I will never trust the likes of Sam Bankman-Fried with my hard-earned investment funds.

5 min readOct 7, 2023

~ Saturday, October 7, 2023 Blog Post ~

An illustration of Sam Bankman-Fried by Alexandra Citrin-Safadi (Image source: Wall Street Journal)

Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial for alleged conspiracy and fraud started this week in a New York City federal court. The disgraced FTX founder had remarked that it was his desire for FTX — the cryptocurrency exchange he established — to save the world.

Bankman-Fried is now standing trial for fraud. Federal prosecutors have charged the 31-year-old investor and entrepreneur for orchestrating a scam, duping lenders and grabbing billions of dollars of clients’ money.

They claim that Bankman-Fried stole FTX investors’ hard-earned investment funds. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to all the criminal accusations. Following the FTX cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse, he issued writings and appeared on interviews.

Bankman-Fried maintained that his trading company, Alameda Research, failed to discern that it had a massive debt obligation to FTX until it was too late. He attributed such oversight to sloppy accounting and held his underlings culpable for the failure.

The accused FTX founder described himself as an aloof chief executive officer who is quite removed from his firm’s daily operations to understand the actual happenings.

One of Bankman-Fried’s legal counsels, Mark Cohen, informed jurors that the Alameda-FTX relationship is legal. He blamed the losses on the inferior risk controls common for fast-expanding startups.

Both the defense and prosecution now need to convince a jury. Bankman-Fried’s attempt to defeat the federal fraud charges could boil down to a single query: Is it possible to lose awareness of US$8 billion via an honest error?

I have written feature and news articles about cryptocurrencies for work since 2018. This stint enabled me to discover more about these virtual assets and how cryptocurrency exchanges operate.

Cryptocurrencies like the flagship digital currency Bitcoin are relatively new investment assets. Being a conservative investor who wants nearly zero risk in my investments, I do not think I will ever trust their creators.

My all-out support still goes to Traditional Finance (TradFi). I am more interested in investing my hard-earned money buying shares of stocks of blue-chip corporations, real estate properties, and share capital in a credit union.

As an investor with low risk tolerance, I am seeking to preserve my investment capital for my secure financial future. The investment vehicles I have selected guarantee me with the least exposure to risk.

Furthermore, they are heavily regulated and not volatile. Thus, I can just watch my investments grow as years go by. Plus, I can always get a good night’s sleep which is exactly what I want.

Finally, I think cryptocurrency investing is ideal for dollar millionaires and dollar billionaires who can stomach the virtual assets’ tremendously high volatility. At this juncture, it is worthy to mention Elon Musk, Michael J. Saylor, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and Michael Novogratz. These Bitcoin bulls’ net worths are in the neighborhood of hundred-millions and billions of US dollars.

They have touted Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and other virtual currencies all these years, persuading investors — many who are young, unwitting, and do not understand what they are getting into — to pour their hard-earned investments funds into these digital assets with unsecure foundations.

Still, being a middle-class investor, I do not think I will ever be convinced to invest my hard-earned investment funds in Bitcoin and other crypto-assets. I will stick to TradFi. I believe my safe decision will help me with my objective of a prosperous, comfortable, quiet, and peaceful financial future, and I really do not want a rockstar lifestyle, anyway.

Bitcoin and other crypto-assets’ trading price may nosedive in the hundred-thousand-dollar-level, yet ultra-high-net-worth individuals and high-net-worth individuals like Mr. Musk will find these financial losses tolerable as they are merely an iota of their immense wealth and multi-billion-dollar net worths. On the other hand, for middle-class investors who worked 9-to-5 jobs for many years to accumulate their investment money, such losses are likely unimaginable, horrific, and life-changing for the worse.

I’m far from being a risk-taker when it comes to investing. Moreover, it is hard to convince me to part with my hard-earned money, especially if the investment vehicle is not a TradFi element and I do not understand its nature and terms.

The daily news nowadays typically features victims of scams surfacing and seeking justice after losing their hard-earned money. I must say that with every investment opportunity, there is the proliferation of scammers who take advantage of investors’ desire to grow their investment money. Think of notorious “CryptoQueen” and OneCoin cryptocurrency scam mastermind Ruja Ignatova, the fugitive still at large and pursued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to this day.

Ponzi schemes have survived the times and there are still Ponzi fraudsters lurking around and looking for their next victims this 2023. Hence, I maintain that I will never trust any novel investment vehicle promoted by some thirtysomething potential financial predator or individual who is not a certified TradFi professional. At the end of the day, I decide on what to do with my hard-earned funds.

I have saved the Wall Street Journal news stories on Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial which I find interesting and worth following. On my free time, I read them and here are six images of the reports’ titles and blurbs: