A unanimous three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals denied Sam Bankman-Fried's bid to overturn his conviction on Friday, upholding all seven counts of fraud and conspiracy and his 25-year prison sentence. The court rejected every argument Bankman-Fried's lawyers advanced — that Judge Kaplan improperly excluded evidence that FTX could have covered customer withdrawals, that the trial was procedurally unfair, and that rulings on cross-examination and evidence presentation prejudiced the defense. The panel's language was blunt: prosecutors' evidence "was, conservatively stated, robust," and the court ruled that fraud occurred the moment Bankman-Fried transferred customer funds to Alameda Research, regardless of his stated intentions to return them. "While he was publicly reassuring customers, investors and regulators that FTX customer funds were safe, he was simultaneously using FTX as his own personal piggy bank," Circuit Judge Barrington Parker wrote. The ruling comes the same week Bankman-Fried submitted a clemency petition to the DOJ's Office of the Pardon Attorney — requesting a presidential pardon from Trump, who has publicly said he will not grant it. A separate motion for a new trial, filed pro se and denied by Judge Kaplan in April as a "reputation-rescue plan," is also exhausted. The 25-year sentence stands.
Stablecoin Conference 2026 by Bitso Business is coming on June 15–16 at the World Trade Center in Mexico City.
The event will bring together over 2,500 executives, policymakers, regulators, developers and financial infrastructure leaders from 50 countries to discuss the future of digital money, cross-border payments and financial modernization.
Participants include White House officials, Mexican regulators and policymakers, as well as executives from Tether, Visa, Mastercard, Fireblocks, Bridge, Stellar and other leading global organizations.
When the CFTC approved Kalshi's BTCPERP contract on May 29 — the first regulated crypto perpetual future in the U.S. — it classified the product as a future rather than a swap. That distinction matters enormously: futures fall under CFTC oversight via Designated Contract Markets, while swaps trigger a separate regulatory regime under the Dodd-Frank Act with different capital, clearing, and reporting requirements. Critics argue that perpetuals are structurally closer to swaps — they have no expiration date, use funding rates to track spot prices, and behave like the offshore instruments long regulated as swaps in other jurisdictions. The CFTC's own procedural paper trail shows Kalshi submitted BTCPERP under Regulation 40.3 voluntary approval rather than self-certification, suggesting the Commission engaged substantively with the classification question. The debate has real stakes: if future courts or a different CFTC majority classify perps as swaps, the entire regulatory framework for onshore crypto perpetuals — and Kalshi's $178 billion annualized trading volume — would need to be rebuilt from scratch.
Bitcoin is trading above $63,000 Friday in choppy, rangebound conditions as the market consolidates ahead of next week's FOMC meeting on June 16–17. The token has held its 200-week moving average through the week — the technical floor that defined prior cycle lows — while most altcoins remain deep in the red. DOGE is essentially flat on the day. Bitfinex margin longs have surpassed 90,000 BTC for the first time since November 2023, a sign of growing conviction among leveraged traders that the worst of the selling is done. The constructive path for bulls requires inflation to soften further, Treasury yields to stabilize, and ETF outflows — which have totaled $5.7 billion over the past four weeks — to slow meaningfully. The FOMC is the week's defining event: Warsh's tone on rate trajectory will determine whether BTC grinds back toward $68–72K or breaks below $60K for the first time in this cycle.
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