Crypto mythology had imbued these lines with meaning. Each represented an ownership stake in the future of art, the thinking went, or a DeFi investment that would revolutionize the world of finance. People paid millions of perfectly good dollars to add lines to crypto spreadsheets, to record that they owned a stash of Dogecoins, or a rare Bored Ape. By manipulating sheets like these, Sam Bankman-Fried had made himself into one of the world’s richest men. On the screen in the courtroom, the spreadsheet lost its power. It looked like any other financial document, with line after line of random
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