Bank man fried

25 years, not really a surprise:

Crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison for a massive fraud on hundreds of thousands of customers that unraveled with the collapse of FTX, once one of the world’s most popular platforms for exchanging digital currency.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan delivered a blistering analysis of Bankman-Fried and his crimes before announcing a sentence that was half of what prosecutors sought and less than a quarter of the 105 years recommended by the court’s Probation officers.

“There is absolutely no doubt that Mr. Bankman-Fried’s name right now is pretty much mud around the world,” Kaplan said of the 32-year-old man who once seemed atop the cryptocurrency world before his businesses collapsed in November 2022, leaving customers, investors and lenders short over $11 billion, which the judge ordered him to forfeit.

He was convicted in November of fraud and conspiracy — a dramatic fall from a crest of success that included a Super Bowl advertisement and celebrity endorsements from stars like quarterback Tom Brady, basketball star Stephen Curry and comedian Larry David.

Kaplan imposed the sentence in the same Manhattan courtroom where, four months ago, Bankman-Fried testified that his intention had been to revolutionize the emerging cryptocurrency market with his innovative and altruistic ideas, not to steal. The judge said Bankman-Fried repeatedly committed perjury when he told lies from the witness stand.

The difference between “altruism” and “effective altruism” is apparently that the latter gets its effectiveness from looting your company for Caribbean estates for yourself, your cronies, your parents, your polycule, etc.

Anyway, none of this would have happened had Donald Trump not won in 2020, because Biden would have let him get off:

Nailed it https://t.co/zncahID90l pic.twitter.com/Lg6IIhWj2Z— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) March 28, 2024

I’m not sure this heuristic is working out.