Good Morning & Happy Friday! Another fresh record close for the S&P on the last trading day of the month. This is the best quarter for the index since 2019. Jobless claims came in slightly lower than expectations and the GDP growth for Q4 of last year beat expectations.
Yesterday also saw the infamous Sam Bankman-Fried get sentenced. Read some of the details below. The word on the street is that Apple has purchased the rights for the book Going Infinite by Michael Lewis about the ex-CEO, so hopefully it’ll be streaming by the end of 2025. We also have some more information on BlackRock’s brand new on-chain fund. The industry giant seems to be even more crypto forward than they let on. And as always, be sure to see how our preferred liquidity pools of choice are performing.
SBF Trial Update: SBF Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison
Yesterday, the former billionaire star of Forbes and founder of FTX was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud and conspiracy. The sentence was somewhat smack in the middle of what prosecutors asked for (40 to 50 years) and what his own defense attorneys suggested (5 to 6.5 years).
Judge Lewis Kaplan noted that there was a very possible risk that SBF would do something ‘very bad in the future' as partial reasoning for his sentence. He also ordered SBF to pay $11 billion in forfeiture to the U.S. government.
Kaplan noted that he never heard a “word of remorse for the commission of terrible crimes” and that he had “never seen a performance” like SBF’s testimony in his 30 years on the federal bench.
It seems SBF’s decision to testify really did do more harm than good as many jurors during his trial also were not buying his version of events as he was often extremely evasive.
While SBF did speak somewhat ‘contritely’ before his sentencing, he continued his story that the billions of dollars lost was a result of a ‘liquidity crisis’ and ‘mismanagement’ of funds. This is probably what the judge was referring to when he said he still denies any fraud or acknowledgement of wrongdoing from his end. He continued on to blame the federal government and bankruptcy process for not making any of the FTX consumers whole again, at which point the journalist notes that Judge Kaplan seemed to stop paying close attention to SBF’s speech.
While the consumers of FTX still have to await for the bankruptcy process to unfold, this was no doubt the closing of a major chapter of the FTX saga. What is still to happen though, is the sentencing of some of the other major executives of FTX and Alameda who took deals in exchange for testifying against SBF. Those 3 are: Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh and Gary Wang.
Crypto Spotlight: BlackRock Betting Big on Tokenization
As we mentioned yesterday, crypto outlets were ablaze when it was discovered that the investment behemoth BlackRock had created a fund called the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund or better known as BUIDL. This was found out through a document filed with the SEC.
Not surprisingly given the current regulatory regime, the fund is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands and is launching in partnership with an asset tokenization firm called Securitize.
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