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. :)

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

I was thinking more of transferring customer assets

Inflating the price was manipulating the market but its an unregulated one

Right, so he was bigly connected, like I said. Thanks for the elaboration.

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.

Speed running the scams that caused the regulations on the financial sector.

"to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, the situation is unprecedented," Ray continued."

That's harsh

Truth

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.

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

I'm not totally convinced "SBM" wasn't complicit in that, and is just pretending he was coerced to use "unauthorized access" to transfer assets out of the reach of U.S. bankruptcy courts.

"F--- regulators. They make everything worse. They don't protect customers at all."

That's rich. Given that he himself doesn't appear to have put any effort whatsoever into "protecting customers at all."

Pretty much all of my B.S. sensors are going off on the notion he fought tooth and nail to protect his customers against the Bahamanian government.

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?

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

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

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

don't know if there's any left man, that 50+ SPF is spendy

FIFY

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.

Hard to know if this is an indictment of the broader cryptocurrency market or not. I bought a few bitcoin at an average of 3K each. I've always intended to hold onto them "forever" and then gift them to my kids. I've also always said I'd ride them to the moon or into the ground and it was probably one or the other. At one point my 12K "investment" was "worth" about 220K. Today, much less. This has always been "extra" money and was certainly never intended as a real investment. I enjoy watching it go up and honestly stop paying attention when it goes down. Then I enjoy watching it go up, then down, over and over. For guys like me whatever happens is really no big deal. For people trying to use crypto to make their fortune it could turn into a huge disaster, especially if they panic sell for much less than they paid. I don't pretend to understand it whatsoever.

what i'd love to know is whether the fraud was the endgame, or a halfway house back to stability

am sure that will come out eventually. socking a lot of it into real estate a bad look, though

Ukraine laundering money for the Dems is nonsense. Too many tinfoil dots to connect and makes no sense.

What I have heard (nothing but pure rumor and no doubt politically motivated) is that Ukraine took some of the financial aid it has been receiving and was/had invested it in Crypto on FTX and may have had funds there lost in the blowup and subsequent hack. This is potentially more plausible, but has nothing to do with the "Dems".

Possible, but it seems unlikely that Ukraine, at this point in time, would play investment games that might come to fruition in months/years. When just months ago it wasn't clear the current government would exist in months/years.

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]

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

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