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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

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Draper still supports Elizabeth Holmes: https://fortune.com/2022/01/05/venture-capital-tim-draper-el... I don't know how. Maybe he's just fucking stupid, or too prideful to admit he was wrong.

I'm not entirely familiar with Theranos, but as far as I know, she only defrauded VCs - entities that are designed to take on risk (which can include Theranos-like fraud). FTX defrauded average people, many of whom were lured by the big name ads, the friendships with Tom Brady, the marquee investors list. Supporting that is deeply immoral.

Holmes "blood tests" were giving people useless results. This is LITERALLY putting lives in danger. She probably is guilty of the deaths of some unknown people, we'll never know. Holmes is just as sociopathic and despiclable as SBF, if not worse.

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

#392

How can anybody be surprised ? The 2 biggest players - Tether and Binance are much worse and still very well alive. Both are several times bigger (on paper) than FTX. Binance is already banned in most countries and without headquarters. Do anybody believes they have a proper gouvernance ? Tether was proved to lie about it réserves several times, recently started publishing attestations about reserves - attestations t…

> both could disappear tomorrow with all the money If they go then the magic beans are worth $0. In which case - what are the damages? They've ran away with magic beans worth $0. To quote Monty Python: "I mean, what have you got to lose? You know, you come from nothing. You're going back to nothing. What have you lost? Nothing."

They received dollars for the magic beans, and it’s the dollars that are worth something.

It’s a game of musical chairs where people holding the magic beans are dancing around and the dollars are the chairs. There’s only so many dollars to go around when the music stops, and they will go to the exchanges and the ones who “cashed out”.

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

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had one of the mentioned firms invest in a place I was a partner at, and it surprises the hell out of me. I remember the investment guy would tell the rest of us "on Wednesday, wear a shirt and tie, X big name is coming" and that's what we'd do. And millions of questions about the strategy, though didn't know much about those details. Current theory is there's some sort of investment U shape curve. Either people…

This is called countersignaling. Basically, if everybody else invests into doing X and somebody conspicuously does not, it's taken as a signal that they're so good that they don't need to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countersignaling

There is an episode of the Silicon Valley series where the team tries to increase their VC funding by becoming increasingly toxic and abusive with the VCs they meet, and they end up signing with the biggest offer they got, after one of them literally puts his genitals on the table during negotiation.

Turns out this was hitting very close to the truth. That show was great to show how much a clown world SV can be.

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

#394
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She put people at risk of undetected cancer. SBF accepted money from suckers.

Like the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund? (As I said: not at all a Holmes defender.)

Yes, they are suckers. This sort of principal-agent problem is exactly why defined benefit pension plans ought to be phased out and replaced by defined contribution plans.

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

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a feeling he will come out worse that Elizabeth Holmes because it feels like a complete fraud and pilfering of their client's money for their own spoils. While Elizabeth ran a known fraud she didn't quite pilfer the money to completely enrich themselves like the FTX crew did.

And what will change because of this? Not much, the (VC) grift continues. People don’t want to accept that the VC model works while there’s a qualitative change in technology, which worked in the 2010’s and there hasn’t been any in a while. Maybe the new AI generative models bring something new

The golden age of VC was curiously correlated with a decade of free money and runaway equity prices. Like buying a plane ticket and thinking you're a bird.

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

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tether's 'market cap' is like 60 billion or whatever, I think most of that was just created out of thin air, but I think some of it was exchanged for real dollars, like a few percent, maybe a couple of billion dollars. In which case, when the fraud comes crashing down, they will have stolen hundreds of millions, to maybe a couple of billion dollars. Imagine if somebody stole a piece of art worth hundreds of millions…

They did handle several billion in redemptions without any hiccups when Luna collapsed. But then again, everyone knows that if Tether blows up, every single crypto entity collapses. If Tether had a hole of a few billion, other entities might have stepped in. Will they do so again? Hard to tell. Regardless, Tether is a ticking time bomb. It would be a fantastic business if they did indeed have all that money. 70B in d…

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

#397
post #206

Once again I need to poin tout the shocking truth that FTX had no CFO [1]. The CFO's experience and reputation is waht gives investors and regulators confidence that the financial statements that the CFO literally signs off on are valid. Listed companies on the NASDAQ and NYSE have lots of requirements here (eg internal and external audits). Obviously these don't apply to FTX but the truly shocking thing here is the…

> He either doesn't have lawyers... His parents are both lawyers! And law professors! Specializing in compliance and ethics!

This blame game again. Look, the universe is a deterministic machine. SBF or his mom and dad are no more to blame than you were when you accidentally squashed a bug walking this morning! Should we start taking everyone to account for their actions? Where will this end?

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

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lesson learned is that frauds can go on for a long time. It took decades and a once in a generation market crash to expose Bernie Madoff. Enron spent years running their sketchy accounting. Wirecard was only finally exposed after the German government essentially lobbied on their behalf against the journalists trying to expose the fraud.

These frauds can continue so long as they can continue to grow or at least maintain a steady state. Since they promise higher returns than can be achieved through honest means the liabilities grow faster than assets over time, but so long as nobody tries to realize their gains it's fine. FTX only came down because they pissed off the Binance guy who dumped his position all at once and exposed the fraud. I'm dubious T…

> These frauds can continue so long as they can continue to grow or at least maintain a steady state. Since they promise higher returns than can be achieved through honest means the liabilities grow faster than assets over time, but so long as nobody tries to realize their gains it's fine.

Honestly this sort of comment makes me want to stop reading hacker news comments sections altogether. Could you explain what returns are promised for depositors of USD at FTX international and holders of USDT?

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

#400
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She put people at risk of undetected cancer. SBF accepted money from suckers.

Like the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund? (As I said: not at all a Holmes defender.)

Yes. Institutions are notorious suckers.
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