Disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in the United States this Thursday, months after being convicted on charges including fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering.

During the sentencing hearing at the Southern District of New York court, the 32-year-old entrepreneur apologized, admitting that he had “made a series of bad decisions.”

The sentence is much lower than what New York prosecutor Damian Williams had requested, who sought between 40 and 50 years in prison for the founder and CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX.

A Manhattan jury found him guilty in November on seven charges, including fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering.

Known by the nickname “SBF,” he used customers’ platform deposits without consent to engage in risky transactions in his hedge fund, Alameda Research, and to purchase lavish properties and make political donations.

A billionaire before turning 30, Bankman-Fried rapidly rose to prominence in the cryptocurrency world, turning FTX, a small startup he co-founded in 2019, into the world’s second-largest exchange platform.

But in November 2022, the FTX empire imploded, unable to cope with massive customer withdrawal requests after it was revealed that some of the funds deposited with the company had been engaged in risky operations.

At the time of its bankruptcy filing, approximately $9 billion was missing.

The group’s liquidators have already recovered around $6.4 billion in cash and plan for a full refund to affected clients.

They benefit from the brutal appreciation of cryptocurrencies, which have rebounded after a catastrophic 2022 marked by several bankruptcies and the FTX scandal.

Propelled by capital inflows and the launch of a new investment product, the undisputed leader of cryptocurrencies, bitcoin, has been breaking records since March.