November 13, 2022

"A spreadsheet... references $5bn of withdrawals last Sunday, and a negative $8bn entry described as 'hidden, poorly internally labled "fiat@" account.'"

"Bankman-Fried told the Financial Times the $8bn related to funds 'accidentally' extended to his trading firm, Alameda, but declined to comment further. Earlier this week, he tweeted that FTX international had $4bn in easily tradeable assets when it faced Sunday’s $5bn surge of withdrawals. 'There were many things I wish I could do differently than I did, but the largest are represented by these two things: the poorly labeled internal bank-related acount [sic], and the size of customer withdrawals during a run on the bank,' the spreadsheet adds.... Healthy companies typically have assets that match or exceed their liabilities. The spreadsheet says FTX Trading had a total of $9.6bn of assets, but it is unclear how much of that value could be realised...."

 From "FTX held less than $1bn in liquid assets against $9bn in liabilities/Vast gap highlights the dire state of Sam Bankman-Fried’s exchange before it collapsed into bankruptcy" (Financial Times).

I don't normally blog about finance. It's kind of my least favorite topic, but I was intrigued by "'There were many things I wish I could do differently than I did....' the spreadsheet adds." 

I didn't know spreadsheets experienced regret. 

The "I" is, presumably, Bankman-Fried. Here's a BBC article about him, "The fall of the FTX ‘King of Crypto’ Sam Bankman-Fried":

It's a dizzying downfall and the rise of Mr Bankman-Fried is also its own dramatic story of risks, rewards and beanbags. Mr Bankman-Fried went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - a prestigious US research university where he studied physics and maths. But the young bright undergraduate says it was lessons learned in the student dorms that led him on his path to getting rich.

In a BBC radio interview last month, he recalled being swept up in the "effective altruism" movement. Effective altruism is a community of people "trying to figure out what practical things you can do with your life to have as much positive impact as you can on the world", he said.

So, as Mr Bankman-Fried recalls, he decided to get into banking to make as much money as he could to give it back to good causes....

Ha ha. Okay. I give this post my "charity" tag. For fun. Also, "wealth." Any greedy person raking in monstrous wealth can "recall" a motivation like that.

But where's the beanbag?, you may ask.

The crypto exchange grew to be the second largest in the world and a titan of the industry, seeing $10-$15bn traded a day.... All the while, Mr Bankman-Fried seemingly delighted in giving his Twitter followers an insight into his lifestyle. He mainly sleeps on a bean bag next to his desk in the office, he said, with a picture of him lying next to his staff at their trading terminals....

AND: From "It Was All a Game for Sam Bankman-Fried" (NY Magazine):

He was reportedly in a kind of polycule with his ten other roommates in the Bahamas, who were apparently not only romantically involved with each other but also were de facto running his empire....

The millions he spent helping elect Democrats and write his own regulatory agenda in Washington have blown up, effectively turning him — and the crypto industry — toxic.

“This guy knew his shit,” said William Quigley, a co-founder of Tether who had a meeting with him and a politician in June to talk about the crypto industry. “But I have my own view of what happened. Young people tend to whistle past the graveyard. They think of risk controls as boring stuff that should be set aside.”...

Spend enough time in crypto circles and the presence of literal teenage millionaires is off-putting, and those who have some kind of pedigree — people who came from, say, Goldman Sachs or a big tech company like Facebook — try weirdly hard to sell you on the next big thing.

There was always the sense that, because crypto was entirely digital, everyone in the industry was creating a whole new world....

Bankman-Fried was supposed to be the antidote. This was the MIT math whiz, the guy who made money at a known hedge fund, Jane Capital, through the perfectly normal practice of trading arbitrage — buying crypto where it was cheap, selling where it was expensive, and then pocketing the difference. Yes, he looked kind of silly with his mop of hair and T-shirts and running shoes, regardless of the situation — but he was the one sitting up on stage with Bill Clinton and Gisele Bündchen.... 

64 comments:

Meade said...

“A cryptocurrency billionaire facing federal investigation for mishandling customer funds had high-level White House meetings just months ago, as Congress was debating how to regulate his company—and just weeks before he pledged to donate up to $1 billion to Democrats ahead of the midterm campaign.”

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/beleaguered-crypto-billionaire-was-hobnobbing-at-white-house-just-six-months-ago/

Achilles said...

SBF took the deposits and liquidity pools in FTX and invested them.

A big part of that investment was into Solana which is not essentially dead.

The Centralized portion of crypto is going to constantly have these kinds of pump and dumps. The centralized exchanges like FTX are run by people that fly to Argentina and donate money to democrats/republicans.

It was SBF that helped the democrats write the regulations for crypto that congress is now trying to pass. Maxine Waters and the senator from New York were heavily involved in that.

They are trying to keep Crypto centralized like BSC/FTX and eliminate the decentralized crypto.

In general you need to understand that Centralized crypto is everything that is bad about crypto and decentralized crypto is everything this Regime and the Big Banks hate about crypto.

SBF was trying to tip the scales towards centralized control crypto with his democrat friends.

So long story longer SBF should go to jail for decades. He openly committed fraud against thousands of people.

He probably wont because he gave so much money to the Regime.

Dave Begley said...

Early on, Charlie Munger called crypto “rat poison squared.” If this incident doesn’t kill crypto, nothing will.

SBF is supposedly now broke. But back when he was a billionaire, he gave millions to the Dems. Wondering if the Dems will do the right thing and give the money back.

The laugher here is that celebs like Tom Brady lost millions with SBF.

Munger and Buffett are nearly always right.

MayBee said...

He was a huge political donor. He created a Super PAC where he supported Dem candidates who looked to take future pandemic measures seriously.

Of course, his bankruptcy became news the days *after* the election. But what is it about these billionaires who are so in love with the pandemic measures??? Hmmm?

Achilles said...

Meade said...

Here is a reasonable source of background info into what Alameda research and the execs at FTX did.

It was shockingly brazen.

Less fraud and more just straight theft at that point.

gilbar said...

it seems, like all this crypto stuff is all just a puzzle!

stlcdr said...

Crypto, serving no useful purpose since 1986!

Is this money (sic) even real? I don’t think it’s real. If I buy a crypto-unit for 1 dollar, and somehow it gets values at a billion dollars, am I suddenly rich?

wendybar said...

What would Democrats do without their corrupt donors?

n.n said...

beleaguered-crypto-billionaire-was-hobnobbing-at-white-house-just-six-months-ago

Votes. Get your votes. Get your hot votes. Brayed and braided. Cheaper by the dozen.

The democratic/dictatorial duality is the second best form of governance.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Meade said...

"...and just weeks before he pledged to donate up to $1 billion to Democrats ahead of the midterm campaign.”

And I'm hiding the Bahamas
I'm a desperate man
Send lawyers, guns and Bidens
The shit has hit the fan

Zombie Warren Zevon - Live at Meadehouse 2022

RideSpaceMountain said...

This guy sums it up very nicely, and hilariously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTFhnpf-IE0

MayBee said...

I think Althouse would really enjoy Bankman-Fried's Twitter thread where he basically says "My bad". It is so bro. So very bro for a guy who just lost people's billions.

https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1590709200665333762

Link

RideSpaceMountain said...

@Meade

It goes deeper than that...

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/430493835265835021/1041059453899907072/unknown.png

Amadeus 48 said...

"Effective altruism is a community of people 'trying to figure out what practical things you can do with your life to have as much positive impact as you can on the world.'"

A very smart, altruistic thief. Got it.

This is spending other people's money on other people, the least efficient way of allocating resources.

I am glad he wasn't able to spend a billion dollars on the 2024 elections. I don't think it would have gone well for the rest of humanity.

Darkisland said...

FTX ran an ad belittling Larry David for curbing his enthusiasm. He refused to invest in FTX.

"don't be like Larry was the tagline"

I hope he got paid in cash.
https://twitter.com/allnick/status/1590788378907529216

John Henry

Darkisland said...

Gateway Pundit is running a story that tens of billions of dollars were laundered through Ukraine by FTX. They were then sent to Democrat politicians

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/11/breaking-exclusive-tens-billions-transferred-ukraine-using-ftx-crypto-currency-laundered-back-democrats-us/

John Henry

narciso said...

like bcci funding the dems senatorial sweep and the subprime doing the same in 2006, then the fall

Darkisland said...

Neal Stephenson wrote one of my favorite novels about cryptocurrency back in 1996. Cryptonomicon.

He was smart enough to realize that it only had value if backed* by something tangible like gold stored somewhere safe.

In this case yamashitas (mythical?) gold stored in the bowels of Mount Eliza near borneo.

Cryptocurrency like FTX and bitcoin and others is backed by nothing.

*backed by = exchangeable for

John Henry

robother said...

Woke Capital. Even the primitive AI represented by the spreadsheet operating system comes to realize that it's just a matter of time until the douchebag CEO blames it (the spreadsheet) for whatever went wrong. But apologize profusely enough and you're good to go, or so it has learned from its links to the CEO's social media accounts.

"Fiat" (as in "fiat currency") is presumably an obscenity in crypto world, hence the apology.

Be interesting to see if Banker-Fried's Democrat donations result in TBTF (Too Big To Fail) status. As Dem control of Senate, House and Presidency looks increasingly likely, I wouldn't bet against it.

n.n said...

Crypto offers the indelible fingerprint that the State has forever dreamed of tapping.

On FTX And Crypto Generally

Leaving aside that all such designs are inherently and intentionally ponzi schemes (that is, the "founders" always get the first of whatever it is at zero cost or nearly zero, then sell them to others at ever-higher prices) if anyone can use leverage without prior disclosure and thus become an emitter of credit into the stream they can move the price in either direction on command.

A technical curio. A monetization scheme backed by the full faith and credit of...

MayBee said...

Elizabeth Holmes will be sentenced this month. The lesson of falling in love with some young magician who courts politicians and promises big things with no proof of being able to produce them is not even an old lesson. Yet it can't be learned.

Donate billions to the Democrat Politicians. Pretend to be very interested in creating oversite the rest of the industry. Freely take money from others. Fritter it away because you don't know what you are doing. Rinse. Repeat.
The people who do it are bad enough, but the politicians who keep feeding off from it disgust me.

Achilles said...

Dave Begley said...

Early on, Charlie Munger called crypto “rat poison squared.” If this incident doesn’t kill crypto, nothing will.

You should be less ignorant of Crypto to make comments like this. There are as many factions of crypto as there are political parties. It is not a monolithic group.

At least learn the difference between centralized and decentralized frameworks.

Your comments are very much like calling all Chinese and Japanese and Vietnamese people "Asian."

But ignorance has never really stopped people like you from saying things.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Remember Larry David’s commercial for them during the SuperBowl? Turns out his sarcastic “Nah I think crypto will fail” was more truth in advertising than they expected.

Aggie said...

Wendybar said: "What would Democrats do without their corrupt donors?"

I've got some news for you: You're one of them. While our Progressive Democrat Congress and Administration were funneling money over to the Ukraine, none of it with audit rights, SBF and his cohorts were setting up a crypto-exchange in the Ukraine that was tied to their fiat currency. The Ukraine Central Bank was shoveling into crypto at the same time SBF was writing checks by the millions to the Democrat Party, promising $1 billion for 2024, delivering $40 million for mid-terms alone. The #2 donor right behind George Soros. See the cycle?

The question becomes, will $40 million be enough 'insurance' (protection) to keep him below the radar from investigation? Oh.... wait. Who won the House again?

Joe Smith said...

He is the second largest democrat backer this cycle and spent big $$ this midterm.

He will be just fine...

n.n said...

A multi-trillion dollar medical complex with shared responsibility and progressive prices. A multi-trillion dollar Green industry to flatline. A multi-trillion dollar Welfare industry... more, please. A trillion dollar amnesty here, where every child is left behind. A billion dollars here, there, everywhere. A million babies on a cold, gray slate... paint it black.

Martha said...

Sam is the son of two Stanford law professors:

Bankman-Fried was born in 1992 on the campus of Stanford University into a family of academics. Born and raised to an upper-middle-class Jewish family in California, he is the son of Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman, both professors at Stanford Law School.

Joseph Bankman is currently the Ralph M. Parsons Professor of Law and Business at Stanford Law School AND was actively involved in FTX according to Anthony Scaramucci . FTX bought 30% stake in Scaramucci’s SkyBridge Capital. Scaramucci was so concerned about FTX he flew to the Bahamas last week before the bankruptcy and said he detected fraud and the lawyer parents, although fine people, know what happened and should come clean to the regulators.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/11/scaramucci-on-ftx-sam-bankman-fried-and-the-worst-week-in-cryptocurrency-history.html

Gusty Winds said...

The Democrat / Ukraine money laundering operation was just exposed.

But the damage is already done. And it's here to stay.

It was all Donald Trump's fault.

Achilles said...

RideSpaceMountain said...

This guy sums it up very nicely, and hilariously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTFhnpf-IE0


That was an awesome video. Very entertaining. I am watching some of his other videos now.

clickable link version.

tim in vermont said...

The billions of military aid to Ukraine that it’s coming out were laundered right back to Democrats through FTX are not the first billions in US aid to that country to disappear.

Nancy Pelosi, daughter of a mob lawyer and congressman (see Snopes) has a son who founded a company, which then had his name stripped from it and it somehow got repurposed into a receptacle for green energy grants from the US Congress to Ukraine at the time when Joe Biden was Obama’s “point man” there and, obs, Pelosi was handing out the grants.

Martha said...

CORRECTION: Scaramucci did not want to call IT fraud because “fraud” is a legal term.

. “I don’t want to call it fraud in this moment,” Anthony Scaramucci, the ex-Trump adviser who sold part of his investment business to Bankman-Fried, said on CNBC Friday. “If there was fraud, let’s clean it up to the extent possible and repair the accounts at FTX.”

Achilles said...

In the Crypto space the centralized exchanges are the casinos and ponzi shops. People go there to leverage trade on futures.

The biggest movement over the last 6-9 months has been markets moving up or down and "investors" who are trading on margin getting washed out.

In the end it just reinforces the Pareto distribution. Stupid people are going to find a way to lose their money. DYOR = Do your own research.

In crypto space things are wild and crazy. But you have more of a chance on your own than you do in the US economy where they just brazenly print off more dollars.

The US federal government balance sheet makes FTX look honest. FTX failed because they made a token that was algorithmically limited. The Fed just prints more dollars when their shenanigans fail.

tim in vermont said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tim in vermont said...

Achilles is right about the idiocy of keeping crypto in a central place, but if the only place that it is investable is in itself, then that’s a serious weakness. Plus, it’s not really “crypto” in the sense of hidden. In Canada wallets were seized for opposition to Trudeau policies there.

Crypto to me seems like printed cash, you can only keep it in your mattress, except that the government can apparently seize it with a few keystrokes, or convert it at a bank to electronic money to invest it. I would be interested to hear how I am wrong. I am no expert.

Ray - SoCal said...

Explanation in 99 seconds:
https://twitter.com/JG_Nuke/status/1591070331988774913?s=20&t=dF6qnB46r1XNy4BwlhxIiQ

Good explanation in text:
https://dirtybubblemedia.substack.com/p/is-alameda-research-insolvent

Joe Smith said...

This is an odd story, because governments want a form of digital currency to better control the population.

This doesn't help their cause...

Temujin said...

An absolute mess that is almost laughable when you peel apart the characters and the almost cult-like following SBF created. We do have a society filled with so many wannabe lemmings and clones. It's as if they are all starving for a cult to get behind. Reading the transcript from Sequoia Capital's meeting with then 'founder' SBF, they sound like kids who really wanted to believe in the new Pikachu.

And I love that on Sequoia Capital's landing page of their website they state boldly at the top: "We help the daring build legendary companies." Yes, of course. They did just that.

It's astounding the number of people who invested in, and/or fell for this guy who just comes across as a bad kid who learned early on how to manipulate the adults in the room.

He just set crypto back 10 years.

rrsafety said...

Not only is FTX a ponzu but they also destroyed other companies. Average people lost billions in Terra Luna when FTX’s Alameda hedge fund destroyed it. They didn’t just lose the money of FTX customers but they actively sought destroy the wealth of people doing no business with FTX. This is the biggest Democrat scandal in history.

Achilles said...

tim in vermont said...

Crypto to me seems like printed cash, you can only keep it in your mattress, except that the government can apparently seize it with a few keystrokes, or convert it at a bank to electronic money to invest it. I would be interested to hear how I am wrong. I am no expert.

The first thing you should know about is the difference between "On-Chain" and "Off-Chain."

On chain means an asset is in a crypto wallet. This wallet is associated with a seed phrase. A seed phase is a set of words in a specific order between 12 and 24 words long. These words are pulled from a larger set of usually 1024-2000ish words. When you create a wallet it is cryptographically formed out of the words in the seed phrase. Using factorial math you end up with ~2000*1999*1998* ... ~2000-n possible wallet combinations where n is the length of the seed phrase.

As long as you have your seed phrase you can reclaim your wallet anywhere in the world anonymously. There is no name or address or any other identifiable data attached to those assets. It is a fascist government's nightmare. All transactions are traceable on the chain for now, though there are "Mixers" that are coming our that will make a transaction untraceable.

FTX was a Centralized exchange. Assets in a centralized exchange are "Off Chain." There were 4 "Major" exchanges and now that is 3. Binance Exchange dwarfs everyone else and Binance was pivotal in taking down FTX. Everything you put on an exchange is accessible to them. There is really nothing stopping them from just taking it as this event demonstrates.

There is also a term called "KYC" or Know Your Customer. In order to use these centralized exchanges they require varying levels of personal information to use them. Binance Exchange for example requires a physical location, documentation in the form of a utility bill etc. and an actual picture of yourself.

I use exchanges for "Arbitrage" which is a term for buying an asset at a discount in one place and selling it for more in another place. When we saw the Binance tweet we withdrew everything to the blockchain where it is safe. We only use smaller exchanges with much lower levels of KYC and never have more on those exchanges than we can immediately withdraw as every time something like this happens we immediately flee back to the blockchain. I also constantly disparage leverage traders, but they are never around for long.

There are also many different "Blockchains." They all have different attributes. This post s too long to go into those but I will say that I believe the Cardano Blockchain is the future. It is compared to the tortoise commonly and the other more centralized blockchains hate Cardano. On the Centralized vs. Decentralized spectrum it defines decentralized frameworks.

The main risk with Cardano is that governments crush it at the behest of banks and the centralized powers because it's concept is so destabilizing to their control.

Michael K said...

Big Democrat donor is dishonest ! What a surprise !

Scotty, beam me up... said...

Major League Baseball, in their quest to wring every last penny out of endorsements, had signed a deal to put FTX patches on the chest and sleeves of the MLB umpire uniforms in 2021. The endorsement started at the 2021 All Star Game. When I noticed that, it was the first time that I had heard of FTX and I had to look it up online. I have seen nothing in the news about MLB’s deal with FTX since FTX crashed and burned last week. MLB Commissioner Rob Manafort must have breathed a sigh of relief last week that the FTX downfall hadn’t happened in October during the World Series as it would have been embarrassing to them on MLB’s biggest stage. I am guessing that MLB is already quietly lining up a new sponsor endorsement to put on umpire uniforms in 2023 from a business that is a tad more stable that crypto currencies.

Lurker21 said...

Trending on Twitter: if he gave the money to Republicans the media would be demanding that they give it back.

Anyway this solves one mystery. Those strange full page ads week after week in the New Yorker for something called FTX with someone who looks like Giselle Bundchen sitting on a stool and the other ones with someone who looks like Bankman-Fried sitting on a stool. I heard Tom and Giselle got paid in crypto. Bad move.

Lurker21 said...

Trending on Twitter: if he gave the money to Republicans the media would be demanding that they give it back.

Anyway this solves one mystery. Those strange full page ads week after week in the New Yorker for something called FTX with someone who looks like Giselle Bundchen sitting on a stool and the other ones with someone who looks like Bankman-Fried sitting on a stool. I heard Tom and Giselle got paid in crypto. Bad move.

rcocean said...

Wonder if Ye has any comment on this?

Gusty Winds said...

Elon Musk smelled a rat when Bankmen-Fried wanted to partner up and put $1-$5 billion in on the Twitter Deal. Now it’s melting in real time on Twitter.

But Democrats and Zelinsky/Ukraine didn’t smell a rat? They gladly took the stolen money. Elon Musk didn’t. Makes you wonder how much “help” Bankman-Fried got to help start and run this political money laundering Crypto scam…

Baffling. Elon Musk is a sadistic asshole who is about to fail at everything because of his Twitter addiction. Obviously, he just got lucky. Whew!

Achilles said...

Temujin said...

He just set crypto back 10 years.

I disagree.

The centralized entities like FTX and Solana and 3 Arrows and Terra Luna will all eventually fall as they are just the Federal Reserve with algorithmically limited currencies.

The future of blockchain has always bee on on the decentralized side.

It is now in the phase where people are fighting for control. The institutional buys like Blackrock and JP Morgan can be seen moving around for the last year or so.

The time for adoption is not far off.

MayBee said...

Scotty, beam me up... said...
Major League Baseball, in their quest to wring every last penny out of endorsements, had signed a deal to put FTX patches on the chest and sleeves of the MLB umpire uniforms in 2021.


Woke MLB is the most embarrassing! They took FTX money, but pulled the All Star Game from Atlanta for the Jim Crow on Steroid voter laws that just allowed a massive voter turnout.

Gusty Winds said...

Thank God Mitch McConnell didn't know anything about a Crypto-Ukraine money laundering scheme funding Democrats during and election cycle he wanted to lose.

It's impossible that he knew because he really wanted to be majority leader again, and everything that just happened is obviously Donald Trump's fault.

I'm sure the money didn't help fund the absentee ballot harvesting in blue and purple states.

veni vidi vici said...

Unlike the Enron scandal or 2008 Lehman meltdown, is it possible that in this instance of financial finagling, we may actually see a bank-man fried?

Wince said...

Makes me feel like the timing of this is the Biden Laptop story of the 2022 mid-terms.

Don't worry, champion of the little guy Marie Gluesenkamp Perez will get to the bottom of this.

Yancey Ward said...

There is nothing inherently fraudulent about crypto-currency itself. Person to person, or person to business, or business to person transactions are no different in fundamental nature than those conducted via credit card or cash transactions. I think everyone should hold at least part (not a large part) of their wealth in their own well guarded and concealed e-wallet because you can't know the future- think of it as an option without an expiration date.

Where the fraud comes in are these exchanges where send in investment funds and get "proprietary" stable coins that are supposed to be backed by exchange held crypto portfolios and/or crypto "derivatives". They try to lure in real cash with promises of reducing the variance found in the values of crypto currencies. This sort of reduction in variance is not possible, and promises of doing so are fraud, full stop.

With FTX, I think Bankman-Fried always intended to abscond with the funds, and was doing so right from the start, but I think he too stupid to understand that at the first hint fraud his investors would try to pull their funds all at once. In short, he got surprised and was forced to go on the lamb. This is a huge scandal, but because Bankman-Fried is a huge Democrat donor, I expect the DoJ will "investigate", but nothing gets to court, and their investigation will be used quash any state level investigations. Additionally, by January, it will be "well known" that Bankman-Fried was really a Republican and Trump supporter, and if he is ever arrested by anyone, he will be found hanging in his cell where the cameras are on the fritz for the first time in 5 years.

Gusty Winds said...

I feel such sense of relief that our leaders in power were willing to support such a creative and unique political funding operation by laundering crypto money through a war zone.

Funding the absentee ballot harvesting through Democrat PACs alone was worth it. Blankman-Fried is now an American hero. He was willing to step up and help when the US was on the brink of losing its Democracy. He is as altruistic as advertised. That was close.

If it wasn't for quick thinking like this, we'd all be speaking Russian, and Donald Trump would still be allowed offend our sensibilities. Impeaching Trump for trying to expose money funneling back to American Political party through Ukraine was well timed.

If he had gotten away with it......we'd all be speaking Russian and Trump would continue to offend our sensibilities!!!! Blankman-Fried may have just saved abortion rights and Democracy. He may never get the credit he deserves. Shame.

Achilles said...

Lurker21 said...

I heard Tom and Giselle got paid in crypto. Bad move.

My sources have them in at hundreds of millions.

I bet the divorce is going to flesh this out. I wonder which one thought FTX tokens were a good idea.

Josephbleau said...

I guess I am convinced now. The way a dead is to invest in companies that only hire children of big Democrats. Try to find the next solyndra if you are interested in making money. Why fight it? Find an investment group that can launder money thru Ukraine! Al Capone had a lot of financial clout in Demo Chicago.

jim said...

hope he managed to steal enough to pay his bodyguards

Achilles said...

Michael K said...

Big Democrat donor is dishonest ! What a surprise !

He donated a lot of money to Republicans too.

He was also very connected with the SEC and CFTC.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Borrowed...
We prohibit Baseball Players from betting on their games.
Why do we let Congress Critters invest in companies they regulate?

BUMBLE BEE said...

jim... I, for one, hope he didn't steal enough.

Another old lawyer said...

@Darkisland

I've read an article or two that argue that Stephenson is the big unknown who founded Bitcoin and has Bitcoin holdings in the billions that have never been exchanged or transferred.

Well, maybe now in the $100Ms.

gilbar said...

oh, there's a Whole thing on this; i guess i should have posted This HERE

FTX
Laundered Billions Through Ukraine, Funneled Funds to U.S Democrats


FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was Democrats’ second largest donor
during the midterm elections cycle this year, only coming behind George Soros.
Bankman-Fried gave at least $40 million to Democrat candidates and causes in
the midterms.
Now it has emerged that billions of dollars that was flowing into Ukraine was
laundered through FTX and pumped back to Democrats and elites in America using
cryptocurrency.

At this early hour, it__appears__ that tens-of-billions in American “Military
Aid” to Ukraine, which was allegedly to be used to fight Russia, was cash that
Ukraine DID NOT use to fight Russia, but instead invested into FTX!


And, as you might guess from the Bankruptcy filing… . it now seems that all the
money .. . is gone.

Yes, you read that correctly: Instead of using US Military Aid to fight Russia,
Ukraine “invested” part or all of it, into FTX, and right now, it looks like
all Democrat Donations
<

Freeman Hunt said...

He was so altruistic that he was altruistic towards himself on behalf of others.

tim in vermont said...

Well Achilles, it sounds to me like you make money in crypto by clipping nickels from unsophisticated holders of the currency. Maybe that works for you, but it's no passive investment except in the hope that your "coins" appreciate on their own while stuffed in the mattress, figuratively. On the plus side for crypto, paper money is all but certain to lose value.

Rollo said...

Sam Bankrupt and Fried.

Howard said...

About a year and a half ago crypto was a hot topic on the Lex Fridman podcast. Very bullish... bullshit bullish. Asked my financial guy about it. He said he didn't believe the hype and wasn't interested in it at all. Next milestone was the Superbowl with every celebrity sports hero and former disgraced politician was staring in a crypto ad. Major hump for a pump and dump. It's a sure thing 😜