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CRYPTO JUSTICE

US appeals court upholds Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX fraud conviction

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Sam Bankman-Fried’s 2023 fraud and conspiracy conviction, leaving in place the 25-year prison sentence imposed after FTX’s collapse. The appeals court found that the trial was not unfair and that the prosecution’s evidence supported the jury’s verdict. Bankman-Fried had argued that trial rulings and jury instructions prevented him from presenting his defence properly, but the panel rejected that challenge. The decision does not end all legal avenues: he could seek rehearing or ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case, and his separate clemency effort remains a political route rather than a judicial one. For European readers, the ruling lands after the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation became fully applicable, reinforcing why regulators moved to bring crypto platforms, custody and disclosures closer to conventional financial-market oversight.

Belgium Impulse Editorial·12 June 2026·3 min read·6 sources
Key signal

This is mainly a U.S. criminal ruling, but it matters to Belgian consumers, retail investors, fintech workers, banks and crypto firms because FTX was a global platform and its collapse shaped the EU’s push for tighter crypto supervision. The EU’s MiCA framework now gives Belgium’s FSMA and other national supervisors a common rulebook for crypto service providers. The ruling also clarifies a broader lesson for Belgian investors: platform branding, celebrity marketing and offshore structures do not replace custody safeguards, disclosure and enforceable rights.

Sam Bankman-Fried (American entrepreneur, born 1992, co-founder of FTX) became one of crypto’s best-known executives before his conviction. FTX (Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2019) collapsed in November 2022 after a liquidity crisis exposed misuse of customer assets. Alameda Research (crypto trading firm co-founded by Bankman-Fried in 2017) was FTX’s affiliated trading arm and central to the prosecution case. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (federal appellate court in Manhattan covering New York, Connecticut and Vermont) reviewed the fairness of the trial. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan (U.S. district judge in Manhattan) presided over the 2023 trial and imposed the 2024 sentence. Barrington D. Parker (U.S. circuit judge) wrote the appeals panel’s opinion. The Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, or MiCA (EU Regulation 2023/1114, adopted in 2023 and fully applicable from December 2024), sets EU rules for crypto-asset issuers and service providers.

Background

FTX filed for bankruptcy on 11 November 2022 after customers rushed to withdraw funds and the exchange could not meet demands. Bankman-Fried was convicted on 2 November 2023 and sentenced on 28 March 2024. The case followed earlier financial-fraud precedents in which charismatic founders and complex products obscured basic customer-asset misuse, including Enron’s 2001 collapse and Bernard Madoff’s 2008 Ponzi-scheme exposure. A 2023 research paper by David Vidal-Tomás, Antonio Briola and Tomaso Aste found that FTX’s failure also exposed fragility and centralisation within supposedly decentralised crypto markets.

Why now

The story is timely because the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued its decision on 12 June 2026, closing Bankman-Fried’s first major attempt to overturn the conviction and sentence imposed after the FTX trial.

OIS Intelligence

What to watch

The next signals are whether Bankman-Fried files for rehearing, petitions the U.S. Supreme Court, or continues pursuing executive clemency. In Europe, watch how national supervisors apply MiCA to exchanges, custodians and cross-border crypto marketing.

Opposing perspectives

  1. Appeals court panel

    The court’s strongest frame is that this was a conventional fraud case with a sufficient trial record, not a referendum on crypto innovation. The panel found the evidence supported the jury’s verdict and rejected the argument that trial management or jury instructions denied Bankman-Fried a fair opportunity to defend himself.

  2. Bankman-Fried defence team

    The defence frame is that the trial narrowed the story too much and prevented jurors from hearing evidence that could support a less criminal interpretation of FTX’s collapse. Bankman-Fried’s side has argued that FTX’s structure, solvency claims and legal advice were not fairly presented to the jury.

  3. EU financial regulators

    The regulatory frame is that FTX showed why crypto platforms handling customer assets need clear authorisation, governance, disclosure and custody rules. MiCA does not erase investment risk, but it gives EU supervisors a common basis for policing crypto-asset service providers and reducing regulatory arbitrage.

Sources & evidence