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FTX used corporate funds to purchase employee homes, new filing shows

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Re: FTX used corporate funds to purchase employee homes, new filing shows

#51

how did ftx successfully raise so much vc money recently? do these top vc firms do no due diligence?

Effective altruism at its finest. LOL

What does effective altruism have to do with VCs that invested in FTX and their due diligence? If anything effective altruism is downstream from that.

Re: FTX used corporate funds to purchase employee homes, new filing shows

#53

This whole mess makes me wonder, what if they did everything right, with proper accounting and compliance practices etc.? Would we have ended up with a successful crypto business that would advance the whole field forward? Perhaps Coinbase is an example of that, though maybe not as well known due to less drama?

My impression is Coinbase is the thing that FTX was claiming to be, a well run exchange. Looking back, them purchasing the naming rights to Miami's stadium and all the A list celebrities prompting it just added this fake layer of trust. It's very easy to see the celebrity endorsements, puff pieces and the companies name plastered over a stadium as endorsements of how solid the business is, after all, a bunch of kids…

>them purchasing the naming rights to Miami's stadium and all the A list celebrities prompting it just added this fake layer of trust.

This never made sense to me. To me celebrity endorsements and purchasing naming rights only mean that you have the money to pay for them. It might convey some legitimacy in the way of "they can pay for it", but I don't think of them as some sort of stamp of approval.

Re: FTX used corporate funds to purchase employee homes, new filing shows

#54

how did ftx successfully raise so much vc money recently? do these top vc firms do no due diligence?

That's one theory.

Of course, given the depth of financial depravity on display here and the incredible thinness of the financial defense, one must also entertain the theory that they did do the due diligence, they were aware of how dangerous this was, and they invested anyhow for other reasons. And that those reasons are probably not good.

There have been many cases where companies go to great lengths to do accounting alchemy to fool even very smart auditors, but we are clearly not dealing with that here. Binance or whoever was offering to buy FTX out literally figured out within single-digit hours of looking at FTX's books that they were not interested. A person skilled in the art can literally glance at these books and figure out that they are worthless. I do not believe there is any credible theory that any investor could possibly have been unaware of these issues.

FTX's books don't so much have red flags as that they are printed on red flags, with ink derived from red flags, a custom-made red cover made out of more red flags, and each page, when opened, has pop-up red flags along with a little electronic speaker that plays Red Flag by Antigoni while you get sprayed with Red Flag perfume [1].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKk91x0Yg7Q

Re: FTX used corporate funds to purchase employee homes, new filing shows

#55
post #4

The new CEO of FTX states that FTX had no accounting department. lol. > “The Debtors do not have an accounting department,” Ray wrote, stating he expected it would be “some time” before reliable financial statements could be prepared.

This shouldn’t be surprising at all after seeing their balance sheet with round numbers like $5,000,000,000 in assets and $12,000,000,000 in liabilities. It looked like SBF made it in Excel while his LoL game was loading.

I was under the impression that was a hastily prepared document for essentially marketing purposes when they were shopping around for a buyer/savior, and the fact that Binance looked at it and quickly nixed any thought of a deal speaks for how well it worked for that purpose. But I assume there are more detailed docs internally, though I'm sure those will be problematic too.

Re: FTX used corporate funds to purchase employee homes, new filing shows

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shouldn’t be surprising at all after seeing their balance sheet with round numbers like $5,000,000,000 in assets and $12,000,000,000 in liabilities. It looked like SBF made it in Excel while his LoL game was loading.

Throwback to when HN was praising FTX for running so 'lean' and 'efficiently,' only hiring the bare minimum to be successful.

I couldn't find any such comments, but this one from August 2021 aged really poorly:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28798944

Re: FTX used corporate funds to purchase employee homes, new filing shows

#59
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here it is! https://d1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net/production/7ab64a3b-6c...

What is TRUMPLOSE lol

FTX had various betting markets where you could wager on the outcome of the 2024 election. Some larger speculators wanted to buy bets bigger than what the orderbook for the market could handle, so FTX directly acted as the counterparty to their bets. Source is Twitter, so grain of salt, caveat emptor, etc.

Re: FTX used corporate funds to purchase employee homes, new filing shows

#60
post #54

how did ftx successfully raise so much vc money recently? do these top vc firms do no due diligence?

That's one theory. Of course, given the depth of financial depravity on display here and the incredible thinness of the financial defense, one must also entertain the theory that they did do the due diligence, they were aware of how dangerous this was, and they invested anyhow for other reasons. And that those reasons are probably not good. There have been many cases where companies go to great lengths to do accounti…

>FTX's books don't so much have red flags as that they are printed on red flags, with ink derived from red flags, a custom-made red cover made out of more red flags, and each page, when opened, has pop-up red flags along with a little electronic speaker that plays Red Flag by Antigoni.

Lol. This should be a framed quote.

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