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Well Known Short Seller Claims SBF Is a Fraud Weeks Ago

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Re: Well Known Short Seller Claims SBF Is a Fraud Weeks Ago

#43

Post by jmmoses »

anm89 wrote: post #6

Not trying to defend SBF or FTX but honestly wasn't that impressed with this critic either. His criticism seems to break down to: 1) Look at him, he's ugly 2) He doesn't have the proper lineage of insider mentors to be allowed to be a billionaire 3) We don't have the full story on the original arbitrage mixed in with some political pandering 4) The compliance officer was sketchy 4 seems to be the only valid point. 3…

Marc Identified several indicia of fraud: 1) He acknowledged SBF and the CTO, Gary Wang, are worth billions, however the money materialized out of nowhere.

This is highly irregular and a potential indicator of a scam on the backs of retail investors.

2) He noted the chief regulatory officer of FTX, Dan Friedberg, was the general counsel for a poker site that defrauded its players.

A big red flag for anyone thinking of interacting with FTX in any way.

3) SBF has a record of deploying capital poorly (making losing investments and falling for scams) and he provided no good rationale for making these bad bets

A clear sign he isn't a good businessman and it creates even more skepticism that FTX could be viable.

4) He sees through their obvious attempts to paint a rosy picture of SBF and FTX with their very vague but positive marketing, but no ability to explain concretely what is positive about FTX, what their business model is (why the founders are getting so rich!)

These things are "smelly". They are like "code smells". On their own, they don't necessarily indicate anything, but taken together they could be an indication of much deeper problems with the codebase.

Marc was saying that the microscope needed to be put on FTX, SBF, and Gary Wang ASAP, because things stunk to high heaven. He was saying questions needed to be answered and the fact they were seemingly purposely being evaded was a big red flag to him.

Re: Well Known Short Seller Claims SBF Is a Fraud Weeks Ago

#46

Post by ralph84 »

anm89 wrote: post #6

Not trying to defend SBF or FTX but honestly wasn't that impressed with this critic either. His criticism seems to break down to: 1) Look at him, he's ugly 2) He doesn't have the proper lineage of insider mentors to be allowed to be a billionaire 3) We don't have the full story on the original arbitrage mixed in with some political pandering 4) The compliance officer was sketchy 4 seems to be the only valid point. 3…

3 is SBF's equivalent of Madoff's split-strike conversion. A strategy that can make a little bit of money that a fraudster uses to claim to be making a lot of money. And just like Madoff nobody questioned it until it all came crashing down.

Re: Well Known Short Seller Claims SBF Is a Fraud Weeks Ago

#47

Post by foogazi »

ummonk wrote: post #34
factsarelolz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tens of millions of dollars to political campaigns?

Buy off politicians to keep the fraud going so you can funnel more money to your charity causes!

Or a front to launder money via crypto into “causes”

Re: Well Known Short Seller Claims SBF Is a Fraud Weeks Ago

#50

Post by bmitc »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #10
naikrovek wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all crypto is rife with red flags.

Crypto is nothing special in this respect.. These red flags you speak are not an issue with crypto, they are an issue with people. Humans have been looking for ways to screw each other over since the dawn of time. If you mint some brass coins and say they are gold, that just makes you a loar. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with gold.

Is there another industry that has had such consistent fraud, scams, failed companies, stolen money, etc. over a period of several years?
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