SBF Sentenced: Up or Down for Crypto?

Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX's founder Sam Bankman-Fried "SBF" has been convicted to 25 years in prison.

On 28th March, Judge Lewis Kaplan announced a 25-year sentence for SBF on seven counts of fraud. SBF was found guilty on these seven counts in November 2023 itself after a four-week trial.

The exchange’s customer balance was depleted from $20 billion to $5 billion to fund Alameda Research, a sister company of FTX being run by SBF's then-partner Caroline Ellison.

Till date, the collapse of FTX in November 2022 is the biggest crypto fraud and among the biggest corporate frauds in history.

However, the announcement of SBF’s sentence had zilch impact on the crypto market.

It seems as if everyone already knew what was coming and it had zero impact on the price movement of the crypto market. Any price movement seems fairly independent of the sentence.

Bitcoin (BTC) continues to soar above $70k and Ethereum (ETH) above $3.5k.

Solana (SOL) is trading above $185 and Polkadot (DOT) only slightly below $10.

Meanwhile, a developer launched a memecoin ahead of the court sentence on Base, the Coinbase layer-2 network. The memecoin is called Sam Baseman Fraud with the FTX ticker.

 

Source: dexscreener

The memecoin rallied more than 23,300% but as it happens with controversial tokens, it dropped off to 85% of the highest value within hours.

Another memecoin dubbed Som Bonkmon Fraud was launched on the Solana network following the sentencing.

 

Source: dexscreener

It rallied more than 18,000% following its launch but soon fell off to 95% of its highest value within hours.

FTX, the native token of the now-defunct now-defunct FTX exchange, witnessed a drop of nearly 15% as the news of SBF’s sentence was announced.

 

Source: dexscreener