The SBF Trial: What to Expect

Joining us now to discuss with more insights ahead of Sp F's trial is Coindesk global policy and regulation. Managing editor Nick Day, who is also the editor of Coin Desk's absolute positively must read state of crypto newsletter. Happy Monday, Nick. Good morning. Happy Trial Eve. Oh, yes, indeed. The trial starts tomorrow. Tuesday. What are you expecting tomorrow tomorrow? Honestly, I think it's gonna be relatively straightforward. We're expecting jury selection to our deer process. Um, prosecutors expect that's going to take the better part of the day. So, uh, I would be a little surprised if we got to any of the substantive parts of the trial, you know, the opening statements, the arguments themselves. But tomorrow should still be interesting. You know, as you saw on the video, we'll get a better sense of, you know, which group of New Yorkers will compose the 12 person, two alternate person, a jury that's gonna try Bank Andre on the seven different charges he's accused of. Yeah, I that's probably going to be the most exci I think it's gonna be the most exciting part, jury selection because I don't know if, if people watching this have ever even been on a subway where you have a dozen people or more. Uh, New Yorkers. It's, um, it, it can be contentious at the very least. So that should be a lot of fun. I would, of course we're disqualified from probably being jurors on there. Um, but I would have loved to have sat in that jury. Uh, anyway, uh, so the judge is saying to Sam Beman Fried, stop blaming the lawyers uh at FTX for the collapse of FTX. What is that? What's that all about? Yeah, so this was a filing an order yesterday. Um I don't think the judge is really necessarily saying stop blaming the lawyers outright. But what he ruled is that uh if Beron freed were to bring up, you know, external counsel, uh or even in house counsel because he's, you know, kind of looking at both uh in the opening statement, it might be somewhat confusing to the jury. Um The do J's objection was, you know, I, we don't want to create the impression that he is just blaming the lawyers for what he owned, you know, what his own actions were uh bank for his defenses. You know, the lawyers were involved in all of these decisions. So he can still try bringing up this defense saying, you know, attorneys both external and internal to FDX were involved in decisions to, for example, use auto deleting messaging tools or setting up the north dimension entities which were certain us entities that were tied to FTX or, you know, allowing approving loans to FTX and Alameda research executives. So he can still try bringing this up later on in the trial after notifying the court and the prosecution. But he can't bring this up in the opening argument. At least Nick, separate from the trial. It starts tomorrow 15,000 Ether sitting in a wallet associated with last year's $600 million attack on FTXS. Wallets mysteriously moved over the weekend. Any insights on what happened there uh late for uh Saturday slash early Saturday, I guess depending on whether or not you had gone to bed. By that point. Uh We saw that the funds in this wallet uh began moving. So, you know, as you mentioned FTX uh lost about 600 million last year the same day it filed for bankruptcy the same day that bank could previous stepped down from the company. Uh hours afterwards. You that evening, some 600 million were taken from the wallets or certain wallets tied to FTX. We never got an explanation for, you know, who did that, how that happened? Uh You know, what exactly happened? All we know is that these funds were stolen 15,000, either of that was stashed in this one intermediary wallet for quite a while. Woke up over the weekend. Uh At first it was just, you know, about $4 million worth. It's about 2500 either that moved. But by yesterday, you know, all 1500 ether or 15,000 ether, excuse me, uh, moved, that was about $26 million overall as of last night's prices. And, um, you know, a lot of these funds seem to have just been kind of moved through various routers and bridges and tools to, uh, you know, obfuscate where they're landing up. So all of them ended up moving through rail gun, the chain, I think had the vast majority of the funds. Uh couple other tools. But you know, I, I think it seems fair to say that the attacker or whoever did this, the exploiter uh is trying to cover their track, so to speak, cash out without, you know, getting tracked too closely. Weird coincidence. Timing is crazy and the timing is crazy. All right, Nick, thank you for joining the show. We look forward to following your coverage of SBF trial that starts tomorrow. So good luck. We know you're gonna be in the courtroom. Good luck. Thank you. That was award-winning journalist, coin desk, global policy and regulation. Managing editor Nick Day.