The legality of the loans are central to the case against Bankman-Fried. Prosecutors allege Alameda backstopped its bad bets on the crypto market with FTX customers’ dollars plus their crypto deposits. Defense attorneys said the relationship between those two companies was neither secret nor illegal.
Bankman-Fried and his companies were “building the plane in flight,” Mark Cohen, who anchors the defense, said in his opening statement. He told the jury his client, a “math nerd,” did nothing illegal but perhaps unwise, like never hiring a chief risk officer to watch the health of his “innovative” crypto exchange. And he began casting blame at former Alameda Research CEO Caorline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend and a key witness, saying that the defendant told her to hedge the trading firm’s risk on multiple occasions but she didn’t.
Source: Unpacking the First Day of FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s Actual Trial
