It's incredible that SBF was being touted by Sequoia, WEF, Fortune, chumming it up with Clinton and Blair in the Bahamas, getting meetings and kid glove treatment with the SEC, relatively glowing profile as a "do-gooder" by the NYT.
All while FTX had a Chief Regulatory Officer who was basically a career white-collar criminal. It beggars belief that anyone who dug half an inch into this story wouldn't have seen 90,000 watt flashing red warning signs.
Crypto turned into a haven for replaying every form of financial fraud ever invented on an epic speedrun against retail "investors", and a whole lot of powerful people and institutions have dirty hands. The idea all of this could be adequately explained by stupidity rather than malice strains credulity.
> Friedberg, who served as FTX’s general counsel before taking on the company’s regulatory role, was recently described by Coingeek’s Steven Stradbrooke as being “almost comically inappropriate” for the job. The description appears apt, given Friedberg’s long history of not complying with various jurisdictions’ regulations, but rather, evading them.
Can't make this up. Reads to me like, on the contrary, they couldn't have found anyone more qualified.
There is a German saying: "Wo ein Trog ist kommen die Schweine." roughly translates to "Where there is a trough - the pigs will come." Rather fitting for all the crypto meltdowns in the last years.
Crypto has attracted almost every type of criminal under the sun, to the detriment of 'regular' people who got conned into this stuff and is now left holding the bags.
Actually, this seems like a rather interesting defense of crypto. To use the metaphor, did the trough create the pigs? Or did it only draw a horde of pre-existing pigs to one place? Perhaps the amount of quasi-criminals that we are seeing in the crypto sector right now is just a sign that crypto was highly successful and not a condemnation of crypto in and of itself.
Clickbait title. Tether is only vaguely mentioned and there is nothing related to Tether operations- only to an employee at Tether.
While this article covers an interesting topic, the title is clearly an attempt to bandwagon on the "Tether is next" narrative while contributing nothing substantial to the conversation
> The second near-failure of UB occurred when the site was riddled by extensive credit-card fraud during its first year or so of operations. That led parent company ieLogic to develop an antifraud software suite called ieSnare that was so effective that the company was able to license it to other online concerns.
Feels sort of nonsensical honestly. Credit card anti fraud is entirely reactionary, there’s no magic bullet, you’re just papering over the cracks of an absolutely broken payment system. Every service will see different fraud, it will always be changing, there’s no one fits all solution. Very frequently the “rules” of the systems aren’t solid and everybody trying to exploit them knows that.
"Crypto" is useless. Bitcoin isn't. Maximalists have been warning against this stuff happening for nearly a year now. Ever since Luna collapsed, those voices grew louder, but the yield-farming degenerates chose not to listen.
Tether has similarly been caught in the past using the funds behind their supposedly "fully backed" tokens for highly speculative investment. So far it's just such a big scam that no one has been able to create a large enough run to topple it... so far.
> perpetrators are smart enough to avoid being caught.
IMO, many startups are scams on some level. VC A funds company X. VC A also funds company Y. Company Y 'decides' to use company X's hot new product and has a lofty enterprise license. This happens a few more times. Company X now has very large revenues, VC's friends at big-nation-bank decide it's time to IPO and cash out.
It seems more to me like governments don't want to take financial crimes (specifically fiditiary duty) seriously, as it would make precedent for bankers who do the same crimes, just less visibly (bailouts).
Lots of people building real businesses do shady things on the way up. John Hempton wrote up a great example of this about a failed short play against Steve Madden Shoes[0]. Steve Madden may have been a fibber, but he made shoes people wanted to buy. The value of the shoes was larger than the fakery.
But when you are selling financial services, this kind of fakery almost always blows up because the accounting is the product. And if the accounts are fake, the thing is fake. Fake accounts always leave a hole that can only grow with each cycle of fraud. Dan Davies wrote a great book titled "Lying for Money" on the whole sorry process[1]. Galbraith called it the "bezzle".
Sure. Look into any dictator that was installed by the CIA. Emboldened by their power and shady alliance with the US, they usually go on a financial crime spree--stealing billions.
Disgusting. SBF and this Friedman guy need to be literally physically flogged to a sobbing mess in the public square and then put into the ring for eight rounds with Mike Tyson. Better than they deserve. Absolutely vile. It is bad enough to cheat as a player/trader but to be responsible for the integrity of the platform and act like these guys is beyond the fucking pale
It’s amazing to me that enough people still believe in the crypto scam to keep pumping BTC above $15k. I guess they are still managing to mint fools at a fast enough pace to keep the price up.
> Sam Bankman-Fried stormed on to the US political scene with multimillion-dollar donations that led lawmakers, particularly Democrats, to believe he was ushering in the next generation of donors. But in a matter of days, his business empire collapsed into bankruptcy and the prospect of millions more in donations evaporated.
> The 30-year-old Bankman-Fried has been a major force in Democratic politics, ranking as the party’s second-biggest individual donor in the 2021–2022 election cycle, according to Open Secrets, with donations totaling $39.8 million. That ranks only behind George Soros (about $128 million) but ahead of many other big names, including Michael Bloomberg ($28.3 million). What’s more, he had promised to spend far more on Democrats moving forward, predicting in May that he’d fund “north of $100 million” and had a “soft ceiling” of $1 billion for the 2024 elections.
Because there are too many people that are in the situation that state actors steal from them more than these scams do.
Anyone doing international money transfers. Hell, that included intra-EU money transfers not 5 years ago.
Anyone in a bunch of countries. Lebanon being the most recent addition. Venezuela, Columbia, Turkey, Russia, Greece (sort-of-not-quite-anymore) ...
Anyone in legal but unfairly treated business/professions. Situations vary from country to country. From sex work, even website admins, to "the unbanked", who can expect the authorities to impound their money at the drop of a hat.
Anyone who wants to do large cash transactions safely without using a bank. And that DOES NOT mean drugs. Reality: you do this because you're afraid bank transactions can be reversed, which is possible in a bunch of places. Large, in the EU, has now become smaller than the cost of a used car.
Recently, if your transaction involves anyone on social security, your or their bank transactions may be monitored very closely by non-judicial institutions. If this is unwanted (and I guarantee it'll be unwanted) that will means you either use cash or crypto, depending on the amount. Although a lot of people in this segment haven't really discovered crypto yet.
Quote: “Aid For Ukraine shows how the global crypto community and the traditional financial system can work together,” said Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko. “Crypto donations to the DAO are stored and governed on-chain, then transferred to FTX, a centralized exchange, to be sold for fiat USD sent via SWIFT to the Ukrainian government.”
So basically people in the US (not the US government) sent money to Ukraine using FTX as an exchange to fiat (lol). Seems the whole thing is more like a PR thing than anything else.
Ukraine funding FTX:
Mostly false. This appears to be a confusion related to the fact that Ukraine launched a website accepting cryptocurrency donations that were processed via FTX [1]. However, as far as I can tell, there was no funding of FTX by Ukraine other than possibly FTX earning transaction fees for processing the donations.
FTX being 2nd largest donor to Democratic party in the U.S.:
Semi-true. SBF was the 2nd largest donor, not FTX the company. [2]
From what I'm reading, Ukraine used FTX to facilitate donations to Ukraine. I'm waiting for more details on the claim that Ukraine actually directly funded FTX.
In other funding news- FTX did fund one of the studies that "debunked" Ivermectin as an effective covid treatment. There's definitely a strong political slant to this scandal.
[+] [-] themgt|3 years ago|reply
All while FTX had a Chief Regulatory Officer who was basically a career white-collar criminal. It beggars belief that anyone who dug half an inch into this story wouldn't have seen 90,000 watt flashing red warning signs.
Crypto turned into a haven for replaying every form of financial fraud ever invented on an epic speedrun against retail "investors", and a whole lot of powerful people and institutions have dirty hands. The idea all of this could be adequately explained by stupidity rather than malice strains credulity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/14/business/sam-bankman-frie...
[+] [-] svara|3 years ago|reply
Can't make this up. Reads to me like, on the contrary, they couldn't have found anyone more qualified.
[+] [-] NBJack|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theCrowing|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] louwrentius|3 years ago|reply
That German saying is on point and really sad.
[+] [-] TheMaskedCoder|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] thejosh|3 years ago|reply
(pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune).
[+] [-] peteradio|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrleinad|3 years ago|reply
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH5-rSxilxo
[+] [-] simongray|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] new2this|3 years ago|reply
While this article covers an interesting topic, the title is clearly an attempt to bandwagon on the "Tether is next" narrative while contributing nothing substantial to the conversation
[+] [-] shkkmo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] CPLX|3 years ago|reply
That’s a pretty interesting little side story.
[+] [-] RL_Quine|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bedhead|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] once_inc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hef19898|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arisAlexis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JustLurking2022|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shkkmo|3 years ago|reply
Both Tether and FTX hired former white collar criminals from the same company to head their regulator compliance.
[+] [-] stephc_int13|3 years ago|reply
Not all criminals end-up behind bars.
I suspect that some scams can go unnoticed for long enough.
I also suspect that scam opportunities are exploding.
[+] [-] linuxftw|3 years ago|reply
IMO, many startups are scams on some level. VC A funds company X. VC A also funds company Y. Company Y 'decides' to use company X's hot new product and has a lofty enterprise license. This happens a few more times. Company X now has very large revenues, VC's friends at big-nation-bank decide it's time to IPO and cash out.
[+] [-] xiphias2|3 years ago|reply
It seems more to me like governments don't want to take financial crimes (specifically fiditiary duty) seriously, as it would make precedent for bankers who do the same crimes, just less visibly (bailouts).
[+] [-] sbarre|3 years ago|reply
Keep it low-key, don't get greedy, and you can probably milk it forever.
[+] [-] michael1999|3 years ago|reply
But when you are selling financial services, this kind of fakery almost always blows up because the accounting is the product. And if the accounts are fake, the thing is fake. Fake accounts always leave a hole that can only grow with each cycle of fraud. Dan Davies wrote a great book titled "Lying for Money" on the whole sorry process[1]. Galbraith called it the "bezzle".
[0] - http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2011/05/steve-madden-count... [1] - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38605195-lying-for-money
[+] [-] Gasp0de|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] datavirtue|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wly_cdgr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vba616|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mberning|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flanked-evergl|3 years ago|reply
> Sam Bankman-Fried stormed on to the US political scene with multimillion-dollar donations that led lawmakers, particularly Democrats, to believe he was ushering in the next generation of donors. But in a matter of days, his business empire collapsed into bankruptcy and the prospect of millions more in donations evaporated.
https://fortune.com/2022/11/10/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-joe-bid... (https://archive.ph/BBpQN#selection-417.0-424.0)
> The 30-year-old Bankman-Fried has been a major force in Democratic politics, ranking as the party’s second-biggest individual donor in the 2021–2022 election cycle, according to Open Secrets, with donations totaling $39.8 million. That ranks only behind George Soros (about $128 million) but ahead of many other big names, including Michael Bloomberg ($28.3 million). What’s more, he had promised to spend far more on Democrats moving forward, predicting in May that he’d fund “north of $100 million” and had a “soft ceiling” of $1 billion for the 2024 elections.
[+] [-] scrlk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gasp0de|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] candiodari|3 years ago|reply
Anyone doing international money transfers. Hell, that included intra-EU money transfers not 5 years ago.
Anyone in a bunch of countries. Lebanon being the most recent addition. Venezuela, Columbia, Turkey, Russia, Greece (sort-of-not-quite-anymore) ...
Anyone in legal but unfairly treated business/professions. Situations vary from country to country. From sex work, even website admins, to "the unbanked", who can expect the authorities to impound their money at the drop of a hat.
Anyone who wants to do large cash transactions safely without using a bank. And that DOES NOT mean drugs. Reality: you do this because you're afraid bank transactions can be reversed, which is possible in a bunch of places. Large, in the EU, has now become smaller than the cost of a used car.
Recently, if your transaction involves anyone on social security, your or their bank transactions may be monitored very closely by non-judicial institutions. If this is unwanted (and I guarantee it'll be unwanted) that will means you either use cash or crypto, depending on the amount. Although a lot of people in this segment haven't really discovered crypto yet.
[+] [-] candiddevmike|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bud|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cheri9|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] chaosbolt|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] loceng|3 years ago|reply
Timeline:
- April 25, 2019: Biden announces his presidential campaign.
- 13 days later, Sam Bankman-Fried, son of Barbara Fried (co-founder of political fundraising organizations), launched FTX crypto exchange.
- The exchange is an overnight success. Sam Bankman-Fried (SBM) becomes biggest donor to Biden.
- Most of the FTX team is reported to have flown to Hong Kong now, so China, the CCP is their safe haven?
[+] [-] teh64|3 years ago|reply
Quote: “Aid For Ukraine shows how the global crypto community and the traditional financial system can work together,” said Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko. “Crypto donations to the DAO are stored and governed on-chain, then transferred to FTX, a centralized exchange, to be sold for fiat USD sent via SWIFT to the Ukrainian government.”
So basically people in the US (not the US government) sent money to Ukraine using FTX as an exchange to fiat (lol). Seems the whole thing is more like a PR thing than anything else.
[+] [-] boole1854|3 years ago|reply
Ukraine funding FTX: Mostly false. This appears to be a confusion related to the fact that Ukraine launched a website accepting cryptocurrency donations that were processed via FTX [1]. However, as far as I can tell, there was no funding of FTX by Ukraine other than possibly FTX earning transaction fees for processing the donations.
FTX being 2nd largest donor to Democratic party in the U.S.: Semi-true. SBF was the 2nd largest donor, not FTX the company. [2]
[1] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/03/14/ukraine-partners-...
[2] https://fortune.com/2022/11/10/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-joe-bid...
[+] [-] mminer237|3 years ago|reply
Ukraine didn't contribute to FTX at all.
[+] [-] yonaguska|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimcavel888|3 years ago|reply
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