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Quick answers
When did FTX collapse?
Withdrawals failed in the first week of November 2022 after a CoinDesk report on Alameda's balance sheet and a public spat over the FTT token. Chapter 11 petitions were filed on 11 November 2022.
What was Sam Bankman-Fried convicted of?
On 2 November 2023 a Southern District of New York jury convicted him on seven counts, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers and lenders, and related conspiracy counts (securities, commodities, and money-laundering conspiracies as charged).
What sentence did he receive?
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan imposed 25 years on 28 March 2024, plus forfeiture set out in the judgment. He appealed. The trial-court sentence is the encyclopedia's recorded term unless an appellate court changes it.
Who cooperated?
Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh pleaded guilty and cooperated with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Their pleas and testimony were central to the government's case.
What was Alameda Research?
A trading firm founded by Bankman-Fried before FTX and still under his control. Prosecutors and cooperators described it as the entity that used FTX customer assets. Ellison was its CEO at the collapse.
Did customers get money back?
The Delaware bankruptcy estate reported substantial recoveries and a claims process that, in later public updates, pointed toward high nominal recovery on allowed customer claims. That civil result is separate from the criminal conviction.
FTX did not, by itself, produce a single named Act on the scale of Sarbanes-Oxley. It did harden U.S. and U.K. political talk about exchange supervision.
Culturally it attached a criminal verdict to a set of 2021-2022 brands: stadium names, late-night ads, and an effective-altruism story.
Law & institutions
- Exchange-segregation debates — U.S. agencies and Congress used FTX in 2023-2024 hearings as the example of customer property that was not treated as customer property.
- Parallel SEC and CFTC complaints — Civil crypto cases against the founder and entities sit beside the criminal judgment and are cited in later exchange-registration fights.
- Campaign-finance side docket — A separate charging theory about political contributions was not the seven-count trial the jury decided; it remains a side file in popular memory.
- Chapter 11 as a crypto template — The Delaware estate became a comparison point for later exchange failures: how to find assets, value tokens, and pay claims.
Culture
- Effective altruism on trial — English-language features treated the philosophy brand as part of the pitch. Philosophers objected; the jury instructions were about fraud, not utilitarianism.
- Celebrity marketing hangover — Spokespeople and stadium deals became a due-diligence joke in U.S. and U.K. coverage of later token promotions.
- The defendant as a type — Messy hair and an overstuffed calendar entered the stock image of a 2020s founder-defendant, sometimes crowding out the verdict form.
- CoinDesk as a hinge publication — Trade press gained a permanent citation in general finance histories of 2022, alongside the Journal's older corporate scoops.
Money & scale
- Tens of billions (private marks) — 2021-2022 private valuations and token marks were not cash in segregated accounts. They vanished as prices and trust fell.
- Customer hole (2022) — Early estate and press figures described an eight-billion-dollar-order shortfall in November 2022; later recoveries changed the civil ending, not the 2022 fact of a failed redemption.
- Forfeiture (~$11B paper) — The 2024 criminal forfeiture figure is a judgment number. It is not the same spreadsheet as Chapter 11 distributions.
The impact is a completed SDNY conviction that crypto politics still argues over, and a bankruptcy that later paid more than the first headlines promised.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.