Connect with us

Published

on

Neal Stephenson
Source: Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Author Neal Stephenson shot to fame almost 30 years ago with the science-fiction novel “Snow Crash,” which envisioned a future dominated by mega-corporations and organized crime, competing for dominance in both the real world and the “metaverse,” a computer-generated world accessible through virtual reality headsets.

Since then, he’s written several more novels encompassing technology and history, including a trilogy set at the dawn of the scientific revolution, and has done work for various technology companies including Jeff Bezos’ space travel company, Blue Origin, and augmented reality company Magic Leap.

His new novel, “Termination Shock,” out Nov. 16, focuses on the looming issue of our age — human-generated climate change, projecting a near future of extreme weather and social chaos. Against this setting, a maverick oilman decides to take matters into his own hands and builds the world’s biggest gun to shoot canisters of sulfur dioxide into the air, echoing the effects of a volcanic eruption and temporarily cooling parts of the globe. Geopolitics, social media and Dutch royalty all play a part.

Stephenson acknowledges that geoengineering is a radical step, but suggests as the effects of climate change grow more destructive, the demand for radical solutions will grow.

But if geoengineering does happen, it probably won’t be because a billionaire took matters into their own hands.

“In real life, somebody like that would probably get shut down,” he told CNBC in an interview.

“By far, the more plausible scenario is that some government somewhere just makes the calculation at some point that doing this would be fairly cheap and easy. And better than not doing it, as far as [their] selfish purposes are concerned.”

Personally, he favors an all-of-the-above set of solutions to climate change, including more clean energy sources, decarbonizing the economy and carbon capture to take some of the CO2 we’ve emitted over the last 150 years out of the atmosphere. The trouble is convincing large numbers of people that this kind of action is necessary.

He points to two factors that he expects will convince more people that climate change can no longer be ignored. One is rising sea levels.

“You can be as ideological as you want. But you can’t argue with the fact that your house is full of water,” he says.

“And the other one is these possible so-called wet-bulb events, where some areas become so hot and humid that everyone who’s outdoors will just die.” Stephenson points to the “heat dome” that descended over the Pacific Northwest last summer, causing temperatures to skyrocket for a few days and killing hundreds of people.

He does not necessarily believe governments will come together and agree on solutions, although he says the recent 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 26, was a necessary and useful event. “We have to have those conferences. And we have to hope and pray that their strongest and most optimistic recommendations are put into effect.”

But even if they can’t agree, governments will be forced to respond.

“I think we’ll see the big governments, the Indias and Chinas of the world, charting their own path,” he says. “At the end of the day, most politicians want to retain their power. And they’re going to do what it takes to keep getting votes or to maintain their grip on on the political system. And if they’re seen as having presided over huge apocalyptic disasters and not taking effective action, then they’re in trouble.”

Although he was one of the first writers to popularize the idea of virtual reality, he does not necessarily believe that people will retreat into artificial worlds as the real world becomes harder to live in.

“I don’t hate VR,” he says. “But the reality has been so far that most people don’t like to hang out there for more than a short period of time. That may change as the technology gets better, but there’s just inherent limitations on things like the problem of getting motion sickness, the problem of how do you move around?”

He’s more bullish on augmented reality — the idea pioneered by Magic Leap and currently being developed by Microsoft, Apple, and others, where computer-generated images are blended with the real world. But he agrees it won’t take off until there’s a good reason for people to wear headsets or glasses for long periods of time. “It’ll probably have something to do with making it even smaller, more compact, and less of an intrusive experience to wear around.”

As far as the metaverse goes, Stephenson has stood back and watched as the tech and business worlds have claimed the term for themselves, most notably the company formerly known as Facebook, which renamed itself Meta to emphasize its interest in building a computer-generated universe.

“All I can do is kind of sit back and watch it in amazement,” he said. But, as many have noticed, “There’s a pretty big gap between what Facebook is actually doing, like running Facebook and WhatsApp and Instagram, and the visions that they’re talking about for the metaverse.”

Here’s a transcript of the complete interview, lightly edited for clarity and length.

Matt Rosoff, CNBC: The plot of your new novel “Termination Shock” is essentially about a maverick businessperson using geoengineering to reverse climate change. For CNBC readers who may not be familiar with the concept of geoengineering, can you tell us a little bit about it?

Neal Stephenson, author: The first point to emphasize is that it doesn’t fix the actual problem, which is too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But it’s thought that it could be a stopgap way to slow down the rate at which the climate gets hotter.

And it’s basically imitating the effects of large volcanic eruptions by putting sulfur dioxide or something else into the atmosphere, right?

Exactly. There have been many cases throughout history where a big volcano — most recently, Pinatubo in the Philippines — does exactly this. And it puts particles or droplets of sulfates into the stratosphere, and those sort of act as a veil that bounces back a little bit of the sun’s radiation back into space so that it never reaches our planet and doesn’t warm us up. So we know that this cools the planet down because it’s happened a bunch of times throughout history. And we also know that the sulfates will kind of naturally wash out of the atmosphere in a couple of years. And you go back to where you were before.

The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, 1991.
Thomson Reuters

So you almost need a constant infusion of them. While you decarbonize.

Exactly. The only sane way to use this, if it’s done at all, is as a way to buy time for decarbonization, which is what we really need to do.

How did you get interested in this subject and become fascinated with it enough to base a novel on it?

I’ve been hearing about the idea for a number of years. I’m interested in history. I’m interested in science and the physics of the planet. And so, the idea that a volcano could erupt somewhere and affect temperatures all over the planet is a natural, fascinating topic for me. Over the last decade or two, it’s become increasingly clear that the CO2 content in the atmosphere is a huge problem, and that it’s getting worse fast, and we’re not really being very effective. Despite efforts by a number of people to draw attention to the problem and and push for emissions reductions, that number is still climbing rather rapidly and probably will keep climbing for a while. So rolling that together in the brain of the science fiction novelist, that looks like the basis for a story that that’s got that technical angle to it, but that’s also got a strong geopolitical and personal storytelling basis.

Do you think it’s a realistic likelihood that this could happen in 10 to 15 years? Maybe a maverick individual, but more likely a government that doesn’t particularly care much about world opinion will take it into their own hands?

I agree. In this book, it’s the maverick billionaire because it makes for a good story. But I have to do a lot of explaining as to how he’s able to get away with it, because in real life, somebody like that would probably get shut down. By far, the more plausible scenario is that some government somewhere just makes the calculation at some point that doing this would be fairly cheap and easy. And better than not doing it as far as [their] selfish purposes are concerned.

It’s considered a pretty radical out-there idea. If you look at the overall landscape and what you’ve been seeing over the last few years, what do you think the likelihood of countries in industry and individuals voluntarily taking steps to reduce emissions enough to keep global warming to a minimum? Or how do you think it’s likely to play out over the next 10 to 15 years?

The number that matters is the CO2 in the atmosphere, which is above 400 parts per million and climbing, That’s higher than it’s been in millions of years. So when we talk about emissions reductions, all we’re saying is that the rate at which that number grows, will slow down. But it’s still growing, the numbers still get higher every year. It’s just not climbing as fast because we reduced our emissions. If we could get to zero emissions, which might happen in a few decades — like China’s saying maybe by 2060, it might get to zero emissions. That just means that that number stays wherever it is, for about a million years, which is how long it takes natural processes to remove it. So emissions reductions are great and zero emissions would be better than than not doing that, but still leaves us stuck with the number at a dangerously high level until we take active measures to remove that carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

What do you think of carbon capture as a technology? Have you followed it at all?

I know an increasing number of people who are techies who are altering their careers to think about this and work on this. There’s a bunch of ways that it could be done. We have to do it. It will be the biggest engineering project by far in human history. We have to do it. We have to succeed. And it’ll take many decades.

Did you follow the COP26 conference at all? What did you think of it?

I followed it. Not super closely. But all of that stuff is great. We have to have those conferences. And we have to hope and pray that their strongest and most optimistic recommendations are put into effect. For sure. It’s just while we’re doing that, we can’t lose sight of what I said before, which is that reducing emissions or taking emissions to zero still doesn’t begin to solve the problem. It just means that we’re not making the problem worse.

What about other forms of energy? Nuclear energy in particular is one that draws a lot of interest from from readers. It’s zero carbon, but there’s fear about it, and some of that fear is grounded. What about that and other energy forms?

Nuclear, I think during the Cold War it kind of got rushed into service, too soon. And before the whole picture was was fully understood. So it’s not where where the engineering resources have been going in the last few decades. And with more resources, more engineers, more money, maybe we can find ways to do it that are that are safer. There are still intractable problems around what to do with nuclear waste, and and so on that need attention. But we’re entering into this phase in our history where we have to start thinking in terms of relative risks. If you’re talking about a particular new technology, they have to compare its risk to the risk of not using it.

There’s a lot going on that’s promising. Beyond just nuclear, there’s geothermal and the usual suspects, wind, solar, etc. And we need it all.

A lot of these discussions get bogged down by ideological purity tests. So one one side you’ve got activists who say if you even talk about adaptation, that’s wrong. Because you’re giving up on reduction. And if you even talk about carbon capture, you’re just giving the current economy and the current fossil fuel industry more more leeway to keep burning. Then you’ve got other people, the Bjorn Lomborgs of the world, who say, “Oh, we’re focusing way too much on the risks and not talking about the costs enough, and growth is the only way out.” How do you think about this? How do you parse this when you’re looking at all of these different, really strong ideological beliefs?

Yeah, a whole separate dimension to the problem that we’re facing is weird, weird polarization of everything. It’s incredibly obstructive. There was just an article in The New York Times about Republicans who are furious at other Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill. Like, how dare you vote for bridges?

It’s really disheartening and seems like it’s definitely this partisan shift by bad actors who think they’re gaining something from it.

I personally can look at something like carbon capture, and I can make an argument that convinces me that we should be doing it, so it’s not hard for me to formulate my own opinion on that. Much harder is getting millions and millions of other people to agree.

What do you think will be the tipping point? I’ve noticed a lot more people coming around to the idea that we need a multifaceted, throw-everything-at-it solution. And I think some of that comes as the effects become harder and harder to ignore, so it’s harder to presume that this is just happening somewhere else. Do you imagine some kind of event, or series of events, that can break this logjam?

So here’s an example. We had this heat dome event in Seattle over the summer, where out of nowhere, from a normal summer’s day, just suddenly, it was 115 degrees. Much hotter than it has ever been in Seattle.

I grew up there, and lived there for 10 years as an adult as well. So yeah, that was staggering.

So that happened overnight, and after three days of that, overnight, the temperature dropped by 50 degrees. A bunch of people died. So I think an event like that might convince a bunch of people who live in Seattle.

But I think one is going to be rising sea levels, which is something you can’t argue with. You can be as ideological as you want. But you can’t argue with the fact that your house is full of water.

And the other one is these possible so-called wet-bulb events, where some areas become so hot and humid that everyone who’s outdoors will just die.

How can people come together to ensure that solutions help the broadest number of people, rather than pulling up the drawbridges — let’s just escape into space or our compound in New Zealand or something like that? Or do you think it’s inevitable that the people with the means are going to run?

Of course, some people are going to do that. And other parts of the world are going to be depopulated one way or the other. But I think we’ll see the big governments, the Indias and Chinas of the world, charting their own path, going their own way, doing what they think they need to do, in order to basically prevent their their governments from falling. At the end of the day, most politicians want to retain their power. And they’re going to do what it takes to keep getting votes or to maintain their grip on on the political system. And if they’re seen as having presided over huge apocalyptic disasters and not taking effective action, then they’re in trouble.

I have to ask about the metaverse, a term that you coined in the book “Snow Crash” in 1992. Now it’s everywhere in tech. It was on Disney‘s earnings call! Everybody in the tech world is suddenly using the term, probably not the way you intended it or originally envisioned it. What are your thoughts on that?

I have to assume that some of this is pre-emptive. Making sure that one company — that Facebook — doesn’t establish a trademarkable position. If they begin to throw the term around, and nobody else does, then they might be able to later prevent other people from from using the term. So that might be part of why they’re doing this.

I don’t know. All I can do is kind of sit back and watch it in amazement.

There’s a pretty big gap between what Facebook is actually doing, like running Facebook and WhatsApp and Instagram, and the visions that they’re talking about for the metaverse. They’re two very different things. That’s important to keep in mind.

I had a conversation with a VC maybe six or seven years ago, and he was sort of a pessimist in general about the course of humanity and where things are going. He said, “Hey, you know, if you’re a pessimist, VR seems like a great bet. Because everybody’s going to want to escape from their real world conditions.” Do you see things that way at all?

I’m personally more interested in AR than in VR. I mean, I don’t hate VR. But the reality has been so far that most people don’t like to hang out there for more than a short period of time. That may change as the technology gets better, but there’s just inherent limitations on things like the problem of getting motion sickness, the problem of how do you move around? I mean, while I’m talking to you, I’m just kind of wandering around my house. And that’s a normal human thing to do, to want to get up and move around. That’s a difficult thing to do in a VR environment because you’ll step on your cat.

I know you were involved with Magic Leap, and that seems to have gone in a different direction with Peggy Johnson in charge, focusing on enterprise a lot, like Microsoft has, but what’s it going to take for for AR to really take off? What are the technological barriers? I look at how mobile was with Windows Mobile and Palm and some of those things, and then all of a sudden, the iPhone had enough new things in it, the capacitive touch screen and the idea of apps, that it was 18 months ahead of everybody else. And that was enough for it to take off. Is there something like that, that would have to happen for AR to take off?

I think that’s a good analogy. Somewhere out there is that tipping point. And nobody knows where it is until they’ve found it. And so timing is tricky. I think what Magic Leap accomplished in the way of hardware is impressive. I mean, they’re shipping a headset with a 6D controller and a whole system that tracks the room around you. And it makes it possible for applications to interact with things that it sees in your environment. And there’s a lot of engineering that has to happen to make those things all work together in a package that doesn’t immediately catch on fire or run out of batteries.

I actually saw [former Oculus CTO John] Carmack tweeted, not about Magic Leap, but he was saying maybe what VR headsets need is a big heat exchanger that would sit on top of your head.

So engineering-wise, I think it’s been going pretty well. The question is what will prompt people to want to wear something like this all day long and make it just a routine thing to carry around. And it’ll probably have something to do with making it even smaller, more compact, and less of an intrusive experience to wear around.

You’ve been writing about technology for about three decades now. When you look back at when you started this, when the internet was young, what has surprised you and what do you think you’ve been right about? What did you anticipate, and what did you not anticipate?

The popularity early on of relatively simple forms of the internet, just simple web browsers with words and pictures, and how catchy that was, how rapidly people adopted it. That was a surprise to me because as a techie, I wanted to have more splashy kinds of technologies like full 3D immersive experiences. Who knew that reading a few words on a webpage and maybe seeing a grainy JPEG would be so transformative?

On the not-so-happy side, the speed with which and the completeness with which it was taken over by bad actors. I remember when Obama was elected. People were saying, ‘Well, you know, Obama’s team, they understood the internet, they understood how to use the internet. And Republicans, they’re old. And they don’t get it. So they’ve been left in the dust.’ And then eight years later, not only did they get it, but they got way in a way deeper, and much more kind of cynical way than the Democrats had.

I know that there’s an HBO adaptation of “Snow Crash” in the works, maybe coming out this year. I haven’t heard much about it recently, can you talk about that?

The reason you haven’t heard about it is because they passed on it in June. So it’s no longer an HBO Max project. It’s reverted to Paramount. And Kennedy/Marshall.

Are we going to see it soon?

All I can say is stay tuned. A lot of people want it to happen.

Continue Reading

Technology

Reddit shares plunge almost 25% in two days, finish the week below first day close

Published

on

By

Reddit shares plunge almost 25% in two days, finish the week below first day close

The trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange prepares for the social media platform Reddit’s initial public offering in New York City on March 21, 2024.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Reddit shares are plummeting after experiencing a rally stemming from the social media company’s IPO last week.

Shares closed at $49.32, ending the week below their closing price on Reddit’s first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange. They closed at $50.44 last Thursday. Stock markets are closed on Good Friday.

Reddit shares began their downward spiral on Wednesday, when they sank about 11% to $57.75 at market close. That day, Hedgeye Risk Management described Reddit’s stock as “grossly overvalued” in a report cited by Bloomberg News, adding the company was on the firm’s “short bench.”

Earlier this week, Reddit disclosed in a corporate filing that CEO Steve Huffman sold 500,000 shares. Ben Silverman, vice president of research at Verity, told CNBC the move was expected and represents just “a portion of his holdings.”

Meanwhile, Reddit Chief Operating Officer Jennifer Wong disclosed that she sold 514,000 shares and now holds 1.4 million of the company’s shares.

“There’s always a bit of a disconnect, because the purpose of bringing the company public is twofold,” Silverman said. “It’s not just to generate liquidity for the company itself so that it can expand and grow. In these situations, it often allows insiders to cash out to generate liquidity, and that’s something executives have to consider here.”

“If the prospects are so bright, why are insiders selling?” Silverman added.

Reddit shares started off the week on a high note and soared 30% on Monday. The company’s shares then rose 8.8% on Tuesday to close at $65.11, even after New Street Research issued a neutral rating on the company.

The New Street Research analysts wrote in a note that they wouldn’t alter their $54 price target and that they expect “volatility into the first earnings report.”

Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO:

Reddit shares slump after CEO Steve Huffman sells 500,000 shares

Continue Reading

Technology

Xiaomi releases electric car $4K cheaper than Tesla’s Model 3 as price wars heat up

Published

on

By

Xiaomi releases electric car K cheaper than Tesla's Model 3 as price wars heat up

Chinese consumer electronics company Xiaomi revealed Thurs., Dec. 28, 2023, its long-awaited electric car, but declined to share its price or specific release date.

CNBC | Evelyn Cheng

BEIJING — Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi said Thursday it will sell its first car for far less than Tesla’s Model 3, as price wars heat up in China’s fiercely competitive electric car market.

Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun said the standard version of the SU7 will sell for 215,900 yuan ($30,408) in the country — a price he acknowledged would mean the company was selling each car at a loss.

Tesla’s Model 3 starts at 245,900 yuan in China.

Lei claimed the standard version of the SU7 beat the Model 3 on more than 90% of its specifications, except on two aspects that he said it might take Xiaomi at least three to five years to catch up with Tesla on. He also said the SU7 had a minimum driving range of 700 kilometers (nearly 435 miles) versus the Model 3’s 606 kilometers. The company said orders had exceeded 50,000 cars in the 27 minutes since sales started at 10 p.m. Beijing time Thursday.

Deliveries are set to start by the end of April, Lei said. Lei also claimed that Xiaomi’s car factory, for which all “key” steps are fully automated, can produce an SU7 every 76 seconds. It was not immediately clear whether the factory was fully operational.

Earlier this week, the Xiaomi CEO said on social media the SU7 would be the best sedan “under 500,000 yuan” ($69,328).

The car is entering a fiercely competitive market in China, where companies are launching a slew of new models and cutting prices in order to survive. Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei has partnered with traditional automakers, most notably launching the Aito brand whose vehicles are often on display in Huawei smartphone showrooms.

Tesla‘s Model 3 is the best-selling new energy sedan in China that has a driving range of at least 600 kilometers (372 miles) and costs less than 500,000 yuan, according to data from industry website Autohome.

Xiaomi targets 20 million premium users for its new electric vehicle, says president

BYD‘s Han sedan starts at 169,800 yuan, according to Autohome.

Nio‘s ET5 starts at 298,000 yuan, while Xpeng‘s P7 starts at 209,900 yuan, the data showed. Geely-owned Zeekr’s 007 sedan starts at 209,900 yuan, according to Autohome.

Sales of new energy vehicles, which include battery-only powered cars, have surged in China to account for about one-third of new passenger cars sold, according to the China Passenger Car Association.

Accessories

The heads of competing electric car startups Nio, Xpeng and Li Auto were among the featured guests at the Xiaomi SU7 launch event.

Lei on Thursday showed off a range of accessories such as an in-car refrigerator, a custom front-window shade, and a smartphone holder, some available for free with a car purchase before the end of April, and others for a separate price.

The SU7 supports Apple’s Car Play and can integrate with the iPad, Lei said. He also revealed driver-assist tech for highways and cities, set to be fully available in China in August.

Tesla’s Autopilot for driver assist on highways is available in China, but the company’s “Full Self Driving” for city streets has yet to be released in the country.

Despite saying Xiaomi wanted to compete with Porsche at a car tech event in December, Lei acknowledged that the SU7 had longer to go before it might be able to compete at this more premium level. He announced that the “Max” version of the SU7, aimed as a competitor with Porsche’s Taycan, would sell for 299,900 yuan.

Ecosystem of devices

The rapid rise of Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD

Continue Reading

Technology

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years for crypto fraud, pay $11 billion in forfeiture

Published

on

By

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years for crypto fraud, pay  billion in forfeiture

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison for massive crypto fraud

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday for the massive fraud and conspiracy that doomed his cryptocurrency exchange and a related hedge fund, Alameda Research.

The sentence in Manhattan federal court was significantly less than the 40 to 50 years in prison that federal prosecutors wanted for Bankman-Fried. But it was much more than the five to six-and-a-half years suggested by his attorneys.

“There is a risk that this man will be in position to do something very bad in the future,” Judge Lewis Kaplan said before sentencing the 32-year-old and ordering him to pay $11 billion in forfeiture to the U.S. government.

“And it’s not a trivial risk at all,” Kaplan added.

The judge said that in 30 years on the federal bench, he had “never seen a performance” like Bankman-Fried’s trial testimony.

If Bankman-Fried was not “outright lying” during cross-examination by prosecutors, he was “evasive,” Kaplan said.

Jurors at trial likewise did not buy Bankman-Fried’s version of events, convicting him in November of seven criminal counts and holding him responsible for losing about $10 billion in customer money due to the securities fraud conspiracy.

Kaplan on Thursday said the quarter-century prison term has “the purpose of disabling him to the extent that can appropriately be done for a significant period of time.”

Before being sentenced, Bankman-Fried spoke contritely even as he suggested that the billions of dollars customers lost was the result of a “liquidity crisis” or “mismanagement,” not fraud.

Indicted FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves the U.S. Courthouse in New York City, July 26, 2023.

Amr Alfiky | Reuters

“My useful life is probably over,” he said while wearing a beige jailhouse jumpsuit. “It’s been over for a while now since before my arrest.”

“They built something really beautiful and I threw all of that away,” he said of his co-workers at FTX, a company once valued at $32 billion. “It haunts me every day.”

“A lot of people feel really let down. And they were very let down,” he said. “And
I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about what happened at every stage.”

“It’s been excruciating to watch this all unfold,” he told Kaplan. “Customers don’t deserve this level of pain.”

“I was the CEO of FTX and I was responsible.”

But even as he took some responsibility, Bankman-Fried suggested that customers eventually would get back the money they placed with his exchange, and blamed a federal bankruptcy court for not making those customers whole yet.

Kaplan appeared to stop paying close attention at that point.

In response, Bankman-Fried crossed his arms and began rapidly tapping his right foot as he continued speaking.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Roos, arguing for a prison sentence of up to five decades, scoffed at the picture painted by Bankman-Fried and his lawyers.

FTX’s collapse was not due to “a liquidity crisis or act of mismanagement,” Roos said. “It was the theft” of billions of dollars of customer money around the world, the prosecutor said.

“It was a loss that affected people significantly.”

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, in a statement after the sentencing, said, “Samuel Bankman-Fried orchestrated one of the largest financial frauds in history.”

“His deliberate and ongoing lies demonstrated a brazen disregard for his customers’ expectations and disrespect for the rule of law, all so that he could secretly use his customers’ money to expand his own power and influence,” Williams said.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “Anyone who believes they can hide their financial crimes behind wealth and power, or behind a shiny new thing they claim no one else is smart enough to understand, should think twice. I

Bankman-Fried’s family, in a statement, said, “We are heartbroken and will continue to fight for our son.” Both Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, who are Stanford Law professors, were in court for the sentencing.

Barbara Fried and Allan Joseph Bankman, parents of FTX Co-Founder Sam Bankman-Fried, arrive at court in New York, US, on Thursday, March 28, 2024. Sam Bankman-Fried returns to court for sentencing after being convicted of a massive fraud that led to the collapse of his FTX exchange. 

Yuki Iwamura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Before he sentenced SBF, Kaplan said he rejected “the entirety of defendant’s argument there was no loss” at FTX, calling that claim “misleading, logically flawed and speculative.”

Several victims of Bankman-Fried then talked about the damage to their lives from his crimes.

Bankman-Fried looked at the victims as they talked to the judge.

Bankman-Fried plans to appeal his conviction and sentence.

Three other people, who all testified against Bankman-Fried at trial, are awaiting their own sentencings after pleading guilty to criminal charges related to FTX and Alameda Research.

They are Caroline Ellison, the Alameda CEO who at one time dated Bankman-Fried, FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh and Gary Wang, the co-founder and chief technology officer of FTX.

WATCH: The collapse of FTX: Insiders Tell All

This is developing news. Check back for updates.

Continue Reading

Trending