BARTER SYSTEM

In Prison, Sam Bankman-Fried Has a New Trading Currency of Choice

The disgraced crypto founder is serving a 25-year sentence for fraud and conspiracy.

Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried may have left his cryptocurrency days behind him, but he’s got a new tender of choice behind bars in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center. Rice has become Bankman-Fried’s new prison currency, the convicted fraudster told Puck’s William D. Cohan in an interview from the facility. He added that he was subsisting on a diet of rice and beans because of the “inedible” prison food quality. Besides that, he was finding prison life mundane and relatively free of drama, telling Cohan he hadn’t suffered abuse and didn’t fear for his safety. The only time other inmates bothered him was at night, “about those bags of rice, which they intend to use to barter,” he said. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years behind bars in March after being convicted of fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy for stealing billions from customers for personal use, political donations, and to prop up his other company, Alameda Research. He maintains he did nothing wrong and plans to appeal his conviction.