It’s Monday, Jan 9th - Welcome to the Cryptohunt Jam, where we spend a minute a day explaining the intersection of exciting new technologies and your world. As always: In plain English.

After a relatively quiet holiday, Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced CEO of collapsed crypto exchange FTX, appeared in court and did something that may shock you: He pleaded “not guilty”.

Let’s unpack that, and dive into the little oddities of the US justice system.

Remember, the US government is accusing Sam Bankman-Fried of eight different crimes. In essence, they are saying he lied to investors and stole customer funds - and those charges could add up to a maximum of 115 years in prison for the now-30 year old.

How much time he will serve, if found guilty, depends on many factors and one of them is what sentence the prosecution recommends to the judge. It is very common that guilty people strike a deal right away: I’ll admit what I did to save us all the time, and in return you recommend a lesser sentence.

So why didn’t SBF do that? We can only speculate, but likely because of two reasons.

First, the prosecution might have such strong evidence, that they feel confident enough to not make a deal. The public pressure is high, and they will try to make an example of him instead of looking lenient.

Secondly though, this seems to be part of SBFs larger defense strategy: From the beginning he has projected the image of the nice guy from next door who accidentally managed his business really badly. He has nothing to loose, so he is taking his chances with a jury - best case they believe him, worst case he’ll be in jail for the time he would have spent there anyhow.

So - now you know part of the chess game being played. This will remain really interesting. Stay tuned for more, as we will keep you in the loop.

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