Binance and FTX

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not into the crypto scene and am fascinated to see that much of the drama/manipulation/crimes are related to the platform companies and not the digital currencies themselves.

Illegal? These are not banks and are almost completely unregulated. I don't know what it was take for some to be prosecuted as a crime.

Agree, and my work prohibits any ownership of crypto. Bitcoin's proof of work mechanism ensures its integrity. Etherium has shifted to proof of stake to satisfy the climate change crowd but it remains to be seen if that could be manipulated.

Lightly regulated platforms dealing with other people's money were a problem waiting to happen.

FTX was lending customer assets (an exchange should be safekeeping customer assets, not lending them) to a connected company, Alameda (compounding the egregiousness of the lending), that Alameda collateralized with its holdings of tokens FTX itself had issued (ensuring that a drop in the token's value would leave FTX unable financially to give its customers their assets back).

The FTX implosion has nothing to do with the digital assets themselves, but has everything to do with a financial firm that avoided all principles of good governance and risk management.

The claim that the FTX collapse has nothing to do with the digital assets themselves is wrong. FTX Token was a key part of this collapse.

I would differentiate FTT, the FTX tokens, from digital assets like bitcoin and etherium. FTT was a token issued by FTX that gave holders a share in FTX's profit.

[Anonymous]

This is probably a Bernie Madoff situation. I think we now know why SBF and his deputies donated nearly $70M to PACs this election cycle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not into the crypto scene and am fascinated to see that much of the drama/manipulation/crimes are related to the platform companies and not the digital currencies themselves.

Illegal? These are not banks and are almost completely unregulated. I don't know what it was take for some to be prosecuted as a crime.

Agree, and my work prohibits any ownership of crypto. Bitcoin's proof of work mechanism ensures its integrity. Etherium has shifted to proof of stake to satisfy the climate change crowd but it remains to be seen if that could be manipulated.

Lightly regulated platforms dealing with other people's money were a problem waiting to happen.

FTX was lending customer assets (an exchange should be safekeeping customer assets, not lending them) to a connected company, Alameda (compounding the egregiousness of the lending), that Alameda collateralized with its holdings of tokens FTX itself had issued (ensuring that a drop in the token's value would leave FTX unable financially to give its customers their assets back).

The FTX implosion has nothing to do with the digital assets themselves, but has everything to do with a financial firm that avoided all principles of good governance and risk management.

The claim that the FTX collapse has nothing to do with the digital assets themselves is wrong. FTX Token was a key part of this collapse.

I would differentiate FTT, the FTX tokens, from digital assets like bitcoin and etherium. FTT was a token issued by FTX that gave holders a share in FTX's profit.

Oh true, there is the potential than FTT would have paid a dividend from the company. BTC and ETH have zero future income streams and worth is completely based upon finding the next fool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is probably a Bernie Madoff situation. I think we now know why SBF and his deputies donated nearly $70M to PACs this election cycle.

The effective altruism piece on him by Sequoia was hilarious
https://archive.ph/2022.11.10-160906/https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlight/

[Anonymous]

The story gets even worse.

Last night, $600 million of FTX customer assets were hacked and apparently converted into ether. Strong rumors that it was inside job, perhaps by SBF himself.

He says he is in the Bahamas, but there are strong suspicions that he has gone to Argentina.

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

I told my friend who was keeping his crypto at FTX ("because the US FTX isn't affected by this") to get it out earlier this week. He didn't. He just messaged me that his account shows he has ZERO. It's all gone.

Help me out here - why do the same people who don't trust government think that giving your money to an unregulated bunch of kids is better?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I told my friend who was keeping his crypto at FTX ("because the US FTX isn't affected by this") to get it out earlier this week. He didn't. He just messaged me that his account shows he has ZERO. It's all gone.

Help me out here - why do the same people who don't trust government think that giving your money to an unregulated bunch of kids is better?

Yep, US FTX, which was not implicated in the broader FTX scandal, was apparently affected by the hack, one of the aspects that is fueling suspicion of an inside job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I told my friend who was keeping his crypto at FTX ("because the US FTX isn't affected by this") to get it out earlier this week. He didn't. He just messaged me that his account shows he has ZERO. It's all gone.

Help me out here - why do the same people who don't trust government think that giving your money to an unregulated bunch of kids is better?

Because these people have been brainwashed for the past few decades that the government is the problem.

It makes them very easy marks for the scam artists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is probably a Bernie Madoff situation. I think we now know why SBF and his deputies donated nearly $70M to PACs this election cycle.

The effective altruism piece on him by Sequoia was hilarious
https://archive.ph/2022.11.10-160906/https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlight/

It's a truism that anyone who tries to appear saintly is probably hiding severe ethical issues. Dan Price, for example, literally groomed himself to look like Jesus and went on any media that would take him to brag about his virtue.

I'm a born skeptic, but I have a hard time understanding why people give their money to ANYONE like this-- even the ESG crowd. It's even harder to understand why you'd give it to a shadowy, unregulated, off-shore group in an industry known for scams and theft. And furthermore, I am a smart person and I dont understand cryto. They say it has value because only a finite amount exists. Okay, but it is sold in fractions, and there are an infinite number of fractions, which means that there really is no floor on how many can be sold. The whole thing is a giant con.

[Anonymous]

This is hilarious. Apparently FTX was “hacked” today and someone siphoned off $600M client funds into ETH accounts

And SBF is being tracked on his private jet to Argentina.

Coincidence?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is probably a Bernie Madoff situation. I think we now know why SBF and his deputies donated nearly $70M to PACs this election cycle.

The effective altruism piece on him by Sequoia was hilarious
https://archive.ph/2022.11.10-160906/https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlight/

I couldn't get there from that link, but this link worked for me.

Long, but well worth the read if you are into the scandal.

In retrospect, the fawning of the article's author is hilarious. It seems SBF's effective altruism was backed up bu an ends justify the means philosophy. Because he had all these utilitarian good intentions for his fortune, it didn't matter what ethical corners he cut to make it.

SBF was the second largest donor to Biden's election, and he donated $40 million, second only to George Soros, to the Democratic party for the midterms. His "soft" number for his future donations to the party was $1 billion.

https://web.archive.org/web/20221027181005/https:/www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlight/

[Anonymous]

I totally don't understand any of this no matter how much I read about it, but what interests me is reading that celebrities like Tom Brady and wife, Steph Curry, Shohei Ohtanai, and even Mark Zuckerburg will or already have lost billions in this. Who else?

[Anonymous]

FTX counsel is saying the 600m in cryptoassets were moved into "cold storage" for safe keeping.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I totally don't understand any of this no matter how much I read about it, but what interests me is reading that celebrities like Tom Brady and wife, Steph Curry, Shohei Ohtanai, and even Mark Zuckerburg will or already have lost billions in this. Who else?

Don't know other celebrities, but here are firms and one pension fund that were FTX investors:

BlackRock
Ontario Pension Fund
Sequoia
Paradigm
Tiger Global
SoftBank
Circle
Ribbit
Alan Howard
Multicoin
VanEck
Temasek