The FTX Gigafraud

[Etern4l]

I'm sure everyone has heard about the gigantic fraud operated by one astute MIT alum Samuel Bankman-Fried. This is causing severe damage to cryptocurrency space, and will likely set it back by several years. 

 

The scam is likely to eclipse Madoff's scheme.

 

Hopefully no fellow members have been too exposed. 

 

Who knew this was coming? A boy wonder making obscene "profits" out of thin air and out of sight in the Bahamas. I guess human greed and stupidity wlll never change. People were essentially handing over their crypto to the scheme. In essence, this has nothing to do with the core crypto ideas and  ecosystem per se. Not your keys, not your crypto. He might have just as well taken people's dollars, but then he wouldn't be able to just as easily capitalise on the crypto hype. 

 

Of course, the story goes even deeper if we look at the background of "SBF"'s activities , although we must be very aware of the implied forum guidelines when pursuing those fascinating angles. 

 

Of course, the people who have been closely involved in crypto are likely to be most affected. Here is a victim impact statement from a major crypto mining YouTube (the guy's dream was to build a solar-powered mining farm):

 

 

@ryan @Mr. Fox @Papusan

 

 

[Reciever]

Even those that didnt use FTX exchange were affected as it sent ripples throughout the space, it was essentially a second crash for a recovering crypto "economy".

 

Its always a bummer to see your stocks and/or crypto take a dive but luckily I have limited myself to only what I mine on my GPU's and refuse to put any fiat currency from other revenue streams into crypto. Doesnt mean its value didnt tank (again) but I am not in a position where I must sell and as a result actualize the loss.

 

Though there are plenty didnt approach as cautiously or in such a constricted manner.

[Aaron44126]

I dabble in cryptocurrency a bit and was lucky to not have any wallets at FTX.  This is another "fascinating to watch" situation.  It's still rather unclear what happened.  (Granted, I haven't been following this one as close as I have the Elon Musk / Twitter situation.)  Clearly there was mismanagement going on, but rather it was "intentional fraud" or just "gross negligence" (combined with some losses from hackers) isn't clear to me.

 

Sort of stinks for people who either unable to withdraw their funds or just had their portfolio drop in value (more).  Like @Reciever, I'm not in a position where I have to sell anything, so I'll just continue to hold for now and see what happens.  I'm good playing the long game.  The cryptocurrency market is generally (wildly) unpredictable so who knows where we will be in another few years.

[jaybee83]

can highly recommend recent vids by youtube creator "ColdFusion" on this topic. aside from FTX, hes covered various other topics in history, tech, business and science / R&D. if ure into documentary style vids, this might be smth for ya 🙂 i for one enjoy his channel a lot.

in any case, very detailed deep dives into what actually happened in the FTX fiasco.

[Etern4l]

16 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

I dabble in cryptocurrency a bit and was lucky to not have any wallets at FTX.  This is another "fascinating to watch" situation.  It's still rather unclear what happened.  (Granted, I haven't been following this one as close as I have the Elon Musk / Twitter situation.)  Clearly there was mismanagement going on, but rather it was "intentional fraud" or just "gross negligence" (combined with some losses from hackers) isn't clear to me.

 

Unfortunately the matter is highly p....cised, so there is some defensive rhetoric in the media supportive of the affected p... side. Instead of the wholly due unequivocal condemnation, the reaction has been muted. This may backfire.

 

Because the outfit operated in a loosely or unregulated environment (this too could be explained as an honest mistake I guess, after all the weather is lovely in the Bahamas), they would likely attempt to claim gross negligence, incompetence, bad luck, rookie mistake, hacker attack etc. if ever seriously questioned there. If this was operated in the US/UK/Europe though, explanations (if any), would likely have to be provided while the team is in custody. Worth noting that incompetence or negligence are generally invalid lines of defence in cases involving those tightly regulated financial markets.

 

Seems like Wikipedia has a decent summary.

 

One thing is pretty clear: CZ, the Binance owner, pulled the plug on FTX as a result of the feud with SBF. While had every right to do so, he probably did not fully realise the extent of vulnerability he is trying to exploit, not to mention all the potential consequences for the crypto ecosystem (hence the subsequent brief takeover attempt). What a mess.

 

 

[jaybee83]

18 hours ago, Etern4l said:

 

Unfortunately the matter is highly p....cised, so there is some defensive rhetoric in the media supportive of the affected p... side. Instead of the wholly due unequivocal condemnation, the reaction has been muted. This may backfire.

 

Because the outfit operated in a loosely or unregulated environment (this too could be explained as an honest mistake I guess, after all the weather is lovely in the Bahamas), they would likely attempt to claim gross negligence, incompetence, bad luck, rookie mistake, hacker attack etc. if ever seriously questioned there. If this was operated in the US/UK/Europe though, explanations (if any), would likely have to be provided while the team is in custody. Worth noting that incompetence or negligence are generally invalid lines of defence in cases involving those tightly regulated financial markets.

 

Seems like Wikipedia has a decent summary.

 

One thing is pretty clear: CZ, the Binance owner, pulled the plug on FTX as a result of the feud with SBF. While had every right to do so, he probably did not fully realise the extent of vulnerability he is trying to exploit, not to mention all the potential consequences for the crypto ecosystem (hence the subsequent brief takeover attempt). What a mess.

 

 

 

on the other hand, he only exposed what was a horribly mismanaged platform without any rules or regulations whatsoever. best to do it now than let it build up even more, wouldve been even more of a wideranging impact.

[Etern4l]

1 hour ago, jaybee83 said:

 

on the other hand, he only exposed what was a horribly mismanaged platform without any rules or regulations whatsoever. best to do it now than let it build up even more, wouldve been even more of a wideranging impact.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure there was any other way that would not involve CZ having to write off his sizeable stake in FTX. 

[Etern4l]

To the point summary from a legal perspective:

 

 

Probably one of the main points: taking funds from U.S. investors automatically placed them under the jurisdiction of applicable U.S.  laws. Although evidently that legal framework wasn't robust enough to prevent the scam. Then again, Madoff operated right in the US. 

[Sandy Bridge]

I heard about this from a friend who works at BlockFi.  Hadn't heard of FTX before since I don't have anything in crypto (due primarily to the number of Ponzi schemes and secondarily to its environmental impact, with a side of not being able to see any societal benefit from it), but reading a couple articles about them in the New York Times, including one from way back in April, wow, this seems like it was destined to implode.  My reading of it is that FTX was basically acting like a brokerage, while also operating to some extent like a bank where people could keep their money, and behind the scenes was lending literally billions to a partner company to invest speculatively in the known-to-be-highly-volatile crypto space.  The generous way of interpreting it is that the partner company made poor "investment" speculations, and for some reason FTX was betting the farm on those investments being successful.

 

Meanwhile, all sorts of people were buying in to Bankman-Fried being legitimate.  He was testifying to Congress.  Spoke at an event with Bill Clinton.  Sequoia Capital and Black Rock had invested in FTX.  Shouldn't it have been a red flag that FTX went from new in 2019 to a $32 billion valuation in three years?  That makes the dot-com boom look tame by comparison.

 

Having worked at a U.S. company that had both investment and banking arms, FTX's scheme would never have passed regulatory muster in the traditional financial sector.  There are firewalls between the banking and investment departments at traditional firms, and regulations, so the investment arm can't just invest the customers' deposits however it wants with no regard to risk.

 

Why do those regulations exist?  To increase trust in the market and reduce the risk of the sorts of collapses that can cause wider panics (to use the term popular in the late 1800s), or longer-term recessions/depressions.  Crypto is the Wild West, and even if it continues to be a thing (I'm still hoping it fades to obscurity someday), it's going to have these busts if it remains largely unregulated.

 

It seems appropriate that the new guy put in charge of FTX is the same guy who was in charge of Enron after they went bust.  It's also telling that he stated that in his 40 year career, much focused on doling out the remains of companies that imploded, often due to fraud or gross mismanagement, FTX is the worst he has seen.

[Etern4l]

17 hours ago, Sandy Bridge said:

I heard about this from a friend who works at BlockFi.  Hadn't heard of FTX before since I don't have anything in crypto (due primarily to the number of Ponzi schemes and secondarily to its environmental impact, with a side of not being able to see any societal benefit from it), but reading a couple articles about them in the New York Times, including one from way back in April, wow, this seems like it was destined to implode.  My reading of it is that FTX was basically acting like a brokerage, while also operating to some extent like a bank where people could keep their money, and behind the scenes was lending literally billions to a partner company to invest speculatively in the known-to-be-highly-volatile crypto space.  The generous way of interpreting it is that the partner company made poor "investment" speculations, and for some reason FTX was betting the farm on those investments being successful.

 

Meanwhile, all sorts of people were buying in to Bankman-Fried being legitimate.  He was testifying to Congress.  Spoke at an event with Bill Clinton.  Sequoia Capital and Black Rock had invested in FTX.  Shouldn't it have been a red flag that FTX went from new in 2019 to a $32 billion valuation in three years?  That makes the dot-com boom look tame by comparison.

 

Having worked at a U.S. company that had both investment and banking arms, FTX's scheme would never have passed regulatory muster in the traditional financial sector.  There are firewalls between the banking and investment departments at traditional firms, and regulations, so the investment arm can't just invest the customers' deposits however it wants with no regard to risk.

 

Why do those regulations exist?  To increase trust in the market and reduce the risk of the sorts of collapses that can cause wider panics (to use the term popular in the late 1800s), or longer-term recessions/depressions.  Crypto is the Wild West, and even if it continues to be a thing (I'm still hoping it fades to obscurity someday), it's going to have these busts if it remains largely unregulated.

 

It seems appropriate that the new guy put in charge of FTX is the same guy who was in charge of Enron after they went bust.  It's also telling that he stated that in his 40 year career, much focused on doling out the remains of companies that imploded, often due to fraud or gross mismanagement, FTX is the worst he has seen.

 

Yes, so the implosion of Alameda Research had nothing to do with core crypto per se. They were basically an unregulated hedge fund / proprietary trading firm who happened to invest in crypto. The gross fraud part is the siphoning of customer funds from the FTX exchange  anywhere outside other than to a proper custodian. No FTX customers were aware that their funds were misappropriated this way. Their confidence was being maintained by a clever PR campaign, hanging out with politicians, high profile investments itd.  Again, the core rule is "not your keys, not your crypto". The only role exchanges should play is handling quick transfers back and forth between crypto and fiat. Instead, people were handing their funds over to the exchange in order to hold (and possibly earn some interest, I'm not sure) or trade on the exchange - a costly mistake. Should one absolutely need to use an exchange, obviously the safest bet would be to use one located in a regulated jurisdiction, rather than an offshore one, but the same rule generally applies. TBH the thought of using FTX had never crossed my mind prior to them becoming "famous". I'm not sure I was even aware of it's existence.

 

Then again, we can take a broader look at the world of investing and consider what's happening in equities. Tesla investors have lost at least $500B, or at least half the value of their investment, this year. However, because these are good old stocks, nobody is constantly lamenting. It's considered par for the course. Then of course, there are historical events such as the Great Recession or the 2008 housing/banking collapse which brought entire countries to their knees, and in the case of the former, arguably lead to WWII. The losses of SBF's investors are a drop in the bucket compared to those major global events. The difference, of course, is that - at least in the case of Tesla - it's harder to fault Musk, or anyone else, directly. He didn't really deceive anyone much - other than through the usual Twitter shenanigans.  Yes, his reckless actions contributed to the losses, but he had every right to take them. 

[John Ratsey]

19 hours ago, Sandy Bridge said:

Hadn't heard of FTX before since I don't have anything in crypto (due primarily to the number of Ponzi schemes and secondarily to its environmental impact, with a side of not being able to see any societal benefit from it)

That's also my view. It seems to be speculation in something with no physical or intellectual property value.

[Sandy Bridge]

Alameda Research was at least primarily investing in crypto, though, right?  I entirely agree that the big mistake was FTX moving customer funds into an outside brokerage, and a high-risk one at that.  It would be a classic way for an unregulated bank to fail in the 1800s too, take deposits, use that money to invest in some outside venture, outside venture fails, customers lose their money.

 

On 12/10/2022 at 5:02 PM, Etern4l said:

Then again, we can take a broader look at the world of investing and consider what's happening in equities. Tesla investors have lost at least $500B, or at least half the value of their investment, this year. However, because these are good old stocks, nobody is constantly lamenting. It's considered par for the course. Then of course, there are historical events such as the Great Recession or the 2008 housing/banking collapse which brought entire countries to their knees, and in the case of the former, arguably lead to WWII. The losses of SBF's investors are a drop in the bucket compared to those major global events. The difference, of course, is that - at least in the case of Tesla - it's harder to fault Musk, or anyone else, directly. He didn't really deceive anyone much - other than through the usual Twitter shenanigans.  Yes, his reckless actions contributed to the losses, but he had every right to take them. 

 

Making poor business decisions or having a business strategy that doesn't pan out is not illegal.  Part of what regulation brings is the requirement for publicly traded companies to release reports to the public periodically, so the public can make more informed decisions about whether an investment is a wise one or not.  It doesn't prevent someone from putting their life savings in securities that go to zero, but there is some more accountability than the typical crypto "trust us, we won't do anything bad with your money."  And with publicly-traded companies, if they do commit fraud, the SEC will know who is running the business, they won't be pulling exit scams.

 

My historical take is that people have always been susceptible to hype and putting their money in investments before really doing their research; it dates back to at least the Dutch Tulip Mania of the 1600s, and on a smaller scale surely well before that.  Some unethical individuals will capitalize on that human susceptibility, but even without malicious intentions, hype can fuel more hype.  We regulate our financial markets in no small part to tame the worst excesses of it, and introduced many new reforms in response to the Great Depression, as well as the Great Recession.

 

Yes, it hits the news when Enron or WorldCom implodes, but all said those sorts of total failures caused by greed and not caught in time by required audits are rare these days, especially in the more-regulated category of publicly traded companies.  Cryptocurrencies, and crypto in general, seem to proclaim their main benefit of being a "market without government intervention," and have spectacular meltdowns all the time.  I don't think that premise of government regulation being bad is true, and ironically it is crypto that has solidified that viewpoint for me.

 

The old adge of "don't invest what you can't afford to lose" applies regardless of where you're investing, but at least if you put money in a mutual fund and forget about it for 20 years, it's still going to be there and will likely have increased in value.

[Etern4l]

8 hours ago, Sandy Bridge said:

Alameda Research was at least primarily investing in crypto, though, right?

 

By the same token we could denounce the dollar and equities because Madoff defrauded people while being involved with those, or because Tesla, the US stock denominated in dollars, lost $500B of value, or because the Great Depression and the associated stock market collapse had happened. 

 

8 hours ago, Sandy Bridge said:

Cryptocurrencies, and crypto in general, seem to proclaim their main benefit of being a "market without government intervention," and have spectacular meltdowns all the time.  I don't think that premise of government regulation being bad is true, and ironically it is crypto that has solidified that viewpoint for me.

 

Most of the time what melts down is centralised entities the existence of which goes against the very idea of crypto. 

[Aaron44126]

Apparently, Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested today.

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/12/12/ftx-founder-sam-bankman-fried-arrested-bahamas-says/

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/12/23506483/sam-bankman-fried-arrest-us-extradition-ftx-crypto

[Etern4l]

SEC has been at war with crypto so it's no surprise they pounced. 

 

Interesting to see some p..ans acting "surprised". Hope the strategy of defending the indefensible works out for them. 

 

Ignorantia juris non excusat. 

 

On the other hand, while it's good to see some enforcement action on this, I believe not a single person was convicted in the aftermath the 2008 Gigacrisis, not even Dick Fuld.

[Aaron44126]

18 minutes ago, Etern4l said:

Interestingly, this is being reported everywhere in the UK, but not on edition.cnn.com, as I am perusing it now.

NPR picked it up pretty promptly yesterday.  (Heard radio coverage on the situation through them this morning as well.)

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/12/1142361088/bankman-fried-ceo-ftx-crypto-exchange-arrested-bahamas-charges-sdny

 

I don't follow any sort of cable news, but I can actually see it on the front page at edition.cnn.com (and regular cnn.com as well).

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/13/business/sam-bankman-fried-charges/index.html

[Etern4l]

4 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

NPR picked it up pretty promptly yesterday.  (Heard radio coverage on the situation through them this morning as well.)

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/12/1142361088/bankman-fried-ceo-ftx-crypto-exchange-arrested-bahamas-charges-sdny

 

I don't follow any sort of cable news, but I can see it on the front page at edition.cnn.com.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/13/business/sam-bankman-fried-charges/index.html

 

Popped in for me as well, might have been a timezone thing. 

[Etern4l]

CFTC joined the party. 

 

CFTC Sues Bankman-Fried, FTX and Alameda for Law Violations

 

 "At Bankman-Fried's direction, FTX executives created features in the underlying code for FTX that allowed Alameda to maintain an essentially unlimited line of credit on FTX," 

 

Meanwhile the contagion seems to be spreading as Binance is seeing major outflows after temporarily pausing USDC redemptions... Oh dear. 

[Aaron44126]

The many lies of Sam Bankman-Fried
https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/13/23507361/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-alameda-cftc-complaint-lies

(Basically summing up the charges)

 

The guy clearly got himself in a hole… and then kept digging it deeper 😕
 

[Edit]
Denied bail, extradition hearing Feb 8.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/13/23508217/sbf-sam-bankman-fried-ftx-bail-john-ray-congress-hearing

[Etern4l]

The CFTC claims that Bankman-Fried, his parents, and his employees at FTX and Alameda used customers' funds for personal benefit: luxury real estate, private jets, personal loans, and political donations. The customer funds were also used for a Super Bowl commercial starring Larry David and the sponsorship of FTX Arena in Miami. These advertisements, which the CFTC says were paid for by customers’ funds, said that FTX was “the safest and easiest way to buy and sell crypto.”

 

Wow. Perhaps the idea here was to lay some groundwork for a plausible insanity defence should things unravel down the line? Nah, he just went all in as countless failed gamblers before him who lost everything by doubling down to chase the losses. 

[jaybee83]

On 12/13/2022 at 2:23 AM, Aaron44126 said:

Apparently, Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested today.

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/12/12/ftx-founder-sam-bankman-fried-arrested-bahamas-says/

https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/12/23506483/sam-bankman-fried-arrest-us-extradition-ftx-crypto

 

about time. cant let those scamming bastards get away with their scummy operations!

[Aaron44126]

10 minutes ago, jaybee83 said:

about time. cant let those scamming bastards get away with their scummy operations!

 

It seems like U.S. authorities spent a few weeks gathering evidence and preparing the list of charges, and waited until they had a pretty overwhelming list before filing everything and asking authorities in the Bahamas to do the arrest (which they appear to have carried out without delay).  What they have against him right now seems insurmountable.  This guy is going to jail.

 

20 hours ago, Etern4l said:

...his parents...

 

Listened to this piece yesterday while running errands in the evening; the second half dives into his parents' connection to the whole thing a bit.

[Etern4l]

2 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

Listened to this piece yesterday while running errands, the second half dives into his parents' connection to the whole thing a bit.

 

A good listen, thanks.

 

"Nothing against Quickbooks, a very nice tool, but not for a multi-billion dollar company" 

 

Wow once again. I didn't realize his parents are actually legal scholars... I mean given how close they have been to the whole thing, they are basically complicit. Apparently they were in the court during the initial extradition/bail hearing making scenes such as lauging out loud. Very nice, super-scholarly behaviour.

 

 

 

[jaybee83]

On 12/14/2022 at 3:30 PM, Etern4l said:

 

A good listen, thanks.

 

"Nothing against Quickbooks, a very nice tool, but not for a multi-billion dollar company" 

 

Wow once again. I didn't realize his parents are actually legal scholars... I mean given how close they have been to the whole thing, they are basically complicit. Apparently they were in the court during the initial extradition/bail hearing making scenes such as lauging out loud. Very nice, super-scholarly behaviour.

 

 

 

 

problem is, once its about their own kids, a lot of people just lose their cool and behave more like animals rather than human beings... and no, im not talking about life threatening situations, everyone would move heaven and earth to protect their kids. im talking about the most mundane stuff 😅

Edited December 17, 2022 by Reciever
language

[Etern4l]

20 minutes ago, jaybee83 said:

 

problem is, once its about their own kids, a lot of people just lose their shit and behave more like animals rather than human beings... and no, im not talking about life threatening situations, everyone would move heaven and earth to protect their kids. im talking about the most mundane shit 😅

 

Not all do, despite their children committing horrible crimes. "The Dharmer Tapes" or "Ted Bundy Tapes" on Netflix showcase major examples of this, and at least in the former case, the parents were also part of the problem.

 

To me, this just shows that the whole bunch is  rotten to the bone.