Kevin O'Leary on FTX

[oraclewizard77]

What's funny is if the CEO of FTX did not commit fraud, there would be no problem. Exchanges are like casinos, in that the house always wins.

Here is an example:

Binance makes money from trading fees, margin fees, interest on crypto loans, spreads, withdrawal fees, and fees from the broker program. It also makes money from cloud offerings, mining services, interchange fees, and profits from its investments.

However the CEO of FTX installed a back door to send $ 10 billion to it's sister trading firm that was run by his girlfriend who is a meth head.

Trading is hard even for the top people on ET, I am sure FTX had more than enough money to hire a good trader, instead they hired a meth head because she gave him a blow job.

SBF should not only be put in jail for many years for criminal fraud, his personal wealth should be taken and used to help repay customers. However, I heard he fled to Argentina.

 

[TheDawn]

One thing I find disturbing is that Binance deliberately sold off its holding of FTX's native crypto FTT which prompted the downfall of FTX after coindesk published an article that revealed that majority of FTX's assets are invested in its own native crypto FTT. To me that sounds like willful sabotage and unfair dealing, nothing different from knowing where somebody keeps their cash and then deliberately going there to steal it. They didn't sell off their holdings of FTT but only did it after knowing that the majority of FTX's assets are parked there and then turning around to try to purchase FTX cheap. That's market manipulation. Everybody is all caught up with the sensationalism of the bankruptcy and how many entities are involved and how it's hacked and etc. but is anybody scrutinizing what Binance did? CFTC is only investigating how FTX is handling customer funds but why is nobody scrutinizing what Binance did?

Everybody is focusing on FTX but Binance is really the entity responsible for literally driving another organization to the ground for personal gain and causing the unnecessary financial loss of other innocent entities (like pension funds that hold people's retirement money) who have chosen to invest in FTX, an otherwise functioning crypto exchange. Binance's action is not that of a whistleblower or whatever. It's an action of a despicable opportunistic vulture that acted on private information of other companies just because it could. And everybody is OK with this? I find that incredible.

 

[TheDawn]

What's funny is if the CEO of FTX did not commit fraud, there would be no problem. Exchanges are like casinos, in that the house always wins.

Here is an example:

Binance makes money from trading fees, margin fees, interest on crypto loans, spreads, withdrawal fees, and fees from the broker program. It also makes money from cloud offerings, mining services, interchange fees, and profits from its investments.

However the CEO of FTX installed a back door to send $ 10 billion to it's sister trading firm that was run by his girlfriend who is a meth head.

Trading is hard even for the top people on ET, I am sure FTX had more than enough money to hire a good trader, instead they hired a meth head because she gave him a blow job.

SBF should not only be put in jail for many years for criminal fraud, his personal wealth should be taken and used to help repay customers. However, I heard he fled to Argentina.

Last I checked FTX's sister trading firm, Alameda Research is also controlled and run by FTX's CEO. The two companies, given its non-arm's-length relationship should not have transacted in ways that gives rise to conflict of interest and the sister company shouldn't have had access to customer funds that was invested in FTX.

 

[TheDawn]

No. You missed his point.

What he said is that we can't solve all crypto assets problems at once. The ecosystem and diversity of assets is just too big to realistically do that. He said we need to start with one thing, which is regulating stablecoins because as a payment method stablecoin transfers are superior in every way to traditional money transfer methods. In other words, let's solve this one problem first, and then we can move forward with solving other ones in the future.

But the thing is if you just want to reform money transfer methods and reduce its cost or what not, using crypto's is really a roundabout way to achieve it. There are so many different ways to reform money transfer methods and reduce its cost. And to me, stablecoin is just fiat money. That's why it's stable because it's tethered to the USD. It's not even a crypto. So why don't we just look directly at the US banking system and money transfer system and work from there?

As far as I know, the creation of crypto is to serve 3 purposes: 1). Achieve anonymity and privacy. 2) Establish as a store of value and stability as a medium of exchange and 3) Reduce transaction fees. So far cryptos haven't achieved any of the three purposes. Some crypto's might have achieved anonymity but that just ended up allowing criminal organizations from getting apprehended and brought to justice, not something positive for us regular folks.

 

[Baron]

And to me, stablecoin is just fiat money... It's not even a crypto.

100% Wrong. A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency and stablecoin transactions on the blockchain are secured by cryptography.

So why don't we just look directly at the US banking system and money transfer system and work from there?

Because the system is bogged down in old-school thinking. You can't just keep tinkering with a old monetary system and expect a revolutionary outcome. In other words, you can tinker with your Windows 95 computer all you want but the outcome isn't going to be a Macbook Pro with a UNIX operating system.

As far as I know, the creation of crypto is to serve 3 purposes: 1). Achieve anonymity and privacy.

Some crypto's might have achieved anonymity but that just ended up allowing criminal organizations from getting apprehended and brought to justice, not something positive for us regular folks.

I removed points 2 and 3 above so you can see how you just argued point #1 against yourself.

2) Establish as a store of value and stability as a medium of exchange

The USDC stablecoin is a store of value and a medium of exchange. And if you think otherwise, please explain.

3) Reduce transaction fees. So far cryptos haven't achieved any of the three purposes.

Johnarb has posted plenty of examples in the past of how ridiculously cheap it is to send vast amounts of money across the world via crypto. The transaction fees to send crypto vs. fiat money via wire transfer, western union, etc. isn't even close. Where are you getting your information from? You've gotta stop making up these absurd statements and then believing them to be true.

 

[Pekelo]

You can't just keep tinkering with a old monetary system and expect a revolutionary outcome. In other words, you can tinker with your Windows 95 computer all you want but the outcome isn't going to be a Macbook Pro with a UNIX operating system.

But this same logic also applies to Bitcoin itself. Why tinker with an old, obsolete coin when it is much easier to make a new, technologically much better one? And if so, technology and usage should switch to the new one and abandon the old system.

You don't use your old VHS tapes anymore, do you?

 

[jbusse]

One thing I find disturbing is that Binance deliberately sold off its holding of FTX's native crypto FTT which prompted the downfall of FTX after coindesk published an article that revealed that majority of FTX's assets are invested in its own native crypto FTT. To me that sounds like willful sabotage and unfair dealing, nothing different from knowing where somebody keeps their cash and then deliberately going there to steal it. They didn't sell off their holdings of FTT but only did it after knowing that the majority of FTX's assets are parked there and then turning around to try to purchase FTX cheap. That's market manipulation. Everybody is all caught up with the sensationalism of the bankruptcy and how many entities are involved and how it's hacked and etc. but is anybody scrutinizing what Binance did? CFTC is only investigating how FTX is handling customer funds but why is nobody scrutinizing what Binance did?

Everybody is focusing on FTX but Binance is really the entity responsible for literally driving another organization to the ground for personal gain and causing the unnecessary financial loss of other innocent entities (like pension funds that hold people's retirement money) who have chosen to invest in FTX, an otherwise functioning crypto exchange. Binance's action is not that of a whistleblower or whatever. It's an action of a despicable opportunistic vulture that acted on private information of other companies just because it could. And everybody is OK with this? I find that incredible.

FTX has only themselves to blame. They left themselves susceptible via their exposure to their illiquid FTT holdings. The same type of downside risk is why IB limits its customer's buying power for illiquid securities.

 

[jbusse]

What's funny is if the CEO of FTX did not commit fraud, there would be no problem. Exchanges are like casinos, in that the house always wins.

Here is an example:

Binance makes money from trading fees, margin fees, interest on crypto loans, spreads, withdrawal fees, and fees from the broker program. It also makes money from cloud offerings, mining services, interchange fees, and profits from its investments.

However the CEO of FTX installed a back door to send $ 10 billion to it's sister trading firm that was run by his girlfriend who is a meth head.

Trading is hard even for the top people on ET, I am sure FTX had more than enough money to hire a good trader, instead they hired a meth head because she gave him a blow job.

SBF should not only be put in jail for many years for criminal fraud, his personal wealth should be taken and used to help repay customers. However, I heard he fled to Argentina.

Trying to understand the $8 billion shortfall at FTX, which had been "backed" by FTT collateral from Alameda. Since the shortfall relates to customer accounts at FTX, does this suggest that Alameda basically suffered a trading loss of $8 billion? That is, Alameda couldn't repay FTX because they lost it, and then the FTT collateral lost most of its market value.

 

[Baron]

But this same logic also applies to Bitcoin itself. Why tinker with an old, obsolete coin when it is much easier to make a new, technologically much better one? And if so, technology and usage should switch to the new one and abandon the old system.

You don't use your old VHS tapes anymore, do you?

I'm not sure why you're even asking me that question. I don't work on maintaining Bitcoin code and never have. You'd have to ask Bitcoin developers that question.

 

[The_Krakenite]

One thing I find disturbing is that Binance deliberately sold off its holding of FTX's native crypto FTT which prompted the downfall of FTX-

Yes, it was. But keep in mind, CZ was ALREADY the most hated person out there in crypto-land. It's not like he was going to make his reputation much worse. And Binance was ALREADY BANNED from Canada and many other places in the west. So this was his chance to get revenge on many people... while knocking out a competitor at the same time.

Furthermore, the irony of how CZ got so rich... he plagiarized Ethereum, and made a few tweaks to it to make it Centralized, instead of De-Centralized...(which goes against the whole point of crypto BTW). And yet... retailers all swoomed in to buy this horrendous PoS (No that's not Proof Of Stake), and bloated up the price.. which in reality supports FIAT more than Crypto.

To think of the irony there!

And to further make a point, when people whine here how terrible crypto is because if you send funds between different chains and you can't get your money back and it's lost for good because of the Binance chain, blah-blah... well yaah... I just TOLD you, one chain was centralized and isn't compatible with the decentralized chain. You lose your tokens... forever.

Don't like it? Then why did you buy shit-coins like that? If you play with alchemy... you may get burned.