After a brutal 18 months of bankruptcies, company failures and criminal trials, the crypto market is starting to claw back some of its former standing.

Bitcoin is up more than 150% this year. Meanwhile, Solana is nearly 10x higher in the last 12 months, and bitcoin miner Marathon Digital has also skyrocketed. Crypto-pegged stocks like Coinbase, MicroStrategy and the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust rose more than 300% in value year-to-date.

But even as prices swell, the sector’s reputation has struggled to regain ground after names virtually synonymous with bitcoin have both been found guilty of crimes directly related to their multibillion-dollar crypto empires.

For years, Binance’s Changpeng Zhao and FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried preached the power of decentralized, digital currencies to the masses. Both were bitcoin billionaires who ran their own global cryptocurrency exchanges and spent much of their professional career selling the public on a new, tech-powered world order; one where an alternative financial system comprised of borderless virtual coins would liberate the oppressed by eliminating middlemen like banks and the over-reach of the government.

Yet they both, in the end, helped crypto critics and regulators make the case that some of them had been right all along; that the industry was rife with grifters and fraudsters intent on using new tech to carry out age-old crimes.

Even when the crypto market was at its hottest, as token prices hit all-time highs in Oct. 2021, some of the biggest names in business and politics shared their doubts.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in 2021 at peak crypto valuations that bitcoin was “worthless,” and he doubled down on that sentiment earlier this year when he said that the digital currency was a “hyped-up fraud.” Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said in 2018 that he would short bitcoin if he could, adding that cryptocurrencies are “kind of a pure ‘greater fool theory’ type of investment.” Legendary investor Warren Buffett said he wouldn’t buy all of the bitcoin in the world for $25, because “it doesn’t produce anything,” and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has long been one of crypto’s greatest naysayers on Capitol Hill.

Rather than ushering in a new era of financial freedom, Zhao and Bankman-Fried were found guilty on a mix of charges including fraud and money laundering. Once the two biggest names in crypto, the sector’s greatest proponents now face jail time.

Bankman-Fried, 31, could be sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of seven criminal counts in early November, including charges related to stealing billions of dollars from FTX’s customers. Less than three weeks after Bankman-Fried’s conviction, Zhao pleaded guilty to criminal charges and stepped down as Binance’s CEO as part of a $4.3 billion settlement with the Department of Justice.

Their crimes varied, but ultimately, both crypto execs went from industry titans to convicted frauds in the span of 12 months, and it was, in part, the bitter feud between them that landed them there.

“They were both responsible for behavior that has kept a black eye on crypto and its association with criminal behavior,” said Renato Mariotti, a former prosecutor in the U.S. Justice Department’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Section.

In March 2019, CZ passed on paying Bankman-Fried $40 million to buy the futures crypto exchange that SBF had designed with his team, instead building a version of the same platform in-house. A month later, Bankman-Fried and a few others founded FTX.com, a first-of-its-kind futures trading exchange with a flashy new liquidation engine and features which catered to large-scale institutional clients. Binance was the first outside investor in FTX, funding a Series A round in 2019. As part of that arrangement, Binance took on a long-term position in FTX’s native token, FTT, which was created to give perks to customers.

FTX’s success begat a $2 billion venture fund that seeded other crypto firms. Bankman-Fried’s personal wealth grew to around $26 billion at its peak, and FTX reached a valuation of $32 billion before it all came crashing down.

As crypto prices ran up in 2021, Bankman-Fried’s reputation did the same. Suddenly, the wunderkind was praised by the press as the poster boy for crypto everywhere.

The FTX logo adorned everything from Formula One race cars to a Miami basketball arena. Bankman-Fried went on an endless press tour, bragged about having a balance sheet that could one day buy Goldman Sachs, and became a fixture in Washington, where he was one of the Democratic Party’s top donors, promising to sink $1 billion into U.S. political races before later backtracking. Bankman-Fried wielded some of that political influence to cast shade on Zhao and Binance’s dealing.

At the same time, CZ’s influence continued to grow, as did Binance’s market dominance. With assets of more than $65 billion on the platform, it processed billions of dollars in trading volume every year.

As the two grew to be formidable opponents, FTX opted to buy out Binance in 2021 with a combination of FTT and other coins, according to Zhao.

But much of Bankman-Fried’s empire was a mirage, while Zhao’s operation was laced with questionable business tactics under the hood. What ultimately exposed the grift at the two exchanges was the rivalry between the crypto bosses.

Zhao dropped the hammer with a tweet saying that because of “recent revelations that have came [sic] to light, we have decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on our books.”

The threat led to a panic-led sell-off of the FTT token. As the price of the coin plummeted by over 75%, so too did confidence in the platform. FTX executives scrambled to contain the damage, but customers proceeded to pull billions of dollars off the exchange. Zhao, who swooped in and agreed to buy FTX in a fire sale, backed out of the deal after one day’s worth of due diligence, and the company spiraled into bankruptcy.

As outsiders got a look at FTX’s actual books for the first time, the fraud became clear: Bankman-Fried and other leaders at FTX had taken billions of dollars in customer money.

In fact, during the criminal trial of Bankman-Fried, 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 the one 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? Jurors decided within a few hours of deliberation that he had knowingly committed fraud on a mass scale.

The government’s beef with Zhao and Binance was different.

Three criminal charges were brought against the exchange, including conducting an unlicensed money-transmitting business, violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and conspiracy. Binance has agreed to forfeit $2.5 billion to the government, as well as to pay a fine of $1.8 billion, for crimes which included allowing illicit actors to make more than 100,000 transactions that supported activities such as terrorism and illegal narcotics.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press conference on Nov. 21 that the fine is “one of the largest penalties we have ever obtained.”

“Using new technology to break the law does not make you a disruptor; it makes you a criminal,” Garland said.

The $4.3 billion settlement and plea arrangement with the U.S. government, including the Department of Justice, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Treasury Department, resolves a multiyear investigation into the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. The Securities and Exchange Commission, however, was notably absent.

Zhao and others were also charged with violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to implement an effective anti-money-laundering program and for willfully violating U.S. economic sanctions “in a deliberate and calculated effort to profit from the U.S. market without implementing controls required by U.S. law,” according to the Justice Department. The DOJ is recommending that the court impose a $50 million fine on Zhao.

In the meantime, CZ has been released on a $175 million personal recognizance bond secured by $15 million in cash and has a sentencing hearing scheduled for Feb. 23. Bankman-Fried faces a sentencing hearing on March 28.