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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

#201

Post by _jal »

jmull wrote: post #170
zozbot234 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, wasn't the NYT supposed to take a very critical look at everything in "tech", as a matter of editorial policy? Why were they giving such a glowing (no pun intended!) endorsement of crypto, of all things? Something doesn't add up here.

...NYT...Why were they giving such a glowing (no pun intended!) endorsement of crypto I don't think they did. To check my memory, I clicked on to the "Cryptocurrency" keyword to see the crypto-related stories going back. It's mostly reporting news (which is mainly bad) and skepticism. Is the next crypto narrative is going to be "why didn't the media save us?" I guess it makes about as much sense as all the previous c…

"The lamestream media, whom I never listen to, failed to warn me!"

Anyone else remember those folks who suddenly realized climate change was actually happening and immediately started whining about how the media failed to tell them?

People failing to think critically about how media works while simultaneously whining about how the media works will never cease to amuse me. It is almost exactly like taking a bus to the end of the line and then yelling at the driver for taking you there.

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

#202

Post by tsukikage »

threeseed wrote: post #43
louwrentius wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto has attracted almost every type of criminal under the sun, to the detriment of 'regular' people who got conned into this stuff and is now left holding the bags. That German saying is on point and really sad.

> Crypto has attracted almost every type of criminal under the sun This is actually quite a profound statement. Is there actually anything in human history that can come close to rivalling this ? We have everyone from teens promoting shitcoins on TikTok, to household celebrities like Matt Damon, to white collar criminals, to arguably VCs, all the way to nation states like Iran and North Korea.

Whenever you have a space where boundaries are not imposed and actions merely have externalities rather than consequences for the actor, malicious actors that find it difficult to act how they want elsewhere flock to this space; this makes being in that space more and more painful, and so if the space remains lawless, people who can exist elsewhere abandon it, until the space is inhabited mostly or only by malicious actors.

We see this in online communities. We see it in the real physical world. And, yes, we are seeing it play out in crypto.

An online community without restrictions or boundaries doesn't look like one's fond memories of university dorm chats over a glass of wine; it looks like 4chan or the dark web.

A country without effective governance doesn't look like the romanticised media depictions of the wild west or your favourite science fictional post-scarcity anarchy utopia; it looks like Somalia.

A financial system without regulations doesn't look like your family kitty; it looks like, well, the crypto ecosystem.

Humans can't do better unless we all start to consistently choose cooperate/cooperate in prisoner's dilemma, and one quick look at, well, any community anywhere today shows we are a long way away from that.

This is not a technical problem, and cannot be solved with a technical solution. Humans do not know how to solve it. I wish we did. Historically, the most aspirational attempts to solve this problem have been the ones with the most gruesome outcomes.

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

#203

Post by lcole14 »

NBJack wrote: post #98
svara wrote: post #68

> Friedberg, who served as FTX’s general counsel before taking on the company’s regulatory role, was recently described by Coingeek’s Steven Stradbrooke as being “almost comically inappropriate” for the job. The description appears apt, given Friedberg’s long history of not complying with various jurisdictions’ regulations, but rather, evading them. Can't make this up. Reads to me like, on the contrary, they couldn't…

This whole thing sounds like a Netflix movie waiting to happen.

Might be coming sooner than you think: https://theankler.com/p/hwood-ftx-frenzy-as-michael-lewis

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

#204

Post by TacticalCoder »

cokeandpepsi wrote: post #193
AlexandrB wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not the media's fault these people commit crimes

It's the media's fault if they cannot be bothered to Google for two minutes that the chief lawyer at Alameda/FTX happens to be involved in a big poker scandal which... defrauded players.

Especially when there were tweets as old as 2018 at the very least describing the very scam Alameda/FTX/SBF was pulling.

@bitfinex'ed, a Twitter account which exposes tether for the scam it is since maybe a decade (and tether shall eventually fall), has been posting proof of all the wrongdoings. Including the ties between Alameda an Deltec (tether's bank in the Bahamas) since the very start of the scam.

It's also the media's fault that they re copy/pasting everywhere that it's "leveraged trades gone wrong, sending SBF in a death spiral".

That's not the story at all yet that's what these scummy media are publishing.

The story is that the goal was, from day one, to not only defraud people/investors but also to do a regulatory capture of the crypto exchanges market by greasing politicians and working hand in hand with officials and ex- officials who all knew each other.

If there were still investigative journalists around, there's material for quite a story.

But it's better to present SBF as an altruistic woke kid who, sadly, was sent into a death spiral after a few bad leveraged trades.

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

#205

Post by HWR_14 »

settrans wrote: post #64
zozbot234 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, wasn't the NYT supposed to take a very critical look at everything in "tech", as a matter of editorial policy? Why were they giving such a glowing (no pun intended!) endorsement of crypto, of all things? Something doesn't add up here.

In case you're not being facetious, Sam was the single second largest donor to the Democratic Party.

He donated in the primaries. He told the democrats he would donate again in the general, but didn't. Like a month ago there was articles like "Where is the $100MM Sam promised the Democrats, he's donated nothing in the general"

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

#206

Post by datavirtue »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #7

I wonder if there are cases of large scams where the perpetrators are smart enough to avoid being caught. Not all criminals end-up behind bars. I suspect that some scams can go unnoticed for long enough. I also suspect that scam opportunities are exploding.

Sure. Look into any dictator that was installed by the CIA. Emboldened by their power and shady alliance with the US, they usually go on a financial crime spree--stealing billions.

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

#207

Post by [deleted] »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #197
COGlory wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll have you know he donated to both sides: He also gave $5,800 to 6 different left-leaning Republicans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2021/10/21/the-w...

that's not much compared to the $40 millions he gave to the democrats...

[deleted]

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

#208

Post by jimcavel888 »

lzooz wrote: post #111
themgt wrote: 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…

Sam Bankman-Fried donated $40M to the Democratic Party, making him the second-biggest donor of the party.

No post body was provided.

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

#209

Post by brookst »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #108
brookst wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The media” is mostly just a bunch of 20-40 year olds with liberal arts bachelors degrees, trying to make ends meet and feed their families. Serious investigative reporters with the smarts and experience to dive deep were always the exception, maybe a handful in the world at any given time. So IMO, “they’ve always been this bad” is the answer, but it’s not entirely fair. Kind of like saying the cooks at McDonald’s ha…

> “The media” is mostly just a bunch of 20-40 year olds with liberal arts bachelors degrees, trying to make ends meet and feed their families. Sounds like the "Yuppie Nuremberg Defense" from Thank You For Smoking , in which a tobacco lobbyist excuses himself by saying he has a mortgage to pay.

> Sounds like the "Yuppie Nuremberg Defense" from Thank You For Smoking, in which a tobacco lobbyist excuses himself by saying he has a mortgage to pay.

It's not a "defense", it's just reality. When it snows, do you say that sounds like the "triple point defense" of frozen water?

People are by and large fallible. I am. And we're wired to prioritize our immediate family over nebulous ideas like The World Must Know The Truth. I am full of nothing but admiration if you are the rare exception who is doing only the most principled of things, with complete confidence that everyone you work for is upright, and that you have optimized your labor to produce the most good for the world in general, not just you and yours.

But I honestly don't blame those "Yuppie Nuremberg" people, and if you see shallow news reporting as the moral equivalent of lobbying for tobacco, I can't really disagree. I just don't have the energy to pass moral judgment on everyone, so I'm content with understanding the phenomenon.

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

#210

Post by indymike »

themgt wrote: 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…

> Crypto turned into a haven for replaying every form of financial fraud ever invented on an epic speedrun against retail "investors"

Best description of all that is wrong with crypto. It's a human problem, not a tech problem.

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