SBF testifying, bitcoin rises amid spot ETF speculation and Walmart’s web3 accelerator surfaces

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It’s week 4 of the Sam Bankman-Fried trial…and he’s taking the stand at present at 2 p.m. So hold an eye fixed out for added protection. 

This marks the second time Bankman-Fried has spoken out publicly within the courtroom after saying “sure,” on the first day in response to Decide Lewis Kaplan asking if he understood he had the appropriate to testify if he wished to. 

That is the primary day the protection offered their arguments after a number of weeks of prosecutors making their case with rising sheafs of proof.

The prosecutors rested their case round 10 a.m. on Thursday. Mark Cohen, Bankman-Fried’s lead lawyer, requested a movement for acquittal on all seven counts towards his consumer, calling the federal government’s case on the costs “inadequate” with “materiality not proven.” Prosecutors opposed the movement and Decide Kaplan declined it.

The trial was on recess from October 20 till at present. However Wednesday morning, there was a digital listening to between Decide Lewis Kaplan, the prosecutors and protection to border the remainder of the case.

Throughout the name, Cohen stated that the protection has three potential witnesses and added “our consumer will likely be testifying.” Earlier than the protection makes their case, the prosecutors plan on bringing out another witness, FBI agent Marc Troiano, to “summarize sure paperwork” targeted on FTX and Alameda, Assistant United States Lawyer Thane Rehn stated.

The protection additionally filed a letter to Decide Kaplan on Wednesday requesting permission to ask Bankman-Fried’s “good religion” about sure components of FTX and Alameda. A few of the occasions regarded inner and exterior authorized counsel implementing knowledge retention insurance policies, like auto-deletion insurance policies for Slack and Sign, in addition to loans made out of FTX and Alameda to executives, drafts of phrases and companies and different areas.

“Bankman-Fried’s understanding that auto-deletion insurance policies had been instituted beneath the steerage of legal professionals can be immediately related to rebut the inference that these insurance policies had been instituted for improper functions,” the protection letter wrote.

Cohen stated on the digital name he expects Bankman-Fried’s testimony to be the identical size as that of his former colleagues, who pleaded responsible: FTX co-founder and CTO Gary Wang, Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and FTX head of engineering Nishad Singh. He additionally stated that it’ll take a “good a part of Thursday, perhaps all of Thursday,” with potential for Friday cross-examination.

Although the trial was on pause, particulars had been nonetheless transpiring, and we had been nonetheless placing out extra content material. Particulars under.

SBF trial

1. As SBF plans to testify, former SDNY federal prosecutor sees it as a ‘Hail Mary’ (TC+)
2. Ex-SDNY prosecutor says Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh probably won’t get jail time
3. Third Point managing director doubles down on SBF investor fraud in trial testimony

This week in web3

For those who’re getting SBF trial fatigue, listed below are some articles on what else is going on within the wild world of web3.

1. Bitcoin is now worth over $34,500 — but will it hold? (TC+)
2. Walmart and Outlier Ventures’ web3 accelerator launches with five startups
3. There’s ‘great hope’ for bitcoin spot ETF approval in 2024, says Bitwise’s general counsel (TC+)

The newest pod

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Josh Naftalis, associate at legislation agency Pallas Companions.

He’s a longtime lawyer who represents firms, boards and executives in circumstances for white-collar felony protection, regulatory enforcement issues, inner investigations, disaster administration and extra.

Previous to Pallas Companions, Josh was a federal prosecutor and served over a decade as assistant U.S. lawyer within the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace for the Southern District of New York. Whereas on the SDNY he led plenty of authorities white-collar prosecutions and trials, and was a senior member of SDNY’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Activity Power. Josh dealt with conditions starting from cryptocurrency to insider buying and selling and market manipulation to company and accounting fraud. His work additionally concerned coordination with different companies just like the SEC, CFTC and FBI.

Whereas on the SDNY, Josh secured convictions in each federal felony trial that he led as an assistant U.S. lawyer. So we noticed him as the right particular person to dive into the eye-grabbing trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, who’s combating seven costs associated to cash laundering and fraud. SBF’s trial can also be going down at SDNY the place Josh labored.

We talked about all of the nitty-gritty particulars of SBF’s trial: the prosecution’s technique, the protection’s technique, how this case compares to ones that Josh beforehand led and the way possible it’s that jurors will attain a responsible verdict.

We additionally talked about:

• What number of years SBF might face
• Significance of jurors
• Greatest witness testimonies thus far
• Sentencing for different FTX execs
• Why he thinks SBF will testify

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Observe the cash

1. Avalanche-focused gaming studio Neon Machine closed a $20 million Collection A spherical
2. Singapore-based crypto funds startup Triple A raised $10 million in a Collection A spherical
3. Ethereum onchain privateness startup Nocturne raised $6 million in a seed spherical
4. Binance led $12 million funding spherical for InfinityStakeChain
5. Web3 healthcare platform Rymedi raised $9 million in a Collection A

This checklist was compiled with info from Messari in addition to TechCrunch’s personal reporting.

What else we’re writing

Wish to department out from the world of web3? Listed here are some articles on TechCrunch that caught our consideration this week.

1. Why 42 states came together to sue Meta over kids’ mental health
2. AI is finally resulting in real growth for Big Tech (TC+)
3. Carta’s CEO reaches out to customers about bad press, alerting them to bad press
4. Will X’s addition of audio and video calling create stickiness in the app?
5. Robotaxis ‘do not belong in the city of Los Angeles,’ lawmaker says

Observe me on Twitter @Jacqmelinek for breaking crypto information, memes and extra.