General Cryptocoin Discussion

[RandallFlagg]

One of very, very few who called the FTX bluff.

From Feb 2022 :

"Is this really the altruistic genius being painted in the media? Or is SBF just another greedy conman in the Crypto Crime Cartel? Make your own mind up, but in any case, remember that this is an industry run by some very shady people, and nothing is ever as it seems. If you trade on leverage on these platforms, you’re up against people with unlimited funds and an insider’s view of the orderbooks. Your chances of beating them are zero."

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried isn’t who you think he is

Sam Bankman-Fried recently hit the news when he was featured in Washington Post, vowing to give away millions worth of BTC, although he admits this is about wooing regulators and onboarding people to FTX.

coingeek.com

This seems like a reasonable resource:

Crypto Crime Cartel Archives

Crypto Crime Cartel Tag - CoinGeek.

coingeek.com

 

[dragontamer5788]

Ah, but that structure does not match the twitter post, that's all I'm saying. I agree with you that it's a snake eating it's own tail scenario.

Well, I guess the devil is in the details. But the details are a 41 page + 16 page legal document (two different docs). Of course a 280 character tweet is gonna be somewhat of an estimate of it, lol.

But I think the overall "BlockFi owes FTX money because Almeda Research owes it money because SBF owns Emergent (which is a shell organization that only owns Robinhood shares) and those Robinhood shares were promised to BlockFi" snake-eating-its-own-tail loop is... correctish? If you squint hard enough. Perhaps its not the most accurate thing to say, but its a hell of a lot easier to say than the legal text, lol.

 

[Chomiq]

Ex-FTX boss Bankman-Fried: 'I didn't try to commit fraud'

Sam Bankman-Fried says he has almost no money left after the collapse of the crypto exchange.

www.bbc.com

Oh, HE had a bad month? Poor guy. /s

 

[Leobar]

Since we have quite a few Australians here, it's interesting to note that Avocado's were a better investment than Bitcoin for the past 3 years (Aus is a major exporter) :

View attachment 259245

Hahahahaha thats a new one haven't seen that example before i also had no idea that australia was a major exporter not gonna lie

 

[Assimilator]

Tether is going to be the next to go belly-up: https://www.wsj.com/articles/rising-tether-loans-add-risk-to-stablecoin-crypto-world-11669875590

Tether says it lends only to eligible customers and requires that borrowers post lots of "extremely liquid" collateral, which could be sold for dollars if borrowers default. These loans have appeared for several quarters in the financial reports that Tether shows on its website. In the most recent report, they reached $6.1 billion as of Sept. 30, or 9% of the company's total assets. They were $4.1 billion, or 5% of total assets, at the end of 2021.

Tether calls them "secured loans" and discloses little about the borrowers or the collateral accepted. Alex Welch, a Tether spokeswoman, confirmed that all of the secured loans listed in the reports were issued and denominated in tether. The company said the loans were short-term and that Tether holds the collateral. Tether, which is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, doesn't publish audited financial statements or a complete balance sheet, leaving outsiders with an incomplete picture of the company's financial health. "Tether's disclosures are limited to the information contained in the mentioned reports," Ms. Welch said. The rise in Tether's lending represents a broad risk to the crypto world. Stablecoins such as tether are anchors in the system. They are vital for trading many cryptocurrencies and are widely held by traders. The premise of tether -- and other stablecoins -- is that the issuer always will redeem one coin for $1. Issuers take pains to demonstrate they have ample funds available to do so. The company's reports show only U.S. dollar amounts for the loans and don't say the loans were made in tether tokens. The reports also say the loans were "fully collateralized by liquid assets."

"Tether says" sounds a lot like "FTX says".

 

[dragontamer5788]

SBF arrested.

 

[Vario]

Binance might be about to pop

Exclusive: U.S. Justice Dept is split over charging Binance as crypto world falters

Splits between U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors are delaying the conclusion of a long-running criminal investigation into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, four people familiar with the matter have told Reuters.

www.reuters.com

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/20...cerns-about-its-reserve-report-spook-traders/

Binance temporarily halted withdrawals of stablecoin USDC as investor concerns mount after FTX collapse

Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, tweeted on Tuesday that the exchange is seeing an increase in withdrawals of USDC.

www.cnbc.com

 

[Bomby569]

Binance might be about to pop

Exclusive: U.S. Justice Dept is split over charging Binance as crypto world falters

Splits between U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors are delaying the conclusion of a long-running criminal investigation into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, four people familiar with the matter have told Reuters.

www.reuters.com

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/20...cerns-about-its-reserve-report-spook-traders/

Binance temporarily halted withdrawals of stablecoin USDC as investor concerns mount after FTX collapse

Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, tweeted on Tuesday that the exchange is seeing an increase in withdrawals of USDC.

www.cnbc.com

how can you have an exchange and lose money? you just have to collect the fees, the house always wins, going up or down.

The problem i see was the lending and using the clients money to invest themselves (sure not all at FTX levels). And they are/were all doing it. If crypto doesn't meaningfully go up soon, they will all go down.





edit:

Someone paid me 300USD for my reddit avatar, yes that was a thing that really happened. This is not a joke. The world is insane and i love it.

 

[lexluthermiester]

SBF arrested.

Not surprising.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Not surprising.

The speed is surprising. It took the Feds years to nab Madoff. The first evidence came out in 2001, and Madoff wasn't arrested until 2008.

Then again, SBF has been an idiot throughout this. So maybe it shouldn't be too surprising to me...

 

[RandallFlagg]

The Attorney prosecuting SBF. Charges levied last Wed, Grand Jury indictment by last Friday.

SBF is toast. I saw no sympathy in the house hearing either.

"To any person, entity, or political campaign that has received stolen customer money we ask that you work with us to return that money to the innocent victims. And to anyone who participated in wrongdoing at FTX or Alameda research and who has not yet come forward, I would strongly encourage you to come see us before we come see you."

 

[Vario]

Mazars Group suspends all work with crypto clients including Binance, Crypto.com, citing concerns over public perception of proof of reserves

Accounting firm Mazars Group has suspended all work with its crypto clients, according to its former client and the world's largest crypto exchange, Binance.

www.cnbc.com

 

[lexluthermiester]

Mazars Group suspends all work with crypto clients including Binance, Crypto.com, citing concerns over public perception of proof of reserves

Accounting firm Mazars Group has suspended all work with its crypto clients, according to its former client and the world's largest crypto exchange, Binance.

www.cnbc.com

I'm surprised that didn't happen sooner.

 

[Vario]

Probably enough overlap between trekkies and techpowerup to post this humorous skit I found

 

[StrayKAT]

One of very, very few who called the FTX bluff.

From Feb 2022 :

"Is this really the altruistic genius being painted in the media? Or is SBF just another greedy conman in the Crypto Crime Cartel? Make your own mind up, but in any case, remember that this is an industry run by some very shady people, and nothing is ever as it seems. If you trade on leverage on these platforms, you’re up against people with unlimited funds and an insider’s view of the orderbooks. Your chances of beating them are zero."

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried isn’t who you think he is

Sam Bankman-Fried recently hit the news when he was featured in Washington Post, vowing to give away millions worth of BTC, although he admits this is about wooing regulators and onboarding people to FTX.

coingeek.com

This seems like a reasonable resource:

Crypto Crime Cartel Archives

Crypto Crime Cartel Tag - CoinGeek.

coingeek.com

My boy Coffeezilla has blown up since the FTX thing. He called it pretty early too.

Or you could say SBF called it on himself. He admitted it was basically a Ponzi in so many words in an interview awhile back.

 

[dragontamer5788]

My boy Coffeezilla has blown up since the FTX thing. He called it pretty early too.

Or you could say SBF called it on himself. He admitted it was basically a Ponzi in so many words in an interview awhile back.

Coffeezilla is a bit late IMO. Matt Levine was the one who called it a Ponzi in that interview back in March/April or so.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1518601156670287872

Then again, I'm a bit of a fanboy of Matt Levine (columnist at Bloomberg). Levine has an almost satirical writing style. He's not always correct, but he's always in depth and well reasoned.

“I think of myself as a fairly cynical person and that was so much more cynical than I would have described farming. You’re just like ‘I’m in the Ponzi scheme business and it’s pretty good.’”

[...]

“Can you comment on the sustainability of that?”

I dunno if watching the whole interview is worth it. But at least the ~5 minute clip where Matt Levine is trying to understand yield farming from SBF, leading up to the "Ponzi Scheme" comment is pretty good.

 

[StrayKAT]

Coffeezilla is a bit late IMO. Matt Levine was the one who called it a Ponzi in that interview back in March/April or so.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1518601156670287872

Then again, I'm a bit of a fanboy of Matt Levine (columnist at Bloomberg). Levine has an almost satirical writing style. He's not always correct, but he's always in depth and well reasoned.



I dunno if watching the whole interview is worth it. But at least the ~5 minute clip where Matt Levine is trying to understand yield farming from SBF, leading up to the "Ponzi Scheme" comment is pretty good.

Cool, I'll check him out. I think that was him in Coffee's link too?

edit: Really, this all should have been obvious to everyone. All it takes is having a sense of principles (both general life principles and first rules of some given field.. in this case, economics). And then a guy like this can call it for what it was.

Crypto however has a way of making everyone forget even fundamental lessons. It's Bizarro land. Maybe it started with a good idea. It went from "let's decentralize currency, bro" but jumped to "lets rewrite all the rules" in no time and all the scumbags (and dupes) came out of the woodwork. Low tier, degenerate scams have suddenly become mainstream and pushed as the "new thing", the new economy, and pushed by supposed financiers to celebrities to even ex-presidents now. SBF isn't even unique.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Coffeezilla is a bit late IMO. Matt Levine was the one who called it a Ponzi in that interview back in March/April or so.

Hell both of them are late. Who has been calling it a Ponzi scheme for years? I hate to say "I told you so", but damn..

 

[RandallFlagg]

Cool, I'll check him out. I think that was him in Coffee's link too?

edit: Really, this all should have been obvious to everyone. All it takes is having a sense of principles (both general life principles and first rules of some given field.. in this case, economics). And then a guy like this can call it for what it was.

Crypto however has a way of making everyone forget even fundamental lessons. It's Bizarro land. Maybe it started with a good idea. It went from "let's decentralize currency, bro" but jumped to "lets rewrite all the rules" in no time and all the scumbags (and dupes) came out of the woodwork. Low tier, degenerate scams have suddenly become mainstream and pushed as the "new thing", the new economy, and pushed by supposed financiers to celebrities to even ex-presidents now. SBF isn't even unique.

What concerns me about the whole thing is not that some ponzi scheme existed within the crypto space. Honestly I did a couple of instances of mining here and there, most of the clients are hooked up to someone's exchange or crypto pool, and all of them looked like one or the other type of ponzi scheme to me.

What concerns me is that a bunch of fairly well regarded funds invested in SBF. I'm not talking about a ponzi scheme bitcoin exchange that invested in another ponzi scheme bitcoin exchange (FTX).

I'm talking about companies like Tiger Global, a $125B global investment company, and Sequoia Capital with $85B, Temasek with over 400B US, not to mention BlackRock with 150B.

If I had never heard of FTX, I would still recognize all of those names. Whoever ran the accounts or had anything to do with investing in FTX from those companies should be sacked with cause.

This is exactly the kind of thing those companies get paid the big bucks to avoid, and it makes me wonder what else they haven't been paying attention to.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Hell both of them are late. Who has been calling it a Ponzi scheme for years? I hate to say "I told you so", but damn..

I've been reading Mr. Levine for over 2+ years now. Most of his discussions are on _other_ stupid shit going on in the financial world, like SPACs... or the London Whale, or... ya know... stupid stuff going on in the rest of the financial world.

Cryptocoins went up in value a lot last year and he started talking more about it. I noticed it with Iron/Titan when Mr. Levine started talking about how little sense it all made. Then suddenly Iron/Titan clones like Terra/Luna pop up and everything is insanity for a while... but... yeah... Levine actually did call this stuff out rather early last year (or earlier than I would have called it at least).

Anyway, he's not really a cryptocoin writer. He hops from topic-to-topic, and finance has a lot of interesting things going on all over the place. You can't expect him to just focus on cryptocoins! But when he does talk about cryptocoins, its about the stupidest parts of it. (Much like how his discussions on the rest of finances focuses on extremely stupid parts of finance in general. Like buying a stock, because a celebrity told you so... and the stock doesn't actually have a business plan yet. AKA: SPACs).

 

[StrayKAT]

What concerns me about the whole thing is not that some ponzi scheme existed within the crypto space. Honestly I did a couple of instances of mining here and there, most of the clients are hooked up to someone's exchange or crypto pool, and all of them looked like one or the other type of ponzi scheme to me.

What concerns me is that a bunch of fairly well regarded funds invested in SBF. I'm not talking about a ponzi scheme bitcoin exchange that invested in another ponzi scheme bitcoin exchange (FTX).

I'm talking about companies like Tiger Global, a $125B global investment company, and Sequoia Capital with $85B, Temasek with over 400B US, not to mention BlackRock with 150B.

If I had never heard of FTX, I would still recognize all of those names. Whoever ran the accounts or had anything to do with investing in FTX from those companies should be sacked with cause.

This is exactly the kind of thing those companies get paid the big bucks to avoid, and it makes me wonder what else they haven't been paying attention to.

What if I told you that they're all built on Ponzi schemes too?

 

[RandallFlagg]

What if I told you that they're all built on Ponzi schemes too?

I'd say I've been hearing that for 40 years. It's like someone who looks at a small part of a bridge's girders without seeing its relationship to the whole, and says it's a house of cards easily tipped over.

And then the bridge lasts for 100 years.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
The biggest issue is suckers are O-plenty
Mining thin air or ransomware data for made up coins, just the concept is ponzi but gov's continue to give the rich con-artists lots air "bribe to play on" so it continues because the lie is easy money or oops coin but it's real money to them because rich are smart enough to cash out suckers stay in until it's to late

 

[StrayKAT]

I'd say I've been hearing that for 40 years. It's like someone who looks at a small part of a bridge's girders without seeing its relationship to the whole, and says it's a house of cards easily tipped over.

And then the bridge lasts for 100 years.

I definitely don't think it's easily tipped over at least.

 

[trog100]

it lasts until it dosnt.. then they all say how come people didnt see this coming..

bat shit crazy becomes the norm.. he he..

trog