Sam Bankman-Fried to Be Released on $250 Million Bail

Sam Bankman-Fried will be freed on $250 million bail after he was extradited to New York to face criminal fraud charges from the collapse of FTX, the failed crypto trading platform.

Bankman-Fried, who has previously said he just $100,000 left, will remain under house arrest at his parents' home in Palo Alto, California, wear an electronic monitor and surrender his passport. The ruling by federal judge Gabriel Gorenstein, came a day after he arrived in the U.S. from the Bahamas.

The ruling came as two former top FTX executives pleaded guilty to fraud and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors on charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

The guilty pleas from Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Bankman-Fried's private hedge fund, Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, co-founder of the now-defunct crypto trading platform, ratchet up pressure on Bankman-Fried. Ellison, Bankman-Fried's former girlfriend, pleaded guilty to seven charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering, and could face as much as 110 years in prison, while Wang pleaded guilty to four charges and faces up to 50 years of jail time.

Bankman-Fried was arrested Dec. 12 in the Bahamas, where FTX was headquartered, after the exchange's November collapse and was held in a Bahamian prison and received comforts including air conditioning and segregation from the jail's population.

Legal proceedings in the Bankman-Fried case are just beginning. Many crypto investors have suffered significant losses from the FTX collapse and will be keen to see if it's possible to recover any of their assets.