https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/23/heres-the-apology-letter-sam-bankman-fried-sent-to-ftx-employees.html

 

Here’s the apology letter Sam Bankman-Fried sent to FTX employees: ‘When sh---y things happen to us, we all tend to make irrational decisions’

 

I get these things take time, but why aren't this freak and his cohorts in chains already? We have extradition with Bahamas, though they're compromised and may not play ball. Fine, let's embargo those c-nts until we make it back with interest.

 

And when he eventually relocates to Buenos Aires, then our government should send over some mercenaries, throw a hood over his and the collaborators' heads Munich style, kidnap the Madoff-wannabees, toss them into the boiler room of a ship, and waterboard them until they're back in the US. 

 

Would be a good episode 10 to the eventual Netflix series.

 

 

Edited November 23, 20222 yr by TBideon

I have read nothing that makes me less suspicious that this was primarily a laundry for illegal campaign contributions.

1 hour ago, E Rocc said:

I have read nothing that makes me less suspicious that this was primarily a laundry for illegal campaign contributions.

 

What would be illegal about the contributions?

 

If I rob a bank and give the money to a PAC dedicated to legalizing bank robbery, the legal issue is not the contributions to the PAC, it's robbing the bank while that is still illegal.

  

2 hours ago, TBideon said:

And when he eventually relocates to Buenos Aires, then our government should send over some mercenaries, throw a hood over his and the collaborators' heads Munich style, kidnap the Madoff-wannabees, toss them into the boiler room of a ship, and waterboard them until they're back in the US. 

 

OK, alternatively, we could maybe just not.

The $30 billion value of failed FTX was not that much money relative to the holdings of many United States banks.  

 

Fifth Third, for example, holds about $200 billion in assets.  Bank of America is 10X bigger than 5/3 and JP Morgan Chase is 15X bigger.  

 

JP Morgan Chase alone is 3X bigger than all of the world's crypto combined.  

On 11/18/2022 at 1:20 PM, GCrites80s said:

These fools think regulation and oversight only exist because a bunch of communist hippies want to take all their money. It never occurs to them that those things protect the business and its people as well. 

 

A former boss of mine once quipped, "Why do we even need the FDIC? When's the last time that you heard of people not being able to withdraw cash from a bank?"

I helped out with a couple job fairs for the FDIC in 2004 and 2005. They were recruiting for people to go around and close down failed banks. They were like, "People think it doesn't happen anymore but oh yes it does." And this was when only the French had smelled 2008.

On 11/23/2022 at 4:20 PM, Gramarye said:

 

What would be illegal about the contributions?

 

 

Well, if the sources of the money were barred from contributing to US campaigns....

3 hours ago, E Rocc said:

 

Well, if the sources of the money were barred from contributing to US campaigns....

Well if your conservatives justices would have ruled differently in the citizens united case, maybe we wouldn’t have the money in politics issue. But what do I know.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/14/binance-ceo-cz-deposits-coming-back-in-but-bumpy-road-ahead.html

 

Binance CEO says deposits are ‘coming back in’ but sees ‘bumpy’ road ahead for the crypto firm

 

I trust Zhao as much as I do Bankman-Fried. Which is about as much as Musk and even Trump. 

 

Does this industry have ANY regulation? 

I love how Crypto claims that it is an "industry", and how recent events have threatened "the whole industry".  Like how there exists, we are told, an "adult entertainment industry".  

7 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

I love how Crypto claims that it is an "industry", and how recent events have threatened "the whole industry".  Like how there exists, we are told, an "adult entertainment industry".  

 

What term would you use?  I think "industry" is fair.  "Industry" is generally one step down from "sector;" cryptocurrencies are part of the financial sector and not recognizably intrinsically part of any other industry within it (banking, wealth management, insurance, payments, etc.)

It moved from fringe investing to alternative investing.

On 12/14/2022 at 3:43 PM, Lazarus said:

I love how Crypto claims that it is an "industry", and how recent events have threatened "the whole industry".  Like how there exists, we are told, an "adult entertainment industry".  

 

That's not a fair comparison.  The adult entertainment industry produces an actual product.

15 minutes ago, X said:

 

That's not a fair comparison.  The adult entertainment industry produces an actual product.

 

So many comments, so little time....

 

I wonder what this is.

97? year-old Charlie Munger calls for a ban on cryptocurrencies:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-america-should-ban-crypto-regulation-economy-finance-china-england-trading-currency-securities-commodity-gamble-11675287477?mod=hp_opin_pos_4#cxrecs_s

 

Quote

All this wild and wooly capitalism is much like that described in a remark often attributed to Mark Twain, who was thought to have said that “a mine is a hole in the ground with a liar on top.”

 

I have incredible respect for Charlie Munger, and I have never invested a dime of my own money in crypto (and only the comparative lack of access to the right financial services has prevented me from shorting it).  But the notion of an outright ban is a bridge too far.

 

The real difference is that crypto does not have the political clout to demand a bailout like the big banks got in 2009.  If the big banks then had been allowed to fail, the next generation of bankers would have learned caution.  Unfortunately, there is no next generation of bankers (other than through normal retirement, which in that profession generally means the old generation got to handpick their successors and of course chose more people like themselves) because that generation was rescued and allowed to stay in place.  But the crypto sector can learn fire safety by being burned, without risking a conflagration that engulfs those of us who were smart enough to stand back from the pyromaniacs.

A crypto meltdown would not make all real estate lose value or ruin 2.5 generations' careers that's for sure.

The Bittrex Exchange is shutting down U.S. operations.  This is the shady exchange that was based in Lithuania and charged $6 for every transaction.  Why use it?  It was the only place where you had access to some of the most obscure coins and some of the most obscure pump-and-dump schemes.  

 

The energy usage for bitcoin seems to be unsustainable, even with improvements in energy usage. 

Quote

one bitcoin transaction takes 1,449 kWh to complete, or the equivalent of approximately 50 days of power for the average US household. 

To put that into money terms, the average cost per kWh in the US is close to 12 cents. That means a bitcoin transaction would generate approximately an energy bill of $173. 

 

Quote

A growing number of coins -- there are more than 19,000 of them -- use the proof-of-stake protocol that ethereum 2.0 will transition to, resulting in a drop in power consumption.

Cardano, for example, uses its own proof-of-stake protocol and consumed 6 gigawatt-hours in 2021.

https://www.iyops.org/post/energy-consumption-cryptocurrency-vs-traditional-banks

 

A "low energy" cryptocurrency using 6GWh.  What's the average homeowner use in the US -- something around 10000-14000 kWh? -- that means that Cardano alone (hardly a household name) consumes as much power as 6,000 average American homeowners.  Hopefully further energy improvements are made in cryptocurrency.

 

But before you think I'm only attacking crypto, research also shows that worldwide cryptocurrency consumes approximately 60-125 TWh annually, but traditional banking consumes far more energy in maintaining servers, ATMs, and physical banking locations -- around 139TWh annually.  (Traditional banking transactions, however, also outnumber cryptocurrency transactions by a wide margin, for now.)

 

https://complyadvantage.com/insights/cryptocurrency-transaction-volumes-grow-567-as-focus-turns-to-defi/

Edited August 8, 20231 yr by Foraker
added link

the fascinating story of how they caught dorky incel jimmy zhong aka the infamous silkroad bitcoin crypto thief — 

 

 

 

The secret life of Jimmy Zhong, who stole – and lost – more than $3 billion 

 

UPDATED TUE, OCT 17 2023 5:02 PM EDT

 

Eamon Javers

Paige Tortorelli

 

 

Athens, Georgia, is home to the University of Georgia, and the police there are used to college town-type crimes: break-ins, bar fights and assorted rowdiness. That kind of thing.

 

But the 911 call that came in on the night of March 13, 2019, was unlike anything the Athens-Clarke County Police Department had ever encountered.

 

On the phone was 28-year-old Jimmy Zhong, a local party boy and Georgia alum who frequented Athens' drinking establishments. He wasn't like the other town rowdies – Zhong was also a computer expert who had an unusually robust digital home surveillance system.

 

Now, he was calling to report a crime: hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto currency that he said had been stolen from his home. Thinking of all that lost money, Zhong was distressed.

 

"I'm having a panic attack," Zhong told the dispatcher, according to a recording obtained by CNBC.

 

Zhong turned down the dispatcher's offer of an ambulance, and began trying to explain the situation. "I'm an investor in bitcoin, which is like an online thing," he said.

 

What happened next would bring an end to a nearly decade long manhunt and solve one of the biggest crimes of the crypto era. And it also would lead to the largest seizure of cryptocurrency from an individual in the history of the Department of Justice.

 

 

more:

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/10/17/crypto911.html

 

we’ll see what he actually gets, but guilty on all counts and up to 115 years in the clink for another crypto geek —

 

 

 

Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty on all seven criminal fraud counts

 

PUBLISHED THU, NOV 2 2023

 

 

more:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/02/sam-bankman-fried-found-guilty-on-all-seven-criminal-fraud-counts.html

Get that fool to testify against his parents next.

What's next, a flat earth convention? NFT lecture? 3d televisions forum?  

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/27/trump-bitcoin-conference-harris.html

 

Trump proposes strategic national crypto stockpile: ‘Never sell your bitcoin’

Bitcoin miners in texas are making more money holding the power grid for ransom than they are mining bitcoin.

 

What a very real, totally not a scam currency.

 

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/08/27/why-texas-republicans-are-souring-on-crypto

 

Just two reasons why Russia/China is spending so much effort on promoting a crypto based monetary world in the west:

 

US financial sanctions will be meaningless, with crypto payments bypassing the USD reserve currency, international banking system, with banks replaced by platforms owned by the very pro-russian crypto bros that Trump just appointed to run the American government. All enemies of democracy can rage wars of territorial expansion free from the consequences of the last remaining element of US soft power.

 

An "impartial international body" will be set up to govern this new crypto world. Russia and China will paralyze it exactly as they have the UN and any other international body they're currently party to.

 

Trump handing the US financial system to 3 pro-Russian, America-hating, conspiracy peddling, South African billionaires just seems insane to me, but that's just me.