As SBF’s trial heads into its second week, right here’s what we all know up to now

As we gear up for week two of the Sam Bankman-Fried fraud trial, we pulled collectively among the juiciest bits from witnesses who took the stand final week. Amongst them was Gary Wang, the co-founder and CTO of FTX, who took a plea deal in December 2022. He’s anticipated to complete his cross-examination on Tuesday.

Listed below are another main factors from Wang’s testimony up to now:

In July 2019, Bankman-Fried allegedly requested Wang and FTX’s director of engineering, Nishad Singh — who’s additionally anticipated to testify — to present FTX’s crypto buying and selling agency sister firm, Alameda Analysis, the flexibility to withdraw past a stability of zero to assist pay for firm bills. The cash it was withdrawing got here from the client deposits and buying and selling charges FTX charged its customers.

On the identical day that the allow unfavorable characteristic was added, prosecutors shared that Bankman-Fried tweeted, “Alameda is a liquidity supplier on FTX however their account is rather like everybody else’s.”:

Wang testified that SBF requested him “greater than as soon as” to ensure Alameda by no means liquidates on FTX, so he deployed code to stop Alameda from liquidating no matter its balances, positions in trades or unfavorable stability.

Wang testified that in late 2019, Bankman-Fried advised him that so long as the withdrawals had been lower than complete buying and selling income, then it was positive for Alameda to maintain withdrawing. On the time, Alameda’s income was between $50 million to $100 million. However on the finish of 2019, Wang realized that Alameda was dipping into FTX’s prospects’ cash. He stated he flagged it to Bankman-Fried, however didn’t pursue the problem additional and “trusted [SBF’s] judgment.”