A friend of mine got roughly half this sentence (12 years) for possession of cocaine with intent to sell. To be fair, was a large amount of cocaine and she 100% intended to sell it. However, she lost 10 years of her life (after good behavior) for being in possession of a < $1m worth of a regulated substance. Not sure how that fits on the spectrum against stealing $8b, but it all seems pretty disproportionate to me.

It will be interesting to see if they now prosecute his parents, who were entirely, shamelessly complicit.

"commit a violent crime with a silencer on your pistol" is an odd way of saying murdering someone.

There is quite a difference between murdering someone, and stealing a bunch of peoples money to the justice system. I am not saying that makes sense, but it's really hard to judge a crime when the year count starts getting into 10+ years. Would you be happy if it is 5x lifetime? Or some other silly number that means nothing?

The biggest Ponzi scheme in US history was Bernie Madoff's.

How much do you think an extra 5 years would add in terms of deterrence? It seems downright dishonest to characterize a third of his life as a joke.

Where I would put my energy into is making the risk of being prosecuted higher. If getting prosecuted is rare, the kind of people who are into cryptocurrency are going to figure that they’re likely to get away with it as long as they aren’t so blatant. White collar crime prevention needs to focus on changing that assumption.