Crypto Twitter did not hold back Friday amid news that disgraced FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s bail had been revoked. He was remanded to jail by a federal judge due to witness tampering, and industry personalities impacted in some way by his alleged misdeeds let loose on the social media platform.
“Take that, you witness tampering vegan-faking, money stealing, egotistical, delusional, coked-up, fraudulent, orgy-goblin, bean bag sleeping, self-entitled, stuck-up, pudgy little, twatwaffle,” Cinneamhain Ventures partner Adam Cochran tweeted. “I hope you enjoy prison.”
“SBF bail revoked [because] the dude cannot stop himself from cheating even to watch sports. Poetic, really,” General Counsel at Delphi Labs Gabriel Shapiro said.
Bankman-Fried’s bail was revoked following an order by presiding New York U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who doubted that a gag order would be enough to keep Bankman-Fried from speaking to the media.
“Sucks for Sam. If the past is prologue, he will not see home for 15-30 years,” former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli tweeted. “Played a high-stakes game and wanted a shortcut. Doesn’t work that way!”
Shkreli gained the “pharma bro” moniker in 2015 when he raised the price of the anti-malaria medication Daraprim by 4,000%. He was charged and convicted on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy, and released early from a seven-year prison sentence in 2022.
“Do you want to trust your hard-earned money to someone who can’t tell the difference between right & wrong?” Custodia Bank founder and CEO Caitlin Long tweeted. “Do you think SBF even cares that he put at risk the bail posted by his parents’ Stanford friends/colleagues?”
In July, Bankman-Fried’s attorney confirmed that he shared documents related to the former CEO of Alameda Research, Caroline Ellison, with the New York Times. Ellison was also a former romantic partner.
“Mr. Bankman-Fried entertained the reporter at his parents’ home in Palo Alto and showed some portion of Ms. Ellison’s private writings,” Judge Kaplan reportedly said. “The U.S. said it was to intimidate her and others. The defense says it’s about a First Amendment right.”
Bankman-Fried has also been accused of witness tampering using encrypted communication applications.
In December, Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas, one month after the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, on charges including fraud and money laundering by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
For some, Bankman-Fried being remanded into custody was a long time coming, given the extreme scale of his alleged crimes to the tune of billions of dollars’ worth of FTX customer assets.
“Nature is healing,” economist Alex Kruger said.
And some builders in the industry were not so long-winded in their assessment of the situation.
“Bitch, bye,” tweeted THNDR Games CEO Des Dickerson, adding an emoji of a hand making a peace sign.
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