Transcript Ep. 549: Here’s How Sam Bankman-Fried’s High-Stakes Trial Could Play Out

Nik De, CoinDesk’s managing editor for global policy and regulation, discusses the importance of jury selection in the trial and how many years Sam Bankman-Fried may face if found guilty.

Nik De:

Even though each of these charges, if you look at the DOJ press release says, oh, it contains a maximum sentence of 20 years or five years, whatever, it's not going to be consecutive. It'll be concurrent. So the estimate I'm getting from various attorneys that I've spoken to over the past few weeks is, it'll probably be somewhere in the 10 to 20 year range.

Laura Shin:

Hi everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto eight years ago and as a senior editor at Forbes was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the September 29th, 2023 episode of Unchained.

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Today's guest is Nik De, CoinDesk's managing editor for global policy and regulation. Welcome, Nik.

Nik De:

Thanks for having me. 

Laura Shin:

The trial for former FTX CEO Sam Benkman-Fried starts next Tuesday, October 3rd. There's been a lot happening pre-trial. For instance, Sam has requested release from jail multiple times and repeatedly been denied, including as recently as Thursday morning. My personal thought was that it seemed like all these requests that the defense was putting in at this critical juncture right before the trial was supposed to begin was maybe not the best use of their time, but that's just my personal opinion. I'm not a lawyer. Why do you think they made this such a point of focus in the last few days?

Nik De: