Sam Bankman-Fried's Life Behind Bars: Crypto Tips and Paying With Fish

[dalton99a]

https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/sam-bankman-frieds-life-behind-bars-crypto-tips-and-paying-with-fish-858097c6
https://archive.ph/dnWog

Sam Bankman-Fried’s Life Behind Bars: Crypto Tips and Paying With Fish
FTX founder learns that mackerel is a jailhouse currency and shares a dorm with other high-profile defendants
By James Fanelli and Corinne Ramey
Nov. 23, 2023 5:30 am ET


Mackerel packets, known as ’macks,’ are a favored federal jailhouse currency after officials banned smoking. Photo Illustration: The Wall Street Journal; Photo: Bill Baroni

Sam Bankman-Fried, convicted of fraud in the meltdown of FTX, has traded in crypto for a new currency: mackerel.

The fallen crypto king, who is cooling his heels at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center while he awaits sentencing for seven felony offenses, has learned the fundamentals of prison economics while sharing a dormitory with a former Honduran president awaiting criminal trial and a recently convicted former top cop of Mexico, people familiar with the matter said.

Mackerel has replaced cigarettes as a favored federal jailhouse currency after officials banned smoking, and inmates sometimes use pouches of the preserved fish purchased in a commissary to pay for services from one another. Bankman-Fried traded some pouches of macks, as they are known, to a fellow inmate for a haircut of his signature moptop ahead of his trial, one of the people said.

The FTX founder has been in jail since a federal judge revoked his bail in August after finding probable cause that he attempted to intimidate witnesses, a claim Bankman-Fried denied. Earlier this month, a jury took only a few hours to convict him on charges that he stole billions of dollars from FTX customers while defrauding investors and lenders. He is scheduled to be sentenced March 28, after which he will move to a federal prison to serve out his sentence.

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What happened to ramen noodles?

[yagotme]

1. A Ramen is a single, and a fish is a five or ten-spot.

I/M's trade everything. Depends on commissary pricing. Let's not even start on 2-fers.

[ret5hd]

2. the "BitMack"...get in on the ground floor!

[DET]

3. I Don't Get It

Is there some connection between cigarettes and mackerel?