Sam Bankman-Fried Released on $250 Million Bond
FTX founder makes first U.S. court appearance following his extradition from the Bahamas
3 min
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was released on a $250 million bond Thursday and ordered to detention in his parents’ Palo Alto, Calif., home, after the former executive’s first appearance in a New York federal court following his extradition from the Bahamas.
Mr. Bankman-Fried, charged with engaging in criminal conduct that contributed to the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse, came to court shackled by the ankles and wearing a charcoal grey suit. He sat quietly at the defence table, flanked by his lawyers.
Mr. Bankman-Fried left the courthouse in a black SUV. At a later date he will enter a plea on charges that he engaged in fraud and other offences, a federal magistrate judge said. The next court hearing is set for Jan. 3.
Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein set the bail package, which requires Mr. Bankman-Fried to be under electronic monitoring and restricts his travel to parts of northern California and New York.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos called Mr. Bankman-Fried’s alleged crimes “a fraud of epic proportions” and said he believed the $250 million bond was the largest ever. The judge said the bond would be cosigned by four financially responsible people, including one non-family member.
The evidence against Mr. Bankman-Fried includes the testimony of multiple cooperators and more than a dozen witnesses from FTX and his crypto-trading firm Alameda Research, as well as encrypted text messages and tens of thousands of pages of financial documents, Mr. Roos said.
The government agreed to the bail package, Mr. Roos said, because Mr. Bankman-Fried had consented to extradition. Mr. Bankman-Fried’s financial assets had diminished significantly from when they were worth billions of dollars, he said.
Mark Cohen, a lawyer for Mr. Bankman-Fried, said his client agreed to extradition, which could have taken years, in order to address the charges. He noted Mr. Bankman-Fried would be living with both of his parents, who helped to secure his bond with the equity interest in their home.
Judge Gorenstein said he agreed to the bail package because he believed Mr. Bankman-Fried wasn’t a flight risk and didn’t pose a danger to the community.
“It will be very difficult for this defendant to hide without being recognised,” the judge said. Mr. Bankman-Fried had achieved such notoriety that it would be impossible for him to conduct any financial transactions, the judge added.
When the judge asked if Mr. Bankman-Fried understood that he could be charged with bail jumping if he failed to appear in court, he looked at his lawyers then said, “Yes, I do.”
Mr. Bankman-Fried has acknowledged making mistakes while running the company, but has denied committing fraud.
His appearance caps a dramatic series of legal developments that began when Mr. Bankman-Fried told a Bahamas judge Wednesday morning that he wanted to be transferred immediately to the U.S. to face charges and try to “make the relevant customers whole.”
After U.S. officials had him on a plane en route to New York on Wednesday night, they announced that two of his closest associates had pleaded guilty to several criminal offences and were cooperating with prosecutors.
Caroline Ellison, the former chief executive of Alameda Research, pleaded guilty to seven criminal counts, and former FTX Chief Technology Officer Gary Wang to four counts, according to their plea agreements. Their cooperation with investigators likely strengthens prosecutors’ case against Mr. Bankman-Fried, who is accused of defrauding customers, lenders and investors. It could also increase the legal peril facing other former FTX officials who played a role in the alleged scheme, as prosecutors have two insiders’ accounts and documents upon which they could rely at any future trials.
According to documents made public Thursday, Ms. Ellison and Mr. Wang pleaded guilty to participating in a scheme to defraud FTX customers from 2019 through November 2022 by misappropriating customer deposits and lending them to Alameda. Ms. Ellison also admitted participating in a scheme to defraud Alameda lenders by providing false information about its financial condition. She and Mr. Wang also pleaded guilty to misleading FTX investors.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a video statement Wednesday that the investigation into FTX is ongoing. He urged anyone who participated in misconduct at FTX or Alameda to come forward soon.
A lawyer for Ms. Ellison declined to comment after her guilty plea was announced. A lawyer for Mr. Wang said his client took his obligations as a cooperating witness seriously.
Both Ms. Ellison, 28 years old, and Mr. Wang, 29, have ties to Mr. Bankman-Fried that predate his founding of FTX. Ms. Ellison and Mr. Bankman-Fried worked together at Jane Street, a quantitative-trading firm, and were once romantically involved. Mr. Wang and Mr. Bankman-Fried were in the same coed living group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission also filed lawsuits against Ms. Ellison and Mr. Wang late Wednesday for their roles in a scheme to defraud FTX investors. Both agreed to settle the SEC’s and CFTC’s claims and to accept liability, according to the regulators.
Mr. Bankman-Fried is also charged with conspiring with others to make illegal campaign contributions. Mr. Williams said Mr. Bankman-Fried made political contributions look like they were coming from wealthy associates when in reality they were funded by Alameda with money from stolen customer funds.
Mr. Bankman-Fried personally donated $40 million to political campaigns and committees—mostly to Democrats and liberal-leaning groups.
FTX’s new management has said it would try to recoup campaign contributions made by Mr. Bankman-Fried and other FTX executives to pay back creditors.
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Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
Americans now think they need at least $1.25 million for retirement, a 20% increase from a year ago, according to a survey by Northwestern Mutual
Competitive pressure and creativity have made Chinese-designed and -built electric cars formidable competitors
4 min
China rocked the auto world twice this year. First, its electric vehicles stunned Western rivals at the Shanghai auto show with their quality, features and price. Then came reports that in the first quarter of 2023 it dethroned Japan as the world’s largest auto exporter.
How is China in contention to lead the world’s most lucrative and prestigious consumer goods market, one long dominated by American, European, Japanese and South Korean nameplates? The answer is a unique combination of industrial policy, protectionism and homegrown competitive dynamism. Western policy makers and business leaders are better prepared for the first two than the third.
Start with industrial policy—the use of government resources to help favoured sectors. China has practiced industrial policy for decades. While it’s finding increased favour even in the U.S., the concept remains controversial. Governments have a poor record of identifying winning technologies and often end up subsidising inferior and wasteful capacity, including in China.
But in the case of EVs, Chinese industrial policy had a couple of things going for it. First, governments around the world saw climate change as an enduring threat that would require decade-long interventions to transition away from fossil fuels. China bet correctly that in transportation, the transition would favour electric vehicles.
In 2009, China started handing out generous subsidies to buyers of EVs. Public procurement of taxis and buses was targeted to electric vehicles, rechargers were subsidised, and provincial governments stumped up capital for lithium mining and refining for EV batteries. In 2020 NIO, at the time an aspiring challenger to Tesla, avoided bankruptcy thanks to a government-led bailout.
While industrial policy guaranteed a demand for EVs, protectionism ensured those EVs would be made in China, by Chinese companies. To qualify for subsidies, cars had to be domestically made, although foreign brands did qualify. They also had to have batteries made by Chinese companies, giving Chinese national champions like Contemporary Amperex Technology and BYD an advantage over then-market leaders from Japan and South Korea.
To sell in China, foreign automakers had to abide by conditions intended to upgrade the local industry’s skills. State-owned Guangzhou Automobile Group developed the manufacturing know-how necessary to become a player in EVs thanks to joint ventures with Toyota and Honda, said Gregor Sebastian, an analyst at Germany’s Mercator Institute for China Studies.
Despite all that government support, sales of EVs remained weak until 2019, when China let Tesla open a wholly owned factory in Shanghai. “It took this catalyst…to boost interest and increase the level of competitiveness of the local Chinese makers,” said Tu Le, managing director of Sino Auto Insights, a research service specialising in the Chinese auto industry.
Back in 2011 Pony Ma, the founder of Tencent, explained what set Chinese capitalism apart from its American counterpart. “In America, when you bring an idea to market you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share,” he said, according to Fast Company, a technology magazine. “In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China—execution is.”
Thanks to that competition and focus on execution, the EV industry went from a niche industrial-policy project to a sprawling ecosystem of predominantly private companies. Much of this happened below the Western radar while China was cut off from the world because of Covid-19 restrictions.
When Western auto executives flew in for April’s Shanghai auto show, “they saw a sea of green plates, a sea of Chinese brands,” said Le, referring to the green license plates assigned to clean-energy vehicles in China. “They hear the sounds of the door closing, sit inside and look at the quality of the materials, the fabric or the plastic on the console, that’s the other holy s— moment—they’ve caught up to us.”
Manufacturers of gasoline cars are product-oriented, whereas EV manufacturers, like tech companies, are user-oriented, Le said. Chinese EVs feature at least two, often three, display screens, one suitable for watching movies from the back seat, multiple lidars (laser-based sensors) for driver assistance, and even a microphone for karaoke (quickly copied by Tesla). Meanwhile, Chinese suppliers such as CATL have gone from laggard to leader.
Chinese dominance of EVs isn’t preordained. The low barriers to entry exploited by Chinese brands also open the door to future non-Chinese competitors. Nor does China’s success in EVs necessarily translate to other sectors where industrial policy matters less and creativity, privacy and deeply woven technological capability—such as software, cloud computing and semiconductors—matter more.
Still, the threat to Western auto market share posed by Chinese EVs is one for which Western policy makers have no obvious answer. “You can shut off your own market and to a certain extent that will shield production for your domestic needs,” said Sebastian. “The question really is, what are you going to do for the global south, countries that are still very happily trading with China?”
Western companies themselves are likely to respond by deepening their presence in China—not to sell cars, but for proximity to the most sophisticated customers and suppliers. Jörg Wuttke, the past president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, calls China a “fitness centre.” Even as conditions there become steadily more difficult, Western multinationals “have to be there. It keeps you fit.”
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
Americans now think they need at least $1.25 million for retirement, a 20% increase from a year ago, according to a survey by Northwestern Mutual
