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Former FTX Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried, who faces fraud charges over the collapse of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, arrives on the day of a hearing at Manhattan federal court in New York City, January 3, 2023.

David Dee Delgado | Reuters

In Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud trial, prosecutors won quickly by keeping it simple.

Jurors needed only about three hours of deliberations to find the FTX founder guilty of seven criminal counts, which could amount to a life sentence. For a high-profile monthlong trial that involved nearly 20 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits, experts told CNBC they’d never seen such a speedy decision.

“The jury came back in next to no time on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, a charge that is notoriously difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt in typical cases, especially for complex financial wrongdoing,” said Yesha Yadav, professor of law and associate dean at Vanderbilt University.

Working in the government’s favor was a basic fact that’s accepted by just about everyone: stealing money is wrong.

Both the prosecution and defense agreed that $10 billion in customer money that was sitting in FTX’s crypto exchange went missing, with some of it going toward payments for real estate, recalled loans, venture investments, and political donations. They also agreed that Bankman-Fried was calling the shots.

The key question for jurors was one of intent. Did Bankman-Fried knowingly commit fraud in directing those payouts with FTX customer cash, or did he simply make some mistakes along the way?

Nicolas Roos and Danielle Sassoon, the two assistant U.S. attorneys who led the prosecution’s case through the trial, continuously reminded investors that billions of dollars went missing at the expense of ordinary investors. Crypto may be complicated because it’s unregulated and has been difficult to categorize as a currency, commodity or something else. But Roos and Sassoon emphasized how little any of that mattered to the case at hand.

The prosecution called as its first witness a London-based cocoa bean trader who lost $100,000 on FTX. The investor, Marc-Antoine Julliard, turned to the platform in 2021 to diversify his holdings because he said the company gave the impression that it was trustworthy.

“The key at trial, aside from the multiple cooperators, was the way in which prosecutors simplified the case and tried it as a garden-variety fraud instead of as a complex crypto scheme,” Renato Mariotti, a former prosecutor in the U.S. Justice Department’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Section, told CNBC.

Mariotti, who’s now a trial partner in Chicago with Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, said, “The simpler story is usually the winner at a jury trial.”

Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, underscored that point in a press briefing after the verdicts were read on Thursday evening.

“While the cryptocurrency industry might be new and the players like Sam Bankman-Fried might be new, this kind of corruption is as old as time,” Williams said. “This case has always been about lying, cheating, and stealing, and we have no patience for it.”

What's next after Sam Bankman-Fried's conviction in fraud trial: CNBC Crypto World

Prosecutors had a lot going for them.

Bankman-Fried, the 31-year-old son of two Stanford legal scholars, had shirked legal advice well after FTX and sister hedge fund Alameda Research spiraled into bankruptcy in late 2022. He remained prolific and unfiltered in dealing with the press, even speaking publicly by video to journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times DealBook Summit, which took place three weeks after his crypto empire collapsed.

“What do your lawyers tell you right now,?” Sorkin asked. “Are they suggesting this is a good idea for you to be speaking?

“No, they are very much not,” Bankman-Fried responded. “The classic advice — don’t say anything, recede into a hole. And that’s not who I am. It’s not who I want to be.”

That interview, along with others, came back to haunt him. Audio and video clips and news excerpts, from before, during and after FTX’s failure, gave the prosecution a mountain of evidence on top of the damning witness testimony it was able to present.

‘Impossible position’

In September of 2022, when the crisis had become evident internally, Bankman-Fried told CNBC that he had $1 billion in free cash to deploy across the industry. The following month, at an event in Washington, D.C., he boasted of FTX’s role in helping to prop up the industry through a cascade of failures.

In presenting those statements to the jury, the prosecution made clear that Bankman-Fried knew he was lying.

“SBF lost this case before it started,” Mariotti said. “He put his lawyers in an impossible position by committing outlandish crimes and refusing to keep his mouth shut even after it was apparent that he was under investigation.”

Sassoon ended by telling the jurors that Bankman-Fried thought he could fool customers, reporters and the public. Now, he was aiming to fool them.

“Don’t fall for it,” she said. “Find him guilty.”

Paul Tuchmann, a former federal prosecutor who is currently a partner with Wiggin and Dana LLP, said a three-hour deliberation for a trial of this length is “not common at all.”

“It really goes to show the strength of the government’s case,” said Tuchmann.

While prosecutors brought up witnesses from Bankman-Fried’s inner circle who were cooperating as part of plea agreements, the defense’s case was mostly built on testimony from the defendant himself. Tuchmann described Bankman-Fried’s performance as “unpersuasive.”

Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents, seated to the left, react to the verdict. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams is seated to the far right.

Artist: Elizabeth Williams

Starring for the prosecution was Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend and the former head of Alameda. On the stand, Ellison, who pleaded guilty in December to multiple charges, said that she and Bankman-Fried committed “fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering.”

Jurors also got to hear Ellison on tape describing to employees the huge hole in FTX’s balance sheet and the disappearance of customer money. And they saw text messages she sent to Bankman-Fried, including one as the grand scheme was falling apart, in which she wrote “this is the best mood I’ve been in in like a year” because the nightmare was all finally coming to an end.

“No one had a shred of support for SBF, nor should they have,” trial attorney James Koutoulas told CNBC.

Regarding the speedy deliberation, Koutoulas said, “That’s enough time for everybody to be like, I’m glad it’s over, let’s eat our cookies or our sandwiches, recap the facts, and everybody say, ‘OK, well he’s guilty, right?'”

In addition to Ellison, the government called to the stand FTX co-founder Gary Wang, who was Bankman-Fried’s childhood friend from math camp, FTX’s former director of engineering Nishad Singh, and Bankman-Fried’s former roommate and senior FTX coder Adam Yedidia. FTX’s ex-general counsel Can Sun also testified.

“The prosecution featured no fewer than four cooperating witnesses from the senior ranks of the companies, all of whom convincingly described the defendant as the leader of the fraudulent schemes,” said Kevin J. O’Brien, a former assistant U.S. attorney who specializes in white collar criminal defense in New York. “The prosecutors were confident, brisk and well-organized in their presentation, which juries in a complex, lengthy case always appreciate.”

The defense, led by Mark Cohen, tried to create reasonable doubt by pointing out flaws in testimony. But O’Brien said the defense failed to negate the important facts.

When Bankman-Fried took the stand over three separate days, he did himself no favors.

Bankman-Fried rushed through lengthy and convoluted sentences that at times were repetitive and contradictory. That’s when he was responding to his lawyer’s questions. On cross-examination, he clammed up, replying with “Yup,” and some variation of “I don’t recall” over 100 times.

Bankman-Fried’s decision to testify “backfired because of inconsistencies in his testimony and his general lack of appeal,” said O’Brien.

Mariotti credited the Justice Department for working “collaboratively and with urgency” with the Commodities Future Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. That allowed the government to move swiftly while gathering highly compelling evidence.

“Sam Bankman-Fried will be remembered as one of the biggest fraudsters of our lifetimes,” Mariotti said. “He has finally met a situation that he can’t talk his way out of.”

WATCH: Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty on all seven counts

Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty on all seven criminal fraud counts: Here's what next

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Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

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Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.

The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.

As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.

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After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:

We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.

Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:

Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:

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Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller

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Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller

A new Tesla prototype was spotted again, reigniting speculation among Tesla shareholders, even though it’s likely just a Model Y, potentially a bit smaller, and the upcoming stripped-down, cheaper version.

Over the last few months, there have been several sightings of what appears to be a Model Y with camouflage around Tesla’s Fremont factory.

It sparked a lot of speculation about it being the new “affordable” compact Tesla vehicle.

There’s confusion in the Tesla community around Tesla’s upcoming “affordable” vehicles because CEO Elon Musk falsely denied a report last year about Tesla’s “$25,000” EV model being canceled.

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The facts are that Musk canceled two cheaper vehicles that Tesla was working on, commonly referred as “the $25,000 Tesla” in early 2024. Those vehicles were codenamed NV91 and NV92, and they were based on the new vehicle platform that Tesla is now reserving for the Cybercab.

Instead, Musk noticed that Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y production lines were starting to be underutilized as the Company faced demand issues. Therefore, Tesla canceled the vehicles program based on the new platform and decided to build new vehicles on Model 3/Y platform using the same production lines.

We previously reported that these electric vehicles will likely look very similar to Model 3 and Model Y.

In recent months, several other media reports reinforced this, and Tesla all but confirmed it during its latest earnings call, when it stated that it is “limited in how different vehicles can be when built on the same production lines.”

Now, the same Tesla prototype has been spotted over the last few days, and it sent the Tesla shareholders community into a frenzy of speculations:

Electrek’s Take

As we have repeatedly reported over the last year, the new “affordable” Tesla “models” coming are basically only stripped-down Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

They might end up being a little smaller by a few inches, and Tesla may use different model names, but they will be extremely similar.

If this is it, which is possible, you can see it looks almost exactly like a Model Y.

It’s hard to confirm if it’s indeed smaller because of the angle of the vehicle compared to the other Model Ys, but it’s not impossible that the wheelbase is a bit smaller – although it’s hard to confirm.

Either way, the most significant changes for these stripped-down, more affordable “models” are expected to be cheaper interior materials, like textile seats instead of vegan leather, no heated or ventilated seats standard, no rear screen, maybe even no double-panned acoustic glass and a lesser audio system.

As previously stated, the real goal of these new variants, or models, is to lower the average sale price in order to combat decreasing demand and maintain or increase the utilization rate of Tesla’s current production lines, which have been throttled down in the last few years to now about 60% utilization.

If this trend continues, Tesla would find itself in trouble and may even have to close its factories.

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Ethereum is powering Wall Street’s future. The crypto scene at Cannes shows how far it’s come

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Ethereum is powering Wall Street's future. The crypto scene at Cannes shows how far it's come

Ethereum succeeded beyond anyone's expectations, says network co-founder Vitalik Buterin at EthCC

CANNES — Wall Street’s new plumbing is being built on Ethereum and this week its architects took over the same French Riviera villas and red carpet venues that host the Cannes Film Festival in May.

The Ethereum Community Conference, or EthCC, took over the beachside town that was swarming with crypto founders, developers, and some of the institutional giants now building atop the infrastructure.

The crypto elite climbed the iconic red-carpeted steps of the Palais des Festivals — a cinematic landmark now repurposed as the stage for Ethereum’s flagship European event.

“The atmosphere this year was palpable in Cannes,” said Bettina Boon Falleur, the powerhouse behind EthCC for the past seven years. “The prestige of the location, combined with the quality of talks, has reinforced Ethereum’s stature and purpose in the wider ecosystem.”

Private parties sprawled across cliffside estates and exclusive resorts, but the conversations were less about price action and more about the blockchain’s evolving role as the back-end of global finance.

EthCC, now in its eighth year, has tracked Ethereum’s trajectory from scrappy experiment to institutional backbone.

“That impact was unmistakable this year,” Falleur said. “From Robinhood embracing decentralized finance infrastructure via Arbitrum to local governments like the City of Cannes exploring deeper integration with the crypto economy.”

Indeed, one of the boldest moves came this week from Robinhood, which became the first publicly traded U.S. company to launch tokenized stocks on-chain.

At a product showcase held inside a Belle Époque mansion overlooking the sea, Robinhood unveiled a sweeping new crypto strategy — including the ability for European users to trade tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs via Arbitrum, a Layer 2 network built on Ethereum.

The announcement helped push Robinhood stock past $100 for the first time, capping off a week of fresh all-time highs and a more than 30% rally since being snubbed by the S&P 500 during a recent rebalance.

Inside the Palais des Festivals, ETHCC draws founders, developers, and institutions into the same halls that host the world’s biggest film premieres — this time, for the future of finance.

MacKenzie Sigalos

Ether, the token native to the Ethereum blockchain, was up nearly 6% on the week and several public equities tied to the blockchain have rallied alongside it.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, a company that mines bitcoin, gained more than 1,200% since announcing it would make ether its primary treasury reserve asset. Bit Digital, which recently exited bitcoin mining to “become a pure play” ethereum staking and treasury company, gained more than 34% this week. And SharpLink Gaming, which added more than $20 million in ether to its balance sheet this week, jumped more than 28% on Thursday.

Ether ETF inflows are rising again too — a sign that institutional investors are warming back up.

Ether is still down more than 20% this year and lags far behind bitcoin in market cap and adoption. But funds tracking ETH have seen two straight months of mostly net inflows, according to CoinGlass data. Still, ether ETFs total just $11 billion — compared to $138 billion in bitcoin ETFs.

Institutions aren’t betting on Ethereum for hype — they’re betting on infrastructure.

Even as prices stall and the network faces headwinds from slower base layer revenues and faster rivals like Solana, the momentum is shifting toward utility.

“Ethereum is getting plugged into these core transactional systems,” Paul Brody, global blockchain leader at EY, told CNBC on the sidelines of EthCC. “Investors, savers, people moving money — they are going to start shifting from some of the older mechanisms of doing this into Ethereum ecosystems that can do these transactions faster, cheaper, but also very importantly, with significant new functionality attached to it.”

Crypto founders and developers climb the iconic red-carpeted steps of the Palais des Festivals — a familiar backdrop for the Cannes Film Festival, now repurposed for Ethereum’s flagship European event.

MacKenzie Sigalos

Deutsche Bank recently announced it’s building a tokenization platform on zkSync — a faster, cheaper blockchain built on top of Ethereum — to help asset managers issue and manage tokenized funds, stablecoins, and other real-world assets while meeting regulatory and data protection requirements.

Coinbase and Kraken are also racing to own the crossover between traditional stocks and crypto.

Coinbase has filed with the SEC to offer trading in tokenized public equities, a move that would diversify its revenue stream and bring it into more direct competition with brokerages like Robinhood and eToro.

Kraken announced plans to offer 24/7 trading of U.S. stock tokens in select overseas markets.

BlackRock‘s tokenized money market fund, BUIDL — launched on Ethereum last year — offers qualified investors on-chain access to yield with redemptions settled in USDC in real time.

Stablecoins, meanwhile, continue to serve as the backbone of Ethereum’s financial layer.

Circle’s USDC — the second-largest stablecoin — still settles around 65% of its volume on Ethereum’s rails. According to CoinGecko’s latest “State of Stablecoins” report, Ethereum accounts for nearly 50% of stablecoin market share.

“The builders and contributors at EthCC aren’t chasing the next bull run,” Falleur said, “they’re laying the groundwork to make Ethereum home for the next billion users.”

Even as newer blockchains tout faster speeds and lower fees, Ethereum is proving its staying power as a trusted network.

Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, told CNBC in Cannes that there is an assumption that institutions only care about scale and speed — but in practice, it’s the opposite.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin delivers a keynote at ETHCC, laying out the network’s next steps — and its values test — as institutional adoption accelerates.

EthCC

“A lot of institutions basically tell us to our faces that they value Ethereum because it’s stable and dependable, because it doesn’t go down,” he said.

Buterin added that firms often ask about privacy and other long-term features — the kinds of concerns that institutions, he said, “really value.”

Tomasz Stańczak, the new co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, said institutions are choosing Ethereum for the same core reasons.

“Ten years without stopping for a moment. Ten years of upgrades, with a huge dedication to security and censorship resistance,” he said.

He added that when institutions send orders to the market, they want to be “absolutely sure that their order is treated fairly, that nobody has preference, that the transaction actually is executed at the time when it’s delivered.”

Those guarantees have become increasingly valuable as stablecoins and tokenized assets move into the mainstream.

The Senate’s recent passage of the GENIUS Act, along with Circle’s IPO, gave the industry a regulatory tailwind and helped reinforce Ethereum’s role as the infrastructure layer for tokenized finance.

Ethereum’s core values — neutrality, security, and censorship resistance — are emerging as competitive advantages.

The real test now is whether Ethereum can scale without losing its values.

“We don’t just want to succeed,” Buterin said from the mainstage of the Palais this week. “We want to be something that is worthy of succeeding.”

He said the hope is that future generations will look back and see a network that truly delivered openness, freedom, and permissionless access to the masses.

White-clad guests dance poolside at the rAAVE party in Cannes.

MacKenzie Sigalos

But the week didn’t end in the conference halls, it closed with tradition. On the balcony of Villa Montana, overlooking the Bay of Cannes, the rAAVE party lit up.

White-clad guests sipped cocktails as the DJ spun by the pool, haze curling from smoke machines.

This year, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov and DeFi icon Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave, stood atop the balcony overlooking the crowd and the light-dotted skyline of Cannes.

It was a fitting snapshot of the momentum behind Ethereum’s institutional rise and symbolic of Web3’s shift from niche experiment to financial mainstay.

WATCH: Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev explains ‘dual purpose’ behind trading platform’s new crypto offerings

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev explains 'dual purpose' behind trading platform's new crypto offerings

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