Here’s an FTX summary
Hard to not say “WTF?” about FTX. I wouldn’t have trusted these people with a dime. What on earth?
This was never going to come out before the election.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Hard to not say “WTF?” about FTX. I wouldn’t have trusted these people with a dime. What on earth?
This was never going to come out before the election.
Wouldn’t have mattered if it did…
(Or is one’s faith in the Democrats’ ability to cheat “according to need” similar to one’s faith in bitcoin?…or more precisely, in this case, FTX.)
OTOH, there are some skeptics out there who DO trust—and stand by—their instincts…
“Elon Musk says FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried set his ‘bulls**t meter’ off…”—
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11420189/Elon-Musk-says-FTX-founder-set-BS-meter-offered-Twitter-purchase.html
…which instincts, in Musk’s case, would appear to be extremely sensitive, precise and well-calibrated instruments… (but then Musk has probably “seen it all”….)
It was a scam from the start. However, it turned into a vast financial scam to get US dollars to Ukraine and back into Democrat pockets.
Hello, it’s Biden, his family, and Democrats. Well, gotta lump McCain type Republicans in there too because those Republicans are part of the scam, including the deceased McCain.
I will defend McCain on the USS Forrestal fire to the hilt because he had nothing to do with the cause. Ukraine, nope.
I take it back (I just watched the video).
Holy mackerel….
Musk’s BS meter didn’t have to be anything special. Didn’t even need to be working.
Any person half-way “compos mentis” would surely have been compelled to sense, to feel, to comprehend, to conclude that Mr. FTX or whatever he calls himself was a mega-creep as soon as he opened his mouth. Even before that: as soon as he came into view.
And then there’s the girlfriend or whatever, or ex-whatever….
This is so incredibly unwholesome, so freakin’ disgusting, so absolutely gruesome, so phenomenally awful ON EVERY LEVEL (and I’m not even scratching the surface here) that I think, I believe—I’m certain—that I’ll just have to blame it on DJT….
Wonder if the Most Honorable Merrick Garland will at least feel compelled to go through the motions on this one…
(OTOH, why waste time even thinking about it….)
Actually, “Biden”‘ll probably tell the FBI to shake down ANYONE who dares question the credibility of FTX and—ESPECIALLY—wonder about its connection with the Democratic Party.
Call it “Credibility Denial”! (Or maybe “Democratic-Connection Denial”…)
Yep, that should do it.
And if one does decide to engage in a campaign of “Credibility Denial”, one should expect an FBI team armed and ready at the door at 4 in the morning….
Just want to ask a few, uh, questions…so that we can clear up some of this, um, unpleasantness….
“TX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Faces ‘Trip’ For Questioning In US”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ftx-founder-sam-bankman-fried-faces-trip-questioning-us
Related:
For those seeking more specific information thus far….
‘Jim Bianco answers “What the FTX just happened??” ‘
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2022-11-15/jim-bianco-answers-what-ftx-just-happened
“Interesting” graf:
“…The SEC doesn’t have regulation in place yet for cryptos, even though many players in the ecosystem have been begging for it.. Instead, the SEC has been ‘slow walking’ the process. Ironically, it had been collaborating most closely with FTX in its exploration of which regulations to put in place. [Emphasis mine; Barry M.—ought to raise a few eyebrows…like through the roof…]
That SEC-FTX nexus, continued (from the article linked to above):
“…So how did the world find out that FTX was a giant ponzi scheme?
“Two weeks ago, Coindesk got hold of FTX’s balance sheet and revealed how the FTT token loans to Alameda were being used to buy other assets. Binance, the biggest crypto exchange in the world, owned a lot of FTT tokens and became worried about how many of these tokens were being printed. Binance’s CEO, CZ, decided to sell his FTT tokens and publicly announced this intent on Twitter and criticized SBF for his efforts to influence SEC regulations to favor FTX over other competitors. [Emphasis mine; Barry M.] The selling of FTT tokens exposed how vulnerable FTX was and started a ‘bank run’, FTX imploded over the following 48 hours.
“FTX is now in bankruptcy, and for the most part, clients will lose most of their money. That’s about $10-14 billion. FTX investors have pretty much lost everything.
“The contagion from this is going to be epic across the cryptoverse. A number of them may die off, too….”
Is the United States government a looting/money laundering operation with a country attached as an afterthought?
Finding out that S-BF grew up in California; that he lives in the Bahamas with a 10-person “polycule” [term of art for a polyamorous group]; that his polycule “friends” are also involved in his crypto “business”; and that he’s a vegan– told me all I need to know about the dude. Oh, and he could use a dash of Gavin Newsom’s hair slickum.
Depending on which entity donated to the Dems, the bankruptcy court will attempt to “claw back” some of the donations as “fraudulent transfers”. The court presumes the transfers are fraudulent, unless they are shown to be in the “ordinary course of business”. This will be a fun bankruptcy.
When there’s a major scam exposed, the psychodrama is never far behind: on top of everything else, FTX had a “company therapist,” a psychiatrist named George Lerner. In his telling, Lerner worked for FTX not exactly as a therapist and certainly not as a doctor, but as a coach, even as he maintained independent doctor-patient relationships with about 20 employees and prescribed medication to at least some of them. In this capacity, Lerner said, he was focused on the well-being of the company’s employees, not only concerning himself with their careers, but their personal (and even dating) lives, at times searching out potential “dating options” for company employees in the Bahamas . . . . Officially, Lerner said, he served as an “in-residence coach,” helping FTX employees work through career decisions and trying to reduce the amount of drama at the office, filled as it was with 20-somethings, through “conflict resolution,” at times providing people with books to read on the matter. . . . Lerner said that FTX paid him for 32 hours of coaching a week and that he dedicated an additional 12 hours to maintaining his private practice [in San Francisco– where else?] through “telemedicine/telepsychiatry” and that the 20 FTX employees “were part of that.” The employees Lerner saw were California residents and he would see them in that capacity when they would leave the Bahamas and “go back home” to California. . . . When asked if he prescribed medicine to FTX employees while he was working for FTX himself, he replied, “Only through my private practice.” . . . . Lerner, for his part, said the entire FTX collapse has been “devastating” and “so so sad for employees.” Then, he added, “It felt like a family.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/epz8mn/the-curious-case-of-ftxs-company-therapist
PA+Cat:
Stories of morally flexible, conveniently obtuse psychiatrists make my nipples hard. (Someone once told me I have an “issue.”)
This George Lerner fella, doctor, psychiatrist, whatever, was prescribing stimulants to these people, whom he read as EAs — Effective Altruists — and trying to understand them as such, and thus provide them with Effective Counsel, I guess.
It’s the Effective Altruist’s Burden, don’t you know. And Effective Altruism goes back to philosopher, bioethicist, Peter Singer — also pro-abortion, pro-suicide, and in some cases, pro-euthanasia. We’re in the best of hands.
Well, Dr. Lerner seems more of a Dr. Feelgood with an extra dollop of talk therapy. Not some wacko Rasputin, which I would find more interesting.
The original SBF article is worth reading at the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221109230422/https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlight/
On a more objective note, there are plenty of over-leveraged, gray-area crypto companies.
ETX was big, but not unique. I’m not sure what’s left at the end, but this is only the beginning of the crypto-cull.
huxley–
I’m thinking that George Lerner would be the ideal shrink for San Francisco’s favorite power couple, the Pelosis. Nancy in particular might need a little pick-me-up from Dr. Feelgood, now that she’s lost her oversize gavel.
The White House is asking Congress for another $37.7 billion for Ukraine
With midterms a done deal, the FTX pipeline to Dem campaigns and McConnell’s sabotage operation is mysteriously gutted. Who would do such a thing? My guess: someone with inside knowledge.
Maybe the new distribution scheme will be more transparent and less corrupt (*wink*).
@ Matthew M > “Is the United States government a looting/money laundering operation with a country attached as an afterthought?”
In the same way universities are hedge funds with classrooms.
@ Neo > “This was never going to come out before the election.”
So now instead of “October surprises” where one party Reveals the Secret Scandal About the Other Party just before an election, we are having “October suppressions” by the media (aka Democrats with by-lines).
2020 was Hunter Biden’s laptop, of course (among a lot of other minor stories).
2016 should have been Hillary’s emails, but I think that got out of the bag and the suppression just didn’t work out.
2012 ??
2008 Obama’s murky past
Query for historians: has an actual October Surprise ever featured the Republicans revealing a Democrat “scandal” or is that another of those one-way-only traditions?
Related (by Ben Shapiro):
“The FTX Dog That Didn’t Bark”—
https://jewishworldreview.com/1122/shapiro111622.php3
H/T Powerline blog.
IOW, the complicity (or collusion, if you will) between “Biden”—more specifically, the SEC—and the FTX boy wonder/procurer of “cash on the barrel”…
The thing about crypto is you die rich or you live long enough to get arrested.
–TechLead (Patrick Shyu)
Fox is not doing reporting the whole story. From Politico:
“Bankman-Fried was among the most significant donors to Democrats during the cycle, distributing more than $40 million through direct contributions and super PACs. Salame gave roughly $24 million to Republicans.”
Salame was the co-CEO of FTX. These two crypto idiots were buying influence wherever they could, regardless of the party affiliation. And representatives on both sides of the aisle we’re happily taking their money.
I’ll add that, in my opinion, the Ukraine angle is specious. The Ukrainian government embraced crypto immediately after it was invaded in February 2022 as a means of attracting donations and using a currency that wasn’t tied to its faltering Hryvnia. We can question the wisdom of that move, but logic explains it without conspiracy.
Apparently Mr FTX was not only fond of Democrats, but had a soft spot for RINOs as well. No surprise there.
@ Banned Lizard – you shouldn’t keep us in suspense like that.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2021/10/21/the-worlds-richest-crypto-billionaire-who-donated-to-biden-is-now-giving-to-republican-senators/?sh=7da9dbb53f5d
Well, he did “give away” his fortune through some complex transactions, but I suspect whatever got cashed out into meat-space money is safely salted away.