There comes a moment in the development of a new technology when the hype is so common it passes for common sense. Lawyers, accountants and regulators are nowhere to be found. Investors insist entrepreneurs take their money. The world trembles on the brink of change. For dotcoms, the moment was 1999. For artificial intelligence, it was just over nine months ago. For cryptocurrency, it was 2017. Six years ago, Sam Bankman-Fried knew little about alternative currencies. But he correctly bet there were huge opportunities in grabbing a tiny piece of millions of crypto trades. In the blink of an eye, he was lauded as being worth $US23 billion. Only Mark Zuckerberg had accumulated so much wealth so young. The Facebook co-founder has his critics but he looks like Thomas Edison next to Bankman-Fried. After a speedy trial in Manhattan federal court, the onetime crypto king, now 31, was convicted on Thursday of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy involving his companies FTX and Alameda Research.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s wild rise and abrupt crash
