Sam Bankman-Fried will take the stand at his own trial, his legal counsel has confirmed. The founder of stricken crypto exchange FTX has endured three weeks of bruising testimony in federal court from ex-colleagues, peers, and other witnesses. But Bankman-Fried will now take the opportunity to relay his own version of events to the jury.
The US government has accused Bankman-Fried of masterminding a multibillion-dollar fraud, whereby funds belonging to FTX customers were swept into a sibling company, Alameda Research, and either used to back up risky crypto bets or spent on debt repayments, personal loans, political donations, and luxuries of various sorts. At trial, he is facing seven charges