The criminal trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, the fallen founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, begins tomorrow in Manhattan, Brady writes.

Why it matters: The trial will decide whether or not one of the greatest financial boondoggles in history was, in fact, a fraud.

• The 31-year-old founder, known widely as SBF, faces seven counts — two of wire fraud and multiple counts of conspiracy — in connection with events that caused $8.7 billion of customer money to go missing.

Catch up fast: Bankman-Fried has been in custody since his bail was revoked in August over witness tampering.

• All of his key lieutenants at his two companies (FTX and sister trading firm Alameda Research) have pled guilty and turned against him.

Quick take: Their testimony, if it happens, is likely to be the most interesting part of the case.

• SBF has claimed he was unaware of the depth of the company's financial troubles, and those at Alameda — framing the collapse as a result of poor risk management.

The big picture: The high-profile trial is set to bring another wave of negative attention to an already battered industry, but it could also be helpful for it to move on.

• "We can't psychologically recover as an industry until we have catharsis," Nic Carter of Castle Island Ventures tells Axios. "This applies to all of the scoundrels from 2022."

What to expect: At a pre-trial hearing Thursday, the prosecution estimated they would need four or five weeks to present their case. The defense said it would need no more than a week and a half.

• If all goes according to plan, the judge in the case, Lewis Kaplan, estimated a judgment a week or so before Thanksgiving.

What we're watching: SBF's parents. More and more it seems possible that charges could be brought against the family. If that happens, it could be to leverage SBF for a guilty plea.

• At the hearing Thursday, the defense floated the possibility that it may not even make a case, depending on how the trial goes.
• Or, one suspects, if their client makes a late-stage decision to change his plea.

That said, a plea change is unlikely to change much for SBF at this point, with the trial underway, a former criminal defense lawyer tells Axios. He can change his plea, but he would be unlikely to get a deal with the state.

• If he did, though, the trial would end and the judge would move to schedule sentencing.

The bottom line: The judge raised the possibility Thursday that the proceedings might leave the defendant feeling very bleak about his future — not a line of speculation his defense team wants to hear.

• For the crypto industry, there are the important goals of making customers whole and holding bad actors accountable, but there's also restoring the public's trust in markets.

SBF's "advice of counsel" defense is still live, but you won't hear much about it over the next few days, Brady writes.

Catch up fast: The defense strategy allows a defendant to admit that he or she did the things they are charged with doing, but that they had been led to believe — by legal counsel — that they were acting within the law, and that they followed that advice in good faith.

• Why it matters: For fraud charges, the prosecution has to prove criminal intent. In this case, they must prove that SBF knew what he was doing.

The intrigue: The government moved for the defense strategy to be ruled inadmissible at trial.

The latest: Last night, Kaplan ruled that the defense can't use it in opening statements.

• After that, counsel needs to discuss its application with the judge ahead of time and he will rule on a case-by-case basis.

The bottom line: Both sides won a little. The judge is showing some skepticism about its application but also seems to think it might be relevant on some points.

The government wrote a letter to Kaplan this weekend that details the sort of witnesses they plan to call, Brady writes.

• The letter gave no names.

In the weeds: The three categories of witnesses it intends to draw on for testimony are customers, investors and co-conspirators.

What they're saying: "In each of these cases, the anticipated testimony about how the witnesses understood their relationship with the defendant and his companies, and their interpretation of statements made by the defendant and his agents, is directly relevant to the issues in dispute at trial," Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, writes in a letter to the court.

Between the lines: Customers are needed to testify, he wrote, to discuss how they understood FTX's commitments to handling their funds and their assets.

• Investors need to testify to discuss whether or not misrepresentations about how FTX handled funds would have been material to their decision to invest.

The intrigue: "The Government expects to call certain witnesses who entered guilty pleas to participating in a conspiracy to commit wire fraud with the defendant and who are testifying pursuant to cooperation agreements, as well as witnesses who will testify pursuant to grants of immunity for their testimony," Williams writes.

• Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh and Gary Wang were all members of SBF's inner circle, who pled guilty long ago.
• Ryan Salame is another FTX executive who has pled guilty.

What we're watching: If grants of immunity have been given, such that there were no charges, we may see some surprise witnesses that haven't made news yet.

🌎 The IMF proposed a country-by-country risk assessment strategy for digital assets. (IMF)

😱 $47 million in shorts were liquidated as bitcoin price took a sudden upward swing yesterday. (Decrypt)

👔 Coinbase secured a major payments institution license in Singapore. (Coinbase)

📺 Michael Lewis was on "60 Minutes" last night talking about his new book on SBF. (CBS)