On November 10 2022 08:54 gobbledydook wrote: I've heard that transactions with bit coin costs around USD10 per transaction. I'm not sure who would be willing to pay that much instead of, say, use a credit card.
bit coin is not a currency, you don't use it to pay for things, unless its illegal. Its a speculative commodity, comparing it to a credit card doesn't make much sense.
On November 10 2022 08:54 gobbledydook wrote: I've heard that transactions with bit coin costs around USD10 per transaction. I'm not sure who would be willing to pay that much instead of, say, use a credit card.
bit coin is not a currency, you don't use it to pay for things, unless its illegal. Its a speculative commodity, comparing it to a credit card doesn't make much sense.
Doesn't commodity imply that it actually does something?
A much more negative (but imo also more correct) framing of your statement would be "It is a "greater fool" scam". The only point of bitcoin is finding someone else who will give you more money for it than you paid yourself.
Furthermore, it is inherently negative-sum. Because out of all the money that flows into the system, real costs for mining have to be paid in addition to any profits that someone makes from greater fools.
So you constantly need an influx of greater fools who put more real money into the system for the previous fools to get their payout + to pay for electricity and so forth.
On November 12 2022 08:25 L_Master wrote: This is quite the loss.
SBF was by far the largest EA in the world, and this seriously impacts that.
Probably neccessary cleansing for the rest though, killing of further scams.
With no real value to fall back on, what prevents the entire sector from collapsing when the will to invest dries up?
You can say that shares and real currency are similar, but if you own the shares of a company, you own the company assets as well, which should have some real value. Currencies are and the banks operating them are protected by governments.
Crypto, on the other hand, is jumping without a parachute, and volatility hinders it from being a useful for trading goods and services.
If this is real then the fraud allegations will seemingly be cemented. As what Capital does he have currently that were not tied to the Condos in the Bahamas, and FTX? But it also makes no sense as Argentina has an extradition treaty with the US. Unless the neighboring countries don't.
It is also sad that some of our most brilliant young minds waste their potential cooking up financial instruments which do nothing good for this world.
What could go wrong? Should be noted the Robinhood shares were not listed in the Bankruptcy filing. I mean this puts Madoff to shame, the miniseries/movies about this are going to be amazing lol
Sam Bankman-Fried’s main international FTX exchange held just $900mn in easily sellable assets against $9bn of liabilities the day before it collapsed into bankruptcy, according to investment materials seen by the Financial Times.
The largest portion of those liquid assets listed on a FTX international balance sheet dated Thursday was $470mn of Robinhood shares owned by a Bankman-Fried vehicle not listed in Friday’s bankruptcy filing, which included 134 corporate entities.
The document, shared with prospective investors before the bankruptcy, provides a detailed picture of the financial hole in the FTX crypto empire and suggests customers of FTX international may face steep losses on cash and crypto assets they held on the exchange.
FTX’s collapse has delivered a powerful blow to a crypto industry already reeling from a string of corporate failures this year.
Bankman-Fried had been a leading figure in the sector and had presented himself as an entrepreneur keen to bring the wild west crypto market in line with mainstream regulation. The 30-year-old had secured backing from blue-chip investors, became a major donor to the US Democratic party and plastered his FTX exchange’s logo on the Miami Heat arena during his meteoric rise following the founding of his trading venue in 2019.
Bankman-Fried on Friday put his $32bn international exchange, along with FTX US and his trading firm Alameda Research, into bankruptcy proceedings in federal court in Delaware.
John J Ray, the veteran insolvency practitioner brought in to run the bankruptcy as FTX chief executive, said on Friday that the cryptocurrency group “has valuable assets” and that the bankruptcy proceedings would allow the company to “assess the situation and . . . maximise recoveries for stakeholders”.
The process has already run into issues after barely 24 hours, incorrectly listing entities FTX did not own in its initial filing and suffering an apparent hack on Friday night.
FTX declined to comment.
Friday’s bankruptcy filing provided few details on the group’s financial health but said both assets and liabilities range between $10bn-$50bn, and that the number of creditors exceeds 100,000.
A spreadsheet listing FTX international’s assets and liabilities, seen by the Financial Times, point at the issues that brought Bankman-Fried crashing back down to earth. It references $5bn of withdrawals last Sunday, and a negative $8bn entry described as “hidden, poorly internally labled ‘fiat@’ account”.
Bankman-Fried told the Financial Times the $8bn related to funds “accidentally” extended to his trading firm, Alameda, but declined to comment further. Earlier this week, he tweeted that FTX international had $4bn in easily tradeable assets when it faced Sunday’s $5bn surge of withdrawals.
“There were many things I wish I could do differently than I did, but the largest are represented by these two things: the poorly labeled internal bank-related acount [sic], and the size of customer withdrawals during a run on the bank,” the spreadsheet adds.
In the investment materials, FTX Trading Ltd, the company behind the main international exchange, is recorded as having liabilities of $8.9bn, the biggest portion of which is $5.1bn of US dollar balances.
Healthy companies typically have assets that match or exceed their liabilities. The spreadsheet says FTX Trading had a total of $9.6bn of assets, but it is unclear how much of that value could be realised.
The vast majority of FTX Trading’s recorded assets are either illiquid venture capital investments or crypto tokens that are not widely traded, according to the spreadsheet, which cautions that the figures “are rough values, and could be slightly off; there is also obviously a chance of typos etc. They also change a bit over time as trades happen.”
The company’s biggest asset as of Thursday was $2.2bn worth of a cryptocurrency called Serum. Serum’s market value was $88mn on Saturday, according to data provider CryptoCompare, suggesting FTX’s holdings would be worth far less if sold into the market. CryptoCompare’s figures take into account the coin’s liquidity.
On Friday, the Financial Times reported that Alameda and FTX between them had some $5.4bn of illiquid venture capital investments, according to other documents provided to investors earlier in the week.
Bankman-Fried had been racing to raise emergency funding but was unable to persuade investors to rescue his collapsed business empire.
The new investment materials show that he was seeking to raise $6bn-$10bn including from a convertible preferred stock paying a 10 per cent dividend that could later be converted into common equity in FTX international at a valuation of between $12bn-$15bn. “This is just a lower bound on the terms investors can get,” the materials add.
Until Friday afternoon, Bankman-Fried was looking to sell the $472mn of Robinhood shares, the largest liquid asset listed for FTX Trading, in privately negotiated deals he was arranging on the messaging app Signal, according to a person directly involved in the negotiations.
The person noted that the Robinhood shares were held by an Antigua and Barbuda entity called Emergent Fidelity, which is personally controlled by Bankman-Fried, according to US securities filings. Emergent Fidelity is not among the entities listed in Friday’s bankruptcy filing.
Bankman-Fried was entertaining offers at an about 20 per cent discount to Robinhood’s volume-weighted average price, or about $9 per share, said the investor, who ultimately declined to buy due to perceived legal risks.
Bankman-Fried acquired a 7.6 per cent stake in Robinhood in May and had intimated at considering a full acquisition of the popular trading app.
The second-biggest liquid asset was $200mn of cash held with Ledger Prime, a crypto investment firm owned by Alameda. The documents record no other US dollar balances held by FTX Trading.
In all, the spreadsheet says FTX Trading’s assets were $900mn of “liquid” assets, $5.5bn of “less liquid” assets consisting of crypto tokens, and $3.2bn of illiquid private equity investments. There is also an obscure $7mn holding called “TRUMPLOSE”. There are no bitcoin assets listed, despite bitcoin liabilities of $1.4bn.
Other documents provided to investors say that FTX US, Bankman-Fried’s onshore exchange, held $115mn of cash. Of that sum, $48mn was listed as corresponding to customer US dollar balances of $60mn.
What does Biden launching his campaign have to do with it? Was Bankman-Fried was using large amounts of money to fund the Biden campaign?
Bets, apparently Alameda also had bets that trump would win in 2024. I mean this is beyond insane. The writer who is/was following Bankman and FTX and who has a book contract is going to make hundreds of millions in sales.
“I LOVE THIS FOUNDER,” one Sequoia partner immediately typed to colleagues, according to the article.
“I am a 10 out of 10,” another responded.
The Sequoia team wasn’t aware at the time, but Mr. Bankman-Fried made his pitch while in the middle of a videogame, “League of Legends,” he later acknowledged in the Sequoia article.
The legal corruption in US politics is sickening, and in this regard, the 2 dominant party is neck and neck accepting millions from dubious donors, some times funding both parties. I agree this is a particularly bad one for the Democrats...
The legal corruption in US politics is sickening, and in this regard, the 2 dominant party is neck and neck accepting millions from dubious donors, some times funding both parties. I agree this is a particularly bad one for the Democrats...
We have literal foreign governments donating money in our elections. This won't effect the Democrats at all.
The legal corruption in US politics is sickening, and in this regard, the 2 dominant party is neck and neck accepting millions from dubious donors, some times funding both parties. I agree this is a particularly bad one for the Democrats...
We have literal foreign governments donating money in our elections. This won't effect the Democrats at all.
What is even worse, white-collar criminals scamming investors for billions or foreign governments?
If it doesn't affect them, it is because none of the top-money candidates wants too much discussion about where their campaign money is coming from. But... could it come up in preliminaries?
The legal corruption in US politics is sickening, and in this regard, the 2 dominant party is neck and neck accepting millions from dubious donors, some times funding both parties. I agree this is a particularly bad one for the Democrats...
We have literal foreign governments donating money in our elections. This won't effect the Democrats at all.
What is even worse, white-collar criminals scamming investors for billions or foreign governments?
If it doesn't affect them, it is because none of the top-money candidates wants too much discussion about where their campaign money is coming from. But... could it come up in preliminaries?
I think plenty of people will find Saudi Arabia influencing US politics far worse than discovering some rich donors ended up being criminals. Money in politics is broken in the US. Whoever spends the most wins. This is true in the House (94% win rate) and the Senate (90% win rate). Hardly anybody in the voting booth cares about where the money comes from any more because everyone knows it comes from corrupt and unethical sources for both parties. This won't hurt the Democrats.
The legal corruption in US politics is sickening, and in this regard, the 2 dominant party is neck and neck accepting millions from dubious donors, some times funding both parties. I agree this is a particularly bad one for the Democrats...
We have literal foreign governments donating money in our elections. This won't effect the Democrats at all.
What is even worse, white-collar criminals scamming investors for billions or foreign governments?
If it doesn't affect them, it is because none of the top-money candidates wants too much discussion about where their campaign money is coming from. But... could it come up in preliminaries?
I think plenty of people will find Saudi Arabia influencing US politics far worse than discovering some rich donors ended up being criminals. Money in politics is broken in the US. Whoever spends the most wins. This is true in the House (94% win rate) and the Senate (90% win rate). Hardly anybody in the voting booth cares about where the money comes from any more because everyone knows it comes from corrupt and unethical sources for both parties. This won't hurt the Democrats.
Freakonomics also looked into this, but came to a different conclusion: money is overrated. The methology iirc was to look at money fluctuations behind several runs by the same candidate. I was surprised, but there are probably more serious studies on the topic out there.
Many seats are locks or near locks, and donors are much more likely to bet on a the favourite to get their money's worth. Looking at the relation between winning and spending does not necessarily reflect how effective campaign money is. Cheap door-to-door idealist campaign work can be just as effective as expensive TV ads.
Still no answer on how FTX had been hacked, over $600 million missing.
The collapse of FTX, already one of the most spectacular disasters in financial history, worsened as hundreds of millions of dollars were drained from the cryptocurrency exchange hours after it filed for bankruptcy.
More than $600 million was siphoned from FTX's crypto wallets late Friday. Soon after, FTX stated in its official Telegram channel that it had been compromised, instructing users not to install any new upgrades and to delete all FTX apps.
"FTX has been hacked. FTX apps are malware. Delete them. Chat is open. Don't go on FTX site as it might download Trojans," wrote an account administrator in the FTX Support Telegram chat. The message was pinned by FTX General Counsel Ryne Miller.
Hours later, Miller disclosed in a tweet that FTX US and FTX.com had been moving all their digital assets to cold storage because of the Friday bankruptcy. "Process was expedited this evening – to mitigate damage upon observing unauthorized transactions," he said.
Many FTX wallet holders reported $0 balances in their FTX.com and FTX US wallets. FTX’s API appeared to be down, which could account for this. According to on-chain data, various Ethereum tokens as well as Solana and Binance Smart Chain tokens exited FTX's official wallets and moved to decentralized exchanges like 1inch. Both FTX and FTX US appear to be affected.
The transfers occurred on the same day that the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. after apparently losing – or misappropriating – billions of dollars in user funds. Suspicions – which are conjecture at this point – circulated online about whether, rather than an outside attack, someone inside the company might've been responsible.
On Twitter, members of the cryptocurrency community quickly began to speculate that the outflows could have been coordinated by a member of Bankman-Fried's inner circle, pointing out that the simultaneous and sophisticated hacks of FTX and FTX US are indicative of a potential inside job. Twitter sleuth ZachXBT tweeted Friday night that "multiple former FTX employees confirmed to me that they do not recognize these transfers."
Around midnight Eastern time, FTX's login portal was unavailable (though the site was still online) giving users a 503 error when they attempted to log in. A 503 error happens when the server is unavailable, commonly because it's down for maintenance or unavailable for access.
EPT
