Đế chế tiền mã hóa của Sam Bankman-Fried được ‘xây dựng trên sự dối trá’

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Federal prosecutors (công tố viên liên bang) on Wednesday opened the criminal trial (phiên tòa hình sự) of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder (người sáng lập) of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, with a simple message: He deliberately “lied to the world,” leading to one of the biggest financial frauds of a generation (vụ bê bối tài chính lớn nhất trong một thế hệ).

Mr. Bankman-Fried’s lawyer advanced a far different narrative. The former crypto mogul (ông trùm, người có vai vế, người có thế lực), the lawyer said, was simply a well-intentioned entrepreneur (doanh nhân có thiện chí) who acted “in good faith” (có thiện chí) to make his firm successful, with no intention to defraud (lừa gạt) anyone.

The dueling arguments are at the crux of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s trial, which has become the highest-profile reckoning (tính toán, xét xử) for a business executive since the Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was convicted (kết án) of fraud early last year.

A onetime crypto wunderkind (thần đồng), Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, became a tousle-haired (tóc bù xù) billionaire virtually overnight, only to see his company collapse last year and his fortune evaporate (tài sản bốc hơi). He has been charged with orchestrating a conspiracy (dàn dựng một âm mưu) to use $10 billion that FTX’s customers had entrusted to him for all manner of personal projects, including venture capital investments, political donations and luxury real estate purchases.

“It looked like Sam Bankman-Fried was on top of the world,” Thane Rehn, a lead prosecutor, told a packed room at the federal courthouse in Manhattan on Wednesday. “All of it was built on lies.”