As the founder and CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried won over presidents, pop stars, and princes. On Friday, he faced his toughest audience yet: a jury of his peers.

Bankman-Fried took the stand Friday following a dry run Thursday in front of federal Judge Lewis Kaplan and attorneys on both sides of his fraud case. Kaplan barred the former billionaire from pinning several of his alleged missteps on advice from his company’s lawyers, but otherwise let him speak widely about his experience as head of the now-bankrupt crypto exchange.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the co-founder of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, testified Friday that many mistakes were made that led to the collapse of the business and the disappearance of $8 billion in customer money, but he denied that any fraud occurred.

Taking the stand in his own defense in his criminal fraud trial, the 31-year-old Bankman-Fried explained that FTX’s risk-management structure came unwound, but he attempted to couch that as a failure that resulted because the company had grown too rapidly.

FTX crypto founder Sam Bankman-Fried was rebuked by the judge multiple times while testifying in his fraud and money laundering trial on Friday.

United States District Judge Lewis Kaplan interrupted Bankman-Fried several times during his testimony for giving long, rambling answers in response to defense attorney Mark Cohen's questions. At one point, Kaplan rejected Bankman-Fried's definition of market manipulation, telling the jury, “You will take what I say manipulation means," according to the Washington Post.