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Bitcoin and other crypto-The CR thread


GRHorn

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17 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

At least none of the disappeared/hacked/stolen funds belonged to people like cartels, trying to launder money.

Right?

Or Russian oligarchs because everything is going swell over there according to GRUHorn.  And we know how understanding those Russian oligarchs are in tough times.

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His political usefulness must have expired. 

1 hour ago, RDCanecutter said:

At least none of the disappeared/hacked/stolen funds belonged to people like cartels, trying to launder money.

Right?

Sam Bankman-Fried’s fall cuts off big source of funds for US Democrats

https://www.ft.com/content/428c7800-c72d-4c59-9940-4376fea6e263

 

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On 11/12/2022 at 12:59 PM, RDCanecutter said:

So this guy with his baby-robot voice probably not knowing a word of Spanish, is going to blend in Argentina. Where the monthly wage is about like Mexico. And he's wanted by the Zillionaires he ripped off as well as all the small fry, SOME of whom may very well BE in Argentina scraping by on Mexico wages when one day, at the bus stop, they hear a baby-robot voice buzzing out OK Spanish, like, nothing like Buenos Aires Spanish, mind you, but passable Duolingo Spanish.

And they're standing there with their shopping bag of onions, duct tape, and a sock full of demonetized coins that you need for the bus, and the wheels start turning. Cousin's got an empty store with a backroom. How much would a Zillionaire pay for this baby-robot-voice guy?

 

On 11/12/2022 at 1:53 PM, Viking said:

I had the same thought. These two:

SBF-Caroline-Ellison-1668176050.webp.f0fac38590a874a743a10a0709f827a3.webp

are going on the lam to south america with 1-2 billion USD worth of shitcoin to their names.

 

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7 hours ago, Anastasis said:

His political usefulness must have expired. 

Sam Bankman-Fried’s fall cuts off big source of funds for US Democrats

https://www.ft.com/content/428c7800-c72d-4c59-9940-4376fea6e263

 

So the expectation is that all of the morally flawed and corrupt individuals in our society are GOP donors? And when one is a Dem donor, it is newsworthy?  Let Me Think GIF by Gerbert!

 

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7 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

I genuinely don't think I care about anything as much as you folks care about Hunter Biden.

The people/Republicans who are upset/obsessed with Hunter Biden are upset over the size of his dick.  

They probably all have small dicks, like 6 inches or less.  He triggers them,

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10 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

The people/Republicans who are upset/obsessed with Hunter Biden are upset over the size of his dick.  

They probably all have small dicks, like 6 inches or less.  He triggers them,

That's unironically his saving grace. All discussions of his supposed transgressions are immediately derailed by comments about his dong.

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It's a money laundering pump and dump ponzi scheme.  How the fuck is this a 19 page cloakroom thread?  Oh, wait, some of y'all actually gave money to these grifters.....didn't you?

Oh, that’s a bingo gif.

Seriously, once the initial dust settled and it became clearer what was happening….yeah. It was obvious. But not the crypto-bro super brain geniuses, nope, they knew that up was really down, etc.
Till they didn’t.
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15 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:


Oh, that’s a bingo gif.

Seriously, once the initial dust settled and it became clearer what was happening….yeah. It was obvious. But not the crypto-bro super brain geniuses, nope, they knew that up was really down, etc.
Till they didn’t.

don't you understand? THIS is different!

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15 minutes ago, Humble Beast said:

Why would the NYT do this? Weird.

 

 

 

Reading through the article.... I disagree with your outrage bait. The author is pretty up-front with SBF moving specifically to avoid regulation and oversight that he would be subject to in the US. It included a single paragraph about his charity efforts, and quickly followed it up with all the other shit he's been doing too (including helping to fund elmo's twitter takeover)

I get it, NYT bad because orange man says bad. But cmon tovarich, at least try to have an original thought for yourself

Edited by Captainant
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4 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

What is the commercial utility for bitcoin? Seriously, can anyone explain how bitcoin adds value? Let me be clear, I do not mean blockchain, that is an old technology that has been around for a while. 

It can be used for illegal transactions and isn't subject to dilution from money printing like fiat currency - but mostly illegal transactions ...

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13 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

What is the commercial utility for bitcoin? Seriously, can anyone explain how bitcoin adds value? Let me be clear, I do not mean blockchain, that is an old technology that has been around for a while. 

 

 

What do you mean by commercial utility? Also, adds value or has value?

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Have a group text with some old law school and adjacent tailgating buddies.  A couple of tech guys, a development exec in the O&G space, a bankruptcy lawyer, etc..  It usually covers important topics: Sark sucks, Beard rules, got some of my favorite mexican food today, we're all getting old and my knee hurts....you know, the usual.  But we do talk interesting business news and cases from time to time.  FTX has come up in discussion, bankruptcy buddy and exec have read some of the filings for shits and giggles.  Some commentary:

Quote

One, giant pyramid scheme.

Most benign form is speculation- gambling on what other speculators will do. After that it is just a Ponzi scheme whose value is ultimately denominated in dollars.

This is wild shit. These admissions by FTX give rise to lots of liability and veil-piercing theories but there is 1 glaring issue - the alleged conduct is so bad that D&O carriers will deny coverage.

MAGA.

Brexit.

Crypto.

Elon and Twitter.

 

I wonder when these guys who champion all these things will get tired of being horrifically wrong.  Probably never.

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Obviously SBF was running a giant pyramid scheme. He was funneling money without permission, payment, or recordation from FTX to Alameda to "invest" aka gamble on other digital beanie babies. 

My question, which most people can't seem to answer, is what is the commercial utility of Bitcoin? Even Deloitte is have troubling making a good argument here

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/audit/articles/corporates-using-crypto.html

Quote

 

What can crypto do for your company?

To spark your company’s thinking about crypto, here are some of the rationales behind why some companies are currently using crypto:

  • Crypto may provide access to new demographic groups. Users often represent a more cutting-edge clientele that values transparency in their transactions. One recent study found that up to 40% of customers who pay with crypto are new customers of the company, and their purchase amounts are twice those of credit card users.
  • Introducing crypto now may help spur internal awareness in your company about this new technology. It also may help position the company in this important emerging space for a future that could include central bank digital currencies.
  • Crypto could enable access to new capital and liquidity pools through traditional investments that have been tokenized, as well as to new asset classes.
  • Crypto furnishes certain options that are simply not available with fiat currency. For example, programmable money can enable real-time and accurate revenue-sharing while enhancing transparency to facilitate back-office reconciliation.
  • More companies are finding that important clients and vendors want to engage by using crypto. Consequently, your business may need to be positioned to receive and disburse crypto to assure smooth exchanges with key stakeholders.
  • Crypto provides a new avenue for enhancing a host of more traditional Treasury activities, such as:
    • Enabling simple, real-time, and secure money transfers
    • Helping strengthen control over the capital of the enterprise
    • Managing the risks and opportunities of engaging in digital investments

Crypto may serve as an effective alternative or balancing asset to cash, which may depreciate over time due to inflation. Crypto is an investable asset, and some, such as bitcoin, have performed exceedingly well over the past five years. There are, of course, clear volatility risks that need to be thoughtfully considered.

 

Most of the Deloitte article is made up bullshit. Crypo is great because young people like it!

 

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Worse than Enron.  Let that sink in.

 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/17/23464445/ftx-bankruptcy-sam-bankman-fried-enron-help

 

Quote

The thing that’s under-appreciated about lawyers — largely because they are so annoying — is that they are also writers and often talented ones. And so, in the spirit of literary appreciation, let’s all do a close read of the absolute banger filed today by John J. Ray III in the FTX bankruptcy case.

Who’s Ray? He’s the guy running FTX now, and in the filing, he writes:

 

Quote

I have over 40 years of legal and restructuring experience. I have been the Chief Restructuring Officer or Chief Executive Officer in several of the largest corporate failures in history. I have supervised situations involving allegations of criminal activity and malfeasance (Enron). I have supervised situations involving novel financial structures (Enron and Residential Capital) and cross-border asset recovery and maximization (Nortel and Overseas Shipholding). Nearly every situation in which I have been involved has been characterized by defects of some sort in internal controls, regulatory compliance, human resources and systems integrity.

 

 

Quote

Quite the windup. Here’s how he pays it off, emphasis mine:

Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented.

 

Quote

The Enron guy says it’s worse than Enron. Enron.

Okay, but what does he think of Alameda Research? Well, it’s not promising:

Alameda Research LLC prepared consolidated financial statements on a quarterly basis. To my knowledge, none of these financial statements have been audited. The September 30, 2022 balance sheet for the Alameda Silo shows $13.46 billion in total assets as of its date. However, because this balance sheet was unaudited and produced while the Debtors were controlled by Mr. Bankman-Fried, I do not have confidence in it and the information herein may not be correct as of the date stated.

 

 

Spoiler

Emphasis mine, here and throughout. What about the ventures arm? Well, Ray isn’t confident in those balance sheets, either, for the same reason. But my favorite part is that he can’t find financial statements for one of the entities used to make venture investments, Island Bay Ventures.

How big is FTX dot com? Hard to know. Ray is more polite here about his confidence in Bankman-Fried’s representations:

 

Mr. Bankman-Fried claimed that, by the end of 2021, around $15 billion of assets were on the platform, which according to him handled approximately 10% of global volume for crypto trading at the time. Mr. Bankman-Fried also claimed that FTX.com, as of July 2022, had “millions” of registered users. These figures have not been verified by my team.

 

I mean, one very funny outcome would be to discover Bankman-Fried had also been lying this whole time about how many people were using FTX. I personally would be very happy and relieved to find out fewer retail investors got ripped off!

Those of you who hate meetings will find this relatable:

Many of the companies in the FTX Group, especially those organized in Antigua and the Bahamas, did not have appropriate corporate governance. I understand that many entities, for example, never had board meetings.

Anyway, there’s a new board, which presumably will meet. A lot of them are experts on distressed companies. How did FTX do with its cash?

 

The FTX Group did not maintain centralized control of its cash. Cash management procedural failures included the absence of an accurate list of bank accounts and account signatories, as well as insufficient attention to the creditworthiness of banking partners around the world.

 

What! They what! I’m... They don’t have an accurate list of their bank accounts!!! I’m sorry, how is that even possible? Who was in charge here? What were they doing? Oh my god. So, uh, “because of historical cash management failures, the Debtors do not yet know the exact amount of cash that the FTX Group held as of the Petition Date.

Ahhhhhhhh.

We have now reached the point where we need to talk about FTX’s auditors, and boy, are they something. One of the auditors was “Prager Metis,” a firm with which I am not familiar and whose website indicates that they are the “first-ever CPA firm to officially open its Metaverse headquarters in the metaverse platform Decentraland.” You cannot make this shit up! Anyway, Ray has “substantial concerns” about the audited financial statements, especially those audited by the Decentraland-friendly firm.

Okay, so we don’t know about the balance statements or the bank accounts. Surely we can figure out who worked there, though?

 

The FTX Group’s approach to human resources combined employees of various entities and outside contractors, with unclear records and lines of responsibility. At this time, the Debtors have been unable to prepare a complete list of who worked for the FTX Group as of the Petition Date, or the terms of their employment. Repeated attempts to locate certain presumed employees to confirm their status have been unsuccessful to date.

 

ksjrhtyakewrtjhwealkewkjweatktwejtwhwksdlthwekpahu PLEASE SEND HELP.

I’m just... literally, I do not know what to say about this, and the hits keep coming for some reason. Payments requests were submitted “through an on-line ‘chat’ platform where a disparate group of supervisors approved disbursements by responding with personalized emojis.” Personalized emojis!!!!

How did FTX keep its books on digital assets? Trick question! They didn’t keep books at all! And somehow, improbably, the situation is worse than that, even?

 

Unacceptable management practices included the use of an unsecured group email account as the root user to access confidential private keys and critically sensitive data for the FTX Group companies around the world, the absence of daily reconciliation of positions on the blockchain, the use of software to conceal the misuse of customer funds, the secret exemption of Alameda from certain aspects of FTX.com’s auto-liquidation protocol, and the absence of independent governance as between Alameda (owned 90% by Mr. Bankman-Fried and 10% by Mr. Wang) and the Dotcom Silo (in which third parties had invested).

 

 

Look, I have been shrieking at my computer a lot lately, but reading that paragraph did make me scream! You will be unsurprised to learn that Ray has not located all of the digital assets yet. He has called in forensic analysts to figure it all out. Holy shit, dude.

Ray is also pretty sympathetic to FTX employees, who appeared to be unaware of all this chaos. “Indeed, I believe some of the people most hurt by these events are current and former employees and executives, whose personal investments and reputations have suffered,” he writes. Woof.

Anyway, “Mr. Bankman-Fried often communicated by using applications that were set to auto-delete after a short period of time, and encouraged employees to do the same.” Look, I understand this business was run by 12-year-olds, but this is a red flag!!! You need to write things down!!!

But honestly, my favorite part might be near the end. John Ray has had enough of Sam Bankman-Fried’s shit! He is fed up! How do I know? Well:

 

Finally, and critically, the Debtors have made clear to employees and the public that Mr. Bankman-Fried is not employed by the Debtors and does not speak for them. Mr. Bankman-Fried, currently in the Bahamas, continues to make erratic and misleading public statements. Mr. Bankman-Fried, whose connections and financial holdings in the Bahamas remain unclear to me, recently stated to a reporter on Twitter: “F*** regulators they make everything worse” and suggested the next step for him was to “win a jurisdictional battle vs. Delaware”.

 

Man, I am not a lawyer, but this does read like, “Bring it on, little bitch.”

Here’s the full document, which you can read for yourself:

 

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53 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

Obviously SBF was running a giant pyramid scheme. He was funneling money without permission, payment, or recordation from FTX to Alameda to "invest" aka gamble on other digital beanie babies. 

My question, which most people can't seem to answer, is what is the commercial utility of Bitcoin? Even Deloitte is have troubling making a good argument here

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/audit/articles/corporates-using-crypto.html

Most of the Deloitte article is made up bullshit. Crypo is great because young people like it!

 

You keep conflating bitcoin and crypto. 
 

It’s surprising to no one that an unregulated offshore crypto casino engaged in fraud. They’re just the worst yet.

 

Also, what do you mean by commercial utility?  

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3 minutes ago, C-Man said:

Funny I haven't heard much about SBF and his troll GF since they apparently fled the Bahamas headed for Argentina last weekend. Are they gone like a fart in the wind?

Don’t know where the gf is. He was spotted in the Bahamas just a couple days ago. Still not under arrest. 
 

Argentina was false alarm. 

Edited by Humble Beast
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3 minutes ago, Humble Beast said:

Don’t know where the gf is. He was spotted in the Bahamas just a couple days ago. Still not under arrest. 
 

Argentina was false alarm. 

Gotcha. Hadn't seen an update since the plane was being tracked to South America.

I imagine there are a lot of people that would like to see SBF dead-as-disco after this shit.

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