From 25 years in prison to just four months: Inside the final verdict on a crypto billionaire CEO archrivalry

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An arch rivalry between one-time crypto titans was brought to a close at a federal courthouse in Seattle on Tuesday when Binance founder Changpeng Zhao was handed a sentence of four months in prison. A month earlier, on the opposite coast in downtown Manhattan, FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried received a 25-year prison sentence for his crimes.

It seemed an underwhelming and somewhat anti-climactic finish to a protracted battle between Zhao and Bankman-Fried, two men who were legendary adversaries, as well as key stewards of the $2.2 trillion crypto sector.

For years, Binance's Zhao and FTX's Bankman-Fried preached the power of decentralized, digital currencies to the masses. Both were bitcoin billionaires who drove Toyotas, ran their own global cryptocurrency exchanges and spent much of their professional career selling the public on a new, tech-powered world order; one where an alternative financial system comprised of borderless virtual coins would liberate the oppressed by eliminating middlemen like banks and the overreach of the government.

Ultimately, both also helped crypto critics and regulators make the case that the skeptics had been right all along — the industry was rife with grifters and fraudsters intent on using new tech to carry out age-old crimes.

Bankman-Fried, 32, was convicted of seven criminal counts in early November, including charges related to stealing billions of dollars from FTX's customers. Less than three weeks after Bankman-Fried's conviction, 47-year-old Zhao pleaded guilty to criminal charges and stepped down as Binance's CEO as part of a $4.3 billion settlement with the Department of Justice.

Yet, much else about the pair is starkly at odds — perhaps most notably,