The cryptocurrency entrepreneur whose trading exchange went bankrupt after an alleged theft of billions of dollars from customer accounts told a court in New York on Friday he had made “large mistakes” but never committed fraud.
Sam Bankman-Fried, 31, who was briefly a multibillionaire and the face of a new financial industry, told a jury he had hoped to create the world’s finest marketplace for digital currency trading. “Did it turn out that way?” his lawyer, Mark Cohen asked.
“Er, no,” he replied. “It turned out basically the opposite. A lot of people got hurt. Customers, employees, investors.”
