U.S. law might disagree. In 2022, BitMEX founders pled guilty to violating U.S, anti-money laundering laws, even though BitMEX was based in the Seychelles. And then, of course, came FTX. FTX was based in Hong Kong and then moved to the Bahamas. Sam Bankman-Fried desperately wanted to make it in the United States, paying huge sums of money for celebrity endorsements and stadium naming rights, all while trying to woo politicians in Washington. In the end, FTX’s global operation never made it into the U.S., with the exception of the much smaller and less powerful FTX.US. Instead, Bankman-Fried ended up getting torn apart by U.S. prosecutors in a U.S. court.