SBF’s ‘Good Faith’ Defense

Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial kicked off in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday with jury selection, followed by opening statements from both the prosecution and the defense earlier today. I went down to check out the action in person on Wednesday, where we got the first in depth look at how Bankman-Fried and his lawyers will defend the case.   

Marc Cohen, one of Bankman-Fried’s lawyers, repeatedly used the phrase “good faith” when referring to the former FTX CEO’s actions during his opening statement. He claimed that a number of facts that the government mentioned in its opening statement did happen, including FTX customers wiring money to bank accounts controlled by Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research trading firm and that there were certain parts of the FTX codebase that were unique for Alameda, but they weren’t secret or  done in bad faith. He also argued that FTX was a startup and overlooked some parts of its business, including not having a risk management team or a chief risk officer, but Bankman-Fried had no intent to commit any crimes.