Could FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried Go to Jail?

Turning now to Sam Beman Fried, who is set to appear at a hearing later today for a judge to decide whether the disgraced founder of FTX is going to jail before his trial in October. Joining us. Now to discuss is Coindesk global policy and regulation, managing editor Nick Day, who is also the editor of Coin Desk's state of crypto newsletter. Good morning, Nick. Good morning. Happy Friday. Happy Friday. I am looking forward to the weekend but I bet Sam Bank Fried is probably um I don't know, probably just trying to get through the day today. Talk to us about what's going on. Uh What could happen at the hearing. Yeah, so at 2 p.m. Eastern or a little over four hours from now, Sam Reed is due back in court to discuss the motion. Uh rather his legal team will discuss the motion to put him in jail prior to his trial in October. Uh This is, of course, you know, we've talked about this before uh because he allegedly leaked Carolyn Ellison, the former Alameda research CEO and his ex girlfriend, uh his private diary to the New York Times. Prosecutors seem to have had enough. The judge frankly also seems to be a little bit tired of some of the, uh, things he's been asked to rule on. So we'll see if the defense has enough, uh, on your side today to keep him out of jail ahead of trial. All right. And how's it gonna impact the upcoming trial if at all? So if you listen to the defense, they claim that having him in jail will make it more difficult to prepare for trial. They say that there's a lot of stuff that, uh, he needs, you know, computer to access a lot of files that are online. If he's in jail, he's going to have to, you know, be able to only be able to access these documents and such during visiting hours if he leaves. Um, basically they're saying, you know, it's gonna be more inconvenient for them. The prosecution contends that, you know, that's not been an issue for any of the other individuals who are at the detention center. Um, that, you know, he will have the ability to prepare for trial the same as anyone else. Uh Basically, they're saying, you know, having to prepare for defense is not a get out of jail free card quote. Uh, so they obviously don't seem to think there will be much, I think we'll have to wait and see. Um, it probably comes down to, you know, what, all they plan to introduce as far as witnesses and such go, we'll have a bit more information on that. By the end of the day month, they given the information that's out there. How likely is it that he actually goes to jail until October? Um, so I asked a number of attorneys about this and none of them were really willing to give me like a concrete estimate. But in the words of some of them, you know, they think that based on the judge's statements, based on the pro prosecution statements, uh, that, you know, the judge in particular, who has basically all the discretion here seems to be really tired of coming back to, you know, banking and having to, you know, modify bail terms or, you know, address these, you know, state of lases. This is not the first time. Remember, uh, we've had seen prosecutors try to modify Bank Andres bond conditions previously for things like reaching out to FTX US, General counsel Ryan Miller, uh, for using a VPN to supposedly watch the Super Bowl according to his, uh, his defense team. So on multiple occasions, now, the judge has questioned why he's being asked to allow Banken Fried back, you know, to his parents' house to, uh, you know, serve out the pretrial time under house arrest essentially. Um So if we look at that, the judge does not seem to have a high bar of patience for Mr Banken Fried right now. And I, you know, we can let our audience kind of draw their own conclusions from there, but of course, nothing is guaranteed. We'll see what happens today. All right, we'll have to wait and see what happens there. But thank you, thank you to Nick. We hope Nick has a great weekend. That was Coindesk global policy and regulation. Managing editor Nick Day. Don't forget to sign up for the state of crypto newsletter on coindesk dot com.