SBF Withdraws Rule 33 Motion as $114B FTX Hypothetical Circulates

Sam Bankman-Fried withdrew his pro se Rule 33 motion for a new trial in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on April 22, 2026. The filing, docketed in Case No. 1:22-cr-00673-LAK, was entered without prejudice, preserving his right to refile after the pending Second Circuit appeal and any decision on a request to reassign the case.

The withdrawal was made by letter to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. The letter said court inquiries about who assisted with the motion diverted time from preparing a reply to prosecutors and that Bankman-Fried did not expect a fair hearing from the judge. The original motion was filed pro se through his mother, attorney Barbara Fried, while he was detained at MDC Brooklyn.

The Rule 33 motion, submitted Feb. 10, 2026, alleged newly discovered evidence and claimed the Department of Justice withheld information and pressured witnesses, including former FTX executive Ryan Salame and associate Daniel Chapsky. Prosecutors filed a 44-page opposition on March 11, 2026, arguing the motion contained no legitimate new evidence.

In a separate letter dated April 13 from FCI Lompoc, Bankman-Fried wrote he was the “ultimate author” of the motion, saying he drafted multiple versions, developed the arguments and did most of the legal research using a word processor while detained. He wrote that his parents, both lawyers, provided editorial and organizational suggestions and that a briefly retained New York attorney had little substantive input. He also wrote that he did not consult his appellate counsel in preparing the motion.

A jury convicted Bankman-Fried in November 2023 on seven counts, including wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering tied to the alleged misuse of customer funds at FTX and Alameda Research. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024. His direct appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and a separate reassignment request to the district court remain pending; the withdrawal of the Rule 33 motion does not affect those proceedings.

On the same day the withdrawal was docketed, a number of crypto-focused social media accounts circulated a hypothetical reconstruction of FTX’s pre-collapse venture and token holdings that estimated an unliquidated combined value of about $114 billion. The reconstructions assigned paper valuations to specific positions: a Solana stake near $5.1 billion, a SpaceX position around $15 billion, an investment in Anthropic at about $82.3 billion, a seed stake in developer tool Cursor near $3 billion, a Robinhood stake around $4.9 billion and a Genesis Digital position of roughly $3.5 billion.

Court-appointed bankruptcy trustees sold most of those investments after the 2022 collapse at distressed prices to repay creditors and victims. The online estimates were presented as a counterfactual exercise rather than an accounting of recoverable assets.

The posts prompted mixed reactions online. Some users highlighted the early investment picks and their hypothetical gains. Others emphasized that the funds used for those investments were customer assets that were transferred without consent.

Bankman-Fried has sought a presidential pardon; no pardon has been granted. With the appeal and reassignment request unresolved, the right to refile the Rule 33 motion remains available pending decisions by the appellate court and the district court.