Surprised there hasn't been a thread on this absolute travesty, yet.

https://www.commonsense.news/...llion-crypto-scammer

From the "next Warren Buffet" to the next Bernie Madoff. SBFs net worth went from 13 billion to zero in one day. Probably a sharper trajectory than Elizabeth Holmes. A lot of other people and entities are out their investments as well.

Time for Peacock to make a TV movie about his rise, and fall.

There's a meme floating around LinkedIn with Holmes and the FTX guy on covers of Forbes touting their successes.

On the Forbes cover wth FTX guy, there's a quote that he didn't understand crypto when he started his company. I replied on LI about Warren Buffett's "invest in what you know" strategy. But what does Warren know?

Michael Lewis Selling Movie Rights for Book on FTX's Meltdown (gizmodo.com)

"Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball and The Big Short, has been following FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried for the past six months to write his next book. And while the potential ending of Lewis’s book has obviously changed in the past week since FTX’s $32 billion implosion, Lewis is already shopping around the movie rights, according to a new report from The Ankler."

Its a fascinating story that is still playing out. A movie will be made of it, and there is zero change that Jonah Hill will not be playing SBF.

Don't forget that part of this FTX saga started earlier this summer with the implosion and bankruptcy of 3Arrows Capital and the Terra LUNA stable-coin fiasco.

Sam BF and FTX targeted both 3AC and Terra in an apparent vendetta and directly caused their demise which resulted in Billions of losses on its own, impacting thousands of people, all because of SBF.


.

Great thread

https://twitter.com/.../1592502805171822592

He didn't do the best at linking the thread but it's all easy to find. Really just epic failures at so many levels.

Time for Peacock to make a TV movie about his rise, and fall.

He is bigly connected. His parents also. It's a wild story.

Great thread

https://twitter.com/.../1592502805171822592

He didn't do the best at linking the thread but it's all easy to find. Really just epic failures at so many levels.

That and Twitter is definitely not the best format for this complex of a story.

There is an awful lot of this that can really only be explained as intentional fraud.

Hard to see how he thought this was going to hold up for very long.

Don't assume fraud when stupidity and ignorance will suffice. (Not completely dismissing fraud but these folks were clowns)

These people were inexperienced at trading risk management.

They were operating in an unregulated environment.

Unregulated doesn't mean inflating apparent value of assets isn't fraud. I guess you could say I didn't know I couldn't do that, no one told me I couldn't. But that sounds like something my brother would say. :)

People in crypto are doing more to keep it from being a viable alternative than banks could ever hope.

You know it's bad news when the guy who handled the Enron bankruptcy says he's never see worse controls in his career.

People in crypto are doing more to keep it from being a viable alternative than banks could ever hope.

Sam Bankman-Fried donated gave about $41 million to candidates, political committees, and his Super PAC (mostly benefiting Dems).

Ryan Salame, another FTX executive, gave about $24 million to candidates, political committees, and his Super PAC (mostly benefiting the GOP).

I think you will find they were making sure they had a finger in both parties.

Ho hum

The Bahamas looted FTX

https://www.cnbc.com/...nkruptcy-filing.html

All candidates and political parties that received money in the past year need to return it to the bankruptcy court for benefit of FTX clients. That money was essentially stolen.

There are plenty of laws around fraudulent transfers. Bankruptcy doesn't run on an honor system. If we're going to demand politicians give back funds when they're not required to under BK law are you proposing we demand the same from the many, many, many charities FTX execs donated far bigger sums to?

I'm not demanding anything from politicians. I'm hoping that they see that they have a moral duty to return the money to absolute morons from whom it was stolen.

I am seeing nonsense posts in Yahoo comments (I need to stop reading the things) where people have found a new conspiracy involving FTX, Ukraine and the Democrats.

They are saying that Ukraine took the money given by the Biden administration, and invested it into FTX. And that is why SBF gave $40M to the Democrats. They've accused Ukraine and FTX of helping launder money for the Democrats.

I don't know if it is russian propaganda meant to turn people off the US helping Ukraine, or if it is the typical nonsense we see from some of the conspiracy minded idiots in the GOP.

is that Ukraine took some of the financial aid it has been receiving and was/had invested it in Crypto on FTX

BREAKING NEWS

Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX founder, was arrested in the Bahamas after U.S. prosecutors filed criminal charges, the Bahamas government said.

Monday, December 12, 2022 7:02 PM ET

Mr. Bankman-Fried has been under investigation by the Justice Department over the sudden implosion of his $32 billion company that filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11.https://www.nytimes.com/...B&smid=share-url[/url]

Good. I got the real sense this guy, like Elizabeth Holmes, just didn't know when to turn off the media tour and STFU. I guess when you've spent a decade or more with everyone fawning over your brilliant speaking that you start to think you can talk your way out of any problem.

He's laying out the groundwork for the ignorant little lost lamb defense

Now Binance has had almost $1B of net outflow just in the past 24 hours.

Rumor has it that Caroline Ellison, who was the CEO of Alameda Research, has been in New York last couple weeks (previously thought to be hiding in Qatar). Probably singing like a bird to the authorities.


.

Based on what I read she's probably more culpable than he is for things at Alameda

So this clown directly gave 46MM to Democrats against less than 300K to Republicans in 2020

the former CEO of the failed crypto exchange has now explained how he donated "about the same amount to both parties this year."

"I've been their third-biggest Republican donor this year as well," he said.

Bankman-Fried explained that this was "not generally known," because "all my Republican donations were dark."

Budding Republican megadonor Ryan Salame quietly shelled out $13.4 million of his personal fortune to boost 15 GOP congressional candidates in the just-concluded 2022 primaries.


Salame, a 29-year-old cryptocurrency mogul, lives in the Bahamas, which is the headquarters of FTX Digital Markets, the firm he oversees as chief executive officer.

So this clown directly gave 46MM to Democrats against less than 300K to Republicans in 2020

It also appears he was the largest donor not named Soros to Democrats in the last cycle

Allegedly without any foundation and just according to him he was the second or third largest donor to the GOP via dark money. I'd like to see some proof of that if for no other reason to see how dark donations work

Obviously every single one of these politicians and groups should give that money to the estate or donate to an apolitical charity like kids with cancer

Dem Senate Majority Pac stepping up to the plate and returning $3 million.

Stepping up to the plate?

Have any other recipients of political donations from the FTX crew announced that they are returning donations? I could well have missed that if it is the case.

In the week and a half since his arrest in the Bahamas, the Bankman-Fried has been held in a prison that US officials have described overcrowded, dirty and lacking medical care. Its crowded cells often lack mattresses and are “infested with rats, maggots, and insects.”
Prosecutors and attorneys for Bankman-Fried are discussing an arrangement for his release, with conditions, that would enable the failed crypto entrepreneur to avoid spending time at the Metropolitan Detention Center. The MDC is a pre-trial holding facility that former inmates and rights advocates have described as inhumane, citing frequent lockdowns, overcrowding and power outages that have left it without heat in the middle of winter.

Many from both parties

Have any other recipients of political donations from the FTX crew announced that they are returning donations? I could well have missed that if it is the case.

The CEO of a hedge fund and co-founder of a crypto exchange. How old do you feel right now?

I believe there was an announcement or something from the SEC or one of the agencies that anyone or entity that received funds/donations/etc... from SBF or FTX might be required by law in the eventual settlement of this to return every $$ they received, as it was all stolen customer money. So a lot of politicians are front-running what they'll be required to do by law later.

Props to Beto O'Rourke (D-TX) that received a $3M donation from FTX earlier this year, and ike a boss, promptly sent the money back with no thanks...way before all this started.

How will the GOP return the millions in dark money donations SBF gave them?

Well he's truly fucked.... Ellison and his co-founder already pleaded guilty in the Southern District earlier today.

Is naive doofus a viable defense?

He's on his way to living at home with mommy and daddy again. Much stricter house rules now though.

Poor mom and dad are getting dinged a bit by this too. They are both institutions at Stanford. And it's not a great look kicking it in their son's palatial Bahamas estate when he was arrested.

It's plausible they knew nothing of the illegality, though they were apparently at times involved in FTX-related activities. Nevertheless their Stanford academic reputations will be ever so slightly tarnished at best.

He's on his way to living at home with mommy and daddy again. Much stricter house rules now though.

I haven't heard a peep about Sam Trabucco. Seems like he made out like a bandit.

Former federal prosecutors predict the fallen FTX co-founder will receive at least 20 years in prison. That would be a harsher sentence than defendants in some other recent high-profile white-collar cases, including Elizabeth Holmes, who received a prison term just over 11 years last November for defrauding Theranos Inc. investors.

At the high end, federal sentencing guidelines could recommend what equates to a life sentence for Bankman-Fried, who turned 31 in March. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan has been critical of the guidelines and often imposed more lenient sentences in previous cases before his court. But Bankman-Fried did himself no favors by rankling the judge, both before and during the trial.

The FTX co-founder has “shown a willingness and a desire to risk crossing the line in an effort to get right up to it, no matter where the line is,” Kaplan said during a July hearing.

Prosecutors had previously raised concerns about Bankman-Fried’s use of encrypted messaging app Signal to contact FTX’s US general counsel and suggest they “vet things together.” Kaplan called it an attempt at witness tampering.

Bankman-Fried also wasn’t allowed to use a virtual private network, outside of certain conditions specified by the judge, while on bail. The restrictions came after his lawyers said he used a VPN to watch football, including the Super Bowl.

Kaplan in August revoked Bankman-Fried’s bail after the one-time crypto mogul leaked to reporters the private writings of Caroline Ellison—the CEO of FTX’s sister hedge fund, Alameda Research, and Bankman-Fried’s former girlfriend.

Krissoff said it’s “one thing to fight your case. It’s another thing to do what he’s done in the months since he’s arrested.”

Bankman-Fried’s testimony could also factor into the judge’s sentence. Over three days, Bankman-Fried denied defrauding FTX customers, portraying himself and others at Alameda as inexperienced at running a business.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/...;region=text-section

kiki wrote:

were they turning a blind eye or desperately trying to figure out how to salvage/protect him?

from the outside it could look like the same thing. Clearly their efforts were weren't effective.

Turns out Bankman-Fried is a Republican who wanted to court the Alt-Right and go on Tucker and "come out against the woke agenda"

Sam Bankman-Fried considered going on Tucker Carlson's show and railing 'against the woke agenda' after FTX's collapse (msn.com)

Turns out Bankman-Fried is a Republican who wanted to court the Alt-Right and go on Tucker and "come out against the woke agenda"

Sam Bankman-Fried considered going on Tucker Carlson's show and railing 'against the woke agenda' after FTX's collapse (msn.com)

The list of ideas, prosecutors said, was evidence Bankman-Fried was "motivated to launch his redemption narrative and has already been thinking about how to spin it" — and should therefore get a long prison sentence.

US District Judge Lewis Kaplan will weigh prosecutors' memo against one by Bankman-Fried's lawyers, who asked for a sentence of no more than about six years.

Bankman-Fried acknowledged his list of ideas was not very good.

"Note: these are all random probably bad ideas that aren't vetted," the document says at the top.

Turns out Bankman-Fried is a Republican who wanted to court the Alt-Right and go on Tucker and "come out against the woke agenda"

Sam Bankman-Fried considered going on Tucker Carlson's show and railing 'against the woke agenda' after FTX's collapse (msn.com)

That is not what your article says. It says he was trying to come up with ways to spin this and restore himself.

That was my first thought as soon as I saw the headline.

SBF is completely full of shit

He fits in well his party, the GOP.

That was my first thought as soon as I saw the headline.

mentally ill ideologue.

You, and Matt, are so predictable. Insults and personal attacks to deflect from the fact that SBF thought he might be able rally the GOP/Tucker groupies/Alt-Right behind his lies if he pushed the 'Woke!" talking points.

Why do you think lying grifters see your party as fertile ground?

No, that is what I rebutted you with. You tried to imply SBF was a Republican GOP member all along and was finally admitting it. I pointed out your lie. You doubled down. Now very predictably you shift your point after being shown to be wrong and lying. Did you finally read past the headline? Did you wake from the fever dream?

You, and Matt, are so predictable. Insults and personal attacks to deflect from the fact that SBF thought he might be able rally the GOP/Tucker groupies/Alt-Right behind his lies if he pushed the 'Woke!" talking points.

Why do you think lying grifters see your party as fertile ground?

Why do you think lying grifters see the GOP as easy dupes as long as they parrot the Woke! talking point?

Quote:

Insults and personal attacks to deflect

Look in the mirror, that is your modus operandi. Funny you label your typical words as such when I use them back against you. You love to start your posts with "Wrong again", "Why do you lie?", "Your fever dream". And your typical first go to to argue is a personal attack or ad homenin on the author or publisher. When proved wrong you keep doubling down and getting angrier, followed by goal post shifting and pretending your point was not what you literally said. You have become boringly predictable to a T.

As usual, no answer just deflection and insults. No surprise.

No answer?

Correct, you have not answered, just your usual insults and deflection.

Why do lying grifters see your party as fertile ground? Maybe it is because they have seen the success of GOP politicians like Ron DeSantis who rose to national prominence off his pathetic, and often unconstitutional, anti-woke jihad. They see outrage farmers like Tucker, Hannity, Kirk, Cernovich, Posobiec, etc. make millions off pushing grievance and fear. They see that the GOP has put wackos like Marjorie Taylor Greene in positions of power. They embrace conspiracy theories about elections, Clinton killing people, vaccines, Obama being a Kenyan Muslim, etc.

SBF is a lying grifter who thought he might find a home in the GOP because so many other lying grifters found a home there.

This is pretty pathetic.

Yup, your post was pathetic. Your inability to address why the GOP attracts so many lying grifters says a lot.

He fits in well his party, the GOP.

You know better. There is zero evidence that is his party. He donated millions to Democrats.

Zero is a strong word. Item 1a in SBF's list of what he was going to tell Tucker, "While public contributions show one thing, you see another thing including super PACS."

And that's not a lie.

$20M to McConnell's One Nation, $3.2M to the American Prosperity Alliance. Supported a bunch of other Republican House and Senate campaigns.

He seemingly supported Democratic causes and campaigns openly and publicly, and Republican ones "dark" and quietly.

That said, I think you're 100% right that the GOP is not his party. Like Trump he has no sincere ideological convictions whatsoever. He just uses one party or the other as a vehicle to serve his interests as needed. While at FTX it was better to be more open in supporting the Democratic side because FTX/Alameda was steeped in Silicon Valley culture, which is quite "liberal." Peter Thiel and a few others notwithstanding.

“All my Republican donations were dark,” he said, referring to political donations that are not publicly disclosed in FEC filings. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the f—k out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.”

Zero is a strong word. Item 1a in SBF's list of what he was going to tell Tucker, "While public contributions show one thing, you see another thing including super PACS."

And that's not a lie.

$20M to McConnell's One Nation, $3.2M to the American Prosperity Alliance. Supported a bunch of other Republican House and Senate campaigns.

He seemingly supported Democratic causes and campaigns openly and publicly, and Republican ones "dark" and quietly.

That said, I think you're 100% right that the GOP is not his party. Like Trump he has no sincere ideological convictions whatsoever. He just uses one party or the other as a vehicle to serve his interests as needed. While at FTX it was better to be more open in supporting the Democratic side because FTX/Alameda was steeped in Silicon Valley culture, which is quite "liberal." Peter Thiel and a few others notwithstanding.

You know better. There is zero evidence that is his party. He donated millions to Democrats.

Jesus. I should have taken Windy’s advice.

There is plenty of evidence that he directed millions in donations to the GOP and felt that he would receive a warm welcome there if he went on Tucker and complained about "woke". Given the large numbers of lying fraudsters who have found a home in the GOP it is understandable why he would think this.

Meanwhile it looks like he is going to be in prison for a long time. Yesterday prosecutors asked for 40-50 years.

Prosecutors seek from 40 to 50 years in prison for Sam Bankman-Fried for cryptocurrency fraud | AP News

You're not doing yourself any favors here. The contentious point was that he was a Republican, which seems pretty unlikely. He was and is willing to do whatever to manipulate people to his own advantage, just because many members of the GOP are good marks, that doesn't make him a Republican.

In his own words he identifies as one.



I agree he is a shape shifter who aligns himself with whoever he thinks will benefit him. He clearly thinks Republicans, and the Alt-Right, will buy his BS.

That appears to be a strategy to garner some support, not a statement of his actual position. I'd be very surprised if he is actually a conservative/Republican based on what I've seen of him.

SBF is a lying grifter who thought he might find a home in the GOP because so many other lying grifters found a home there.

Turns out Bankman-Fried is a Republican who wanted to court the Alt-Right and go on Tucker and "come out against the woke agenda"

Wait I thought you said he IS a republican…?



Oh yea you did say that. You’re totally full of shit.

No I didn’t. Nobody else seems to have either. Stop lying.

No I didn’t. Nobody else seems to have either. Stop lying.

The list of ideas, prosecutors said, was evidence Bankman-Fried was "motivated to launch his redemption narrative and has already been thinking about how to spin it" — and should therefore get a long prison sentence.

US District Judge Lewis Kaplan will weigh prosecutors' memo against one by Bankman-Fried's lawyers, who asked for a sentence of no more than about six years.

Bankman-Fried acknowledged his list of ideas was not very good.

"Note: these are all random probably bad ideas that aren't vetted," the document says at the top.

Yes you should have....deduct 3 points

He only thought of a possible hairbrained idea of manipulating the right by being anti Woke(tm) after the left turned on him as their prior darling boy.

Did FTX give $40 million to the GOP before or after "the left turned on" them?

Guess you missed this



SBF has been in the closet and now wants the world to know he is a Republican.

Good grief are you being a complete moron. It must be on purpose because I know you’re intelligent.

The list of ideas, prosecutors said, was evidence Bankman-Fried was "motivated to launch his redemption narrative and has already been thinking about how to spin it" — and should therefore get a long prison sentence.

US District Judge Lewis Kaplan will weigh prosecutors' memo against one by Bankman-Fried's lawyers, who asked for a sentence of no more than about six years.

From what I read today the fact that some of his risky bets are paying off means that most of his investors he swindled will be made whole. This probably helped him at sentencing.

From what I read today the fact that some of his risky bets are paying off means that most of his investors he swindled will be made whole.

I just posted what I read in an article this morning. Didn’t grab the link.

The benchmark for "made whole" in this case has generally been whether their asset value as marked-to-market around the end of '22 (when FTX collapsed) can be returned as cash. Considering what's happened to financial markets (especially crypto) since then, that's an incredibly low bar, and the clients will likely lose a ton from opportunity cost even if they get a >100% payout.

Well there was a few things mentioned that SBF did. Put a bunch of money into some AI company. It’s up about 200%

Solana is up big time.

“As the lead professional of a very large team who has spent over a year stewarding the estate from a metaphorical dumpster fire to a debtor-in-possession approaching a confirmed plan of reorganization that will return substantial value to creditors, I can assure the Court that each of these statements is categorically, callously and demonstrably false,” Ray said.

Ray said that his team had to spend “thousands of hours” dedicated to “digging through the rubble of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sprawling criminal enterprise to unearth every possible dollar, token or other asset that was spent on luxury homes, private jets, overpriced speculative ventures and otherwise lost to the four winds.”

According to the letter, FTX only had 105 bitcoins left on the FTX.com exchange when Ray took over. Customer claims neared 100,000 bitcoins.

“Recoveries to customers and creditors depends entirely on the voluntary subordination of over $9 billion in governmental claims for fines and penalties otherwise payable as a result of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s crimes,” he said.

Bankman-Fried lives a life of “delusion” if he believes that FTX was either solvent or safe when he left in November of 2022, Ray added.

Despite certain assets or investments rising in value — like FTX’s stake in Anthropic — Ray believes that the court should look closely at the damage done to former customers through the mismanagement of the exchange.

“I can clearly reflect on that time and I am quite confident that but for the work of a very large team of dedicated individuals, billions of dollars would have been lost or stolen and the recoveries to customers would be a fraction of their expected recovery,” he added.

For some reason you seem to think I am defending the shitbag.

I am merely pointing out that had some of these bets not paid off he’d likely have received a much harsher sentence.