Sam Bankman-Fried trial: Why his hair was the talk on the stand

Much has been said about Sam Bankman-Fried’s casual, if not mussy appearance, when he was building his FTX crypto empire and in the weeks following its implosion. As it turns out, there may have been a method to the madness. 

“He dressed sort of sloppily and didn’t cut his hair often,” Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s former girlfriend and CEO of FTX’s sister company, Alameda Research, said during Wednesday’s testimony in response to a question. 

“He thought his hair had been very valuable. He said ever since Jane Street [former trading firm employer], he thought he had gotten higher bonuses because of his hair and that it was an important part of FTX’s narrative and image.” 

At the beginning of the trial last week, Bankman-Fried sported a trimmed-up coif, tamed from his signature longer hairstyle, according to court sketches. He ditched his standard sweatshirt or T-shirt attire for a suit. 

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Bankman-Fried’s attorneys pushed back on questions about his hair, arguing to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan whether they had any real “probative value.” 

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Bankman-Fried’s image and hair also caught the attention of Hillary Clinton in January 2022, according to author Michael Lewis, whose book “Going Infinite” chronicles the rise and fall of Bankman-Fried.

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Appearing on “Next Question with Katie Couric,” Lewis detailed meeting Clinton for the first time at a party in Los Angeles he was attending around the Super Bowl with Bankman-Fried. Clinton asked, “What are you doing here?”

“This sounds odd, but there is someone here I am thinking about writing a book about,” Lewis replied.

“The guy with the hair?” Clinton asked. 

Ellison also detailed other ambitions of the disgraced CEO. 

“He talked about wanting Alameda, and eventually FTX, to be successful and to end up being huge companies that did a wide variety of things,” she said during testimony Tuesday. “He was also very interested in politics and talked about wanting to use his money to have influence on politics. He said at one point he thought there was a 5% chance he would become president.”

Bankman-Fried is on trial for defrauding crypto investors to the tune of $1 billion in what has been compared to the collapse of energy firm Enron. 

Complicating the squeeze on the firm was the downfall of cryptocurrencies dubbed a “crypto winter.” During that time, bitcoin, the largest crypto by market value, fell from the $31,000 level to below $15,000 before rebounding to current levels.

Ellison, who accepted a plea deal, testified she and Bankman-Fried knowingly defrauded investors and doctored balance sheets, among other illegal tactics.