Sam Bankman-Fried.
Commonly known as SBF. He is the founder of FTX and controller of Alemda Hedge Fund. Today he allegedly hopped on his private jet sipping some Catena Zapata red wine on his way to Argentina to set up residency in a country with no extradition agreement with the US. Why?
He single-handedly has destroyed the cryptocurrency ecosystem, while escaping with 600 million of his customer’s dollars.
For a while, he was being called the next Warren Buffet. Hah! In reality, he’s Bernie Madoff. Matter of fact, his financial shenanigans make Bernie look like an amateur. SBF poses as an eclectic, rich, smart guy, but in reality, he is a t-shirt-wearing, homeless-looking liar and crook.
The Crypto industry has amassed its fair share of bad news headlines, none of which have done the damage SBF has managed to produce. The industry seems to attract the lowest of the low, the scum of the scum. SBF now has the honor of being the swindler of them all.
Congratulations Sam!
So what did he do? SBF used his Ponzi token FTT as collateral to borrow billions of USD that he couldn’t pay back. He then used the “real dollars” to build an empire out of purchasing companies on the brink. Jim Cramer called him, “The new J.P. Morgan.” Hah! I wonder what this will do to Cramer’s ratings.
SBF had most people hoodwinked, including Tom Brady and Gisselle Bundchen, who invested 650 million of their combined net worth into the FTX empire. Oops.
Talk about a rough year for the Brady bunch. First, their marriage falls apart, then their money evaporates overnight. Sheesh. Say nothing of the fact that the Buccaneers are horrible this year.
The most amazing part of this whole story is how SBF maintained the con right up until the last second:
Four day’s later. IMPLOSION.
CZ, the founder of Binance, the world’s largest unregulated Crypto exchange, pushed out a couple of well-timed tweets insinuating that FTX was insolvent, causing a “bank run” on the exchange. Looks like he was right. (Beware oh ye of too much faith in the US dollar, the US banking system operates the same way!)
So where did all the money go? He misappropriated 4 BILLION dollars trying to save his failing hedge fund. Can you say felony? He spent 21 million dollars on Super Bowl commercials, sent 5 million dollars to Biden, and 40 million dollars to bribe Democratic candidates for favorable regulatory laws. Lol.
Basically, SBF stole from people of every economic stratum by issuing false promises and then gave the stolen money to the Dems. Sounds like the scammer in the Oval Office. Before the election, we heard, “I’ll pay off your student loan!” After the election “Sorry. I guess what I promised isn’t legal.” Talk about a rug pull. I guess scammers just be scammin.
Then there is the complicit corporate media. Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) asks a good question:
Finally, how about this? On March 29th, 2022 SBF met with Gary Gensler, the CHAIRPERSON of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and a FAMILY FRIEND of the Bankman-Fried’s. You can’t make this stuff up.
It will take years for the cryptocurrency space to recover from this fiasco. Many individuals, including Tom and Giselle, will never recover from this financial catastrophe. The tentacles of this story are far-reaching, creeping into every major financial institution and government agency we know of.
Ultimately, SBF will prove to be the Kryptonite that cripples the Crypto space, and it may even be the impetus the government needs to usher in their CBDC.
Hang on folks. We are in for a wild ride.