Watch: Outside New York court as Sam Bankman-Fried goes on trial for fraud

Watch a feed from a livestream outside court as Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud trial got underway in New York on Tuesday, 3 October.

The founder and CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX is to face a criminal trial over allegations that he cheated thousands of customers.

Prosecutors claim that the entrepreneur, 31, defrauded people who deposited cryptocurrency on the FTX exchange by illegally diverting large sums of their money for his personal use, including making risky trades at his cryptocurrency hedge fund, Alameda Research.

Mr Bankman-Fried, who once promoted his FTX digital coin exchange as a safe way for regular people to get into cryptocurrency, is also accused of using customer money to buy real estate and make big political contributions as he tried to influence government regulation of cryptocurrency.

On Tuesday, jury selection began.

Mr Bankman-Fried has acknowledged in interviews and social media posts that he made mistakes while running FTX but says he had no criminal intent.