High-flying Wall Street careers usually end with a golden parachute or a quiet retirement in the Hamptons. They don't typically end with an FBI indictment and a public apology for gambling away millions. But that's exactly where Richard Kim, once a rising star at Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan, found himself in 2024 and 2025.
It’s a wild story.
You’ve probably seen the headlines about the "crypto casino founder" who lost everything. If you're looking for the specific details on his time at Goldman Sachs and the subsequent fallout that rocked the venture capital world, you're in the right place. This isn't just a tale of bad trades; it's a look at how a pedigree of pure institutional excellence can crumble under the weight of "degens" culture and personal compulsion.
The Goldman Sachs Years and the Move to Crypto
Before the scandal, Richard Kim was the definition of a "whiz kid." He graduated from the University of Washington at just 18 years old. Think about that for a second. While most of us were figuring out how to do laundry, he was finishing a degree magna cum laude. He then moved through Columbia Law School and landed at prestigious firms like Cleary Gottlieb.
By 2015, he was at Goldman Sachs.
His role wasn't some back-office administrative gig. Kim served as the COO of Global Foreign Exchange and Emerging Markets Trading. That is a massive seat. While at the firm, he was actually one of the key figures leading the charge to build out the Goldman Sachs digital assets franchise in 2018. He was basically the bridge between the old-school suit-and-tie world and the wild west of Bitcoin.
Then, he left.
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In May 2018, Mike Novogratz's Galaxy Digital scooped him up. For a while, it seemed like the perfect transition. He moved from the COO role at Galaxy Digital to becoming a General Partner at Galaxy Interactive. He was picking winners, investing in gaming and "frontier tech," and solidifying his reputation as a guy who understood where the world was going.
Zero Edge: The Startup That Changed Everything
In March 2024, Richard Kim decided to strike out on his own. He founded a company called Zero Edge. The premise was simple, if a bit meta: a blockchain-based online casino. He told investors—including his former employers at Galaxy—that he was going to build a transparent, provably fair gaming app.
He raised roughly $4.3 million in seed funding. The valuation was reportedly around $26 million.
Everything seemed fine until June 2024. Just days after the money hit the company's accounts, things went south. According to the SEC and DOJ filings, Kim didn't use that $4.3 million to hire developers or buy servers. Instead, he allegedly moved about **$3.8 million** into his personal crypto accounts at Coinbase and Binance.
Then he started "playing."
The $7 Million Spree
It sounds like a movie script. Prosecutors allege that over a six-day span in late June, Kim moved nearly $7 million through various exchanges. He wasn't just hedging risk; he was gambling. He allegedly sent a net sum of $1 million to a site called Shuffle.com, which describes itself as a "VIP Crypto Casino."
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He was basically using investor money to gamble at a competing casino.
The Confession and the Fallout
By June 29, 2024, the money was gone.
Richard Kim sent an email to his investors that will probably be studied in business ethics classes for decades. He admitted he was "solely responsible" for the loss of $3.67 million of the company’s balance sheet. He blamed it on "leveraged trading losses" and a "deep-rooted gambler's mentality."
Honestly, it’s rare to see that kind of raw admission in the corporate world. But the damage was done.
Galaxy Digital, his former home, didn't stay quiet. They were among the investors who reported the conduct to the authorities. In April 2025, the SEC officially charged him with fraud. The DOJ followed up with an indictment for securities and wire fraud, which carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.
Why the Richard Kim Goldman Sachs Connection Matters
People are obsessed with this case because of where he came from. When you come from Goldman Sachs, you are trained in risk management. You are the "smart money." Seeing a former Goldman COO fall into the trap of "revenge trading" and online gambling is a wake-up call for the VC industry. It shows that even the most rigorous background checks and the most prestigious resumes can't always account for human psychology.
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What Most People Get Wrong
A lot of folks think this was a complex "SBF-style" scheme with hidden backdoors. It wasn't. Based on the court documents, it was surprisingly blunt. He took the money, moved it to a personal wallet, and lost it.
There was no "treasury management strategy," which is how he reportedly tried to frame it to some investors initially. It was just a guy with a problem who had access to a lot of capital.
Moving Forward: Lessons for Investors
If you are an investor or just someone following the Richard Kim Goldman Sachs saga, there are a few blunt takeaways here:
- Multi-Sig is Mandatory: No founder, regardless of their resume, should have unilateral control over millions in seed funding. If Zero Edge had used a multi-signature wallet requiring two or three people to approve transfers, this might have been avoided.
- Pedigree Isn't a Shield: A history at J.P. Morgan or Goldman Sachs means someone is smart, but it doesn't mean they are immune to the pressures of the crypto markets.
- The Transparency Gap: Even in a "blockchain" startup, if the funds move to a centralized exchange (CEX) like Coinbase under a personal name, the trail goes dark for the board of directors until it's too late.
The legal proceedings against Richard Kim are still unfolding in the Southern District of New York as of 2026. For the industry, it remains a stark reminder that in the world of high-stakes finance, the biggest risk isn't the market—it's the person behind the keyboard.
To keep track of this case, you should regularly monitor the SEC Litigation Releases or the SDNY Press Gallery, as new filings regarding sentencing or trial dates usually appear there first. If you're an early-stage founder, now is the time to implement a formal "Treasury Management Policy" that requires board-level sign-off for any transfer exceeding a certain percentage of your runway. It’s not just about trust; it’s about basic operational hygiene.