Bitcoin Breaks $100,000 | Sam Bankman-Fried’s Prison Diary

A historic rally fueled by Trump’s crypto agenda pushes bitcoin to new heights.

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Nina Bambysheva Staff Writer, Forbes Money & Markets
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Steven Ehrlich Director, Forbes Digital Assets
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Bitcoin Surpasses $100,000

After a few attempts at breaking down this key psychological level, bitcoin crossed the $100,000 line for the first time on the evening of December 4, topping out at $103,446. This surge is the capstone of a furious rally for the asset, which was as low as $60,000 in October and is up 130% on the year. Although the price dropped below this level on Friday–as of this writing it is $101,049 and has a market capitalization of $1.99 trillion–long-time holders of the asset see this jump as validation of an asset that has been declared “dead” at least 477 times in the media.

BANKMAN-FRIED WRITES ABOUT LIFE IN PRISON

Now serving a 25-year sentence for fraud at Brooklyn's notorious Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), convicted former crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried is getting around to writing his memoirs. Forbes got an early look at some chapters and, perhaps because Bankman-Fried has not yet come to grips with his new reality, his writings have the distinct tone of Jane Goodall recounting life among the chimpanzees or a Victorian anthropologist observing a foreign culture.

“Most people become innies,” writes Fried, referring to other inmates.“They will go to war over a banana, and they will trade everything they have to get high one more time.” Other chapters focus on more banal topics such as his efforts to get a pillow. “I lost my pillow tonight. And so tonight I am propping my head up halfheartedly with a combination of towels and prison jumpsuits. It doesn’t work very well; my neck hurts already,” he writes.

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CURRENT PRICE OF TOP 5 COINS (7-Day % Change)

Coin

Price

Percent Change

Bitcoin (BTC)

$101,049

3.2%

Ether (ETH)

$4,036

12.1%

Tether (USDT)

$1.00

0.0%

XRP (XRP)

$2.38

40.2%

Solana (SOL)

$240

0.9%

Sources: Forbes Digital Assets, CoinGecko. Prices as of 1 p.m. on December 6, 2024.

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TRUMP’S CRYPTO CABINET TAKES SHAPE

Industry insiders like to point out that crypto has gotten to this point despite facing an aggressive regulatory regime for its entire history. That is about to change. Donald Trump’s first consequential selection was nominating former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins to replace Gary Gensler as chairman. Atkins, who is a known friend to the industry and worked with a prominent lobbying group to draft token classification guidelines, is seen as a person who should be easily confirmed and be a steady set of hands atop the agency. His first decision will be whether to continue high profile cases against the likes of Coinbase, Binance and Kraken. The industry is also interested to see if he will have the regulator draft specific rules and guidance, something that Coinbase has been suing the SEC for, to provide additional clarity or wait for certain legislative initiatives in Congress to provide a path forward.

Then late on Thursday night Trump announced that David Sacks, venture capitalist and member of the “PayPal Mafia” alongside Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, would serve as his artificial intelligence and crypto czar. “David will guide policy for the Administration in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness. David will focus on making America the clear global leader in both areas,” Trump said Thursday in a post on his Truth Social network.

RIPPLE RIPS EVEN HIGHER

Even though Trump has not made any public overtures to Ripple Labs and its token XRP, this token has been a major beneficiary of his election. After being flat on the year through November 10, the token, which the SEC called in a December 2020 suit an unregistered security, has undergone a parabolic 300% surge to raise its market cap to $133 billion. It just passed Solana to become the third-largest non-stablecoin token in the world.

Last March, Forbes called XRP a Zombie Blockchain, despite its rich market valuation, because it serves no useful function, having effectively failed in its mission to replace Belgium’s SWIFT in trillions of daily international interbank transfers.

Nobody has benefited more from XRP’s current rise than Ripple Labs’ cofounder Chris Larsen, half of whose net worth is tied up in XRP tokens. His fortune has surged 245 from $3.3 billion after the election to $8.1 billion.

ELSEWHERE

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