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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

#201

Post by xwolfi »

mumbisChungo wrote: post #84
oldgradstudent wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where were their profits derived? Is there any reason to believe there were any profits ever?

Of course. They were one of the highest volume exchanges, taking a % of every transaction. Unfortunately, they got greedy and started lending money (to themselves in Alameda, where it was gambled away)

They started AS Alameda and THEN made an exchange to facilitate their trades. They did not exist for any other purpose than doing the good old Tether + Bitfinex = iFinex.

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#202

Post by JustLurking2022 »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #98
wellthatsawrap1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully with jail time

SBF was one of the biggest political donors to the party in govt. He seems to have done all the shady stuff with Alameda (and said it was arms-length). And whilst Alameda's CEO said multiple things that would have got you in trouble with regulated products (saying they had $10bn in secret assets, making a public offer to buy FTT to manipulate the price)...this is crypto. I will make an exception to this: if they do n…

Hint: they're not making people whole, they don't have any assets with which to do so. That's why Binance ran the other direction.

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#203

Post by _jal »

scottiebarnes wrote: post #150
_jal wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> continues to operate exactly as expected Yep: as a set of primitives on which to build sorting mechanisms for fools and money.

Tell me more about the rock solidness of the housing market, or government bonds.

"The lack of mathematically perfect guarantees in this life means nothing means anything."

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#204

Post by JustLurking2022 »

ignoramous wrote: post #34
cannaceo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal belief is that binance agreed with no intention to carry out the deal. CZ tapdanced on FTX's grave on twitter with critical comments yesterday. It is now unlikely that anyone else will want to step up to look at the deal.

I'd say Stripe but unlikely given their missed IPO window. Perhaps, Amazon, if they are feeling lucky?

If Amazon wanted into crypto, they'd be big in crypto already. Why on earth would anyone touch goods this damaged?

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#205

Post by gammarator »

chasd00 wrote: post #145
grey-area wrote: post #72

It would be amusing if this deliberate attack by Binance also caused other frauds like Tether and eventually Binance to collapse too. People will simply lose faith in crypto entirely and avoid the whole market.

I certainly have no faith in crypto. The returns look nice but I know i'm not informed enough to get out while the getting's good so I'll have to pass.

> the returns look nice

Only if you cherry pick when you imagine you would have entered/exited the market

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#206

Post by xwolfi »

eddsh1994 wrote: post #85
Animatronio wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the saying goes "Fool me once ..."

Regardless of opinions it's a sizable user base! And, assuming there's another bull run at some point, it'll grow again.

Who do you think kickstart a bullrun ? SBF was a huge part of the last one...

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#207

Post by PathOfEclipse »

pseudosavant wrote: post #111
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13

In the thick of it, illiquidity and insolvency blur. But not after the fact. As usual, Levine put it best: “the problem is not a timing mismatch, in which FTX’s customers asked for their cash back but FTX did not have enough ready cash because it had long-term but money-good loans out. The problem is that FTX took its customers’ money and traded it for a pile of magic beans, and now the beans are worthless and there’…

FTX going under due to magic beans reminds me so much of Lehman Brothers going under in 2008. That time the magic beans were "mortgage backed securities" that somehow took low-quality debt, mixed it up with some magic, and out came high-quality debt, only it didn't.

"Certainly more study is needed on this issue. But the degree to which the Community Reinvestment Act (renewed and strengthened in 1995; see attached chart), the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and the many other planks of the raft of federal regulation which have built up over the past couple of decades has pushed the banking industry into making the loans for which they are now being criticized is far and away the most under covered aspect of this story. "

https://www.cnbc.com/id/25195425

It's amazing how the government somehow managed to successfully pin all the blame on corporations for problems it helped cause. From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis

"Lenders made loans that they knew borrowers could not afford and that could cause massive losses to investors in mortgage securities."

Of course, it was the government itself that pressured banks to make these loans in the first place. From https://www.appeal-democrat.com/thomas-sowell-government-cre...

"All this was an opening salvo in a campaign to get Congress to pass laws forcing lenders to lend to people they would not otherwise lend to and in places where they would not otherwise put their money."

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#208

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

pseudosavant wrote: post #181
oliwary wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could say that MBS/CDOs were 'leaky abstractions', and that there were equivalents to 'code smells' to suggest they weren't the golden debt they masqueraded as. I can't think of other professions that develop the same level of abstractions that programmers and bankers create. Layers and layers of inputs and outputs.

You could also say they were deliberate fraud.

The number of big-name banks whose actions are questionable [1] - if not actually criminal - is astonishing.

[1] As reported by insider papers like the Financial Times.

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#209

Post by [deleted] »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #64

The funny thing is for six months I have been checking FTX for open developer positions. Thinking surely, the best place in crypto must be hiring good devs like me. And there have been no postings at all! And word on the street is their devs actually building the exchange made a middling salary with zero stock. I always found it odd, how could they not be hiring? even during the downturn? And now I know why, it was a…

[deleted]

Re: We will not pursue the potential acquisition of FTX

#210

Post by twblalock »

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

The results of his actions will hurt him too, by causing severe damage to the market his business participates in.
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