… In response to allegations that he had run a ‘massive Ponzi scheme, he said: ‘I was CEO of FTX and that means whatever happened I had a duty to our stakeholders … to do right by them.’
‘I didn’t do a good job of that, I made a lot of mistakes,’ he added. ‘I did not try to commit fraud on anyone.’
Liar.
Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried claims he has just $100,000 left in his bank account after the implosion of his cryptocurrency empire.
The remarks Monday marked Bankman-Fried’s first attempt to explain his current personal wealth during intense scrutiny over his handling of FTX’s finances. The firm’s new leaders have condemned Bankman-Fried’s management of the company as they navigate a disastrous bankruptcy.
For some reason I don’t believe him.
Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Tiantian Kullander is the second industry leader to die unexpectedly in a matter of weeks.
His death ‘in his sleep’ came after fellow crypto millionaire Nikolai Mushegian, 29, died on October 28 – hours after a paranoid Twitter post expressing fears the CIA and Mossad were going to murder him.
The deaths mean at least four cryptocurrency tycoons have died unexpectedly since 2018, at times triggering wild and unfounded conspiracy theories.
When I first saw the acronym “CBDC,” I may have betrayed my California roots when I thought it was some new cannabis product that will join all the other CBD products sold everywhere, including at truck stops. I’m not so naïve now, and I know that CBDC, which stands for Central Bank Digital Currency, is possibly the most dangerous idea ever bandied about in American politics.
The plan is that the federal government would end paper and coin money in favor of purely digital money—all under the government’s control. Suddenly, in addition to your bank’s ATM, you would be dependent on the federal government’s ATM for every penny you possess. It would be the Chinese social credit system and the Canadian “let’s shut down the bank accounts for anyone protesting the government” system all rolled up into one.
Sam Bankman-Fried is the ultimate expression of the most toxic culture in America.
The FTX Bitcoin empire of 30-year-old CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is in shambles. Or more specifically, his “dumb game” cryptocurrency exchange has destroyed thousands of lives. Electronically, he may have robbed perhaps a million investors, and along with them hundreds of large institutional investors.
Mysteriously, only after the conclusion of the midterm elections, did we suddenly learn that this left-wing “philanthropist” and benefactor of Democratic politics, this megadonor to the quid pro quo puff-piece media, this con artist protected from federal securities regulators, had drained off, lost, hidden, or spent billions of dollars of other people’s money.
Disgraced former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried financially backed half a dozen media outlets including ProPublica, Vox and the Intercept, it has emerged.
SBF’s crypto exchange sensationally collapsed earlier this month, after the company filed for bankruptcy amid reports it owes billions of dollars to customers.
But the repercussions could be even more far-reaching, with one media outlet warning it has a ‘significant hole’ in its budget now FTX has folded.
Billionaires signal virtue to avoid paying tax
Elizabeth Holmes dressed in the same style every day: black turtleneck sweater, black slacks, and black low-slung shoes. This “uniform” underlined her deified status as a busy billionaire dedicated to changing the world, setting her apart from mere mortals with time to choose their clothes. “My mom had me in black turtlenecks when I was, like, eight,” she told one women’s magazine. “I probably have 150 of these. It makes it easy, because every day you put on the same thing and don’t have to think about it — one less thing in your life. All my focus is on the work. I take it so seriously; I’m sure that translates into how I dress.”
NEW PROVIDENCE, Bahamas, Nov 22 (Reuters) – Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, his parents and senior executives of the failed cryptocurrency exchange bought at least 19 properties worth nearly $121 million in the Bahamas over the past two years, official property records show.
Separately, attorneys for FTX said on Tuesday that one of the company’s units spent $300 million in the Bahamas buying homes and vacation properties for its senior staff, and that FTX was run as a “personal fiefdom” of Bankman-Fried. No further details were given.
The FTX founder is the sort of sanctimonious fraud our species knows well
Dame Edna Everage says one of life’s most precious gifts is the ability to laugh at the misfortunes of others. You may lament this instinct, yet we all harbor it. New Yorkers are especially prone when it comes to property envy. Every couple of years, it feels like, a skyscraper goes up in the city that is significantly taller than the previous very tall new skyscraper. Each time one does, the only thing that goes higher than the tower’s residences is the cost of purchasing them. So with what rapture do New Yorkers read about the misfortunes these buildings go through. Oh, the thrill of learning that they sway in the wind, that people get seasick in the penthouses, that when owners put their garbage in the trash chutes the noise on the lower floors is like a tactical nuke.
Will there be Madoff or Holmes like jail time for Sammy?
Unlikely given his parents Dem party standing.
Disgraced FTX boss Sam Bankman-Fried looks distressed as he hunkers down with Mommy & Daddy at his $40M penthouse hideaway in the Bahamas
As CEO of Alameda Research, Ms. Ellison took a leading role in helping Sam Bankman-Fried build the FTX empire
On a video call in early November, employees at Alameda Research dialed in to learn the fate of the trading firm, which was teetering on the brink.
It was up to Caroline Ellison to deliver the bad news. Alameda was at the center of Sam Bankman-Fried ‘s collapsing FTX empire. Ms. Ellison, who had just turned 28, was at the center of Alameda. And they were all in crisis.
Alameda and crypto exchange FTX were both the brainchild of Ms. Ellison’s friend Mr. Bankman-Fried, and he had picked her to help lead Alameda the year before. For a time, they rode the crypto wave together, with FTX eventually notching a blockbuster valuation of $32 billion. This month, it all came crashing down in a matter of days.
Another episode of empty rich kids doing bad.
As the sun beat down on the Baha Mar resort in the Bahamas, Sam Bankman-Fried was living his very best life.
On stage and before an invited audience, Sam was in his usual work attire of trainers, shorts and a T-shirt, but Tony Blair tried to put the founder at ease. “I’m feeling a little overdressed here,” Blair assured him. Between them, the former US president Bill Clinton chuckled.
… William, a construction site manager from California, was woken by a text from friends about potential trouble at FTX in the early hours of 8 November. At the time, the 40-year-old had about $85,000 of fiat currencies on the exchange, plus three bitcoins worth about $55,000 and about $10k in other altcoins – a significant chunk of his assets.
“I opened the FTX app, and tried to take it all out, but fiat withdrawals were limited to $25,000, so I did that and was told to wait 24 hours,” he says. “When I tried to withdraw the bitcoins I got an error message.”
CEOs and companies are never on the side of the people
For anyone seeking direct proof that woke capitalism is nothing but a scam, look no further than Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and former CEO of the now bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, who says as much in a direct message exchange with Vox reporter Kelsey Piper. He calls “ethics” a “dumb game we woke Westerners play” — presumably to avoid any scrutiny from journalists, employees, investors and consumers.
After the crypto firm collapsed, the executive who handled the Enron debacle was brought in – and said he’d never seen anything like it
Casual observers could be forgiven for thinking the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX is another typical tale of financial mismanagement. That’s how its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, terms it: a liquidity crisis that tipped over into a solvency one.
FTX had deposits and loans and when depositors tried to get their money back, FTX didn’t have it to hand. Sure, the loans were in fancy digital money, rather than stale dollars, but at first glance, it appears like just another big company failure.
Then you look closer, and it becomes clear that the whole edifice is in fact the corporate equivalent of three children in a trenchcoat pretending to be a fully grown man.
When FTX raised $420 million from an array of big-name investors in October last year, the cryptocurrency exchange said the money would help grow the business, improve user experience and allow it to engage more with regulators.
Left unmentioned was that nearly three-quarters of the money, $300 million, went instead to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who sold some of his personal stake in the company, according to FTX financial records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and people familiar with the transaction.
Mr. Bankman-Fried’s cashout was large by startup-world standards, where such sales historically were taboo because they allow founders to reap profits before investors. Mr. Bankman-Fried told investors at the time it was a partial reimbursement of money he spent to buy out rival Binance’s stake in FTX a few months earlier, according to some of the people familiar with the transaction.
