In court, FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried denies he took customers’ funds but acknowledges that people got hurt

NEW YORK (AP) — FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried began testifying at his fraud trial on Friday, saying the innovative business he hoped would move the cryptocurrency ecosystem forward ended up doing the opposite and hurting customers.

The one-time cryptocurrency golden boy lost his businesses and his reputation as a pioneering entrepreneur in an emerging facet of finance when a rush of customers withdrew their money last year, exposing that billions of dollars were missing.

Bankman-Fried, 31, acknowledged some of his failures early in his testimony, saying he made mistakes, large and small.

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“We thought we might be able to build the best product on the market,” he said.

The goal was to move the cryptocurrency ecosystem forward, he added.

“It turned out basically the opposite of that,” and a lot of customers and others got hurt, Bankman-Fried said.

Asked by his lawyer, Mark Cohen, if he defrauded anyone or took customers’ funds, Bankman-Fried answered, “No, I did not.”

The California entrepreneur has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges accusing him of diverting billions of dollars from his clients and investors to make risky investments, buy luxury housing, engage in a star-studded publicity campaign, and make large political and charitable donations.

His much-anticipated testimony in Manhattan federal court instantly became the centerpiece of a defense that has tried to convey that Bankman-Fried had no criminal intent as he took actions that prosecutors say were directly to blame for the collapse last November of businesses Bankman-Fried ran from the Bahamas since 2017.

He was extradited from the Bahamas to New York in December to face fraud charges.

Though he was initially granted a $250 million personal recognizance bond and allowed to live with his parents in Palo Alto, California, the bond was revoked in August and he was jailed when Judge Lewis A. Kaplan concluded that he had tried to influence potential witnesses at his upcoming trial.

Prosecutors built their case against Bankman-Fried for three weeks, relying largely on his former top executives, an inner circle of individuals who shared a penthouse apartment in the Bahamas with Bankman-Fried.

The executives testified that Bankman-Fried directed them to spend billions of dollars taken from the accounts of FTX customers and funneled through Alameda Research, a hedge fund he started in 2017, two years before he created the FTX cryptocurrency exchange.