While One Crypto Party Was Ruined, Another Raged On in Amsterdam — The Information

In the final week of October, over 3,000 crypto believers descended into woods on the outskirts of Amsterdam, arriving by shuttle bus to a gritty campus emblazoned in purple neon lights. Gaggles of hoodie-clad developers wandered the halls of industrial warehouses packed with lavish lounges, ball pits and barista stands where attendees could only buy coffee with crypto wallet–enabled wristbands.

The annual Breakpoint conference organized by the Solana Foundation, overseer of the blockchain platform Solana, was reminiscent of crypto parties past—if you could ignore the bushy-haired shadow looming over the proceedings.

At the same time, 3,600 miles away in downtown Manhattan, another crypto party of sorts was coming to a decisive, calamitous end. It was the tail end of Sam Bankman-Fried’s federal fraud and conspiracy trial, which would culminate in seven guilty counts for the FTX founder. While Solana-funded raves raged on in Amsterdam, the prosecution and defense made their closing statements in one of the biggest financial fraud cases in American history.