An article on substack makes good points.

"This new system of money is an absolute death threat to this ruling class; if it reached its full potential without being knee capped (which is what “they” are trying to do at every juncture), it represents a death knell to the World Bank, the BIS, the Central Banking systems—and all of those “first in line” who feed at the troughs they create."

Article: https://cognitivecarbon.substa...ng-on-with-ftx?sd=pf

They are trying to kneecap existing alternative currencies and force us onto government central bank digital currency.

They see both the threat and the vast potential to their position.

I think SBF and BG (Britany Griner) should get together. It's about the hair after all...

https://nypost.com/2022/11/14/...rypto-bank-for-dems/

Biden’s second-biggest donor, cryptocurrency billionaire wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried, a k a SBF, saw his business file for bankruptcy days after the election, but not before pumping $40 million into the Democratic Party to spend on “get-out-the-vote” and other shadowy ballot-harvesting mechanics for the midterms.

The shambolic 30-year-old whiz kid, once said to have been worth $16 billion, had spent $10 million helping get Biden elected in 2020.

SBF’s mother, Stanford law professor Barbara Fried, also is co-founder of left-wing political action committee Mind The Gap, which has raised a reported $140 million to help Democrats win elections through the same “get-out-the-vote” grift.

A more unlikely billionaire you could not find — and of course his money was built on thin air. A math genius with poor social skills, SBF reportedly lived in a “polycule” — a polyamorous relationship with multiple people — in a luxury penthouse with about 10 co-workers in the tax haven of the Bahamas, where his collapsed crypto exchange FTX was headquartered.

Otherwise, he was sleeping on beanbags in his office, eating vegan fries and, according to his own Twitter feed, popping amphetamines and sleeping pills to regulate his chaotic sleeping habits.

Now Reuters is reporting that between $1 billion and $2 billion of customer funds have vanished from FTX, conveniently after the Democrats safely spent his money.

At last report, SBF and his mysterious co-founder, Gary Wang, were being held “under supervision” by Bahamian authorities after reportedly planning to flee to Dubai, according to fintech publication Cointelegraph.

he financial media and big investors have feted the young billionaire as a saint who shunned earthly pleasures like Lamborghinis and Rolexes, but lived only to give away all his money and make the world a better place.

He was the most famous millennial adherent of a cult known as “Effective Altruism,” which originated at Oxford University, found fertile ground in Silicon Valley — and now has gone down in flames along with him.

EA is a disguised form of socialism, because all the “good” that is done just happens to match up perfectly with the left’s obsessions, whether climate change, social justice, equity, banning meat or his favorite, “pandemic preparedness.”

This little shit was no billionaire. Just make believe wealth and money.

quote:

Originally posted by TomV:
Looking at their pictures, I'm guessing most of them will be working at Starbucks once again next week.

Fixed it for you...

This is from journalist-commentator Josh Barro’s Substack account. It certainly describes some crypto activities as Ponzi like per FTX’s SBF:

Crypto is bullshit. Last year, then-crypto magnate Sam Bankman-Fried appeared on the Bloomberg podcast Odd Lots, and one of the topics he discussed with journalists Matt Levine, Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway was “yield farming.” This is a term for a particular type of crypto shenanigans involving high-yield lending: Roughly, you deposit your holdings of an established crypto coin (like Etherium) in a box, and in exchange the box periodically pays you a new, proprietary coin made by the maker of the box. Since market participants irrationally ascribe value to the new coin, the effective interest rate you can earn by lending out your Etherium can become quite high. Enthusiasm for the high interest rate causes more people to put their own assets in the box, and the enthusiasm for the box causes the market value of the new coin to rise, further improving the interest rate and drawing even more assets into the box until the value of the new coin goes to “infinity,” in Bankman-Fried’s words.

When Bankman-Fried described farming in these terms, the Bloomberg hosts were astounded. As Levine replied:

I think of myself as like a fairly cynical person. And that was so much more cynical than how I would've described farming. You're just like, ‘Well, I'm in the Ponzi business, and it's pretty good.’

This is the essence of crypto, and why I think it is not just bullshit but immoral bullshit.

I have no idea what Sam boy is saying, but he talks about working w Ukraine.

He does the interview as he sits in a vibrating chair

https://twitter.com/i/status/1591835076505264129

The wife and I have always laughed at this crypto currency insanity. There is no tangible assets behind any of it. Just because someone says it’s worth this does not make it so.

Unfortunately the Democrats are doing the same thing to the dollar by writing checks that we can’t cash! Thirty trillion dollar debt.

quote:

Originally posted by beltfed21:
The wife and I have always laughed at this crypto currency insanity. There is no tangible assets behind any of it. Just because someone says it’s worth this does not make it so.

The be fair, one could say exactly the same about the US dollar. It's no longer backed by a tangible asset after the US left the gold standard many decades ago. Same with most other world currencies, most of which aren't linked to a tangible asset.

So the value of modern national currency and cryptocurrency both come down to shared belief in its worth.

The difference is that there are exponentially more people who believe in the value of the dollar than the value of the latest memecoin, and modern currencies have the foundational support of significantly more societal structure whereas cryptocurrencies are currently the wild west of scams, volatility, and ponzi scemes with little to no safeguards or oversight.

A digital cryptocurrency could work, in theory. Eventually. With much broader acceptance and greater security and stability. But it doesn't currently, and it has a long way to go.

Would love to see the FTX leadership meet a cruel and unusual fate, but I'd love to see a viable privacy oriented medium of exchange succeed just a little bit more.

To me, anything that keeps more of my money mine without uncle sugar's eye of Sauron on it is a good thing, and we need something better for that than cash.

quote:

He does the interview as he sits in a vibrating chair

It's him, not the chair.
I've seen him on other interviews, damn near needs the chair secured to the deck the way his legs jitterbug.

quote:

Originally posted by powermad:

quote:

He does the interview as he sits in a vibrating chair

It's him, not the chair.
I've seen him on other interviews, damn near needs the chair secured to the deck the way his legs jitterbug.

Amphetamines will do that for you.

quote:

The be fair, one could say exactly the same about the US dollar. It's no longer backed by a tangible asset after the US left the gold standard many decades ago. Same with most other world currencies, most of which aren't linked to a tangible asset.

But the US does have tangible assets. Lots of tangible assets.

Crypto currency generally has none.

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:

Crypto currency generally has none.

When you buy your magic beans, SOMEBODY got your cash.

quote:

Originally posted by BGULL:

When Bankman-Fried described farming in these terms, the Bloomberg hosts were astounded.

Back in the 1980's when the farm economy was in really tough shape (remember the "Farm Aid" concerts?), somebody started to promote growing "Jerusalem Artichokes". It is essentially a weed that grows from the root. Farmers were paying HUGE amounts of money that they couldn't afford to lose in order to buy the "seedstock" to get rich growing Jerusalem Artichokes. The problem was there was no market for the product - other than to harvest and sell more "seedstock" to newly investing farmers.

A "know-it-all" loser that went to our church talked his mother into mortgaging her farm to get into this. He lost it all and she died penniless. A lot of desperate guys lost everything doing this.

A Ponzi scheme is still a Ponzi scheme, whether it is Jerusalem Artichokes, Stocks or Crypto.

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:


But the US does have tangible assets. Lots of tangible assets.

In 1964, Auric Goldfinger came thaaaaaaaat close ....

quote:

When you buy your magic beans, SOMEBODY got your cash.

That's exactly right. Somebody traded zeros and ones on a computer for paper money backed by physical government owned assets.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
This little shit was no billionaire. Just make believe wealth and money.

A friend of mine who is a venture capitalist, and has contacts with many others in the same business, says they estimate he scammed 1 billion out of FTX.