Former FTX director announces new role on LinkedIn as a prisoner

ALBAWABA – When Ryan Salame, the former CEO of the defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, publicly changed his LinkedIn page to reflect his impending prison sentence, it made headlines.

Salame shocked many by changing his LinkedIn status to “Inmate at FCI Cumberland” before completing his term. Salame was sentenced to seven and a half years for unlawful political contributions and running an unregistered money transfer business.

Salame’s unconventional choice to use LinkedIn to announce his incarceration generated a stir on social media and raised awareness of the legal repercussions facing bitcoin’s top executives.

Once valued at $32 billion, FTX’s demise turned into one of the biggest scandals in the cryptocurrency industry. Salame, who had admitted to involvement in the collapse of the FTX, was a key player in the subsequent lawsuit. He admitted his role in the illegal political contributions during his testimony in court in Manhattan, but he did score a small triumph by keeping his 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S, which the government ruled was too worthless to seize to take.

Salame withdrew more than $5 million worth of cryptocurrencies during the FTX collapse, even as he claimed that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) misled him. Salame’s case is part of the wider fallout as the company collapsed, as other executives, such as Caroline Ellison, the former head of Alameda Research, were also sentenced to prison.

Ellison’s evidence was key to SBF getting a 25-year prison sentence. Salame made a funny comment on X (formerly Twitter) in response to the widespread attention his LinkedIn article received: “Today I learned that people are still using LinkedIn.”

This event highlights the ongoing moral dilemmas in the cryptocurrency business and shows how social media continues to have a major influence on how the general public views the financial sector.