It’s game over for SBF — literally.
Extra Grounded
Disgraced cryptocurrency exchange CEO Sam Bankman-Fried just moved into a new circle of personal house-arrest hell.
Until now, the former head of FTX has enjoyed a relatively cozy at-home arrest at his parent’s $3.5 million-plus Palo Alto home, spending his days playing with his new guard dog, writing long-winded Substack posts about how FTX was actually still solvent at the time of his arrest, and so on.
Most importantly, he’s been able to play the popular video game League of Legends, his passion for which is, for lack of a better word, legendary. The former CEO has taken to Twitter a number of times to discuss his obsession with the cult-status game, and, according to lore, once played the game throughout the duration of a massively important pitch meeting with the investment firm Sequoia.
But sadly, it appears that his League of Legends days are officially over.
On Monday, prosecutors in the case against the former crypto wunderkind issued stricter bail requirements, which, among a number of other restrictions, bar the accused fraudster from playing any videogames that, like League of Legends, “permit chat or voice communication.”
Brutal.
Flip Phone
The new court-issued guidelines also restrict the founder to the use of a single, court-issued laptop, on which Bankman-Fried is only allowed to browse “pre-approved” websites, a list that includes all “.gov” sites as well as YouTube, Wikipedia, and several blockchain-trackers. Most major news sites are also still on the table, as are food delivery services — a bright spot on a dark day for the Doordash-stanning Bankman-Fried.
His smartphone has also been taken and replaced with an Uncle Sam-approved flip phone. And though his parents, who are both Stanford professors, are allowed to keep and use their personal devices freely, their son is NOT to access them, and all visitors to the house have to agree to hand their devices over to security guards upon entering the home.
We’d be lying if we said we weren’t a little bit bummed about the fact that SBF is no longer allowed on Substack, as we would have loved reading a rambling SBF newsletter about those new charges accusing him of spending $40 million to successfully bribe Chinese authorities — a revelation that we’re sure has nothing to do with this newly-tightened government leash.
But allegations aside, Futurism is not on the government-approved list, so SBF likely won’t be reading this anyways.
READ MORE: SBF Cut Off From His Favorite Toys Under New Proposed Bail Conditions [Gizmodo]
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