Baron
ET Founder
Get yourself a drink and snack, and then spend the 37 minutes required to watch this video and it will help you better understand the nature of the loss.
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Kevin O'Leary on FTX
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Get yourself a drink and snack, and then spend the 37 minutes required to watch this video and it will help you better understand the nature of the loss.
jesus fucking christ, that thing has an IQ of about 7.
In addition to the 'boxes' Mark Moss kept referring to, I keep getting flash-backs to Enron with how FTX was organized, (in more ways than one) in regard to boxes.
Just as SBF had numerous companies (some blurred between the lines) involved in this bankruptcy... as can be seen in the boxed diagrams... CFO of Enron also did something very similar with shell-based companies in order to help cover-up the massive debt that Enron was hiding.
In regard to boxing/unboxing shenanigans, Fastow approached Skilling with his scheme of creating billions out of thin-air by a fool-proof method of corporate financial alchemy by placing a box of 97/3% debt & equity in a box. Then making up for the shortfall, by hiding another (smaller) box, inside of THAT box, which had the same ratios. Then inside that... another box and so on.
By extrapolating this way along the line, they were able to create billions of $ out of thin air. And to add on top of the wonders of this box-in-a-box scheme, by using the 97-3% rule, technically it was satisfactory to out-wit regulators, etc. and was supposed to be compliant.
Of course, they also paid well just to make sure that Arthur Anderson, etc. looked the other way the rare time any auditing questions came up due to suspicions...
Just as SBF had numerous companies (some blurred between the lines) involved in this bankruptcy... as can be seen in the boxed diagrams... CFO of Enron also did something very similar with shell-based companies in order to help cover-up the massive debt that Enron was hiding.
In regard to boxing/unboxing shenanigans, Fastow approached Skilling with his scheme of creating billions out of thin-air by a fool-proof method of corporate financial alchemy by placing a box of 97/3% debt & equity in a box. Then making up for the shortfall, by hiding another (smaller) box, inside of THAT box, which had the same ratios. Then inside that... another box and so on.
By extrapolating this way along the line, they were able to create billions of $ out of thin air. And to add on top of the wonders of this box-in-a-box scheme, by using the 97-3% rule, technically it was satisfactory to out-wit regulators, etc. and was supposed to be compliant.
Of course, they also paid well just to make sure that Arthur Anderson, etc. looked the other way the rare time any auditing questions came up due to suspicions...
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true, but its easy to change.
Like I said, stablecoin is just a currency albeit digital, tethered to another valuable asset, in a majority of cases, the USD. Yes it's a crypto but in reality it's exactly the same as a fiat when it's pegged to the fiat and follows its value. The whole idea of creating crypto is to replace the fiat, the USD not to follow the USD, a fiat currency that is not backed up by anything and can be manipulated by the "evil" central banks and is prone to inflation and thus is considered a poor store of value? What's the point of creating another currency or potential medium of exchange when it's going to behave just like fiat? When the fiat currency that the stablecoin is pegged to is losing value due to inflation, stablecoin is going to lose its value as well. How is it going to store value? So really stablecoin is really a cop-out and didn't achieve purpose #2, to be a stable store of value, one of the most important purposes that crypto sets out to achieve. It's trying to extricate itself from the volatility stemming from its trading activities by adopting the value of a fiat. But by adopting or pegging to a fiat, it has essentially become just like another fiat.
Yes but the way how crypto is designed, it's not revamping Windows 95 to a UNIX or Macbook Pro using your analogy, it's warping itself to be a worse and more expensive version of Windows 95. It's exacerbated the problems of Windows 95 and has only improved upon some of the flaws of Windows 95 but with several times its cost in terms of the resources and energy cost spent on mining it and maintaining its blockchain.
Only some cryptos like Ethereum have achieved purpose #1 of anonymity and privacy in some ways and I have talked about the negative effects on society and humankind stemming from that. But the most prominent crypto with the biggest promise of becoming a mainstream accepted medium of exchange, bitcoin still requires one to register, even with government IDs to trade and transact in it. That's hardly any achievement in anonymity and privacy.
See my first paragraph above.
This is probably the most achievable accomplishment with crypto but then again like I said, using crypto to just reduce some transaction costs in transferring money is like killing a fly with a mallet. There are so many different ways in achieving that and it's not that difficult to do. Plenty of countries in the world allows zero-fee transfers and even in United States, there is ACH and now PayPal and various payment transfer services that allow one to send/receive funds with nominal fees. Wire transfer, the most expensive method in transfer funds is only used for huge amount of funds being transferred and even with that, if you divide the transaction fee over the amount being transferred, the cost is not that much.
Most important though, I feel the issue with reforming the financial system to reduce transaction fees is not a question of technology but of will. The US commercial banking industry is one of the largest employers in America. The reason why the transaction cost is so high and nobody bothers to overhaul the banking system is because there are so many mouths to feed. If not for that, it's hardly believable that a country that could send people to the moon in the 1960s cannot get rid of redundancy in the banking system to reduce transaction fees. So if they really don't want to do it because it protects the jobs, why would they let cryptos do it especially when cryptos is a form of currency that the government has no control over? If they really want to achieve lower transaction cost for financial transactions, I feel it will be more likely with digital currency issued by the government and not by some whacky programmers that we don't even know the identity of. IMO. The government is already mauling over the issuance of digital currency and is seeking public opinion about it.
Bottom line, @Baron, if you want to invest in cryptocurrency, great but just be prepared that it might remain forever as just another tradable commodity and not ever become a medium of exchange and be mindful of its volatility.
Good trading!
Still doesn't give Binance the excuse of fucking FTX over just because they happen to have a holding of FTX's own currency FTT to sell to single-handedly drive its price down knowing it's FTX's own native currency and it doesn't have an active market. That's market manipulation with privileged holding of securities. If FTX hadn't given Binance its FTT as compensation for a previous acquisition, Binance wouldn't have the holding of it and wouldn't be able to do the fuck-over.
But the fact that SFB donated lots of (people) money to all politics sides in Washington, and Binance was not allowed to enter the US market since 2019, stinks a bit.
FTT would have collapsed anyway, and I. glad binance didn't buy into a massive ponzi by saving FTX.
Yes it is ironic when the whole idea of cryptocurrency is achieving a decentralized monetary system where people are truly the owners of their money and be able to control its value and yet somebody can still turn it into a centralized coin.
CZ is an a$$hole for what he did, causing financial losses to innocent companies that invested in FTX. Am just really surprised that nobody is doing something about holding him responsible for causing this unnecessary financial turmoil that's impacting the lives of millions of people when he probably thinks is just a game. Unreal!
IMO Binance shouldn't. FTT would've collapsed anyway? Without this fuck-over by Binance? How? Would you be able to elaborate? Were you aware of something that the public was not? Really curious.