Is crypto finally cracking? FTX’s financial troubles weighing on the sector with Bitcoin under $18K now. It’s been clinging to $20K for months.
That Binance merger/bailout of FTX has now collapsed. Crypto taking a bigger beating. Wonder if this is the cryptocalypse. How solid is Binance, if people start trying to cash out?
I think the play now is to buy in at the dip. I mean, look how well those people who bought tulip bulbs in March 1637 did.
Oh.
What could possibly go wrong?!?
We watched a documentary last night about the Wirecard scandal. I had never heard anything about it so found it wild. Where it ended up, with the company being a money laundering exercise to mask a Austrio-Russian joint operation to create a refuge crisis in Lybia to help elect a far right, pro-putin party in Austria, was like a Bond film, but made sense. What did less so was the history of the company. The documentary claims the entire company was a fraud, it had no legitimate business, but this refugee piece didnt kick until nearly 2 decades into the company’s existence. They never say it, but other places position the main guy as a long time GRU asset from the 90s. So was this just a 20 year play by the Russians to help build up a scam company to eventually use how they needed? Or was this just a bog standard laundering operation that just happened to be run by a GRU asset that the Russians came to lean on once it became big enough to run this sort of operation?
Killer advice here
The view from one lemming.
Gianluca Giuffra, a 25-year-old investor from Lima, Peru, used FTX to trade digital assets and picked the exchange because he thought it was a safe bet.
“Sam looks like a very honest person,” (
emoji mine) he said, “He doesn’t look like the type of guy that would do crazy stuff behind users’ backs.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Giuffra put in four withdrawal requests starting around 5:24 a.m. The first three went through. The last one, made at 5:56 a.m., didn’t. The experience has left him disheartened about the whole industry.
“I guess regulation is not that bad after all,” (
emoji mine)Mr. Giuffra said. “Because without them, you were kind of guessing and hoping that the CEO or the person in charge is not playing and gambling with all the money that you put in.”
From:
I get it. It’s an unregulated industry. But taking money someone placed into an account to trade crypto and lending to a related entity to make wacky and risky trades still has to be illegal. I guess we’ll find out now.
I listened to two separate podcasts in the past few months with this guy on it focusing on his political contributions. One of which was the source for his claim that he’d be willing to spend as much as a billion on his favoured causes for 2024. The red flags that should have been raised…
- Something seems off in this industry that a guy this young with this little about him can have ammased this sort of wealth to even be considering this sort of contribution
- WTF is wrong with our system that a kid gets rich and immediately thinks it reasonable to spend $1b on politics.
Instead they both just focused on the political horse race and what issues he might put his money behind.
From what I read on twitter yesterday it does sound very much like it was illegal.
Also this (if true):
Seriously, he’s shocked. Now I will have to get my hernia sutured for laughing so hard.
“Dan Dolev of Mizuho Securities. ‘We’re learning that value can evaporate within minutes in crypto, that’s the most shocking thing.’” 
And, maybe Sam should have worn the Newcastle jersey to the meeting.
“Mr. Bankman-Fried tried to raise cash for his business but wasn’t able to before the company collapsed. Last month, he joined Anthony Scaramucci, the financier and former adviser to Donald Trump, at a major Saudi business conference. Mr. Scaramucci arranged meetings with big private-equity firms and sovereign-wealth funds, including the Saudi state’s Public Investment Fund, but the cash never materialized, according to people familiar to the matter.”