Ah, I’m picking up what you’re laying down.
I’d forgotten that FTX was the company that paid for that Larry David ad in the Super Bowl.
I have to admit that it was a clever concept for an ad compared to other celebrity crypto endorsements. And Larry looks pretty good for voicing skepticism about the company, even though he was being paid to do so.
Here’s a thing that I don’t hear being discussed a lot in the reporting I’ve seen about FTX: If your cryptocurrency seems to live and die by the actions of one company or one man, how exactly is that decentralized finance?
Figures.
The timing here is suspiciously convenient. “Oh no, our main cryptocurrency has tanked, and also it looks like all the other crypto that we transacted that still has nominal value has been SWIPED! What a shocking twist of fate, anyway, about those bankruptcy obligations…”
Fraud on top of a zero sum game… there was, and is still, only one outcome.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s fall cuts off big source of funds for US Democrats Financial Times
Probably paywalled, but google news let me in for free.
“It’s like, how much more fucked could this be? And the answer is lots. Lots more fucked.”
I’ve been of two minds on him for a long time. Part of me believed the idea that he was the one making all the money. Somebody has to be making money here, theoretically, right? At the same time, if you listened to him talk, he never came off as being that bright. Like, either he’s admitting that he’s committing fraud, or saying shit that just doesn’t make sense.
The exmaple given was to this podcast where he describes yield farming
Matt: (27:13)
I think of myself as like a fairly cynical person. And that was so much more cynical than how I would’ve described farming. You’re just like, well, I’m in the Ponzi business and it’s pretty good.
I count at least two
-
getting away with it
-
not getting away with it
{The above might well also be posted in
Crap Musicz - games - Boing Boing BBS}
“effective altruism”
Mind you, in this case everyone who got on that stagecoach was planning to rob the others.