The game is up for Sam Bankman-Fried
The former boss of FTX has been charged with eight criminal counts
Only a month has elapsed since Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of ftx, a crypto exchange, placed the firm, along with Alameda Research, its sister hedge fund, into bankruptcy proceedings. The exchange was unable to meet customers’ withdrawal requests; the problem, it became clear, was that some $8bn of customer assets had ended up in the custody of Alameda, and were missing. In the intervening days Mr Bankman-Fried has given countless interviews in which he has apologised, appeared confused by the unravelling of his empire, pleaded ignorance and generally tried to shift the blame.
This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Chained”
Finance & economics
December 17th 2022- How the West fell out of love with economic growth
- The game is up for Sam Bankman-Fried
- America’s inflation fever may be breaking at last
- What an unusual auction says about the art market
- Europe looks increasingly complacent about the winter ahead
- The struggle to put a carbon price on a flight
- The insidious threats to central-bank independence

From the December 17th 2022 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionTrump’s tariff turbulence is worse than anyone imagined
Even his concessions are less generous than expected
Why silver is the new gold
Safe-haven demand and solar panels have sent its price soaring
Trump’s new tariffs are his most extreme ever
America targets its three biggest trading partners: Canada, Mexico and China
El Salvador’s wild crypto experiment ends in failure
Its curtailment is the price of an IMF bail-out. And one worth paying
America is at risk of a Trumpian economic slowdown
Protectionist threats and erratic policies are combining to hurt growth
India has undermined a popular myth about development
Extreme poverty in the country has dropped to negligible levels