Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google were the four leading global brands at the end of 2023, according to consulting firm Interbrand. They’re are also four of the world’s five most valuable companies.

The other is Nvidia, which for a time this week, surpassed Microsoft to become the largest company in the world by market cap.

But despite its $3.1 trillion valuation (it reached $3.3 trillion before a two-day slide), Nvidia doesn’t even crack the top 100 most iconic names on Interbrand’s most recent list, which is populated by such companies as McDonald’s, Starbucks, Disney and Netflix.

Nvidia’s historic rise in valuation — the stock has climbed almost ninefold since the end of 2022 — has been driven almost entirely by demand for its graphics processing units (GPUs) that are at the heart of the boom in generative artificial intelligence and, more broadly, by the hype over AI. Nvidia has over 80% of the market for chips used to train and deploy AI software like ChatGPT. A handful of huge tech companies are the primary buyers of its chips.

The speed of Nvidia’s ascent and its relative lack of contact with consumers along the way combines to put the 31-year-old company’s brand recognition on Main Street far behind its allure on Wall Street. No. 100 on Interbrand’s list for 2023 is Japanese camera maker Canon, with Dutch brewer Heineken at No. 99.

“As a product company recently moving onto a global stage, Nvidia has not had time, nor has it dedicated resources, to change its role of brand and strengthen its brand to protect future revenue,” Greg Silverman, Interbrand’s global director of brand economics, said in an email. The risk for Nvidia, Silverman added, is that its “weak brand strength will limit how valuable it will be, despite its market cap heights.”

A spokesperson for Nvidia declined to comment.

Nvidia’s annual revenue growth has exceeded 200% in each of the past three quarters. For fiscal 2025, revenue is expected to almost double from a year earlier to over $120 billion, according to LSEG.

The company’s data center GPUs, which made up 85% of sales in the most recent quarter, are installed in massive facilities, and typically require a team of expensive data science and supercomputing experts to configure them to efficiently create AI software.

By contrast, Apple, ranked No. 1 by Interbrand, makes the vast majority of its money by selling iPhones and other devices to consumers across the globe. Microsoft, ranked second, is an enterprise sales giant, but is ubiquitously known for its Windows and Office software. Third-ranked Amazon strives to be consumers’ everything store, and No. 4 Google is, for many people, the front door to the internet.

Rounding out Interbrand’s top 10 are South Korean electronics giant Samsung, along with three car companies (Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and BMW), Coca-Cola and Nike.

Further down the list, at No. 24, is Nvidia rival Intel, which is best known for making the processor at the heart of laptops and PCs and for its long-running “Intel Inside” advertising campaign. Even Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a company that builds servers, made the list at No. 91.

However, a competing survey shows that Nvidia’s brand value is catching up to that of its peers.

In a ranking of the 100 most valuable global brands published this month by Kantar BrandZ, Nvidia landed at No. 6, leaping 18 places from its prior survey. The brand’s overall valued jumped 178% in a year to an estimate of about $202 billion. Kantar surveys enterprise buyers to evaluate brands that primarily sell to other businesses to come up with a total estimate of brand value.

“Nvidia is pound for pound as relevant and meaningful to that B2B buyer that’s looking to make big, large purchases in-house for their company as Apple is to the consumer who’s buying an iPad or a Mac,” Marc Glovsky, senior brand strategist at Kantar, told CNBC.

And while Nvidia may not be a name known to your parents — or your kids — it does have resonance in a particular corner of the consumer world. Just ask your hard-core gaming buddy.

When Nvidia was founded in 1991, AI was a nascent field. The company’s primary focus was on designing chips that could draw digital triangles quickly, a basic capability that led to a huge expansion in 3D games.

For years, Nvidia, and its GeForce brand and green logo were well known to the type of people who tweaked their computers to run the most advanced games. Nvidia provides the chips for the Nintendo Switch console, which has shipped over 140 million units around the world.

Unlike Intel, Nvidia never put its name in front of consumers with flashy ad campaigns. And gaming is now just a nice side business for chipmaker. In the latest quarter, it accounted for $2.6 billion of revenue, or 10% of total sales, rising 18% year over year.

When it comes to Nvidia’s most important products, companies and institutions vying for its AI chips have to go through an extensive quoting and sales process, often through a computer-equipment company, like Dell or HPE. Those vendors sell complete systems, including memory, a central processor and other parts. Even experts who want to train AI models are more likely to rent Nvidia access through a cloud provider than build their own server clusters.

Still, Nvidia’s name recognition is rapidly increasing. Among retail investors, Nvidia has emerged as the most widely held stock, according to data collected and published last month by Vanda Research.

And while the name didn’t make Interbrand’s top 100 list for 2023, the firm’s data shows its brand awareness quadrupled in the past 12 months, which will help when it’s time for the next ranking, Silverman said.

Maybe by then people will know how to say its name, a topic that’d been the source of debate on obscure gaming forums. The company pronounces it en-VID-ia.

WATCH: The ‘Magnificent Seven’ should have another good earnings season

Bitcoin isn’t running alongside meme stocks as it did three years ago, although this week’s stock market action might indicate a big crypto rally is on its way.

GameStop and fellow meme stock AMC Entertainment are each up more than 160% over the past two days. Meanwhile, bitcoin is little changed, down just 0.1% in the same period, according Coin Metrics. In 2021, by contrast, GameStop and AMC rallied 821% and 373%, respectively, from January through April. Bitcoin’s gains in that time, though more modest, still came to 96%.

“This isn’t 2021 when the world was locked down and awash with liquidity,” said Antoni Trenchev, cofounder of crypto exchange Nexo. “It’s worth remembering GameStop mania peaked in January 2021, well before bitcoin’s more than $60,000 highs in April and November that year. If you want to read into events of the past 24 hours you could suggest GameStop may be acting as a leading indicator ahead of the next leg of bitcoin’s post-halving run.”

“Today’s stronger than estimated U.S. producer price data is a reminder that the macro[economic] and inflationary backdrop isn’t conducive for a bitcoin rally, and it’s likely to stay rangebound after an explosive opening to 2024,” he added.

To be sure, there’s a world of cryptocurrencies beyond bitcoin that includes meme coins. Still, they haven’t joined the party in the same way. Dogecoin and Shiba Inu coins have risen about 3% each in the past two days, according to Coin Metrics.

Bitcoin is widely considered in a class of its own within the crypto world, driven by macro factors when there aren’t specific catalysts to consider, such as the launch of U.S. bitcoin exchange-traded funds or the Bitcoin halving that takes place every four years.

Noelle Acheson, economist and author of the “Crypto is Macro Now” newsletter, added that the meme stock run was “more of a revving of engines than a full take-off” and that macro issues are still pressuring bitcoin.

“Tomorrow’s inflation data may boost spirits if it comes in better than expected, but uncertainty is high,” she said. 

This year, the U.S. permitted the introduction of the first bitcoin ETFs, pushed largely by BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world. The funds are expected to attract new types of investors, steady flows of new cash, all while reducing volatility. Plus, the 2023 regional banking crisis in the U.S. that kicked off the current bitcoin cycle alterted many people to cryptocurrency’s potential as an alternative financial system and hedge against uncertainty.

“Bitcoin is no longer seen as a pure speculation asset,” Acheson said. “Its store of value narrative is more deeply entrenched, its holder base is much broader and it has become to some extent institutionalized.”

Sylvia Jablonski, CEO and chief investment officer at Defiance ETFs, added that although bitcoin was “lumped into the meme stock category” in 2021, the market is starting to show signs of being taken more seriously now.

“There has been a shift towards credibility in longevity of holding bitcoin,” she said. “Bitcoin became more commercial in its ETF wrapper, and both retail and institutional investors tend to hold both bitcoin and ether, versus day trade it like meme stocks.”

With bitcoin rallying so far in the first quarter of the year, briefly approaching $73,000, it’s more recently been pulling back in what many investors describe as a healthy move. With few catalysts and challenged by macroeconomic headwinds, these investors also warn that the lull in bitcoin’s price could last several more months, and maybe pull prices lower still.

“These periods of consolidation can last a long time and are intensely dull,” Trenchev said. “The bitcoin narrative tap has run dry … and I wouldn’t expect the revival of the meme-stock frenzy to be a catalyst for bitcoin’s next move.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday warned that China is treating the global economy as a dumping ground for its cheaper clean energy products, depressing market prices and squeezing green manufacturing in the U.S.

“I am concerned about global spillovers from the excess capacity that we are seeing in China,” Yellen said during a speech at a Georgia solar company called Suniva. “China’s overcapacity distorts global prices and production patterns and hurts American firms and workers, as well as firms and workers around the world.”

China has a surplus of solar power, electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries that it can ship out to other countries at cheaper prices. That makes it difficult for the more adolescent green manufacturing industries of the U.S. and elsewhere to compete.

Yellen said she intends to put pressure on Chinese officials about these trade practices during her upcoming visit to China.

“I plan to make it a key issue in discussions during my next trip there,” she said. “I will press my Chinese counterparts to take necessary steps to address this issue.”

The secretary’s concerns come as the White House tries to build a burgeoning clean energy industry domestically with investments from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, along with other legislation like the CHIPS and Science Act.

Yellen has regularly touted the gains from these investments, including at another recent speech where she doubled down on the electric vehicle “boom” spurred by the IRA.

But those investments are playing catch-up with China’s government.

“The Biden Administration also recognizes that these investments are new,” Yellen said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, China has been pouring billions into clean energy for years, outpacing the rest of the world in the energy transition.

Yellen added that the more China’s clean energy glut interferes with global market prices, the worse off supply chains for these energy sectors will be.

“President Biden is committed to doing what we can to protect our industries from unfair competition,” Yellen said.

 The Chinese Embassy in Washington denied the notion that there is an excess of Chinese clean energy products.

Yellen’s comments highlight ongoing U.S.-China trade tension even as the two countries try to steady relations.

President Joe Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November as an olive-branch effort to break the ice after years of tension, marked in part by a tariff war launched by former President Donald Trump.

Trump has floated reinstating significant tariff levels on Chinese products if he wins a second presidential term.

In the time since the Biden-Xi meeting, strengthening U.S.-China relations has proven a precarious effort due to ongoing cybersecurity and trade concerns.

In February, Biden launched an investigation into Chinese smart cars, which he said pose a national security risk because they connect to U.S. infrastructure when they drive on American roads.

“China is determined to dominate the future of the auto market, including by using unfair practices,” Biden said in a February statement. “China’s policies could flood our market with its vehicles, posing risks to our national security. I’m not going to let that happen on my watch.”

A California prison inmate locked up on a gang-related murder conviction led a scheme that defrauded the U.S. government out of more than $550 million in Covid-era federal tax credits, prosecutors said.

The inmate, Kristopher Thomas, was also charged with running a drug trafficking operation from his cell at Kern Valley State Prison that shipped large amounts of methamphetamine to several states and smuggled fentanyl into that prison, court filings show.

Thomas’ mother, 55-year-old Kettisha Thompson-Dozier, and her spouse, Charmane Dozier, 44, who both live in Waldorf, Maryland, were charged with him in the tax credit scheme, along with Sharon Vance, 36, of Hawthorne, California, according to prosecutors.

All four defendants are charged in that case with conspiracy to defraud the government with respect to claims.

Five other people were charged with Thomas in the alleged drug trafficking scheme.

Thomas, 36, has been in prison since December 2010 following a murder conviction. He was sentenced to 50-years-to-life behind bars for the August 2009 killing in Los Angeles of Dequawn Allen, whom he shot after asking where Allen was from.

Thomas is a member of the Main Street Mafia Crips, a Los Angeles street gang, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California, which is prosecuting him for both alleged schemes.

A criminal complaint accuses Thomas and his co-conspirators of filing, from early 2022 through July 2023, more than 400 payroll tax returns that claimed the employer retention credits in the names of fake businesses, and in the names of real companies that overstated the wages and numbers of workers they had.

The employee retention credits became a refundable federal tax credit for employers during the Covid-19 pandemic to encourage businesses to retain workers. The credit maximum was $5,000 per employee in 2020 and was increased to $7,000 per employee per quarter in 2021.

“Thomas provided instructions to co-conspirators about how to file payroll tax returns, how to respond to correspondences to the IRS, how to deposit the tax refund checks received, and more,” a criminal complaint said.

Thomas and the other conspirators used the money from the scam for personal expenses, which included Thomas paying for his family and friends “to be driven to Las Vegas from Los Angeles, party for the night at a luxury penthouse, and then fly back to Los Angeles on a private jet” to celebrate his birthday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

“It is remarkable that a prison inmate coordinated with others on the outside to distribute over 100 pounds of methamphetamine into the community,” said U.S. Attorney Philip Talbert.

“But that apparently was not enough: he also conspired to pursue over half a billion dollars in federal tax credits that were meant to help struggling businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Talbert said.

Both the tax scheme and the drug trafficking operation came to light after August 2022, when the Drug Enforcement Administration began an investigation into Thomas at his prison in Delano, California, after identifying him as the source of methamphetamine in Hawaii, Talbert’s office said.

Thomas used a prison-issued electronic tablet to call “numerous romantic partners, family members, and other individuals believed to be involved in drug trafficking,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

DEA agents intercepted those calls and also intercepted text messages showing Thomas communicating about the tax fraud scheme, prosecutors said.

Agents seized more than 90 pounds of meth linked to Thomas in Oahu, Hawaii, more than 94 pounds of the same drug in Alabama, New Jersey and Oklahoma, and elsewhere, prosecutors said.

Agents also seized 14 pounds of fentanyl, 9.5 pounds of heroin, and 8.5 pounds of cocaine as a result of the DEA’s wiretaps on Thomas, according to prosecutors.

And “a half a pound of fentanyl was seized after it was smuggled into [Kern Valley State Prison] at Thomas’s direction,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Charged with Thomas in the drug scheme were Justin Damonte Mitchell, 31, of Los Angeles; former Kern Valley State Prison inmate Derrick Charles, 41; Natasha Michelle Bailey, 44, of Bakersfield, California; Antrell Maeshack Sr., 41, of Santa Clarita, California; and 29-year-old Marie Joo-Yeon Choi of Los Angeles.

Baby formula maker Reckitt Benckiser’s Mead Johnson Nutrition has voluntarily chosen to recall certain batches of baby formula powder due to possible bacterial contamination, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The possibly impacted batches of Nutramigen Powder, an infant formula specially designed for children allergic to cow’s milk, were produced in June and distributed throughout the summer.

“Based on the limited availability of the remaining stock of this special infant formula, it is believed that much, if not all, of the products recalled in the United States have been consumed,” Reckitt said in a statement published by the FDA on Sunday.

The company said no “illnesses or adverse events” have been recorded yet but urged consumers who have purchased Nutramigen to check the bottom of the can to see if they have one of the possibly contaminated batches.

The impacted batch numbers and their corresponding can sizes are as follows:

• ZL3FHG, 12.6 oz cans
• ZL3FMH, 12.6 oz cans
• ZL3FPE, 12.6 oz cans
• ZL3FQD, 12.6 oz cans
• ZL3FRW, 19.8 oz cans
• ZL3FXJ, 12.6 oz cans

The possible bacterial infection in the product can cause potentially fatal infections like sepsis and meningitis, which often have symptoms like jaundice, temperature change, poor feeding, irritability, trouble breathing and unusual movements.

Apple will be able to sell the latest Apple Watches after an import ban was temporarily paused by an appeals court on Wednesday, in a major victory for the iPhone maker.

Apple said in a statement that the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 models will be on sale at Apple’s stores on Wednesday and that they will be available online starting Thursday.

“We are thrilled to return the full Apple Watch lineup to customers in time for the new year,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement. “Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2, including the blood oxygen feature, will become available for purchase again in the United States at Apple Stores starting today and from apple.com tomorrow by 12pm PT.”

Apple stopped selling its Series 9 and Ultra 2 watches last week in stores and online in response to an International Trade Commission order in October that found the blood oxygen sensor in the devices had infringed on intellectual property from Masimo, a medical technology company that sells to hospitals.

“The motion for an interim stay is granted to the extent that the Remedial Orders are temporarily stayed,” a court filing Wednesday said.

On Monday, the Biden administration declined to pause the ITC ban. Apple filed the appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Tuesday. The company continues to seek a longer stay. The ITC will need to reply by Jan. 10. Apple said on Wednesday that it had submitted redesigned Apple Watch models for customs approval that could negate the ban.

The stay means Apple may be able to sell the latest models of one of its most important products during the busiest time of the year. Apple Watch sales are reported as part of Apple’s wearables business, which reported $39.8 billion in sales in fiscal 2023, which ended in September. Ultimately, Apple was unable to directly sell a few Apple Watch models in the U.S. for a period of days.

The sales pause did not affect the Apple Watch SE, an older model that cannot read blood oxygen levels. The latest Apple Watch models also continued to be available from retailers like Best Buy or Amazon as long as they had stock. 

Masimo shares fell more than 4% on Wednesday. Apple’s stock was flat.

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Smartphones. Cars. Toasters. Fighter jets. While vastly different on the outside, all four items share something similar on the inside: semiconductors.

“There’s no tech industry without semiconductors,” said Stacy Rasgon, senior semiconductor analyst at Bernstein Research.

Semiconductors represent a $574 billion industry globally and are on pace to cross the trillion-dollar mark by the end of the decade. The industry has been caught in the crosshairs between the U.S. and China, two of the world’s largest economies.

The U.S., which leads the world in global semiconductor market share, recently issued sweeping restrictions on the sale of advanced chips and chipmaking equipment to China, in an attempt to restrict Beijing’s access to critical technologies. The Biden administration has said the export controls are aimed in part at preventing the use of American-made chips in China’s military. China, meanwhile, has accused the U.S. of abusing export restrictions to impede the country’s technological advances.

“We cannot allow China to have our most sophisticated semiconductor chips for use in the Chinese military,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in an interview with CNBC on Oct. 30, 2023. “That’s where we’ve drawn the cut line.”

Watch the video above to find out more about how the semiconductor industry became the centerpiece of a technological tug-of-war between the U.S. and China, and what the potential implications are for companies caught in the middle of it all.

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried told jurors in his criminal trial on Friday that he didn’t commit fraud, and that he thought the crypto exchange’s outside expenditures, like paying for the naming rights at a sports arena, came out of company profits.

Bankman-Fried addressed the New York courtroom a day after U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan sent jurors home early to consider whether some aspects of the defendant’s planned testimony, related to legal advice he got while running FTX, would be admissible in court.

On Friday morning, defense attorney Mark Cohen asked Bankman-Fried if he defrauded anyone.

“No, I did not,” Bankman-Fried responded.

Cohen followed by asking if he took customer funds, to which Bankman-Fried said “no.”

Bankman-Fried, 31, faces seven criminal counts, including wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering, that could land him in prison for life if he’s convicted. Bankman-Fried, the son of two Stanford legal scholars, has pleaded not guilty in the case.

Prior to the defendant’s appearance on the stand, the four-week trial was highlighted by the testimony of multiple members of FTX’s top leadership team as well as the people who ran sister hedge fund Alameda Research. They all singled out Bankman-Fried as the mastermind of a scheme to use FTX customer money to fund everything from venture investments and a high-priced condo in the Bahamas to covering Alameda’s crypto losses.

Prosecutors walked former leaders of Bankman-Fried’s businesses through specific actions taken by their boss that resulted in clients losing billions of dollars last year. Several of the witnesses, including Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison, who ran Alameda, have pleaded guilty to multiple charges and are cooperating with the government.

The judge’s decision to send the jury home on Thursday allowed Bankman-Fried and his defense team to audition their best legal material for Judge Kaplan.

On Friday, Bankman-Fried acknowledged that one of his biggest mistakes was not having a risk management team or chief regulatory officer. That led to “significant oversights,” he said.

Cohen walked Bankman-Fried through his background and how he got into crypto. The defendant said he studied physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated in 2014. He then worked as a trader on the international desk at Jane Street for over three years, managing tens of billions of dollars a day in trading. That’s where he learned the fundamentals of things like arbitrage trading.

In the fall of 2017, Bankman-Fried founded Alameda Research.

“This was when crypto was starting to become publicly visible for the first time,” Bankman-Fried testified.

He said people were excited about it, watching bitcoin, which had jumped from $1,000 to $10,000 in a two-month period. Banks and brokers weren’t involved yet and it seemed like there would probably be big demand for an arbitrage provider, he said.

“I had absolutely no idea” how cryptocurrencies worked, Bankman-Fried said. “I just knew they were things you could trade.”

The first Alameda office was in an Airbnb in Berkeley, California, he said. It was listed as a two bedroom but they used the couch in the living room as a third bed and also used the attic.

He started FTX in 2019. Trading volume grew substantially on FTX from a few million dollars a day to tens of millions of dollars that year to hundreds of millions of dollars in 2020. By 2022, that number was up to $10 billion to $15 billion of dollars per day in trading volume, he said.

Bankman-Fried said Alameda was permitted to borrow from FTX, but his understanding was that the money was coming from margin trades, collateral from other margin trades or assets earning interest on the platform.

At FTX, there were no general restrictions on what could be done with funds that were borrowed as long as the company believed assets were greater than liabilities, Bankman-Fried testified.

In 2020, a routine liquidation gone wrong led to some of the special borrowing permissions at Alameda, he said. The risk engine was sagging under the weight of growth. A liquidation that should have been in the thousands of dollars was in the trillions of dollars. Alameda was suddenly underwater because of closing the position.

The incident exposed a larger concern, that the potential of an erroneous liquidation of Alameda could be disastrous for users.

Bankman-Fried said he talked to FTX’s engineering director Nishad Singh and co-founder Gary Wang, both of whom testified earlier on behalf of the prosecution. They suggested creating an alert, which would prompt the user to deposit more collateral, or a delay, Bankman-Fried said. They later implemented a feature like that, he said, adding that he learned it was the “allow negative” feature.

Bankman-Fried testified that he wasn’t aware of the amount Alameda was borrowing or its theoretical max. As long as the net asset value was positive on the exchange and the scale of borrowing was reasonable, increasing the line of credit so Alameda could keep filling orders was fine, he said. Bankman-Fried added that he now believes what Singh and Wang did was increase the line of credit.

Convincing the jury will be a tall order for Bankman-Fried after a mountain of damning evidence was presented by the government.

Prosecutors entered corroborating materials, including encrypted Signal messages and other internal documents that appear to show Bankman-Fried orchestrating the spending of FTX customer money.

The defense’s case, which consists of Bankman-Fried’s testimony along with that of two witnesses who took the stand Thursday morning, hinges largely on whether the jury believes the defendant didn’t intend to commit fraud.

On Thursday, under questioning led by Cohen, Bankman-Fried appeared to place much of the criminal blame on FTX’s chief regulatory officer, Dan Friedberg, as well as outside counsel Fenwick & West, which advised the crypto exchange. Bankman-Fried spoke about Friedberg’s active involvement in everything from the companywide auto-deletion policy on messaging apps like Signal, to the creation of Alameda’s North Dimension bank account, where billions of dollars worth of FTX customer money was funneled.

The former FTX chief also said that the hundreds of millions of dollars in personal loans to himself and other founders of the platform were structured through promissory notes drafted by his in-house legal team and discussed in concert with his general counsel and Friedberg. Having the blessing of his legal counsel was something that Bankman-Fried said he “took comfort in.”

In afternoon testimony, Bankman-Fried was asked about FTX’s marketing and promotions.

He said there were 15 people on the marketing team, and noted that he got more involved with it as time progressed. In particular, he discussed the naming rights in 2021 for the basketball arena in Miami, which was to be a 19-year deal for $135 million.

Bankman-Fried said the sponsorship of FTX Arena would deliver returns for the company and create wide brand awareness because even he, as an “average level sports fan,” could name dozens of stadiums. He said the investment would be about $10 million a year, or 1% of revenue. The company had been deciding among a few different stadiums, including the homes to the NFL’s New Orleans Saints and Kansas City Chiefs, Bankman-Fried said.

A crucial part of his testimony came when Bankman-Fried said he thought the stadium deal funding was coming from revenue from the exchange and returns from venture investments, as opposed to customer money.

Similarly, Bankman-Fried testified that he believed the lavish Bahamas properties were being paid for with FTX operating cash that came from revenue and venture investments. He said having available property to rent was a necessary incentive if the company wanted to poach developers from Facebook and Google.

As for the venture investments, Bankman-Fried said he thought that money was coming from Alameda’s operating profits and third-party lending desks. Alameda’s venture arm was renamed Clifton Bay Investments, which Bankman-Fried said was a first step in building a dedicated venture brand.

When asked about loans he took from the business, Bankman-Fried said they were to pay for venture investments and political donations. He said that, as the primary owner of Alameda, he thought he had a few billion dollars in arbitrage profit from the past few years and there was no reason he couldn’t borrow from it. He said the loans, except for the most recent one prior to the firm’s bankruptcy filing, were all documented through promissory notes.

Bankman-Fried said he never directed Singh or former FTX executive Ryan Salame to make political donations. Salame pleaded guilty in September to federal campaign finance and money-transmitting crimes, admitting that from fall 2021 to November 2022, he steered tens of millions of dollars of political contributions to both Democrats and Republicans in his own name when the money actually came from Alameda.

Bankman-Fried, who allegedly used FTX customer funds to help finance over $100 million in political giving during the 2022 midterms, testified that he talked to politicians about pandemic prevention and crypto regulation. He said he had a vested interested in crypto policy even though FTX’s U.S. operation was relatively small, because the company was seeking to offer crypto futures products in the U.S.

Bankman-Fried then discussed his public persona. He said he hadn’t intended to be the public face of the company because he’s “naturally introverted.” But a few interviews went well, and it snowballed from there. He said he was the only person at the company that the press sought.

He wore T-shirts and shorts because they were comfortable and said he let his hair grow out because he was busy and lazy.

Bankman-Fried was photographed at the 2022 Super Bowl in Los Angeles with Katy Perry. He told the jury, which was previously presented with the photo by the prosecution, that he thought it was natural to go to the game because he was in town for meetings and the company had a commercial running.

“I thought maybe it would be interesting,” he said.

The afternoon testimony largely focused on Bankman-Fried’s repeated and unsuccessful request to Ellison that she hedge Alameda’s risk. Bankman-Fried said in late 2021, he had talked to Ellison about putting on trades to protect against the risk of market moves since Alameda had been leveraged long, meaning they would lose money if market went down.

Ellison said she would look into it, which Bankman-Fried said he “interpreted” as her being “far less enthusiastic about it.” Over the course of 2022, Bankman-Fried said every two months he would check in to see if Alameda had hedged, and each time he was told not yet, but Ellison would say she was planning to do so in the near future.

Specifically, Bankman-Fried said he had talked with Ellison and Ramnik Arora, who had been the head of product at FTX, about putting a $2 billion hedge on the company’s investment in Genesis Digital Assets, a bitcoin miner. He told the jury that the hedge was never made.

There was also more detail on how Bankman-Fried was told about FTX’s $8 billion liability. According to the defendant, in October 2022, developers built a Google database that included financial data. That’s where Bankman-Fried noticed the negative $8 billion balance, which he said he was “very surprised” to see.

Bankman-Fried testified that he’d started taking a more comprehensive look at total assets. He said he was happy to pledge everything he had as backup for the liabilities.

Cohen then brought the jury through the summer months of 2022, a time when Alameda’s lenders, specifically Genesis, BlockFi, Celsius and Voyager, all had direct conversations with Bankman-Fried about the need for emergency capital. In the end, only BlockFi and Voyager received funds from Alameda and Bankman-Fried.

In late 2021 and early 2022, Bankman-Fried said he wanted FTX revenue to be above $1 billion because it was a round number. He asked company executives if there were ways to reach that mark. Singh said he’d dealt with it by staking the company’s investment in crypto token Serum, a way of putting the coins to work. That would add another $50 million in revenue. Bankman-Fried testified that he was “a little surprised” they found that additional money, but it got him to $1 billion.

— CNBC’s Dawn Giel contributed to this report

WATCH: Sam Bankman-Fried testifying in his criminal case

Coinbase is confident that a U.S. bitcoin exchange-traded fund will be approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company’s chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, told CNBC.

“I’m quite hopeful that these [ETF] applications will be granted, if only because they should be granted under the law,” Grewal said in an interview with CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal.

The SEC was recently dealt a major court setback when a judge ruled that the regulator had no basis to deny crypto-focused asset manager Grayscale’s bid to turn its huge GBTC bitcoin fund into an ETF.

The SEC last week declined to appeal that ruling by a key deadline, likely paving the way for a bitcoin-related ETF to be approved in the coming months.

“I think that the firms that have stepped forward with robust proposals for these products and services are among some of the biggest blue chips in financial services,” Grewal added.

“So that, I think, suggests that we will see progress there in short order.”

He didn’t say when that’s likely to happen, and added the caveat that any decision would ultimately be up to the SEC.

But, Grewal said, it’s likely now that the SEC will approve a bitcoin ETF soon, highlighting the regulator’s failure in court to block Grayscale from converting its GBTC bitcoin fund into an ETF.

“I think that, after the U.S. Court of Appeals made clear that the SEC could not reject these applications on an arbitrary or capricious basis, we’re going to see the commission fulfill its responsibilities. I’m quite confident of that.”

The SEC declined to comment on Grewal’s comment when contacted by CNBC.

A bitcoin ETF would give investors a way to own bitcoin without having to make a direct purchase from an exchange.

That could be more appealing to retail investors looking to gain exposure to bitcoin without having to actually own the underlying asset.

Coinbase would likely benefit from any bitcoin ETF that is ultimately approved. The company, the largest crypto exchange in the United States, is a common stock held in portfolios designed to give investors exposure to crypto.

Not all is rosy in Grayscale’s bid to turn GBTC into an ETF, however.

The asset management firm’s parent company, Digital Currency Group, along with crypto exchange Gemini and DCG subsidiary Genesis, were accused in a lawsuit from New York’s attorney general of defrauding investors of more than $1 billion.

Still, Grewal sounded a positive note on the prospect of additional bitcoin ETFs being approved — sooner rather than later.

“We think that other ETFs are going to be coming online soon enough as the SEC follows the law and is required to apply the law in a neutral way to the applications that are pending,” he said.

Bitcoin has risen about 72% in the year to date, in a comeback by stealth for the world’s biggest digital currency after huge declines in 2022.

There’s been greater investor demand for the token in recent months, as the market reacts to prospect of the Federal Reserve ending its campaign of persistent interest rate rises, and as anticipation builds around the upcoming bitcoin “halving” event, which will see rewards to bitcoin miners reduced by half, thereby limiting the coin’s supply.

Still, trading volumes have declined, as retail investors have become uninterested in engaging in the market in light of a lack of volatility and in response to severe wounds suffered by once-large industry players like FTX, BlockFi and Three Arrows Capital.

FTX collapsed into bankruptcy last year after investors fled the platform en masse because of concerns over its liquidity. The company and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, are accused of defrauding investors in a multibillion-dollar scheme. Bankman-Fried is standing trial over these allegations and has pleaded not guilty.

Addressing the trial, Grewal said he was “quite encouraged and quite optimistic that a number of the bad actors in this space are being held to account through criminal trials and through aggressive regulatory actions.”

“We are quite excited that there are a number of developments we think that are just around the corner, or underway even as we speak, that will bring back investor and consumer interest in crypto,” Grewal added.