Sam Bankman-Fried Will Take the Stand in His Own Defense

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has decided to testify in his criminal trial, a direct appeal to jurors in his bid to prove he did not commit fraud or conspire to commit fraud at his once-giant cryptocurrency exchange, his defense attorneys said during a Wednesday teleconference.

Bankman-Fried is accustomed to speaking. He was in public frequently before his crypto empire blew up a year ago, speaking to media, testifying to Congress and appearing at conferences – not to mention prolific tweeting – so much that he was a very public face of crypto.

Bankman-Fried even kept on talking in the aftermath of the collapse, going on a media tour to make his case that he was innocent. But FTX insiders have, during the trial, painted a different picture: Bankman-Fried, they have testified, was pulling the strings of the alleged fraud at the crypto exchange.

The defense team also said during the Wednesday teleconference they planned to call just a handful of witnesses alongside Bankman-Fried, including financial services expert Joseph Pimbley, who works at PF2 Securities, to testify in Bankman-Fried's favor. A Bahamas lawyer may also testify, lead defense attorney Mark Cohen said.

The prosecution expects to finish calling witness within an hour of Thursday's court session beginning, after calling just one more witness, FBI agent Mark Troiano, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Roos said during the teleconference.

The move comes as Bankman-Fried's defense prepares to begin calling witnesses after prosecutors spent three weeks laying out their argument that he defrauded FTX's customers and Alameda Research's investors, and conspired with his fellow executives to hide his crimes and continue misusing those funds.

Those executives, including Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh and Gary Wang, testified against him after pleading guilty to various crimes of their own, with the defense mostly mounting seemingly unimpressive cross-examinations in their bid to sow doubt about the strength of the witnesses' testimony. In a separate filing Wednesday, the defense attorneys sought permission to introduce evidence that Singh and Wang had been inconsistent in how they described their conversations with investigators prior to getting on the stand.

Now, Bankman-Fried is going to describe his version of events to the 12 jurors and six alternates who will be asked to decide if he's guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

While the U.S. Department of Justice must prove that Bankman-Fried actually met the statutory requirements of the different crimes he's accused of beyond a reasonable doubt, the defense only has to prove Bankman-Fried not guilty to that standard.

Read all of CoinDesk's coverage here.

UPDATE (Oct. 25, 2023, 15:00 UTC): Adds additional detail.