Welcome to the SBF trial, a CoinDesk Podcast Network newsletter bringing you daily insights from inside the courtroom where Sam Bankman-F freed will try to stay out of prison.

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It is officially trial week, and as Bloomberg's Joe Wisenthal would likely put it,

this is why we get up in the morning.

It's been exactly nine months and 20 days since Sam Bankman-Fried got arrested at his then home in the Bahamas.

Today marks the last day before he is set to start the trial, in which he will win back his freedom,

or be locked up for what a federal judge says could be a very long time.

Thousands of pages of evidence, ranging from internal documents to audio recordings,

will be presented and fought over in the next six weeks as U.S. prosecutors try to prove that the former FtX founder knowingly defrauded customers and business partners. Arguably the most damning evidence or lack thereof could come from the recollections and personal opinions of Bankman Freed's former colleagues, friends, and housemates. Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh, and Gary Wang were close friends

and roommates of Bankman Freed as much as they were colleagues. Ellison was emotionally invested

with the FTX founder and troubled by the former couple's on and off relationship, which

according to a diary entry from her,

slowly fizzled out in February 2022. Prosecutors also say they intend to call up FTX customers

and investors, including non-U.S. customers over the course of the trial. On another note,

do you remember when FTX suddenly announced it was hacked and lost some $600 million worth of crypto?

This was the same day it filed for bankruptcy last November.

A decent portion of those funds sat in a wallet for a few months and then started moving this weekend.

Around 15,000 ether worth around $26 million at Sunday night's prices, moved out of a wallet

through various routers and privacy tools between Friday night and Sunday morning.

We never got an explanation for what exactly happened and how the exploit was carried out.

I imagine federal investigators are probably closely tracking this episode.

On a logistics note, Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled in favor of

...