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We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

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Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#171

Post by skippyboxedhero »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #106
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't. They just ran with significantly less staff (iirc, less than 30). If they wanted you, they got in touch. FTX wasn't a scam either. Their business was a licence to print money but, as so often happens in finance, managed to spin shit from gold.

That's not what I have heard. Specifically know people who have gotten offers, mostly in the 150k range with zero stock. Alameda research is also just random devs that went to MIT with a few years experience. Impressive to go to that school, but clearly not experienced enough to run a real finance operation. Zero real finance people. If they were serious they would have hired portfolio managers with decades of experi…

> Zero real finance people

Debate old as time. I agree with you but this happens every cycle. RenTech doesn't have "real finance people" either. Maybe the problem was that they just had the wrong people, not their level of realness.

And Alameda seemed to be mainly people from Jane Street? There is a difference between trading firms with good tech (Jane Street) and firms taking prop risk (DE Shaw)...just based on what has been released, I agree that they didn't seem to know what they were doing. Unfortunately, the market doesn't know you went to MIT.

And they wouldn't have hired PMs with decades of experience, because no PM with decades of experience would have worked there.

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#172

Post by cwkoss »

mrtksn wrote: post #92
TheAlchemist wrote: post #53

What's even more funny is that Binance make it look like they are a stable financial institution, and it's thanks to their high standards that they won't acquire FTX. Binance is most probably much more of a fraud than FTX. Binance doesn't even have physical headquarters in any country in this world - and the reason is that they are being actively investigated or banned almost everywhere.

I don't know about it, Binance has become a gold standard in crypto exchange business. Here on HN it was always about Coinbase likely because its an American company but for the rest of the world, it's all about Binance and the rest of the world is huge. How huge? About an order of magnitude to Coinbase. If Binance goes, crypto isn't coming back.

Binance does have significantly lower trading fees than coinbase - so while they do have about 8x the trade volume, it's not exactly an apples to apples comparison, because lower fees mean tighter spreads and more money bouncing around within the system per unit of (deposit -> withdrawal in different currency)

So, I'm not sure "an order of magnitude larger" is necessarily an accurate description. Wouldn't say it's inaccurate either, but just missing some nuance.

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#173

Post by jdasdf »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #139
jdasdf wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is this true? Of all the years that various countries have used traditional fiat currency, has debasement happened more years than it hasn't? I don't think so but I'm not certain. Do you know of any currency over the past 200 years that has suffered deflation throughout that period? I don't mean "occasionally has one year with deflation", I mean, the real value of 1 unit of that currency 200 years ago was less than…

Certainly major currencies have experienced periods of deflation (i.e. the Great Depression, the Great Recession, etc.). But deflation is a sign of weakening economy as well. There's an obsession with inflation, but the reality is that some inflation is inevitable in a growing economy as demand outpaces supply. Economists agree pretty consistently on that.

I want to be very clear here, because I believe you're saying what you are saying because you have been taught that way, and because the mainstream media and general economic literature seem to hold that view, and so you, in good faith, are merely repeating it.

You are wrong.

The economist that agree with that view are also wrong, or they are biased by conflicts of interest.

The central banks that support and propagate that view, have a significant conflict of interest as well.

I heavily recommend you consider the incentives of the people teaching that view, and that you re-think from the most elementary of economic principles how exactly that would work.

There is no long term benefit to monetary inflation.

I cannot repeat this enough, monetary inflation, just like monetary deflation, is a distortion on the market, and like any other distortions on the market, it has a net negative expected value.

Of course this negative expected value is distributed throughout the entire economy, whereas the benefits are concentrated on one entity, the issuer of the currency, which is the central bank and the state by association.

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#174

Post by skippyboxedhero »

squidbeak wrote: post #116
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't. They just ran with significantly less staff (iirc, less than 30). If they wanted you, they got in touch. FTX wasn't a scam either. Their business was a licence to print money but, as so often happens in finance, managed to spin shit from gold.

Concealing from users they were gambling with their funds - and not a scam?

I would read the rest of what I said.

Is NYSE a scam? Is Euronext a scam? The exchange was a legit business that was profitable...outside of fixed costs, it isn't possible to lose money with an exchange. But they were doing other stuff (broking) that did lose them money. These are two completely distinct operations though (in real finance, they are largely distinct).

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#176

Post by oliwary »

dragontamer wrote: post #146
kristjansson wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with MBS was always the zero-sum nature of the alchemy. They took 100 low-quality loans in, and returned 10 high-quality loans, 30 ok-ish loans, and 60 dog-shit loans. No harm no foul, until the dog-shit tranches were marketed as ok-ish, and alchemists believed they we're really creating gold.

CDOs weren't the problem. You see, mixing together dog-shit __ONCE__ isn't that big of a deal. CDO-squared (CDOs of CDOs) were a problem. If you took those 60 dog-shit loans, mixed them together, and created 10 high quality loans out of them, problems began to occur. Even then, it wasn't the CDO-squared that collapsed the whole thing. It was the CDS: the "insurance" (so to speak) on the CDO-squared that made things g…

I am fascinated by the number of layers of abstractions built on top of each other in these financial products... Bankers seem to rival programmers in their ability to stack abstractions on top of each other until it is impossible to understand how the underlying system relates to the top layer.

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#177

Post by pseudosavant »

dragontamer wrote: post #146
kristjansson wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with MBS was always the zero-sum nature of the alchemy. They took 100 low-quality loans in, and returned 10 high-quality loans, 30 ok-ish loans, and 60 dog-shit loans. No harm no foul, until the dog-shit tranches were marketed as ok-ish, and alchemists believed they we're really creating gold.

CDOs weren't the problem. You see, mixing together dog-shit __ONCE__ isn't that big of a deal. CDO-squared (CDOs of CDOs) were a problem. If you took those 60 dog-shit loans, mixed them together, and created 10 high quality loans out of them, problems began to occur. Even then, it wasn't the CDO-squared that collapsed the whole thing. It was the CDS: the "insurance" (so to speak) on the CDO-squared that made things g…

Nested leveraging is a common theme. Each layer is leveraged and but supposedly protected by another layer's risk management.

Go through enough layers and you eventually hit an insurer that has zero chance of being able to cover all of the losses of everyone. It could be CDS of CDOs of CDOs, or coins being backed by other coins.

Thankfully the average person is less affected by crypto losses than mortgages, or in the case of the depression, stocks.

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#178

Post by melenaboija »

mrtksn wrote: post #92
TheAlchemist wrote: post #53

What's even more funny is that Binance make it look like they are a stable financial institution, and it's thanks to their high standards that they won't acquire FTX. Binance is most probably much more of a fraud than FTX. Binance doesn't even have physical headquarters in any country in this world - and the reason is that they are being actively investigated or banned almost everywhere.

I don't know about it, Binance has become a gold standard in crypto exchange business. Here on HN it was always about Coinbase likely because its an American company but for the rest of the world, it's all about Binance and the rest of the world is huge. How huge? About an order of magnitude to Coinbase. If Binance goes, crypto isn't coming back.

> If Binance goes, crypto isn't coming back

Interesting statement for a decentralized asset

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#179

Post by can16358p »

rr808 wrote: post #66
shmatt wrote: post #32

CZ knew about the bad leverage to begin with, which is why he tweeted about selling all of the FTT What are the chances he never intended to buy FTX, just to destroy it after their public back and forth? It's almost like a reverse Musk - he sent a purchase offer with an option to back out no matter what CZ knew from day 1 all he needed to do was crash FTT just enough, and the rest would happen organically

CZ seems like a genius, but I'm sure he's panicking now, he doesn't benefit from killing the whole alt-coin world - which increasingly looks like happening.

I think FTX was a very big threat to Binance AND the whole crypto ecosystem. After making sure everything was or could become (practically, at any other event where FTT would crash) insolvent under the hood, CZ went on and killed FTX and actually saved a MUCH, MUCH bigger industry collapse that was impending as FTX went bigger and bigger.

Not to defend him and I also agree that Binance benefited by killing its biggest enemy while still suffering himself as industry collapsed, but if this event didn't happen today, much worse would have happened in the future affecting literally everyone much worse.

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#180

Post by from »

idoh wrote: post #65
misiti3780 wrote: post #49

Does anyone here think SBF will be prosecuted?

What crime was committed? I'm asking in a neutral way. Simply losing billions of dollars of other people's money isn't necessarily illegal.

A good prosecutor can make any act that involves the internet and something sketchy wire fraud.
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