That came as a surprise. For a long time, the Twitter community demanded the arrest of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) after around a million customers had lost billions with the collapsed crypto exchange. Monday evening, he was now arrested by police in the Bahamas after U.S. prosecutors brought a still-sealed indictment. He is now apparently to be quickly extradited to the U.S. to answer questions from prosecutors there. It’s time for a reboot of the crypto scene.
The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York shared a sealed indictment with the Bahamian government, setting the stage for extradition and U.S. trial for the founder of crypto exchange FTX and crypto hedge fund Alameda at the heart of the crypto exchange’s collapse. His arrest is the first concrete move by regulators to hold individuals accountable for the multibillion-dollar implosion of FTX last month.
The FTX case has shown how easy it is to misuse and gamble away billions in customer funds with cryptocurrencies (some self-created) without serious regulatory oversight. The FTX collapse has permanently damaged investor confidence in crypto. Notwithstanding the billions in losses, SBF has presented itself on Twitter and various conferences, trying to portray the FTX collapse as a simple mistake or misjudgment even though it was very likely systematic fraud on a global level. The Twitter community was astonished and even angry about SBF‘s provocative audacity.
With the arrest of SBF and the legal processing of the FTX case, there is perhaps a chance for a reboot of the crypto ecosphere. Or in the famous words of SBF: to make the crypto scene whole again!
