CoinMarketCap News, Jan 4: Everything That Happened During SBF's Court Appearance

As expected, Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges against him when he appeared in a Manhattan court on Tuesday. This will give his legal team an opportunity to assess the prosecutor's case against him. Judge Lewis Kaplan has now set a trial date too — so put Oct. 2 in your diary. After physically elbowing his way through a scrum of reporters with the help of a four-man security team, the ex-billionaire entered the court clean-shaven but still wearing his trademark mop of curly hair and decked out in a suit and tie. The eight counts of fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and campaign finance violations could see SBF jailed for life — he's facing up to 115 years behind bars if convicted.

Under house arrest at his parent's home in California, SBF is wearing an ankle bracelet and has surrendered his passport. But there's another condition to his $250 million bail now, as he's been banned from accessing or transferring assets that belong to FTX and Alameda Research. That followed reports that prosecutors are examining crypto transactions connected to wallets that SBF owned. In late December, more than $1 million was moved to crypto mixing services. The former CEO has insisted he no longer has access to those funds, meaning he couldn't be moving them. Prosecutors disagreed, and fear "additional assets could become inaccessible" within a matter of days. The judge approved their request.

SBF's parents have signed a $250 million bond to secure his bail — meaning they'd lose everything if he was to flee. But they're not the only ones, as there are two anonymous co-signers who have also put their wealth on the line. The 30-year-old's legal team filed a motion requesting their identity continues to be kept secret, amid fears they could suffer an intrusion of privacy. Bankman-Fried's lawyers pointed to the fact that his parents "have received a steady stream of threatening correspondence, including communications expressing a desire that they suffer physical harm." A judge has given this motion the green light, but it's fair to say that journalists covering the case might not be best pleased about this.

A war of words has broken out between FTX's new management and The Bahamas, which is where the doomed company was based. The Caribbean country previously said that it has seized over $3.5 billion in crypto from FTX Digital Markets, which will eventually be returned to customers and other creditors. FTX, which is now being led by John Ray, challenged this figure and said it was closer to $300 million. But in a new statement, the Securities Commission of the Bahamas pushed back — and said FTX was working off "incomplete information." In other developments, the Southern District of New York has created a new taskforce in an attempt to recover assets belonging to FTX customers, with an estimated $8 billion missing.

Web3 investors had better be ready for a rough ride, according to legendary tech investor Fred Wilson. With venture investors becoming more selective, he predicted "Web3 will go through a triage of sorts in 2023" — and only the strong projects and protocols will survive and thrive. The Union Square Ventures co-founder's bets over the decades have included Twitter and Coinbase. In a blog post, he warned: "Many Web3 projects have not found product market fit, have weak or no token economics, and do not execute well and I think we will see many of them continue to flounder and fail in 2023." On the plus side, Wilson said he believes Bitcoin and Ether will continue to attract investors and do well.

A trio of Gemini Earn clients seeking to unlock their frozen assets have filed a class action arbitration request against crypto lender Genesis, alleging that it has "concealed its insolvency" since the summer. Facing a spike in withdrawals that caused a liquidity crisis, Genesis halted withdrawals on Nov. 16, leaving the $900 million it owed to 340,000 Gemini Earn clients in limbo. Gemini Earn offered clients of the Gemini exchange up to 8% interest, sending funds to Genesis to do the actual lending. Unfortunately, Genesis loaned some $2.3 billion to crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), which failed spectacularly in June. That bankrupted several crypto lenders, including Voyager Digital and BlockFi.