Danny is CoinDesk's Managing Editor for Data & Tokens. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL.
Sam Bankman-Fried began his testimony like the brilliant former golden boy from crypto’s better days. He ended the longest, strangest, most torturous day yet of his criminal trial more imperiled than ever before.
To be clear, this is only a portion of the defense argument. When Bankman-Fried shows up Friday to testify in front of the jury, he'll have broader issues to discuss. But even if we put aside the specifics, the main issue may still be that he'll be the one testifying, and he'll still be subject to a cross-examination.
Sam excelled and even Judge Kaplan seemed to know it. When the 78-year-old jurist asked Sam to break down what a “block explorer” was, the explainer-in-chief launched into a lucid depiction of the websites crypto investors use to track where their tokens are. He emanated the eagerness and bravado of the technical boy wonder he used to be.
Her questioning of Sam forced the self-sure alleged fraudster deep into his own patchy memory hole. A typical back-and-forth went like this: But he didn’t treat those bottles with the angry fists that have subconsciously betrayed his state of mind before. During his ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison’s testimony two weeks ago, Sam put those poor Deer Park plastic throwaways in an air-squelching chokehold and then capped them, preserving their crumple. On Thursday, he did no such thing.
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