From 25 years in prison to just 4 months: Inside the final sentencing of a crypto billionaire
On Tuesday, Bian founder Changpeng Zhao ended a bitter rivalry between erstwhile crypto titans in Seattle federal court. He was sentenced to four months in prison. A month earlier, across the river in downtown Manhattan, FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his crimes.
It seemed like a lackluster, somewhat anticlimactic end to the protracted battle between Zhao and Bankman-Fried, two legendary rivals who are also key stewards of the $2.2 trillion cryptocurrency industry.
For years, Bian’s Zhao and FTX’s Bankman-Fried have evangelized the masses about the power of decentralized digital currencies. Both are Bitcoin billionaires who drive Toyotas, run their own global cryptocurrency exchanges, and have spent much of their careers selling the public on a technology-powered new world order; an alternative financial system comprised of borderless virtual currencies that will liberate the oppressed by eliminating middlemen like banks and excessive government intervention.
Ultimately, the two also helped cryptocurrency critics and regulators prove that skeptics were right all along — that the industry was rife with scammers and fraudsters intent on using new technology to commit age-old crimes.
Bankman-Fried, 32, was convicted of seven criminal counts in early November, including charges related to stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers. Less than three weeks after Bankman-Fried was convicted, Zhao, 47, pleaded guilty to criminal charges and resigned as CEO of BTX as part of a $4.3 billion settlement with the Justice Department.
Yet many other aspects of the two men were very different — perhaps most notably the 296-month difference in their respective prison sentences.
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