Robert De Niro marched into Manhattan federal court Tuesday accompanied by an occasional camera click. But the swaths of people lined up outside the courthouse—who had arrived as early as 1:30 a.m.—weren’t there for the movie star. They were there for Sam Bankman-Fried.
The trial of the FTX founder—a former crypto wunderkind known for his slovenly outfits, disheveled hair, and love of video games—has been the main attraction in downtown Manhattan for weeks, with public figures from author Michael Lewis to actor Ben McKenzie to notorious “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli clamoring to watch the courtroom fireworks.
Inside one of the overflow courtrooms on Tuesday, a couple named Vlad and Jenny (they declined to give their last names), said they’d flown in from Palo Alto for the spectacle. Vlad works in tech, but said he didn’t invest in FTX and isn’t particularly interested in crypto.
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“I’m just interested in justice,” he said. “Sometimes you just wanna watch people get what they deserve.”
Also, he admitted, “the Bay Area is very boring.”
For those who wanted to see Bankman-Fried in person, the process was painful. After legal staff, friends, and family were accounted for, only 21 spots in the primary courtroom remained. Most eager onlookers lined up around 3 a.m. to secure a spot in the central room, though some said they came as early as 1:30 in the morning. On Friday, the first day Bankman-Fried testified before the jury, more than 100 people showed up before 9am, according to Nikhilesh De of CoinDesk, who kept a daily count.
Because of the courthouse’s strict rules about electronics, the onlookers were phone-free throughout their time at the trial, leading to some unexpected conversations—and occasionally, friendships. On Friday, a retired Wall Street compliance officer and a 20-something trader at a family office found common ground in their love of On, a Roger Federer-backed shoe brand.
After Bankman-Fried’s testimony ended Tuesday, freelance journalist JoAnn Wypijewski sidled up to Gary Tidwell, an advisor for the International Organization of Securities Commissions, and asked if he wanted to get lunch. Asked if the two came together, she shook her head and smiled. “Just two people who started talking during the trial,” she said.
Many of those in attendance work in the crypto sphere. A number of crypto “influencers” were on hand, including Tiffany Fong, who conducted one of the first interviews with Bankman-Fried after FTX’s dramatic crash in November. (During opening arguments, she sat next to Shkreli, who has been dishing out jail advice to Bankman-Friend on Twitter.)
A man who uses the pseudonym Ogle has also attended every day, and told The Daily Beast he makes a living by recovering stolen crypto. (His Twitter bio reads “professional sleuth & negotiator.”) He acknowledged that attending the trial—and being away from his electronics—was irking clients whose money he wasn’t recovering. “People are getting irritable,” he said.
Ogle also has a personal tie to the case: He said he lost “in the low eight figures” in FTX’s collapse and that a conviction for Bankman-Fried could help bring him closure. “It would be nice to know that justice was served,” he said.
Jason, another victim of the crash who asked to be identified by first name only, flew in from Houston. He was an early investor in crypto and an early fan of FTX—even personally investing in the company. He said he lost $3 million in the crash, both in investments in the company and money on the exchange.
Asked if he just wanted to look the man who’d lost his money in the eye, Jason shook his head. “I wanna see this prosecutor tear him apart,” he said.
And tear him apart she did. The audience was rapt as Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon brutalized Bankman-Fried on the witness stand, grilling him about his private jet usage, luxury real estate purchases, and conflicting statements to the media. (An audience favorite: Sassoon made the former CEO read aloud a Twitter exchange with a journalist in which he stated, “Fuck regulators.”) On Monday, the first day of Bankman-Fried’s cross-examination, an audience member literally pulled out a bag of popcorn.
The crowd was less enthralled with the defense, presented by the highly regarded white collar attorney Mark Cohen. At several points during Bankman-Fried’s jargon-heavy testimony, audience members yawned or even drifted off. “A lot of people are saying that Cohen and crew suck,” Ogle said of the defense. “I think they may just have a crap client.”
Some audience members had no personal connection to the case, which made headlines around the world. David Tonkin of Sydney, Australia, said he was visiting his two daughters in New York and decided to pop by for fun. “They find it sort of strange that dad would do this,” he said. “It’s just the cheapest entertainment you can do.”
Esther Wiseman, Bryony Belworthy, and Lizze Hedden were in town from the U.K. to run a half-marathon and stumbled across the courthouse while sightseeing. They decided to watch the trial because “we’d never been anywhere like this,” Wiseman said. “Everybody's making notes… It’s a different world.” The trio were so captivated by the experience they told a friend who will be visiting in a few weeks she should go to the courthouse, too.
Toward the end of Bankman-Fried’s testimony, two young women—one in her late 20s and one in her mid 30s—slinked into an overflow courtroom. Both work in the crypto space, but said they were more interested in the personal drama of the case than the industry aspect.
In an odd way, they said, they could almost relate to some of the key figures—specifically Caroline Ellison, the 28-year-old former CEO of Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, who dated the founder and wrote him multiple agonizing memos about how their on-and-off relationship made her job unbearable.
The dicey romantic relationships, the millennial slang the executives used in text messages, the dorky tabletop role-playing games they adored—all of it made the characters in the case seem more human, more compelling.
“It’s like watching a miniseries,” the younger of the two women said. “We’re like, inside TV.”
