The SBF Trial Week 1: Here’s What You Missed

Week one of the Sam Bakeman free trial is coming to an end. So what did you miss? Welcome to this special edition of Coin Desk Daily on the Sam Bakeman free trial. I'm your host, Jen. So Sam Bateman Fried's criminal trial kicked off on Tuesday morning in New York City where we got a glimpse of Sam sporting a new look with a fresh haircut and suit and tie. It took about one day for 12 jurors and six alternates to be seated. The jurors ages ranged from about 30 to 60 years old and their profession spanned multiple industries including education, finance, health and more. Spfs parents weren't in court on Tuesday but arrived Wednesday morning for opening statements. Jurors heard opposing explanations for what happened when FTX imploded. Defense lawyers said that Sam was a quote math nerd who overlooked risk management but did not steal from customers while prosecutors said, quote, all of it was built on lies and quote, adding that bank been freed, allegedly took more than $10 billion from FTX customers and then doubled down on risky investments. The first witness was a cocoa bean trader who said he lost $100,000 as a customer with FTX Marc Antoine Juilliard said he had the impression that there were strong financials behind the company. And later, when the exchange faced trouble, Juliard described a quote, extremely anxious feeling as he was unable to withdraw funds he had on the site when asked by a USA Danielle Kudla if he ever considered the possibility that FTX was borrowing his money, his answer was simply no. Next we heard from Adam Yida, a college friend of bank be fried, who ended up working at crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research and then FTX during questioning, he said he resigned from FTX in the days before it went bankrupt. When he quote, learned that Alameda Research had used customer deposits to pay back lenders end quote. Wang took the stand. He's the co founder of FTX and former Chief technology Officer. He told the jury that he be freed and other former executives committed multiple forms of fraud. In his testimony, Wang said quote, we gave special privileges to alata research to allow it to withdraw unlimited funds from FTX and lied about it. And and paradigm co-founder Matt Huang took the stand to testify about his company's previous investments in FTX. The company invested around $278 million across different rounds in both FTX and FTX US on the stand. He said the company has marked its FTX shares to $0. The Samba free trial is expected to last roughly six weeks. That's a wrap for this special edition of Coindesk Daily. Get more updates on the SPF trial on Coindesk dot com and don't forget to subscribe to the SPF trial newsletter. We'll see you on Monday.