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The Story: Sam Bankman-Fried, who sits on trial for conspiracy to commit money laundering and fraud, intends to take the witness stand in his own defense potentially as early as today.

SBF’s lawyer, Mark Cohen, confirmed in a court conference yesterday that the former CEO of crypto exchange platform FTX will testify under oath.

It is usually rare for a defendant accused of a white-collar crime to take the witness stand. However, we have seen one other recent high profile trial where this also occurred. Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and former CEO of Theranos, the fraudulent blood-testing diagnostics company, also took the stand in her trial in 2021. It did not appear to make a difference in her case as she was found guilty and is now serving her sentence of over eleven years in a Texas prison.

So far, prosecutors in the trial have made their case that Bankman-Fried is a liar, stole billions of dollars from FTX customers, and made extremely risky bets at the expense of his investors.

His lawyers, on the other hand, have argued that SBF was merely acting in “good faith” and lost billions because of the sharp downturn of crypto markets, not because of fraud.