinking he was going to
get away with it somehow.
But David, what about the lawyer?
So we've got here, the US, guys, just quickly,
the assistant attorney,
Nicholas Roos, just said the following. Scott, do you have it?
Do you want me to read it?
Yeah, so the way to refresh a thread, I don't know if you know this, sorry, just click on the last attorney, just Nicholas Roos just said the following. Scott, do you have a job to read it? You go ahead.
Yeah. So the way to refresh your thread, I don't know if you know the story,
but I like that you guys are kind of gathering them in the background in one fell swoop. Go ahead.
SPF stole $8 billion. It was theft from customers spread all over the world.
It was a loss that impacted people significantly and caused damage.
I want to address a few of the
new victim letters. They lost their life savings. A man who lived in Portugal the day before
bankruptcy, his daughter was born. He was mired by the ominous specter of financial instability
and his daughter's future. Then there's a 23-year-old from Morocco. He is the eldest son.
He kept money on FTX, not to loan it out to the defendant, but for the family's
security. One more, a couple in the
later stages of their life,
late 60s, they invested with life
savings. They were depressed.
They had to go back to work.
So it's not
going to turn out well. This is probably the best way to
respond to what SBF has said. He's avoided,
he didn't address all the victims,
he addressed his employees instead. What the assistant attorney just did is kind of go back to
the people that lost their money and give some examples. Mr. McKay, he said the defendant didn't
look his victims in the eyes. I disagree. These people look into people's eyes through Twitter.
Now also the defendant took $1.7 billion from investors. That alone necessitates a long
sentence. Some get 40 or more years for that alone.
There were also the loans. Two lenders went bankrupt. That too justified on its own a
severe sentence. Also one of the largest bribes. He committed perjury. It was pervasive.
So that was just by the... I'm sure you guys – anything I missed? Yeah, there's more there.
Some get 40 or more years for that loan.
They also got the loans to lenders.
Oh, no, they already read that.
It was nothing new since.
That was just a few seconds ago.
Your thoughts, Carlo, on everyone else?
Government's doing what the government does best, and that's redirecting to the offense at hand.
They're trying to...
The way this was...
Yeah, go ahead.
No, I was going to say,
the way this is being handled by Sam
is fucking mind-boggling
because the guy is an intelligent guy.
There's no denying that.
And for an intelligent guy,
it just perplexes me
as the way he handled this
from staying in the Bahamas
to jumping onto spaces and incriminating himself. I think jumping on from staying in the Bahamas to jumping onto
spaces and incriminating himself. I think my space was mentioned in the proceedings a while ago as
well and I'm not sure I'm sure other spaces as well that he did other interviews he did so that
incriminated him kept tweeting as well kind of made fun of the situation by tweeting the bits
and pieces that starting with what and then I don't know what the rest was. And now obviously just not listening to his lawyers,
apparently here in the hearings,
it's not the first time he does that.
So it's just mind boggling for me to see him do that.
Or I think if you talk to lawyers who work on white collar criminal cases,
they will tell you that defendants in these types of cases are often
delusional.
They don't see themselves as criminal.
Generally white collar crime starts out as a small thing and becomes a big thing, right? You take a little bit where it's a gray area, and then
incrementally, you get your way from what could be a mistake to outright stealing.
And so I think the fact that Sam is delusional, he's been delusional the whole time. And I agree
with what David said about that. To me, what's more striking and hard to understand is like
the lawyer's approach here. Like the most stunning, like of these live tweets we've seen is the statement by the lawyer.
He's an awkward math nerd. He's into veganism. He has an off the chart intellect. He's a beautiful
puzzle. Like who's buying that at this point? Like the lawyer should know better. Even if Sam
is delusional. A beautiful puzzle. Yeah. I like the example. And like the example you gave,
like white collar crime, it just starts out.
I don't know how Sam started or they started big from the get go and planned or started small and it's kind of spiraled out of control.
And then that leads to that delusion that they did nothing wrong.
It's like, if only I made the right investments, if only we waited longer,
if only there was no run,
I kept using customer funds and got out of this,
I would have gotten out of it in the bull market. Everyone would have made money.
If only I didn't get caught.
Yeah, if you're Sam.
So that would be the way.
You go ahead.
Yeah, I was gonna say, if you're Sam, I really think the best narrative you could spin right now, if you were being objective about this, is to try and have this VA start small and get out
of my control thing. Like, listen, we had bad risk management and then own up that people were hurt.
Listen, like I understand the magnitude of
the losses for the victims. This is awful. I never intended this. And I'm so sorry.
This started out as my trying to cover my tracks. And I realized that that was wrong.
They just fucked him over. And the rules just said the following, the assistant attorney,
you have the defendant's cost benefit analysis, which would allow him to do it again. If SBF thought mathematics justified it, he'll do it again. Today, he spoke about
mismanagement, a quote, painful few weeks, no acceptance of responsibility. They've literally
just used what he said against him. That was a great statement by the prosecutor. They nailed him.
The last one that just went up, he did not swear off doing it again. He said there
is an opportunity to relaunch FTX or an equivalent. That, I submit, tells the court exactly what could
happen. A sentence is necessary here of at least 40 years so he will not do it again. And I think
this comes back to where is the government pushing? I think even it's, I think a lot of people are saying, wow,
like the government there, you know, he just set the ceiling almost at 40 years. This is where
Kaplan's going to get really interesting because to go higher than, and I think I said at the start
of this, I thought it was going to be about 40 years. I think that's, I think that's the right
number. I mean, 40 years for this, you know, based on what the system is, you know, this is just
one of the most interesting cases because I do.
This was a very crafty response by Sam today.
The government is sitting with all the facts on their side.
They're sitting with a judge who's already eviscerated Sam today.
And I do think we're going to see that 40 years or higher number.
I just can't see it going lower when this is over.
I'd say 20. 20 is my guess.
The judge has already said.
I'd say 50.
No, I'd go with 20.
It's 50.
Yeah, I'd go with 20 as well.
What do you think, Scott?
What would your prediction be now?
Listen, I thought when it was in trial, I thought it was, you know, Madoff level.
So I think the higher, you know, the higher end of the spectrum.
So, you know, if the lawyers know better than me, but I would be shocked.
Madoff was 150 years.
He was 150.
The difference in Madoff is it's a longer fraud.
It was a more deliberate fraud in that he was,
it was like a literal Ponzi scheme
where he was knowingly providing fake statements
about people's accounts.
And the victims were more sympathetic than like,
you know, I think a judge will be less sympathetic
to crypto investors than to Madoff's retiree victims.
Yeah, retiree.
It wasn't just retiree victims.
It was the charitable endowments of universities
and such.
I mean, the people, you know, the Simon Wiesenthal Foundation, I think, or, you know, one of those, or Elie Wiesel, whatever those.
I mean, you know, people that the government made off got the largest sentence you could have ever seen in a situation like this, to Zach's point, because of who he stole from.
I think the difference of where Zach and I are seeing this, I think we're both on the same side
of the coin, is that I'm looking at the things he did wrong in the trial, which are going to impact
Kaplan, because judges don't like, I think the witness tampering. Now, I think the bribery and
the political donations go outside because that wasn't part of this trial. That was not proven. We all believe it to be true, but that wasn't
part of this. But the things Sam did since he was here, I think we're going to see even amongst
the lawyers a surprisingly higher number than we were anticipating. I don't see him going down to
20 years because
that almost incentivizes people to go back. I think we're going to see a harsher penalty.
And I think that goes back when you were talking about the victims being sympathetic. I think the
accused here is less sympathetic because of the crypto tie. That's just the way the older people
in the world view it. And I'd be surprised if they gave him a
pass at 20 or less mario i'd love to hear james opinion james that's how you lifted your mic and
i know you've been following this really really closely
yeah i have followed it very very closely i was a creditor of ftx i got involved in the
bankruptcy and had a little bit of profile there. And as a result,
I received a bunch of DMs from people who said, I've lost my life savings. I'm thinking about
committing suicide. I can't tell my wife that I've lost all our money and can't pay our mortgage,
et cetera. So it's a surreal experience for me to watch this transcription of what's going on there in the courthouse.
I don't believe this stuff really is impacting what Judge Kaplan's going to do.
I think he's come into the court with a number in mind. Maybe Sam could have moved
things a little bit if he came in with a surprise and said, look, I've been thinking about this and I am responsible.
What I did was really, really wrong.
And I'm the one who hurt all these people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
He didn't do that.
That could have moved things a little bit.
But I think Kaplan's going to do what he intended to do when he came into the courtroom. And one thing I would just emphasize, I'm not a criminal defense lawyer, but I have worked with Mark Mukasey, and he's a hell of a good lawyer.
So he's done all he can do.
He came out of the box saying, we're going to appeal, Your Honor.
So it's tough for the client to then say, you know what?
In retrospect, I committed all these crimes, and I'm really sorry. Their position is they're going to appeal. Last thing I'll say is
Kaplan is old school. He is 80 years old, but he really, I've appeared before him, he really
is pissed when a defendant gets on the stand and perjures himself in front of a jury.
And so that is a significant factor in the way he looks at this sentencing decision, in my opinion.
And so I would come down kind of on the longer end of the spectrum that you guys are talking about.
I mean, before you jump in, Scott, let me read out just two more tweets here from Inner
City Press.
So we got the assistant attorney speaking.
Mr. McKay, he said the defendant is virtuous.
The defendant is not a monster, but he committed gravely serious crimes that harmed many people
and he would consider doing it again.
So 40 to 50 years.
So Kaplan said, thank you, Mr. Roos. And then
captain, now captain speaking. I've considered the guidelines. Okay. Is that, is that the decision
about to be made? He's about to drop the hammer. He's about to drop the hammer now.
So I've considered the guidelines and the three, five, three, double five, three factors.
Much of what was said about the defendant's background is undisputed. He was privileged,
had loving and devoted parents. He had every advantage they could comfort
on him. He went to MIT.
Is there anything else to add?
Oh, you should learn how to
refresh, Mario.
He's extremely, I just did,
he's extremely smart and he suffers from autism.
He is a high-achieving autistic person.
He is capable of huge accomplishments
and he has frequently a social
awkwardness and a way of interacting with people that's unusual and sometimes off-putting.
He went to Jane Street, made a lot of money, has had a lot of it away.
There was a testimony at trial.
I don't remember by whom.
I learned that the people at Jane Street were encouraged to play quantitative games, bets.
Okay.
Interesting.
Okay, there's more there.
Wow, that was quick.
He had been exceptionally ambitious
and aware of his talents.
Ms. Ellison testified
that he was very ambitious.
He talked about building
two huge companies
and very interested in politics
and wanted to use his money
to have an influence on politics.
It's coming out really quickly.
Yeah, that's where it stops for now.
I look at you refreshing as well.
I want to make sure you're reading words correctly.
How is it looking so far?
Not good.
He's setting the table,
but I think he's about to turn the tide on, Sam.
Wish we could just get it all at once.
Like, you know, when they drop a show on Netflix
and you just get every single show instead of one show each week,
slowly rolled out.
We should have probably just done this after the opinion.
But yeah, or we should be watching it.
Let me go back to the thread.
I was just messaging the team to prepare a tweet.
All right, let me go to the threads, scroll down.
There we are.
Influence on politics.
Okay.
I haven't guessed. So what was your number, Scott? On the higher end? I think over 40, but there was one more tweet here.
All right, there we go. He said, do you want to read it, Scott?
Sure. He said there was a 5% chance he'd be president one day. Oh my God, 5%. Indeed,
that this was a huge financial crime. He wanted to be a hugely politically influential person in his country.
It wasn't just the left end of the spectrum stops there.
Let me see.
Again, I have no experience in this,
but it does seem like he's given some reasons.
Like he blamed Jane Street, for example for people you know betting too much taking
too many risks i'm not sure whether that's a good good indicator for saying or not yeah like
charlo said to me it sounds like he's just setting the table he said there was a five percent chance
to be president one day indeed this is okay imagine thinking there was a five percent chance
he'd be president even the people running running for president at the beginning don't believe they have a 5% chance of
becoming president.
Oh shit, I didn't
click that he said that.
He said there was a 5% chance he'd be president one day.
When did he say that? Do you know?
I'm not sure.
Let's see if that's
after the collapse or prior.
There's one more tweet
here.
All right, let me see.
You got it.
If you got it, you can read it.
When it said it wasn't just to the left end of the spectrum politically.
He set up a vehicle to make donations to the right through straws that wouldn't come back to him.
Some of this at one point might have been attributed to him having presented himself as in favor of appropriate regulation of the crypto industry.
So they're making it clear there
obviously that he donated to both sides
just only publicly to one of the sides.
And I'm assuming the next tweet
is going to be about
the fact that it wasn't just about regulating the crypto
industry but about his own political aspirations.
But we'll see. Just imagine being in Sam's shoes
or anyone's shoes and just waiting
for that sentencing.
Terrible.
Jesus.
Like your life is in the hands of that one human being in front of you.
Been there many times.
It's not a good feeling.
It's insane.
Been there obviously as the attorney side,
just to be clear.
Yes.
He set up.
All right.
Do it. Does anyone still think 20 years?
Me.
25.
26.
Let me see.
I'm sure.
I don't know.
I think I'd be wrong.
All right.
Let's go 30.
How's that?
I'm getting stressed and I'm not even there.
Nothing to do with it.
Not accredited or nothing.
Okay, in my judgment, that was an act.
Okay, he set up a vehicle.
The team had presented himself in favor of the appropriate regulation of the crypto industry.
In my judgment, that was an act.
And he admitted it, ultimately.
On November 15 or 16, he was interviewed by a reporter.
He knew well who said, he knew, oh, sorry.
He was interviewed by a reporter he knew well who said, he said a lot of stuff about good regulations.
Was that just PR too?
And then Sam said, yeah, fuck regulators.
And that's the other thing as well.
Like when you're on call, everything's under the microscope.
Every single comment, one comment to a reporter could put you in jail,
could add the extra year or two or five to your,
or even more to your sentence.
Was that when he was speaking to Tiffany?
Did he said that?
Not sure.
She's actually there today. She spent the night in front
of that courthouse and camped out.
Tiffany will be in there and I'm sure she's going to go
live after this.
That was Tiffany.
Some of Tiffany's tweets are hilarious
from how she was collecting garbage to keep
warm in this last night.
Why am I stressed about this car?
I don't get it.
I mean,
it's a lot of suspense.
It's still somebody's life.
I think Mario,
because if you think about it,
like the,
the FTX thing was when your spaces really blew up and we've been on this
massive journey together.
And,
you know,
this feels like the, the end of a road
and whatever happens whatever you think like when you're dealing with someone's freedom
it's like quite a it's quite a big thing it's cathartic it's very cathartic
yeah so at the end of the day no matter how how bad a person is they're still a human going to
jail for the rest of their life so so how many scammers intentionally launch a coin to rub people, they just don't make it
that successful and they're just walking around now like everything's fine. So it's gonna be the
other side of that fence. Scott, anything on your end?
No, I mean just waiting to hear what this uh you know it was power it was it was
hold on it was a power influence caroline ellison was asked how did the how did the defender
describe his approach to risk and she said he said he was risk neutral he was comfortable as long as
positive ev expected value so i think he's kind of painting him as a risk
taker. I'm really leaning to the 20, not
30 now.
How much am I willing to break
the law?
It's not like a trade.
Yeah, but that's...
He's talking two decades. That's still almost the end
of a life. Two decades in jail.
I think it's enough of a deterrent for anyone
else wanting to do this. 20 years. No money that can buy you 20 years of your life.
20 years is not a lot for this.
It's not just deterrence, right? It's also about justice and making it feel full.
Exactly. Victims feel whole, but also as a deterrent. I think this is the main,
it's got to play an important role as a non-lawyer. Lawyers, please correct me if I'm wrong, but when the judge is making a decision,
he's deciding on the character of the person, et cetera.
But they're also deciding on a decision that will act as a deterrent for everyone else in the industry.
That is definitely a factor.
So what are you leaning at, Carlo?
I'm thinking 50 plus.
Fuck.
Just for the audience, we're about to get the decision D-Day for SBF
on how many years you'll spend in jail.
All right, my phone is frozen, Scott.
I'll just back it up.
Okay, yeah, I'm trying to now get it up on my computer to make it easier.
It's really hard to do this on the phone.
Yeah, I was about to get my laptop out.
I was meant to be in the gym now
but usually I would just say,
take over, I need to go to the gym but
it's a tune of suspense.
This is where you thrive, buddy, when it's
actually news breaking. This is your
thing. Exactly. These are
the shows I like doing. The general
debates and stuff, I'm not
there in those shows. But when it comes
to breaking news, like a mutiny or declaration of war or something
like that, it's the ones I enjoy covering more.
I haven't felt this level.
So the decision could be any minute just for the, actually, how long will this take, Carlo,
just for the audience to know?
Oh, no, he's leading up to it.
When he mentioned those factors under 3553, that is language that
all federal judges are required to say in order to justify their sentence on appeal. So he's
basically reading that very, very scripted thing that he has to say that he's considered those
factors before he pronounced a sentence. It's coming soon.
So it could be literally any second, any minute, correct?
Absolutely.
All right, let me get that on my laptop.
I haven't had this much suspense in the space in a long time.
So just for the audience, SPF will get sentenced any minute.
Now, there's another one.
A man willing to flip a coin as to the continued existence of life on Earth.
Mr. Bankman
Freed knew that Alameda was spending customer
funds on risky investments, political
contributions, and Bahamas real estate.
The funds were not his to use.
There we go. Yeah, that's
the point. He hasn't at
any point said this wasn't my money to spend
on all of this.
I'm still very curious about his parents
role in this whole thing.
Yeah, I think that there's a
civil case against his father. There's
nothing criminal yet as far as I'm aware.
What happened to the rest of them?
A lot of people expected a lot of other names to be dragged into
this. There hasn't been many. Everyone's been within
correctly if I'm wrong again, guys, but there's been
employees within FTX, obviously,
including Ellison, his ex-girlfriend.
Ellison's going
to jail. When is her sentencing? Is she
going to jail?
Unlikely. It depends
on how this goes today because I think
everything was contingent on today.
But this is crazy.
This is, in my opinion,
unfair. Understand that he's the ringleader,
but they were with him making those decisions, as far as I'm aware. So
for them to not go to jail at all, just to be able to rat on him, it just seems a bit unfair to me.
That is the federal system, Mario. You're incentivized to cooperate,
and they did not put the government through a trial. They agreed to sit down to fully confess their guilt and their involvement.
And that's the incentive they now have is the care.
Imagine being Sam and your ex-girlfriend, obviously someone I'm assuming he loves,
just making the decision to not go to jail for a period of time to back you up because she was part of the crime.
So she doesn't go to jail at all, throws you in jail for an extra 20 years to save,
let's say five years of her going to jail.
I'm assuming I'm just making up the numbers,
but it's adding even more heartache.
Fuck, no.
Like your parents are there,
you're going to jail for the rest of your life.
And the people that you thought loved you,
your team members that you were in the trenches with
are just riding out on you.
And I'm showing empathy here because this is a human that's going to jail for
the rest of their life,
even though they deserve it.
Still waiting for another tweet.
Scott is the ruthless one.
Like Sam probably go to jail for 40 years and Scott will be like,
yeah,
it should be in 140.
No,
it's not about ruthless.
We're just being pragmatic here in context of what's happened in the past and
the crime and the actual law. So if you want to make a bet, I'm not making a bet
on how long I think you should go to jail or on the
system in general. I just based on listening to the legal opinions and studying
it. Two questions then, Scott. How long do you think? And by the way,
just for the audience, we'll immediately interrupt as soon as there's a new tweet,
which could be any second,
as the decision is about to be made by Judge Kaplan.
Okay, I thought there was one just came in.
Scott, the question I have for you is 11 seconds.
All right.
One of his pithier expression, I think, was, quote,
I fucked up.
SBF has the right to plead not guilty and go to trial.
Everybody's got that right. And I don, I don't hold it against him,
but I come back to Ms. Ellison's testimony. He knew it was wrong.
I think this is where they're showing was premeditated. Correct, Carlo?
Like he either premeditated or all along he knew it was wrong.
It's not like a mistake that kept getting bigger. It's like, no,
he knew it was illegal and he kept going on with it,
which kind of is siding with the with the
with the with the argument that if he got away with it and scott you made that argument as well
if he got away with it back in november he was continuing doing it today and the hall could be
bigger and he could be he could be the next um whatever the other guy's name is i'm bad with
names who's that other one then that 140 years made mad off mad off yeah i also think the 100 whole
was extreme gaslighting that triggered a lot of people to write in yeah i thought he thought it
was going to work out in his advantage i think it backfired on him the way he handled it instead of
saying look i know i should have said something like i know everyone i know people were made whole, but he should make the point
we're making instead of treating us like idiots.
But they were made whole at the prices that are
90% off current levels.
And that's not being made whole.
Mario, there's a new one up.
Alright, let me see where it is. Alright, there we go.
He's not going to admit a thing, like shit,
as is his right.
Specific deterrence? His name is mud around the world.
But he's president, but he's president and
he's a great marketing guy. Mr. Roos is right that the outlines of SBF's revised version are clear.
Can you make sense of this, Carlo? Can you spell it? Or David or anyone?
Oh, he's just making his case. He's methodically refocusing.
Carlo, I think you got to go up one.
Oh, okay. No, I read the other one. One of his pithier Carla, I think in this one, you got to go up one. Oh, okay. No, I read the
other one. One of his pithier expressions.
I think, I'll read it again anyway. I think
was, quote, I fucked up. SBF has
the right to plead not guilty and go to trial.
Everybody's, oh, I can't know what you mean. Everybody's
got that right, and I don't hold it against
him, but I come back to Ms. Ellison's testimony.
He knew it was wrong. He's going to
admit, he's not going to admit a thing
as his is right.
Specific deterrence?
His name is mud around the world, but he's persistent,
and he's a great marketing guy.
Mr. Roos is right that the outlines of SBS revised version are clear.
Okay, we don't know what he means by are clear.
Coin Bureau just put out a reply to the tweet.
He is cooking him.
I agree.
Jesus. This is very stressful fucking hell okay i know carlo this is normal for you because you've been through many of these how i should
tell her while we're waiting to the next one how does it feel or anyone else met a lawman to be
their lawyer how does it feel to be exactly to be there right next to them obviously you'll build a
relationship with in many cases like you know these people you know their families how does it feel to be next to them and hearing their sentences? Do you have any process to make sure you don't get impacted by it as well? were paid handsomely for the work they've done in this case. So all eyes are on them to deliver.
So there's a ton of pressure on these defense lawyers. And there's not going to be a happy
ending here. No matter what he gets, it's going to significantly disrupt his life. And it's going
to have severe consequences. So the worst part is going to be in the hallway after the hearing,
talking with the parents and explaining to them what's happening and what's going to happen going forward.
Do you ever feel guilt, even if you did your best and you did really well?
Does that feeling ever kick in?
Look, if you don't care and you don't have empathy and you don't take pride in what you do, I think you can easily come out of these things feeling nothing.
But we always feel...
You just dropped out.
So yes, you do always feel that tinge of, unfortunately, I wish I could have done more.
But in this case, there's not much you can do with these facts. I mean, like I said from the start,
we don't get to make the facts. We have to work with what we have. And these just are not good facts.
So while these lawyers are doing the best they can with what they have to work with,
including a client who's difficult to manage, at the end of the day, they've done all they can,
I'm sure. Yeah. And even for anyone that has empathy, look, I'm a very empathetic person.
So I feel bad for literally everybody, including people that scammed me. That's how bad I am. But for anyone that has empathy, that's listening to this, they're like, all right, cool, he fucked up. He didn't kill anyone. Why does he have to spend the rest of his life in jail? There's the fairness aspect, but there's also the high or unfair, which I'm sure 99% of you don't, because a lot of you lost money with this and have been impacted by this.
But if you do, you've got to understand that it's not about being fair for Sam in this case, but also making sure the sentence deters others from doing the same thing.
And there's a lot of people like Sam in the industry,, but you can see what this does to a person from the moment they've been arrested until the moment they face sentencing.
It literally takes years off of people's lives, including the family.
It's highly emotional, and it's just awful to see happen to a person.
Yes, he made very, very poor decisions.
Yes, he's going to be held accountable for them.
And absolutely, this has taken a toll on him.
Whether you want to be sympathetic to that or not, I understand.
But there's definitely a cost to going through this for a year plus.
And I've heard people say that it hits you, especially for people that are in denial,
like Sam here, just delusional.
It hits you when that sentence kicks in or it hits you when you actually
entered that jail cell. But the main one is you really like, Holy fuck. Okay.
The delusion is gone when that sentence kicks in. Is that, is that,
is that true Carlo?
Yeah. Look, the verdict was one thing,
but then the sentencing is put off for so long.
And if you still have that degree of hubris.
All right, Levin, sorry.
No, go, Mario, go. The same skills that had him, even after arrest,
pitching his story to a huge number of media people.
He had every, so it says,
Mr. Rich is right that the outlines of SBF's revised version are clear.
The same skills that had him, even after arrest,
pitching his story to a huge number of media people.
He had every right, we discussed that, on general deterrence. At the end of the day, the criminal justice system thrives only
if it's seen as fair. Is that a normal statement, David, Carlo, anyone else? To say the system only
thrives if it's seen as fair? Is that indicating a potentially lighter sentence or not?
Possibly, possibly.
Or to the detractors, to the people who say he's going to get off easy, I think the judge may be setting it up for, you know, we've got to do justice here.
True, true, true.
My gut instinct when you read it and I see it online right now
was that's a slight turn to a smaller sentence.
Just gut instinct. You you know he was just
doing what he's done the whole time he's just he was pitching his story he kept going to large
groups and speaking and he had every right to do that so my gut let's do let's do let's let's do
let's do a pool then david whoever wants in it scott you want to go into a pool and we all bet
i'm on 20 years now sc, you're at 40 now.
I don't want to bet on this. I don't want to bet on this dude's life, man.
True, true, true.
We did make a bet earlier.
So instead of making you feel bad now, but you're right.
It's not.
It's insensitive.
People need to feel it's fair.
Oh, we're back to trial by combat, folks.
Oh, we're back to trial by combat, folks.
Or something like it.
So punishment must fit the seriousness of the crime.
And this was a serious crime. Bear with me. All right, Scott, I'm glad you didn't bet
because it seems like a long one. There's nothing here that says less than 40. I respect David
Silver's legal opinion now. So maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know, man. What did David say?
The defendant will rise for the imposition of sentence, please.
Here it comes.
SBF stands as do his three lawyers.
Hold on.
I know the probation department recommends 105 years and the government 40 to 50 years.
That would be more than necessary.
David, you win.
Well, that means I get my hour.
Hold on.
Is it 40 to 50 years?
No, it's going to be less than 40 or 50 years is what the judge is saying.
I know the program.
I know the program.
I think so.
That would be more than necessary. know the probability. I think so.
Oh, more than necessary.
Yeah, okay.
So again, I'll read out while waiting for the next one.
So I'll read out what you just said.
The defendant will rise to the imposition.
All right.
The same stands.
I know the probation department recommends 105 years and the government 40 to 50 years.
That will be more than necessary.
So much suspense.
Wait, does more than necessary means it is necessary or he
thinks it's too much?
It sounds like it means too much, but I guess it could go
either way, Alex. I read it as that's
more than would be necessary as in like
it would be less.
That's how I read it too,
but it feels like it goes
against what else he said.
Correct. Correct.
Yeah.
Fucking hell.
The sentence probably has been read out.
They really need to allow at least one.
Yes, that's what it meant.
Here's the next tweet.
Next tweet.
I am not diminishing the harm, the brazenness of his actions,
his exceptional flexibility with the truth, his apparent lack of any remorse.
I want to add one further thought.
I did not think it a fruitful use of time to spell out every lie.
And then he didn't, then there's a, okay, I thought there was another one.
This, this is the most brutal way to attempt to cover something, by the way.
Imagine if you're just, you know, watching it,
we can tell you what's happening. That'd be easier.
No, I'd like to tweet that's all so essentially it's gonna be a should be lower it sounds
like yeah the the amount of load on Twitter servers refreshing this one
specific thread right now has to be incredible yeah like in 53 seconds a thousand impressions
let me see here when not lying he was evasive hair splitting trying to get the prosecutors
to rephrase questions for him i've been doing this job for close to 30 years i've never seen
a performance like that yikes i mean the judge i have no idea where he's going with this
it's going back and forth
yeah when not lying he was evasive
hair splitting trying to get the prosecutors to
rephrase questions for him I've been doing this job
for close to 30 years I've never seen a performance
like that
when he's not lying he was evasive hair splitting
trying to get the prosecutors to rephrase questions for him
I've been doing this so it's actually talking like
he's really good at what he does and dece the ceiling is that what he's trying to say
yeah or he's just yeah very evasive and lies and he's just a horrible witness right
okay so the opposite of what i thought not not yeah i think yeah But I go back to like, this is, he's, right now he's talking to the victims and saying, look, I get what happened. And this is, I'm not discounting the severity, but 40, the key is 40 to 50 is more than necessary. So I think it's going to be maybe a decade or two less than 40 to 50. So you have been right all along mario but yeah the judge is
just saying that he understands the gravity yeah i think it's gonna be it's gonna be less
look again i think 20 years is a lot of fucking time you keep saying like it's not enough 20 years
no billions could uh could could make that worth it.
Refreshing, refreshing.
Fucking hell.
And then Twitter crashes.
So what are you leading Carlo after reading reading this what are you leaning at now i still think it's going to be in the range of 50 uh you know you're right it's hard to read in
these tea leaves because the judge is kind of going uh in two directions here but i which is
good but it shows him being it shows him being objective absolutely and i still think he's
ultimately disgusted with what happened in this case and how sam responded to it so
i don't think he's gonna i don't think he's going to, I don't think he's going to show any, any mercy on that front, because I think this was
a long excruciating trial and his testimony and the judge's perception that he perjured himself
several times is certainly inflammatory. Yeah. Simon, not to change topics, but do you think
Alex Mashinsky is out there rooting right now for like 10 years, meaning like if Sam gets
25, I'm only given two?
25 years.
It is the judgment of the
court that you are sentenced to 240
months, 10 consecutive,
60, etc. for a total of 300
months, 25 years.
That is so much
fucking lighter
than i thought
i'm going late i'm with you 25 years is much lighter than i thought
i think the end of the day the thing that saved him from that made off level sentence
was probably uh his age and as was previously discussed, the fact that Madoff
was much more calculated, and his fraud was extremely disruptive because it was so ongoing,
and it just destroyed generations of wealth and destroyed families. While there were significant
damages and harms here, I think that case was sort of a huge departure. Yes, I'm surprised by 25 years
as well. I expected more, but that's still a substantial sentence.
Sorry, Carlo.
How old is he now? Isn't he at 25? Go ahead.
Oh, I was going to say, in federal court, if it's 25 years, like,
at what point can he potentially get out? Or is it going to be all 25 years?
It is all 25 with the exception of they get some gain time from the Bureau of Prisons for good behavior, but there is no parole in the federal system.
So it's not like he's going to get a 25-year sentence and parole out in five years.
That doesn't happen.
I'll see the next tweet.
I don't know.
It feels crazy.
What is truth in sentencing?
Like 85% in federal court?
Generally, yes.
Generally, yes.
They'll do 85% of their time generally.
The Bureau of Prisons will give him credit for good behavior.
2049 is a long way away, Mario.
Just FYI, my Twitter actually,
how I made a joke, it will crash just before the
sentencing my twitter crashed i can't load tweets anymore so i'm not sure if anyone else has that
issue my internet i had it crashed too and had to go open up a separate browser i'm not sure if it
crashed or if twitter blocked me for refreshing too much oh yeah true true let me see it feels
crazy to me that i'm like looking at this and being like, how did he only get 25 years when 25 years is obviously a really long time.
But man,
that feels so short compared to where we thought it was going to come down.
We got another loyal stage.
Evening there.
Okay. Now it's refreshing. I had had to log in so it blocked my account from
refreshing my own awful account i actually predicted in the judgment so let me read out
the part i just want to read it anyway it is it is the judgment of the court that you are sentenced
to 214 months then can see executive 60 for a total of 300 months, 25 years.
That's exactly the number that I three minutes ago.
Seems right to me.
A lot of people are reporting that it's 20 years, by the way.
So I think they're missing that extra 60 months.
Yeah.
What's happening with,
so what happens next in terms of appeals, et cetera, the defense file a notice of appeal, and then there'll be a delay in getting all the transcripts and all the record documents accumulated.
And then it'll get scheduled for a briefing, and it'll be a significantly huge brief given the length of the trial and the amount of pre-trial motions that were argued.
Sorry, just, we have another space in nine minutes. I'm delaying. Yeah, that's it. So what happens next? Okay, so the ruling has been made. Carlo, David, Stephen, anyone?
Now that there's a judgment, now that there's a formal judgment and sentence, the defense team can file their notice of appeal.
And then they've got to generate all the record documents that were filed in this case and all the transcripts of every hearing, including the trial.
Court reporters got to get all that transcribed and over to the court of appeals.
And then it'll start with the briefing.
And this is going to be a huge appeal. It's going to be very, very lengthy brief because there were so many
issues raised in this case. I mean, the best thing you can say about the appeal is that it's going to
keep SBF busy in prison. But I think he's got his chance of winning is probably slim to none and slim just left town it seems really unlikely 25
years is exactly what i predicted um the judge has to balance um he's got to think about the purpose
of uh you actually have discretion under the sentencing guidelines for some time
um i'm just not at all surprised spf will be one in his mid-fifties when he gets out
so so another question so now now Sam is what being taken
back to, did you go back to prison or what happened with Sam? I think he's remanded back.
He's remanded back. They could make a motion for a bond pending appeal, but I find that highly
unlikely. I don't think he's been assigned to prison yet, right? That's still to be done.
Correct. He's going to be done? Correct.
He's going to be designated by the BOP's designation unit.
He'll go back to the holding facility. Hold on, hold on.
Guys, guys, just a minute ago, so Kaplan's like,
SPF, would you like me to read you the conditions?
And Sam's like, no, thanks, I'm okay.
And then Kaplan's like, any other requests?
And the lawyer, Sam's lawyer goes,
we may submit
language regarding designation to which facility. Let me hand it up. So Carlo, can you explain what
just happened? Sure. They can only make a recommendation. Federal judges are not part
of the executive branch. The Bureau of Prison decides where he goes. The only thing a federal
judge can do is include a recommendation in the judgment to try to keep him as close to his family
as possible and in the most comfortable facility possible keep him as close to his family as possible
and in the most comfortable facility possible. But BOP is going to make the ultimate call where he
goes. And what about when the judge asks, would you like me to read you the conditions? Conditions
to what? Conditions of supervised release, because there's mandatory supervision after his prison
sentence. And there are conditions to that supervised release.
And, you know, basically don't break the law, report to probation within 72 hours of release,
so on and so forth. And he just didn't want to hear all that because it'll be reduced to writing and part of the judgment. Is that common for the person to just say no?
It is uncommon for the judge to want to read them out
verbatim, because I believe they would be incorporated into his judgment. So no, it's
just a formality. I don't think he needed to read them out, because I think the defendant's going to
be made aware of them. It's just standard operating procedure, in my opinion.
Yeah.
I'm shooting here.
And there's reporters, I guess, there.
This is what, who's been reporting on this. This is reporters in court, but it's not being filmed.
There's a press conference.
I see my team streaming it on my channel.
There's no one speaking, so no need to go there,
but there's a press conference that's about to happen.
So what usually happens at those press conferences?
Oh, obviously the DOJ is going to get up and talk about, you know,
the case and the sentence and that they'll cast this as a win
and sending a message to other nefarious players in the space.
Unclear whether the defense will have a press conference
or make any comment.
That remains to be seen, of course.
And the defendant won't get a chance to speak to the press right now?
No, no.
He's back in a holding cell waiting to go back to whatever jail
was holding him pending sentencing.
Oh, he's back in the holding cell right now?
Yeah, he'll be remanded immediately back into custody.
There's a holding cell back there,
and then the U.S. Marshals will put him on a van
back to the jail that was holding him.
Pretty much instantly, correct?
Yes.
And this is one of the roughest jails in the U.S. from what I've read.
What do you guys think this says about what the sentences for Ellison and Nishad and co-conspirators will be. I think Ellison is probably lined up for a significant downward departure
based on her cooperation and testimony at trial.
Whether it gets down to straight probation remains to be seen,
but she's going to definitely get the benefit of the bargain here,
having testified and been a very critical witness for him.
Against him, I guess I should
say two to four years. It's definitely within the realm. She may not see a day in prison. Who knows?
It'll depend. Because what will happen now is, is that there'll be a sentencing hearing for Ellison
and the government's going to file a memorandum explaining the the extent of her cooperation and
make a recommendation to the judge and Judge Kaplan will have to either approve it or he can go below the recommendation or above the recommendation.
My guess would be two to four years sounds quite high given how instrumental she was. People who
cooperate to the extent that Caroline did, judges and prosecutors, especially in SCNY,
I think take that very seriously and give you a ton of credit.
I agree. I agree. I also think that her lawyers
are known as the Tom Cruise steak knives salesman from, you know, a few good men that they
pre-negotiate. And that is what they are phenomenal for, are for having their clients testify before
and get no prison time. She hired the exact right people for what happened here.
I need to jump off for a call, gang. This was amazing.
Historical, history-making event. Thank you so much for including me on the panel.
Thanks, fellow. Scott, what do you think?
All right. Fine. 2049 is a really long time
two seconds
Edward Snowden just commented
holy shit he gave him less than the Chelsea man
in 35 years for way worse crime
so those from Edward Snowden just a comment
eight minutes ago
Dan Howell put out a comment this is not nearly
long enough to compensate for his crime
yeah but
imprisonment doesn't provide compensation to anyone
I hear it
I mean you know I'm not
defending
definitely not
I think this is a cool thing
everyone is always whenever someone's
guilty of a crime
everyone becomes an echo
should be forever whatever number he gives he'll be saying that's not enough It is always whenever someone's guilty of a crime, everyone becomes an echo channel.
It should be forever.
It should be forever.
Whatever number he gives, he'll be saying that's not enough.
Yeah, and the issue, like I have a broader issue.
Like I actually think our sentencing and imprisonment philosophy in the United States doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense.
But as my friend Alex Golubitsky just tweeted, sentencing guidelines are mandatory within a range of incomes, which is kind of a, it's a lawyer, criminal lawyer joke about how
the sentencing guidelines work in the United States. They're actually discretionary after
Supreme Court case a number of years ago. But basically, if you have money and can afford
somebody like Mukasey, you tend to get off easier, which is sort of another element of
unfairness. But it's also worth remembering, like, we pay as American taxpayers,
we pay to house people, like paying to have this guy in prison at 70 years old. If somebody came
up to me and said, I want you to pay like $5,000 to imprison him when he's, you know, $5,000 a year
for the next 50 years, would you do it? It's not really the way it works. The question is like,
economically, at a certain point, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. It's not like nobody's getting paid.
It's Old Testament vengeance, really.
So, you know, 25 years, like let's not miss on.
He's not going to go to a, I don't think he's going to go to a nice prison either.
I think at that, because of the number of years, it's going to be at least a medium security.
I don't remember that terminology.
It's not going to be a nice place to be for the next 25 years. The guy's life is done and dusted. Is it going to be, is it going
to be, you know, even though I said his life is done and dusted, he's going to be back at age,
what is he now? 30? Yeah, it's mid-32. He's going to be back at age 55? Yeah.
I don't know if somebody here has more experience with sentencing and prison assignment.
He's going to be at least in a medium level security, right? He's not going to be like in Supermax in Florence, but he's not going to be at a club fed for 25 years.
Yeah, I'm just going through if there's anything else.
I'm going to do some of the comments of people.
But yeah, I think Simon, how do you feel?
And what's the latest with – I know someone asked you earlier.
I think David asked you about Machinsky.
What's the latest there?
Okay, hold on.
There's one more tweet here.
Two minutes ago, Kaplan said, anything more we can accomplish?
No?
Adjourned.
SBF is let out by U.S. Marshals.
It was two minutes ago.
Clasping his hands behind his back as if handcuffed.
But he's not handcuffed yet.
Vlog and story soon.
Highly recommend you guys check out Inner City Press' thread,
it's pinned at the top.
He's got a book about this called Crypto Criminal,
The Conviction of SBF.
If anyone wants to buy it on Amazon, it's at the bottom of the thread.
So, yeah.
Simon, me and you were covering this from the early days, staying up to 20, 30 hours.
How do you feel now that the chapter is finally closed?
Obviously, it still appeals, but you could say it's pretty much closed.
And maybe you can give us an update on machines.
Yeah, for me, I've always been focused on this has happened now, what happens for creditors.
So I was more interested in the bankruptcy um i don't even think i know how to um analyze what should happen to someone's life or whether
how long they should go to prison for and stuff like that but i do know it means a lot to a lot
of people um so you know in in the mizinski case it's um it's a bit of a weird one because people feel that, you know, SBF, the victims were kind
of very successful traders with large amounts of money or that type of thing. But then you read
letters of the everyday victims as well. But with the Machinsky case, you know, he very deliberately
tried to get pensioners to drain their bank account, saying that it's safer than a bank.
So, you know, the outrageousness of it.
But whether he gets a higher or lower sentence, I don't know.
The bankruptcy is almost coming to an end.
And at that stage, I kind of move on.
But Mishinsky actually got his case delayed till january 2025 because he had the
same lawyers as spf um and so there was a conflict of interest case um and so yeah they're actually
using same lawyers and then that ended up with a delay so he's just been buying himself time
and then the case starts in early 2025 and is he is he in jail right now or not no he's just been buying himself time. And then the case starts in early 2025.
And is he in jail right now or not?
No, he's he's under he had to hand in his passport.
But no, he's not in jail at the moment.
I think, you know, it was like SBF, if you remember, he was he was under house arrest.
But then he did all the witness tampering stuff and then that put him in prison.
So Mijinski hasn't done any of the witness tampering stuff as far as i know the guy's such a fucking
idiot and he had just like kept his mouth shut he could have delayed this forever um and um you
know eventually that piper would have this shit would have hit the fan but he'd still be out
they'd still be planning on a trial date. Well, that's the thing, Mario.
If you remember those early spaces, we were all there thinking,
is he doing triple whammy double gymnastics with contacts everywhere?
Because we were just on these spaces and we were just like, why is he here?
Why is he doing this?
We were all like, and is he here? Why is he doing this? We were all like,
um, and it was just, you know, and that's when Elon Musk first came on your space, right,
Mario? It was that very same one. Um, I think we, yeah, we, and it, we were always thinking like,
is this guy like super connected? Like, is he smart enough to know that? But you know,
it was just dumb, like just. He just he even the government the government was surprised that he insisted on going to trial so quickly there was no reason to do it
and sometimes it's occam's razor he's just a fucking idiot honestly maybe that's the answer
he's not as bright as people think do you mean do you have one of my favorite panelists and lawyers
you know i don't think we've had you on the message yet.
No, I'm not a crypto lawyer or a securities lawyer. So I wanted to say something about Edward Snowden's tweet. Chelsea Manning was, I believe, adjudicated under martial law. It was a court martial and military justice is quite different and usually much harsher. So I don't think making that comparison
is necessarily particularly relevant. You know, as to this sentence, you know, there were a couple
of factors that went in his favor. I think that, you know, he's young, he's a first-time offender,
non-violent first-time offender, etc, against him were the sort of aggregating factors
that he did perjure himself, the judge said that, and that he also, you know, tampered with witnesses
and he was incredibly stupid about these things. The judge also mentioned he was autistic and had
difficulty communicating with people in many ways. Maybe that impacted him as well. I do think,
just from a standpoint of deterrence,
you know, I do think, I don't think there are many people saying, oh, I want to do what he did,
because I'm only going to get 25 years, right? So I do think it has some deterrent effect,
although I thought it was a little light given the aggregating factors. Thanks.
Alex, am I alone?
Yeah, I wouldn't say it's interesting. as i'm sitting here with the verdict even just like
i don't know what's it been 15 20 minutes later i feel like i was real shocked at first with the 25
although congrats to the folks who did call it right but the more i sit with it the more i'm
like i mean it's that is still such an unbelievable amount of time to be locked in a cell and away from the world that like anything more than that, I think, would have made a lot of us feel good given the damage that he's done to so many people.
But this is still an incredibly long amount of time to be locked away.
And what is, as was pointed out, he's not going to club fed with a 25 year sentence.
And he's, he's going to have a really horrible next couple of decades.
And by the time he gets out, nothing good's happening for him.
Am I the only person who feels like it's maybe on the long side?
I could have been given how unremorseful he was yes even up until the last minute he was giving
everyone such a fuck you and holding this bullshit line that i'm definitely not going to think 25
years is too short i think if he had shown a little bit more remorse he might have gotten
off with 15 to 20 because a lot of this is the judge weighing things
and trying to do a certain kind of equity. And yeah, I think the fact that he showed no remorse
probably made it worse for him. Hey, I mentioned earlier on, Judge Kaplan is old school,
and you really cannot overstate how pissed he was about the perjury. So Sam is going
to have to sit in jail and think about the decisions that were made in this trial. And the
biggest one, of course, was testifying. And the last thing that Judge Kaplan said right before bringing the hammer down. Literally the last thing he said was, when not lying,
he, Sam, was evasive, hair splitting, trying to get the prosecutors to rephrase questions for him.
I've been doing this job for close to 30 years. I've never seen a performance like that. So in my view, Sam may have got himself an extra
number of years. He would have been convicted if he had not testified. No question. He was
going to be convicted either way when you've got three co-conspirators testifying in detail about
what you did. So he's going to be convicted. His decision to testify probably got him an extra five years. And then last thing I would say is,
and people don't like to hear this, but I believe the machinery of effective altruism is now going
to go into motion. And what they're going to do is lobby the Biden administration for a commutation of the sentence.
And I think that's definitely going to happen, that attempt.
Will it be successful?
Probably not, but not certainly not. Those of you who are old enough to remember the last days of the Clinton administration, there were some mind boggling pardons and commutations that were handed out in the last days as Bill Clinton exited the White House.
And so people hate it when I bring this up. But this effort is going to happen. It's going to happen behind the scenes, not publicly.
And I can't say for sure that it won't work.
I'd be willing to put a small bet on that.
I don't think there's a tinker.
I just don't think there's a chance in hell.
Somebody might try.
Do you think it's going to be this effort?
Can I ask why do you think Biden would do this?
What would it avail him if he did this? He gets nothing out of it. I mean, I don't see any reason why Biden would do this? What would it avail him? He gets nothing out of it.
I mean, I don't see any reason why he would do it.
Maybe you could speak to that.
Well, the analogy would be, of course, Mark Rich.
You're going to say Mark Rich, but Mark Rich.
Who was a fugitive, right?
And the entire Justice Department was opposed.
The FBI was opposed. The prosecutors who convicted him were all opposed. And he did it anyway. And
people believe that the reason was that Mark Rich's wife raised tremendous amounts of money
for Democratic candidates for years and paved the way for that to happen.
The effective altruism crowd is very, very wealthy.
But I think the thing to think about there is a very specific that was Bill Clinton,
Denise Rich fundraising, et cetera.
Does Sam Bankman Freed really have that sort of support with Joe Biden? I mean,
I just don't see this at all, frankly. I think the bigger difference is time period.
January 20th, 2025 is nine or 10 months from now. Mark Rich was out of the country for 15 years
before he got pardoned on it. So like if Biden got reelected this time in four, you know, five years from now at the end of his second term, could someone maybe pull off that lobbying?
Theoretically, I think it could.
But there's I would also take a bet pretty strongly that there's no way he gets commuted 10 months from now.
It'll just still be too fresh in everyone's head.
You know, but also they did so much work to sweep all the
political stuff under the rug and hide it um i don't know why they'd want to open up that box
again i think i think their goal was to make sure that the political stuff isn't discussed there
isn't any type of clawbacks and um you know yeah that that was all very deliberately, from my perspective, hidden.
I can't imagine anyone wanting to open that again.
Well, I think that shows how powerful the SBF clan is, is that all the political stuff was hidden.
There's a ton of money there and a ton of bodies that if he has any pull or his mom who has significant pull or had significant pull
before this happened. But I do think that that's, I do think, I see why people think that is,
but I think the more interesting comparison here, especially for people in the crypto
Twitter vacuum, is think that Sam just got 25 years. Ross Ulbrich has got 40 years.
If there's someone who can turn around and say,
how unfair is my sentencing compared to this?
We got to talk about Ross.
I mean, Ross got 40 years, has been sitting in jail,
and is watching this now saying, oh my God, I'm in jail.
No, he got a lot more than 40 years.
He got hundreds of years.
Hundreds of years.
Plus the 40 years.
But he's sitting there.
I mean, he, Ross, has to be looking and saying, how am I the one that's in jail for this now?
Where's the justice in this sentencing?
This sentencing has to be incredibly light.
And if there's someone who people should be advocating for, and there are
people in this injury, it's Ross who deserves all of the support to get commuted, to get out,
whose life has been unfairly tainted. I mean, that's incredible. I mean, I was obviously,
you know, with Carlo this morning as we were waiting for this, I totally thought it was
going to be higher. I get why some people are making the argument at 25 years, but for justice, I mean, man, if I'm sitting here and I'm in the Ross camp,
I'm saying, how does Sam get 25 years and Ross is sitting in jail for, you know,
the two life sentences and the plus 40 years? David, how about Bernie Madoff? You know,
the narrative comparison to Sam and Bernie Madoff was made early in this case.
I think mainly because of the amount of money and the amount of people that were affected.
That really kind of draws the line there to comparison and really connected that narrative for people.
But, you know, when you talk about the sentences, Bernie Madoff got 150 years and actually just died in prison.
And he pleaded guilty, right?
Correct.
He turned himself in.
And he turned himself in.
To the question about political influence, though, I mean, like to be real, the guy just got 25 years in prison.
So if he had political influence on him not sure
anything would have happened so i'm skeptical that he's going to have his um that he's going
to have anything commuted or forgiven and i agree david that um you know albrecht is uh certainly
much more worthy of um um industry community support too. I think on the political front, I bring this up because I've yet
to find anybody who agrees with me. So, you know, I think the effort's going to be made. It should
not be successful, obviously. If Biden is reelected, there will be zero chance that he would
commute. If he's not reelected, then you've got between November and January where they're really
going to ratchet up the lobbying. And you all know that Joe Bankman is very tight with Elizabeth
Warren. They're very tight. And so I think anything's possible. And I know I am a minority
of one on this, but you can just note it and we'll see whether it happens.
I think the more important question
is why this is all good for solana i'm just kidding i think i'm kidding maybe i'm not i'm
not sure i guess that's a different uh that's a different broadcast yeah so so on the political
front i think the other thing to think about is the political corruption stuff did not get swept
under the rug because his parents didn't want it to come out.
It's because the fucking politicians who took the bribes didn't want it to come out.
So it's not like anyone had to lobby them to try and suppress that.
That was purely in their self-interest.
And again, re-cooking up that story by commuting it or advocating for him in any way, I think is not,
it's in no one's interest. And then on the topic of sentencing, I think the other flaw sort of in
comparing Ross and Chelsea, which to be clear, I think what SBF did was worse than both of them. But I think if you look at the reality of,
SBF had far less sympathetic victims in the eyes of the justice system. I think that the justice
system would see them mainly as gamblers taking a risk where things happened over a relatively
short term. Chelsea was in a, as Tara pointed out, it was not civilian court.
It was a military court-martial for, in their eyes – and I'm not saying this is right – but in their eyes, attacking the national security of the United States by leaking classified information.
So, of course, a military court is going to go hard on that. And in the case of Madoff, ran a 2025 year scam against, you know, widows and orphans and
very connected, very sympathetic political people. And so I think the reality of the situation,
the same way that money buys you much better lawyers and better connections in the justice
system, and there were certainly, you know, that didn't hurt him in this case. His victims are simply less sympathetic than the
victims. And, you know, oh, and sorry, and in the case of Ross, Ross also attacked, again,
in the government's eyes and in the justice system's eyes, was undermining the core policy
and interests of the United States versus taking money from gamblers.
And again, not saying that's right, but I think that is the reality of how the system views these
people comparative to each other. How do you think that analysis would apply to in a comparison with
Mishinsky then? Do you think they would see, because he was coming off to the pension and
retirement market.
Do you think they'd still see them as crypto gamblers? Or do you think the targeting of safer than a bank and getting people to wipe out their
pensions and stuff?
Do you think that would lead to a higher sentence?
So, you know, that's that's a good question, but it does make me think that if I'm the
prosecutors in that case,
I would lean really heavily on the he tried to undermine our banking system and confidence
in our financial system if I wanted to turn the judge against him.
I think Mashinsky is cheering this end from a plea standpoint.
This gives him a lot of reasons to plea his case out.
He's cheering that SBF only got 25.
I would imagine he's also got to be rethinking his legal team. I mean, just the defense SBF
received was extremely lackluster. I was shocked just to see, you know, just how poorly they did at refuting anything that was thrown at SBF.
So, yeah, a lot of advantages to Majewski here and his delays.
Cool, guys. I think that was a good recap.
And what happens next in terms of the appeal?
I'm not sure who wants to jump in on that one first. And how likely is Sam, in your opinion, to get a diminished sentence?
Anyone want to take that one? I mean, from the appeal standpoint,
he's either going to, let's say this, it's going to be a couple of years for the appeal. So I'm going to go with metal law man and say that it's more likely the politicians bail
him out than the appeals court bails him out in the next couple of years. So he's not, he's not
an island of one. I don't think it's going to happen, but the appeals court won't reduce his
sentence. It can just basically reset a trial and say he wasn't given a fair trial. There were
different things. But at the end of the day, you know, given everything that's happened here,
I don't see the appeals court coming in and bailing out SBF. I give that less than a 1%
chance. I'd be more, it's more likely that something crazy happens in the political system,
but that's years away. This isn't going to be a quick one.
This is going to be a long one.
From an appellate standpoint,
there's a lot of just issues that went on.
There's nothing that's going to reduce
the 25 years from the appellate court.
There's no way this is getting thrown out in its entirety.
The only thing he would get is a new trial,
which may or may not help him because he would get is a new trial, which may or may not help him,
because if he goes for a new trial, they can, you know, additional, they can do additional,
they can charge him with more things. We've already seen some of the interceding indictments
get dismissed. I think that he's going to look, he's going to lose his best bet as if something crazy happens on the political side.
What about the bankruptcy?
Does this have any impact for creditors in the bankruptcy and this personal wealth or anything?
I saw somewhere, and obviously we haven't seen the order come out yet, but somewhere someone's posting on Twitter that he was given an $11 billion restitution order as well.
What does that mean, David, a restitution order?
In theory, he has to pay back $11 billion.
No criminals ever pay back the money in my view, in my world.
But someone saying that there is a restitution tied to this that wouldn't lower a sentence, just he has to pay back.
So but if you think the example here is the wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, he's got a restitution order for all the money he stole.
He hasn't given any of it back and still lives a multimillionaire lifestyle.
I wouldn't count on that money coming back. But ultimately, again, I don't see, I don't, this should have no impact on the
bankruptcy. I'd be following the lawsuit that Moskowitz filed against Sullivan and Cromwell
more than waiting for SBF money. You know, the problem with the political side is I've, I've heard from a sitting politician, uh, that, uh,
who sympathizes with Sam Bankman Freed and the words that were used were, he was naive that,
um, it was really the lawyers that didn't advise him what to happen. And that if we had better
regulations, the U S for crypto, he like wouldn't even be in this boat. So I really believe there
could be something political. Um, and I, I, say that, David, because in terms of the Sullivan and Cromwell case, I think that's one
really to watch because I think there's a lot of pressure on Sullivan and Cromwell, which is like
a major law firm, where there's this narrative of, well, what about the lawyers involved with
all of this? Aren't they responsible? Did Sullivan Cromwell have something to know? And, you know, we saw what, like, Arthur Anderson go down
with Enron, like, would a law firm potentially take a hit too? But I agree. I think politically,
there are people sitting in office now who don't see Sam Beckman Freed as a real criminal here.
Just in terms of the appeal to, I mean, you'd have to be looking for reversible error,
you know, improper sentencing,
which clearly didn't happen here,
excessive sentencing.
The things that you're looking for in an appeal,
I haven't seen here.
Is anyone else?
Anyone?
I have seen nothing.
I think the only other topic that the SBF camp may try to lean on in an appeal would be the health card.
SBF obviously having some mental health issues, possibly some other health concerns.
This has been a strategy used by some in the past I could see that being a narrative that they kind of bring to their defense
how much this is not about appeals but how much do people hear and I look I haven't looked deeply
into the case I don't know a whole lot. So maybe for myself, for the audience who don't fully understand it and aren't, you know, lawyers,
how much of this with SBF was him being taking too much risk as an entrepreneur?
And, you know, obviously he used customer funds. You know, that's where it gets, I think, hairy.
But how much of this was him taking too much risk and being overleveraged and overoptimistic
about where the industry was going?
And then, like many of us, the industry turned around and we all got slapped in the face
because I don't think very many people thought 69 was the top.
So how much of this was him just taking too much risk and being kind of
over leveraged and how much of it was actual ill intent trying to defraud trying to hurt people or
and i'm not trying to defend sbf but i'm just curious you know how much of this was him really
being a terrible person and how much was him just taking too big of bets and making risky bets.
And then maybe how does that compare to Mashinsky who I've, I've known Mashinsky for years and
that's what it felt like with Mashinsky. But yeah, anybody.
But didn't, but didn't SBF take like, uh, was it $8 billion? A lot of it from customer money and
spend it on like different, I don't know the details, but he didn't –
Yeah, why are we litigating the guilt of SBF after the sentencing?
We did this for years.
Yeah, he forged documents.
He stole everybody's money.
He openly forged documents.
It was well-documented.
I really don't see the innocence for SBF personally.
I'm definitely not advocating for his innocence. I'm just curious how people look at that.
I think it's a difficult question. I don't think he did that.
It's a fair question. It's a fair question. Go ahead, Simon.
Yeah, I think what you're asking is, did he do a Madoff where he was just there
setting something up in order to steal money?
I don't think we all know that. I don't think that's what he did. But the ethics of betting client money and putting yourself in a position where you're over leveraged and rather than it
just being your money that you can lose, it's everybody else's money. I think that's the same thing.
I don't see that as, oh, I just made a bad bet.
I mean, if you make a bad bet by risking funds that are meant to be held in custody,
that is the same as stealing from my perspective.
Yeah, as I recall, this is actually how Madoff started too.
He basically started losing money, covering it up, and you just enter into a spiral.
This happens with lots of Ponzi schemes.
So like, is maybe the first dollar of customer funds, was it like a legitimate mistake with, you know, what he was talking about with the whole fiat account?
And, you know, basically not realizing that it was?
Sure.
But like, the first billion
dollars wasn't like they definitely there is a ton of evidence that they got to a point where
they knew what was going on and kept doing it thinking that they could trade their way out of it
and very rarely can you trade your way out of it and rock you know the other part i'll say is i i
didn't mean to say like you know why are we like relitigating this? But what's important to me about what you're saying and also,
you know, Scott, is it is going to be really relitigated in the political spectrum. You know,
like I was saying, there's already a sitting. I don't want to say who the person is, but has said,
you know, it's too bad. Sam Bankman Freed was an entrepreneur and he was naive and the lawyers
around him, the accountants should have been the one helping him.
So, unfortunately, I think we are going to see a little bit of a relitigation leading up to the appeal.
Not that any of that is truthful because, I mean, to me, there's no debate the fact that he took $8 billion and spent it on a lot of things.
Jason, I'll stand up for you.
I give you credit for having the guts.
Everyone just doesn't want to ask those tough questions.
I give you guts to ask it, and I agree. I think it's worthy of a discussion.
How guilty is Sam versus his lawyers versus his parents? How dumb was he?
I think, obviously, he was very calculated. He knew what he was doing.
But it's a fair question to ask, in my opinion.
And there will be an appeals process. He's going to jail for 25 years.
But things could change as part of the appeals process so he's going to jail for 25 years uh but you know things could change
as part of the appeals process no matter how unlikely um but but yeah um but does anyone
think that the the he could end up in jail for less than 25 years and i think metal oman you
kind of indicated that and i think you mentioned a potential presidential pardon even though
unlikely but it's still a plausible possibility am Am I putting words in your mouth, Meta Loman?
I'll tell you what, I find it really hard to imagine that Sam is going to serve 85% of a 25-year sentence. So how that gets commuted, shortened, whatever, he's got a lot of powerful
friends who believe in this philosophy that he has. And so, you know, there's a lot of money
there to help him. And so that's my feeling, that he will not serve 85% of 25 years.
Okay. And Tiro, I know this is agreed. How many years do you think he will serve if you had to guess
Sameta Lohman? And I'm also curious, like what type of influence of power does he have?
Like when you end up in jail, I know he's donated money to some of these politicians,
but they have his money. They can either keep it and return it. Is it what, is he sitting on
more billions that he's hiding away that he could pay people off? Or how does that work?
Yeah, we don't know whether he's sitting on billions.
It is interesting that he, to my knowledge, has not declared personal bankruptcy.
Because when you do that, you have to declare where all your assets are.
And if you lie about that, that is a very quick ticket to jail.
It happened to a lot of famous people who lied in bankruptcies about their assets. Boris Becker,
Lenny Dykstra, the baseball player, went to jail for that. So we don't know, but we do know that he and his mother have friends in over 70 countries that subscribe to this effective altruism philosophy, and I believe many of them will be motivated to try to help him in any way they can.
And I'm going through, just so you know, I'm going through, Rock, I'm going to give you the mic, just going through the comments, anyone in the audience, put in the comments in the bottom right corner uh just your thoughts on this and and i do want some contrarian thoughts i don't i know
there's a circle joke which i'm part of as well like he deserves this that's the right thing he
could he should have gone to jail for longer which i'm not in that circle i think 25 years is plenty
um but i do want some contrarian positions if there is any in the audience um on you know was
he as guilty as we're all making it out to be, which I think he is. It's 25 years too long, is it too short?
Do you think he will get out earlier, as Matt Aloma is saying,
that possibility at least through the donations he's made?
So, yeah, I'd love to go through and see what the audience thinks.
Rock, go ahead.
Yeah, so back to the does he have money hidden somewhere to pay people off?
I mean, does he need money somewhere?
He actually, he already paid the people off.
He already spent millions of dollars on the politicians.
But the question, but Rock, he's already spent it.
So if they have the money, what's their incentive to help him?
They already have the money.
You can't take it back.
I mean, they're still arguing.
If people take care of you, you take care of them.
And, you know, you're indebted to them.
And, I mean, once the money's in their hand, do they just say, oh, you know, wash my hands?
I mean, I don't know.
I don't know how this corrupt politician gave…
OJ didn't get out of prison and go into squalor.
We see it all the time.
The connections people have, they have no income, yet they live just fine. And to think that
SBF doesn't have the ability to pull that off is naive. Just with his mother and father and the wealth that they have in real estate alone. So yeah, he'll be
fine. And he absolutely has the power needed and the bucks needed to find some way out. And again,
when I think about the many cards that he could use, I really do think that the health card will likely be one that helps him
maybe not to get out of prison, but to get into a facility where he has the comfort he needs.
I mean, this man is a recluse, right? Even when he had wealth and he was on top of the world,
he kind of made himself his own personal prison. So, you know, that's something to factor
in as well. I've got a I've got an interesting story that I'm not even sure I should be saying
publicly, but I guess I just won't name names. So you talked about him living comfortably
and what he's used to. So I don't think this is public because I heard it from having dinner with a government official at a
jazz club and we were pretty drunk and she probably shouldn't have told me this but
when he was in the Bahamas and they were trying to get him extradited
the government told this person hey do whatever he wants give him whatever he wants, give him whatever he wants. We need him to come back to the
U S so he could have this trial. And, uh, she said, no, I'm not going to give him anything.
I'm going to make his life hell and he will come back. So he's a vegetarian. Uh, I should probably
shouldn't have said she, but she was, uh, only giving him meat or mostly meat uh she put
him in a in a part of the bahamas prison that had no plumbing so he was using a bucket for the
restroom uh just an interesting story about his comfort levels i don't think he's living the best life.
There's still a dispute over the Robin Hood chairs.
I think he's still trying to own those.
That was 8% of the company.
So just two seconds,
I just want to go back to the story.
Thanks for sharing and keeping the identities confidential.
But the,
the, so you're saying a government official was intentionally making his life hell, a U.S. government official?
Yes.
I have to leave it.
We saw many reports coming and we saw many complaints out of SBF's camp early on during this entire ordeal while the extradition process was still ongoing, talking about his food
conditions, the conditions of the jail, that he wasn't getting his medications. Yeah, it makes
sense, the timing and everything. What an interesting story. It is. I appreciate it.
Just kind of reminds me of the day that, I'm not sure if you remember, Simon, when we had that lady from the exchange come on
and start blowing the whistle on the whole story.
Before we knew there's any fraud going on,
when FTX went bust,
she started talking about how people were behind us,
behind the scenes, it's connected to this, this and that,
and there's fraud involved.
And that was the first time anyone spoke publicly about it.
And then, I don't know if you remember, Simon,
and then her voice started crackling afterwards
as we asked her more questions.
And she started sending us messages,
it was me and my team,
and the back channel was saying,
guys, I'm getting a lot of pressure.
Please delete the recording or something.
And obviously we can't, it's live, it's recorded.
And that was the beginning of that FTX saga.
So that kind of,
and then there's a lot of whistleblowers came on this show
and on those days of marathon shows.
So what Rock said now kind of reminded me slightly of these days.
Do you remember that lady, Simon, from the exchange?
I won't name her, but people can go find her in the recording.
I can't remember that, Mario.
Oh, shit, you came in late.
So that was in the beginning, beginning of the space,
and that was the first whistleblower we had.
She was an executive at one of the exchanges and they,
a lot of people knew that SPF was fucking, and we know that now,
but was just not doing the right thing. But no one really spoke out.
It was kind of turned a blind eye. But yeah, it's just, it's funny.
And also what Rob just said,
it just kind of shows the
opposite of what some people are speculating that politicians will support sam he's just
he up so bad um unless he's sitting on billions that he could use to bribe people
and he's pretty much screwed um and rocks um and what the story the rock told us kind of
indicates that and obviously he is in a pretty shitty jail he's being treated like shit he's gonna go to jail for another 25 years so this was look like this was politicians
back sorry to interrupt but just to be clear this wasn't a u.s jail this was in the bahamas
this was to pressure him to come back so now he's in you know u.s jails u.s jails have a different
you know i'm sure different regulations.
But this was in the Bahamas.
Okay, sorry, I misunderstood.
So essentially, okay, so I completely misunderstood.
So essentially saying the politician wanted him to be treated like shit in the Bahamas.
So then they could extradite him to the U.S.
And what you're implying, and this is your opinion, not fact.
I'm just going to say it, helping you there.
But what you're implying is that that was done intentionally to bring him in the U.S.
where possibly they could be trying to reduce his sentence, et cetera,
where he's in a better position.
Is that – did I interpret it right?
I have no idea what the intent was.
Was it to help him?
Was it to hurt him?
Was it just to get him here to have the trial?
I don't know.
I just know that they wanted him back here in the U.S.
That's what this
government official said. Uh, she said that they were pressuring her to find a way to get him to
come back because I guess he had to do it voluntarily or something. I'm not sure, but
for whatever reason, they were like, just give him whatever he wants and just convince him to
come to the U S to stand trial. And, uh, she said, no, I'm going to make his life hell.
That's how you get him to come back.
So that's pretty interesting. Um, let me know what I'm going to do now is I've,
I've worked for a long time to kind of build a good relationship with Scott.
And you know, I'll be one of the few people he actually likes.
It doesn't give me shit. And to, in, in, in spirit of that,
I'm not going gonna keep the space
going on for too longer even though Scott would love to continue that
discussion enough we can hear me now but if you can I'd be pretty pissed so I
think we've literally we've discussed this enough I think we've covered it
pretty well I would love any final comments from Alex on you have your hand
up but just gonna to conclude Sam is that she's gotta be in jail for 25 years
and appeals process is the next step
but we don't expect much out of it
and that's the end of the saga
and he kind of fucked himself over
shot himself in the foot by speaking in those spaces
by doing those interviews
and almost every word he said in court
did not work
in his favor
that's kind of a recap of what happened today
my team tweeted like 30 tweets in
an hour, 20 to 30 tweets in an hour, summarizing
everything, but even better, there's InnerCityPrested
a whole thread live we're reading.
It's pinned above and he's got a book at the end if you want to
read more about this, check it out.
But I think we've covered it well. I don't think there's anything
else to say. Scott, are you still there or you've
gone offline eating?
Alright, he's off.
Alright everyone, I think we've covered it well.
Really appreciate it.
Didn't expect this to be a long-breaking news space.
It's been a while we haven't done a crypto one.
I will see you again tomorrow for our daily Crypto Town Hall.
And thanks a lot for all the lawyers that have come and helped us cover this.
Enjoy, everyone.
And goodbye, Sam.
Bye, everyone.