On January 3, Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to eight charges related to the collapse of FTX cryptocurrency exchange in November of last year. The co-founder and notorious former CEO of FTX could face up to 115 years in prison if he is found guilty of the charges.

Bankman-Fried, his mother, and other family and friends appeared in person at a court hearing in the United States District Court for the Southern District in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday. The 30-year-old former crypto-executive is facing charges including wire fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance violations. His trial has been scheduled to start on October 2.

At the request of the U.S. government, Bankman-Fried was arrested by Bahamian authorities at his home on December 13, and he was extradited to the U.S. and placed in FBI custody eight days later. A day after returning to the U.S., Bankman-Fried was released into his parents' custody on $250 million bail. Since then, he's been living at his parents' residence in California.

At Tuesday's hearing, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan introduced a new condition to Bankman-Fried's bail blocking him from accessing Alameda or FTX assets. The prosecution had accused Bankman-Fried of attempting to move assets to "more lenient" countries and also pointed out that funds had been moved out of Alameda wallets as recently as last month.

Bankman-Fried has denied making those transactions.

According to NPR, criminal law experts had several reasons to expect Bankman-Fried's not guilty plea. First, pleading not guilty gives Bankman-Fried access to information from the prosecutors investigating him. Federal prosecutor Danielle Sassoon said at Tuesday's hearing that there are hundreds of thousand of pages worth of evidence against the former crypto-mogul.

"It is common for defendants to do this. A not guilty plea generally opens the door to the discovery process, which would give Sam Bankman-Fried a better idea of the evidence that the government has collected thus far in its investigation," Christine Chung, a professor at Albany Law School, told NPR.

In addition, Bankman-Fried didn't have many options other than a not guilty plea. Other top executives, fellow co-founder Gary Wang and Alameda's former CEO Caroline Ellison, plead guilty and are cooperating with prosecutors, but experts say Bankman-Fried probably wasn't given the same opportunity.

"Sam Bankman-Fried was probably not offered a deal because he is likely the main instigator of the fraud, and there is no one higher up that he can testify against," said James Park, a securities fraud expert at UCA Law. "He thus had no incentive to plead guilty, and will attempt to leverage his ability to take the case to trial to get a more favorable sentence than is being offered at the start of the case."