Crypto lending firm Block Fi declared bankruptcy on Monday, citing the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX Trading Ltd. and affiliates two weeks ago.
“This action follows the shocking events surrounding FTX and associated corporate entities (‘FTX’) and the difficult but necessary decision we made as a result to pause most activities on our platform,” the company said in a note posted to its website.
The interview is most revealing in showing how Bankman-Fried has been able to craft his persona, particularly through the media, and how political donations played a major role in that. Bankman-Fried became well known as the second-largest donor to Democrats prior to the 2022 election, behind George Soros. But he says he donated about equally to Republicans, just using dark-money groups that obscure the source of that funding. (As of right now, the data to prove this isn’t publicly available, though it may come to light during bankruptcy proceedings. Still, FEC filings show FTX donated $1 million to a political committee controlled by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell that backed Republicans.) “Despite Citizens United being literally the highest-profile Supreme Court of the decade, and the thing everyone talks about when they talk about campaign finance, for some reason, in practice, no one can possibly fathom that someone, in practice, actually gave dark. So all my Republican donations were dark,” he said. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons. It’s because reporters freak the fuck out if you donate to Republicans, they’re all super-liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.”
When all the phantom money is vanishing into the ether, people are hurriedly trying to liquidate things for any real money they can have, as long as they are still able to.
I wonder what these people would say if you offered to pay them in Bitcoin?
When they make a movie about SBF it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role other than Jonah Hill, except that he already played similar schlubby, reckless scumbag roles so many times (War Dogs, among others) that he might not be interested in it.
That all looks pretty reprehensible, but maybe that’s the point. See, Sam Bankman-Fried was so committed to his philosophy of effective philanthropy that he was prepared to make himself appear to be the epitome of a despicable human being, and spend many years in prison, all to teach us that finance is a wasteful cesspool that needs to be reined in for the good of humanity. And, the place to start is his particular corner of the cesspool: crypto.
Up to a point… It’s really spreading the gospel of communism.
The potential benefits here are enormous. If we can just downsize the financial sector by 10 percent, it will free up more than $300 billion a year for productive purposes. That comes to more than $2,500 a year for every family in the country. As the effective philanthropy folks say, you can buy a lot of mosquito netting with $300 billion a year.
So, Bankman-Fried knew what he was doing in running a Ponzi scheme and making himself look like one of the most despicable people alive. He may spend a lot of time in prison and be viewed with universal contempt for the rest of his life, but if his crimes lead to a crackdown on finance, he will have provided a great service to humanity.