A year ago Sam Bankman-Fried ditched his trademark shorts and T-shirt for a suit and sat before the US House of Representatives as the acceptable face of crypto. Lawmakers could not see that under the table, his shoelaces were untied.

Bankman-Fried had much more than sloppy dressing to conceal. This Tuesday, the man once welcomed in Washington for his innovative regulatory vision was due to testify again, but this time to explain why his FTX cryptocurrency exchange, valued at $32bn only in January, had imploded.

Now his public appearances in coming months will be reserved for courtrooms. Hours before he was due to testify, Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas and charged with fraud by three separate US authorities. The 30-year-old, once crypto’s golden boy, faces criminal and civil cases and potentially a prison sentence of over 100 years. One US prosecutor this week called it “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history”.