Sam Bankman-Fried Started Buying Solana's SOL at 20 Cents Using 'Alameda Profits,' He Says at His Trial
"I believed the funds came from Alameda’s operating profits" as well as third-party lenders, he testified Friday at his fraud and conspiracy trial.
Updated Oct 27, 2023, 8:18 p.m. Published Oct 27, 2023, 6:43 p.m.
Sam Bankman-Fried once infamously offered to buy all the Solana tokens he could for $3 each. On Friday, while testifying at his criminal trial, he revealed he'd actually started buying SOL much earlier in its history, at 20 cents apiece.
Regarding how he paid for the investments, he said during questioning from his lawyer: "I believed the funds came from Alameda’s operating profits" as well as third-party lenders.
SOL has been described as a "Sam Coin" due to its close association with Bankman-Fried. He and his companies invested heavily in Solana-based projects and assets, and evangelized its brand prior to FTX's collapse last November.
I'll buy as much SOL has you have, right now, at $3.
— SBF (@SBF_FTX) January 9, 2021
Sell me all you want.
Then go fuck off.
The exchange's downfall wreaked havoc on the Solana ecosystem; the blockchain's community has been trying to shake his shadow ever since.
Bankman-Fried's testimony amounted to an attempt by defense lawyer Mark Cohen to get his client to show that he did "due diligence" on investments he made while running FTX and Alameda, but federal prosecutor Danielle Sassoon "objection-ed" it down.
SOL traded at $32 at press time Friday.
Read all of CoinDesk's SBF trial coverage here.
Danny Nelson
Danny is CoinDesk's managing editor for Data & Tokens. He formerly ran investigations for the Tufts Daily. At CoinDesk, his beats include (but are not limited to): federal policy, regulation, securities law, exchanges, the Solana ecosystem, smart money doing dumb things, dumb money doing smart things and tungsten cubes. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL tokens, as well as the LinksDAO NFT.
