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FTX collapse, Tether operations have links to online-poker cheating scandals

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Re: FTX collapse, Tether operations have links to online-poker cheating scandals

#181
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect. There was less violence overall in the wild west. Modern America has insane violence at much larger scales (inner city gang violence in Chicago, millions of civilians killed over the past 2 decades via Iraq, Drone programs, etc). The wild west was only wild because Hollywood needed a narrative.

You shouldn't be down voted, this is largely correct. High rates of violence in the "wild west" are a myth created by Hollywood. https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=6182

I would clarify further. High rates of violence were an exaggeration of 19th Century East Coast newspapers that created a myth that was perpetuated by Hollywood.

Re: FTX collapse, Tether operations have links to online-poker cheating scandals

#182
post #88

Is there truth to the U.S. sending money to Ukraine -> Ukraine funding FTX -> FTX being 2nd largest donor to Democratic party in the U.S.? Timeline: - April 25, 2019: Biden announces his presidential campaign. - 13 days later, Sam Bankman-Fried, son of Barbara Fried (co-founder of political fundraising organizations), launched FTX crypto exchange. - The exchange is an overnight success. Sam Bankman-Fried (SBM) become…

From what I'm reading, Ukraine used FTX to facilitate donations to Ukraine. I'm waiting for more details on the claim that Ukraine actually directly funded FTX. In other funding news- FTX did fund one of the studies that "debunked" Ivermectin as an effective covid treatment. There's definitely a strong political slant to this scandal.

I love that proving that a bunch of frauds who were promoting a drug that didn't work at all shows a "political slant". Funding studies to show which drugs treat (and don't treat) covid is unambiguously good and it's insane that it's considered political.

Edit: Great timing - DailyBeast literally just published a story exposing how the leader of one of those idiotic COVID misinformation groups spent her millions in ill-gotten gains: https://www.thedailybeast.com/covid-misinformation-group-ame...

Re: FTX collapse, Tether operations have links to online-poker cheating scandals

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fox News is primarily a cable news network that republishes some of their work as articles. Television isn't really a medium that lends itself to long form investigative journalism. Why would they bother with it when what they're doing is way more profitable? They also have a reputation for being the partisan press. They'd have to completely rebrand to get into a less lucrative area.

I'm told that all press is the partisan press of one side or the other, but it seems that there is little to no investigative reporting done by the conservative media - I wonder if it's an opportunity.

Unless you actually watch conservative media, you won't know about their investigative reporting, because it will rarely be mentioned in Democrat media.

And if it is mentioned, it is dismissed as misinformation, like Hunter Biden's laptop.

Re: FTX collapse, Tether operations have links to online-poker cheating scandals

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's hard to tell if the media has gotten worse at their jobs It's not that "the media" has gotten worse at their jobs. Rather, there simply a lot less funding for reporters. The hit in funding has become much worse in local reporting -- especially local newspapers. However, if this is viewed as a training ground for the few large national/international news organizations, it's easy to see how this has a profound i…

The first statistic you link is a newsroom statistic. This cut makes sense, because newspaper now get their news from big agencies. Newsrooms are completely different from investigative digging into stuff.

[deleted]

Re: FTX collapse, Tether operations have links to online-poker cheating scandals

#185
post #48

It's incredible that SBF was being touted by Sequoia, WEF, Fortune, chumming it up with Clinton and Blair in the Bahamas, getting meetings and kid glove treatment with the SEC, relatively glowing profile as a "do-gooder" by the NYT. All while FTX had a Chief Regulatory Officer who was basically a career white-collar criminal. It beggars belief that anyone who dug half an inch into this story wouldn't have seen 90,000…

> a "do-gooder" by the NYT.

sbf was giving tons of cash to the democratic party so NYT cant find anything bad to say about him

Re: FTX collapse, Tether operations have links to online-poker cheating scandals

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's hard to tell if the media has gotten worse at their jobs It's not that "the media" has gotten worse at their jobs. Rather, there simply a lot less funding for reporters. The hit in funding has become much worse in local reporting -- especially local newspapers. However, if this is viewed as a training ground for the few large national/international news organizations, it's easy to see how this has a profound i…

The first statistic you link is a newsroom statistic. This cut makes sense, because newspaper now get their news from big agencies. Newsrooms are completely different from investigative digging into stuff.

But who collects the stories for the agencies - it used to be the local reporters who are the ones gone. This is the point of the statistic

I am in UK and look at my local papers - the number of stories is massively down and the report numbers are much smaller. One reporter now for several London boroughs when there used to be several for one.

Who is looking at local government now?

Re: FTX collapse, Tether operations have links to online-poker cheating scandals

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is an odd take, given that it was the WSJ that broke the Theranos story and CoinDesk that broke the FTX story. Yes, true investigative reporting is rare (and expensive), but good work is still being done. For the media at large, given the volume of stuff you can read, much of it is plain "story-telling" or "narratives", and I do think the media is more likely to go with things that fit the narrative of t…

> Yes, true investigative reporting is rare (and expensive), but good work is still being done. Still, it's weird to have to read about this at poker.org first instead of any "respected" news source.

I read about Friedberg's ties to the poker scandal in other sources last week. It's not exactly a "scoop" given that it's all a matter of public record and has been so for a long time.

There was an editorial on CoinGeek in February casting doubt on SBF and pointing out the poker scandal: https://coingeek.com/ftx-ceo-sam-bankman-fried-isnt-who-you-...

Re: FTX collapse, Tether operations have links to online-poker cheating scandals

#188

There is a German saying: "Wo ein Trog ist kommen die Schweine." roughly translates to "Where there is a trough - the pigs will come." Rather fitting for all the crypto meltdowns in the last years.

Actually, this seems like a rather interesting defense of crypto. To use the metaphor, did the trough create the pigs? Or did it only draw a horde of pre-existing pigs to one place? Perhaps the amount of quasi-criminals that we are seeing in the crypto sector right now is just a sign that crypto was highly successful and not a condemnation of crypto in and of itself.

Am I understanding this correctly? The very fact that the Crypto scene was filled with criminals is direct evidence that "it works"?

Is this a soft implication that the same scene should "continue" to exist as it currently is?

Re: FTX collapse, Tether operations have links to online-poker cheating scandals

#189
post #48

It's incredible that SBF was being touted by Sequoia, WEF, Fortune, chumming it up with Clinton and Blair in the Bahamas, getting meetings and kid glove treatment with the SEC, relatively glowing profile as a "do-gooder" by the NYT. All while FTX had a Chief Regulatory Officer who was basically a career white-collar criminal. It beggars belief that anyone who dug half an inch into this story wouldn't have seen 90,000…

With every crypto collapse there seems to be an associated failure by the media to do any real digging. The same thing happened with Theranos where, with a few exceptions, the media fawned over Elizabeth Holmes. It's hard to tell if the media has gotten worse at their jobs or they've always been this bad and I'm just getting older. There are plenty of earlier scams and bubbles (Enron, dot-com bubble) that slipped und…

I think it is worth noting that Theranos went after people who investigated them. Used the enormous war chest and high profile backers to crush anyone who challenged the official narrative. How many nascent stories get killed because a broke reporter feels threatened?

Re: FTX collapse, Tether operations have links to online-poker cheating scandals

#190
post #48

It's incredible that SBF was being touted by Sequoia, WEF, Fortune, chumming it up with Clinton and Blair in the Bahamas, getting meetings and kid glove treatment with the SEC, relatively glowing profile as a "do-gooder" by the NYT. All while FTX had a Chief Regulatory Officer who was basically a career white-collar criminal. It beggars belief that anyone who dug half an inch into this story wouldn't have seen 90,000…

With every crypto collapse there seems to be an associated failure by the media to do any real digging. The same thing happened with Theranos where, with a few exceptions, the media fawned over Elizabeth Holmes. It's hard to tell if the media has gotten worse at their jobs or they've always been this bad and I'm just getting older. There are plenty of earlier scams and bubbles (Enron, dot-com bubble) that slipped und…

At least with Theranos, the was the media excuse of "new technologist isn't sharing the secrets of her device yet, but she showed enough to get big-names as investors and #37 on the Fortune list with as much revenue as MSFT is signed on to the tech to make it seem believable".

With Enron, they were very very good at obfuscating their scam. But it was the WSJ affiliate that was the first mover on Enron being fishy. A major short seller saw that article and shorted the stock, then turned a tip into another reporter. That reporter then pretty much started its downfall. It was, possibly, the best example of the media being the guardians against a scam since the internet started.

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