FTX/Sam Bankman-Fried
Discussion
easytiger123 said:
One question I have if there are any experts in the house: why is he not being sentenced until March next year? Why is there such a significant gap between verdict and sentencing for these type of crimes in the US?
Doubt if we'll hear much about what he gets. The Trump trial #1(NY) is due in March followed by #2 (FL) in May. Don't think much else will get a look in.Evercross said:
Watched this earlier. Excellent summation from an excellent reported/Youtuber.
As an aside - I love how Cofeezilla has explained over the years in layman's terms how every crypto has just been a ponzi scheme.
Coffeezilla's done some great work, the vid where he gets into a couple of twitter spaces calls that SBF did during his media "please feel sowwy for meeeeee" blitz after the collapse is freaking hilariousAs an aside - I love how Cofeezilla has explained over the years in layman's terms how every crypto has just been a ponzi scheme.
Molly White has been doing some great analysis on the whole clusterfudge too, including actual code snippets showing how the fraud worked.
Evercross said:
Watched this earlier. Excellent summation from an excellent reported/Youtuber.
As an aside - I love how Cofeezilla has explained over the years in layman's terms how every crypto has just been a ponzi scheme.
Err it's only a ponzi scheme in the same way fiat currency is. The government keep printing it and yet we are supposed to say oh that's OK etc.As an aside - I love how Cofeezilla has explained over the years in layman's terms how every crypto has just been a ponzi scheme.
Crypto is not perfect but like all assets it has a value if people say it does and use it. Zimbabwe has a currency nobody wants it so its almost worthless just like say doge coin but still some have done very well out of it
Gecko1978 said:
Err it's only a ponzi scheme in the same way fiat currency is. The government keep printing it and yet we are supposed to say oh that's OK etc.
Crypto is not perfect but like all assets it has a value if people say it does and use it. Zimbabwe has a currency nobody wants it so its almost worthless just like say doge coin but still some have done very well out of it
True "crypto" itself isn't inherently a ponzi scheme, but it's a tool that is very well suited to use in ponzi schemes, and pretty much gets primarily used for ponzi schemes, and other similar fraud schemes.Crypto is not perfect but like all assets it has a value if people say it does and use it. Zimbabwe has a currency nobody wants it so its almost worthless just like say doge coin but still some have done very well out of it
Yes, some people have done well out of it, even some people who aren't the ones running the scams but usually they've done so because some other sucker came along and bought their "asset" before the price cratered. So the majority of people lose money, even in the legitimate space, let alone when you look at all the hacks, frauds, rug-pulls etc, etc.
All, and I mean all the crypto-bros who are hyping up crypto and telling more people to buy it are doing so because that's the way they can make money - get the next mark to come along and pay a higher price than they did. As soon as no-one else is coming along that is willing to pay more you're either stuck with it or selling it at a loss. Are there potential applications for crypto to use as actual payment methods? Sure, I'm not sure they're particularly compelling though, and in any case that's not what we have, what we have is a proliferation of coin after coin after coin and endless promises of how it's going to "make you rich". So (for now at least) the whole thing is just a waste of time and (literally) energy.
KaraK said:
True "crypto" itself isn't inherently a ponzi scheme, but it's a tool that is very well suited to use in ponzi schemes, and pretty much gets primarily used for ponzi schemes, and other similar fraud schemes.
Yes, some people have done well out of it, even some people who aren't the ones running the scams but usually they've done so because some other sucker came along and bought their "asset" before the price cratered. So the majority of people lose money, even in the legitimate space, let alone when you look at all the hacks, frauds, rug-pulls etc, etc.
All, and I mean all the crypto-bros who are hyping up crypto and telling more people to buy it are doing so because that's the way they can make money - get the next mark to come along and pay a higher price than they did. As soon as no-one else is coming along that is willing to pay more you're either stuck with it or selling it at a loss. Are there potential applications for crypto to use as actual payment methods? Sure, I'm not sure they're particularly compelling though, and in any case that's not what we have, what we have is a proliferation of coin after coin after coin and endless promises of how it's going to "make you rich". So (for now at least) the whole thing is just a waste of time and (literally) energy.
Apart from very last line I mostly agree. SBF was / is a massive fraudster if it wasn't crypto it would have been equities or something else. He used client funds for his own gain.Yes, some people have done well out of it, even some people who aren't the ones running the scams but usually they've done so because some other sucker came along and bought their "asset" before the price cratered. So the majority of people lose money, even in the legitimate space, let alone when you look at all the hacks, frauds, rug-pulls etc, etc.
All, and I mean all the crypto-bros who are hyping up crypto and telling more people to buy it are doing so because that's the way they can make money - get the next mark to come along and pay a higher price than they did. As soon as no-one else is coming along that is willing to pay more you're either stuck with it or selling it at a loss. Are there potential applications for crypto to use as actual payment methods? Sure, I'm not sure they're particularly compelling though, and in any case that's not what we have, what we have is a proliferation of coin after coin after coin and endless promises of how it's going to "make you rich". So (for now at least) the whole thing is just a waste of time and (literally) energy.
BTC for example works just like a USD in that you can exchange it for goods or services (digitally like most fiat transactions) the person giving you the widget believes the BTC will hold some value. Just like usd.
What we see in BTC is a belief I think that one day 1 BTC will be worth $1M its like a lotto win belief etc. I doubt it will ever get that high bur I suspect $50k might be a long term sustained value (i picked that value as a pure guesstimate)
Crypto bros hyping the value are no different to people on tik tok shop selling you cheap pen lights or jewelry etc it's same thing a unregulated sales pitch to snare the unlucky few with a belief that they will make millions.
Gecko1978 said:
Apart from very last line I mostly agree. SBF was / is a massive fraudster if it wasn't crypto it would have been equities or something else. He used client funds for his own gain.
BTC for example works just like a USD in that you can exchange it for goods or services (digitally like most fiat transactions) the person giving you the widget believes the BTC will hold some value. Just like usd.
What we see in BTC is a belief I think that one day 1 BTC will be worth $1M its like a lotto win belief etc. I doubt it will ever get that high bur I suspect $50k might be a long term sustained value (i picked that value as a pure guesstimate)
Crypto bros hyping the value are no different to people on tik tok shop selling you cheap pen lights or jewelry etc it's same thing a unregulated sales pitch to snare the unlucky few with a belief that they will make millions.
You're right - you can (in some transactions) use it like traditional currency. But to what end? We've already got traditional currencies for that, which are more widely accepted, and (generally) more stable in value, because for a traditional currency to go massively tits-up (such as Zimbabwe's) it's usually as a consequence of things going pretty tits-up in the country (again, see Zimbabwe).BTC for example works just like a USD in that you can exchange it for goods or services (digitally like most fiat transactions) the person giving you the widget believes the BTC will hold some value. Just like usd.
What we see in BTC is a belief I think that one day 1 BTC will be worth $1M its like a lotto win belief etc. I doubt it will ever get that high bur I suspect $50k might be a long term sustained value (i picked that value as a pure guesstimate)
Crypto bros hyping the value are no different to people on tik tok shop selling you cheap pen lights or jewelry etc it's same thing a unregulated sales pitch to snare the unlucky few with a belief that they will make millions.
If BTC were to stabilise tomorrow, become accepted everywhere tomorrow, then what? What problem has it solved?
KaraK said:
Gecko1978 said:
Apart from very last line I mostly agree. SBF was / is a massive fraudster if it wasn't crypto it would have been equities or something else. He used client funds for his own gain.
BTC for example works just like a USD in that you can exchange it for goods or services (digitally like most fiat transactions) the person giving you the widget believes the BTC will hold some value. Just like usd.
What we see in BTC is a belief I think that one day 1 BTC will be worth $1M its like a lotto win belief etc. I doubt it will ever get that high bur I suspect $50k might be a long term sustained value (i picked that value as a pure guesstimate)
Crypto bros hyping the value are no different to people on tik tok shop selling you cheap pen lights or jewelry etc it's same thing a unregulated sales pitch to snare the unlucky few with a belief that they will make millions.
You're right - you can (in some transactions) use it like traditional currency. But to what end? We've already got traditional currencies for that, which are more widely accepted, and (generally) more stable in value, because for a traditional currency to go massively tits-up (such as Zimbabwe's) it's usually as a consequence of things going pretty tits-up in the country (again, see Zimbabwe).BTC for example works just like a USD in that you can exchange it for goods or services (digitally like most fiat transactions) the person giving you the widget believes the BTC will hold some value. Just like usd.
What we see in BTC is a belief I think that one day 1 BTC will be worth $1M its like a lotto win belief etc. I doubt it will ever get that high bur I suspect $50k might be a long term sustained value (i picked that value as a pure guesstimate)
Crypto bros hyping the value are no different to people on tik tok shop selling you cheap pen lights or jewelry etc it's same thing a unregulated sales pitch to snare the unlucky few with a belief that they will make millions.
If BTC were to stabilise tomorrow, become accepted everywhere tomorrow, then what? What problem has it solved?
Gecko1978 said:
Kind of off topic but to answer your question unlike GBP you have autonomy over it. The government can devalue currency by printing more, it can seize your money in your account, it can restrict its movement etc. I don't see BTC as a replacement for money I see it more as another asset like shares, or gold, or watches etc. Something you can own as a mix bag of assets.
Ahh the same old tired nebulous reasons.. Yes with a traditional currency you're having to place a great deal of trust in relative strangers (i.e. a gov't) not to screw you over and leave you with nothing, but with a crypto you're still having to place a great deal of trust in relative strangers (the peers of the block chain, any exchange you might use) and that the gov't isn't going to go full China and declare the whole thing illegal (China's clampdown hasn't been super-effective.. yet, but I wouldn't bet against them getting better at it)
When it comes to devaluing of a fiat currency "normal" devaluations aimed at shifting trade balances can be a legitimate economic choice, one that doesn't really devalue your bank balance (unless you're looking to import stuff or buy foreign currency) and holding some BTC would potentially insulate from that effect - but so would holding other fiat currencies that would increase relative to your home one. If a gov't is going around wantonly printing money to the degree it's a serious problem (aka hyperinflation) then that's usually a symptom of wider problems and they don't do it generally because, well, it's not in their best interests.
Even if you've got a rogue, or hugely incompetent gov't doing that then BTC doesn't really offer anything that informally adopting another traditional currency does (such as Zimbabwe de facto adopting the USD), "but that's also vulnerable to the same thing!" cry the crypto-bros, yes, but if (say) UK gov tanked GBP to the extent that we were shifting to another currency like USD and that got tanked by the US gov then, frankly, to get to that point I think it means a pretty major international catastrophe is going on and I don't see how BTC fixes that.
As for control - sure the gov't can freeze your money, but outside of doing it to criminals/suspected criminals they generally don't, if nothing else because it's not a vote winner to go around seizing money off innocent citizens for no reason. It can also work in your favour - e.g. your boss decides to make off with the contents of the pension fund, would you prefer the gov't be able to freeze his accounts and possibly reclaim your money? Or would you prefer that they just had to shrug and say tough luck?
But that's talking about reasonable governments, so let's imagine they've gone out of their tiny little politician minds and are cracking down on innocent citizens in flagrant disregard of the existing status quo, seizing money left and right, preventing you from transferring it out of the country, the whole nine yards. Are we expecting them to stop there? Or will they restrict internet access (strangling peer-to-peer stuff like bitcoin traffic is difficult, but not impossible), travel, start grabbing people off the street and bundling them into vans, that sort of thing?
They can also do quite a lot to actually seize your BTC too - after all a hot wallet is only as secure as you can keep your key, hardware wallets are only as secure as you can keep the device, and exchange wallets are complete joke.
Cutting off one way a bad actor gov't can abuse you as a citizen is all well and good, but in the end it doesn't make much practical difference. Sure if you've got some BTC in a cold wallet and can hop a migrant boat across the channel you can get to your money and set up life again, but how is that any different from having offshore accounts of traditional currency?
But you say it's an asset instead of money, like gold or what have you. Well, what does it offer that other assets don't? If it's just a abstract digital version of gold then I suppose it's a bit lighter and less bulky than gold, and it offers another diversity option to protect you from the volatility of the prices of that sort of asset. If you've got 50% of your assets in gold, 50% in BTC and the price of gold tanks you haven't lost everything - but how many different forms of this does the world need? There's already gold, silver, platinum, etc. Was it really worth burning a shedload of electricity to add another string to that bow? BTC doesn't even have quite the same permanence, bit rot will come for off-line digital storage, online infrastructure isn't especially permanent either: software and protocols march on. If you wanted to bury a gold ingot your great-grandkids could dig it up 100 years later and it's still a gold ingot and is worth what ever the price of gold is then. Good luck trying that with an offline BTC wallet! Even using assets as a form wealth storage depends on you being able to convert that back into usable money to realise the value - so even if we imagine the scenario where the volatility was addressed and the value was relatively stable it still means bringing exchanges into the mix, which means opening up the can'o'worms of hacks, rug pulls, collapses, blah blah. You could make exchanges safer by regulating them - but that means bringing the authorities in and giving them real power to control what goes on there, and the crypto-bros tell me that the benefit of crypto is that the gov't can't control it... and round and round we go.
KaraK said:
.... but with a crypto you're still having to place a great deal of trust in relative strangers (the peers of the block chain, any exchange you might use) and that the gov't isn't going to go full China and declare the whole thing illegal (China's clampdown hasn't been super-effective.. yet, but I wouldn't bet against them getting better at it)....
The risk of significantly adverse regulations is the main reason why I never 'invested' in crypto. A government doesn't even need to ban it - they could easily make a rule, implementing something like a 'holding tax' or other punitive restriction, which would kill the value of crypto. It doesn't matter than many current users holding crypto perhaps wouldn't comply, as it wouldn't then have mainstream appeal, and the perceived value would drop accordingly. And the risk of that type of new rule increases dramatically if/when governments perceive crypto as a threat than than a novelty.In addition, there is a (fairly) close correlation between a leveraged ETF like TQQQ and say Bitcoin. So, if someone has that type of risk appetite, they could just hold TQQQ and probably get a fairly similar result, but without also taking the unknown regulatory risks.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67492753
Now Binance head Zhao is gone after money laundering charges and a $4.3BN fine.
Now Binance head Zhao is gone after money laundering charges and a $4.3BN fine.
glazbagun said:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67492753
Now Binance head Zhao is gone after money laundering charges and a $4.3BN fine.
Haha love it.Now Binance head Zhao is gone after money laundering charges and a $4.3BN fine.
One by one, the dominoes of scam fall down. Clock still ticking for Tether (and therefore btc) but it'll happen eventually
Some Gump said:
glazbagun said:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67492753
Now Binance head Zhao is gone after money laundering charges and a $4.3BN fine.
Haha love it.Now Binance head Zhao is gone after money laundering charges and a $4.3BN fine.
One by one, the dominoes of scam fall down. Clock still ticking for Tether (and therefore btc) but it'll happen eventually
Does anyone actually believe that Tether is fully covered by underlying funds.
glazbagun said:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67492753
Now Binance head Zhao is gone after money laundering charges and a $4.3BN fine.
Coffeezilla is doing good work again explaining more details....Now Binance head Zhao is gone after money laundering charges and a $4.3BN fine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De4QjH9fpgo
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