SBF’s Criminal Charges Take the Heat Off the Crypto Industry

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has just been charged with a raft of crimes. But they’re not really crypto crimes—and that’s a big relief for the broader crypto industry.

The criminal charges, laid out in an indictment filed by federal prosecutors in New York, center on decidedly old-school allegations like wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. And in its own complaint on Tuesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission did not take the opportunity to argue that some tokens are securities, instead sticking to simply charging Bankman-Fried with defrauding investors.

“Fraud is fraud,” said Ira Sorkin, a partner at Mintz & Gold who represented Bernie Madoff as the lead attorney in his fraud case. “Whether you’re hiding information in a crypto case or in another case…it doesn’t matter what the entity is doing.”