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SimulationCommander's avatar

Not every transaction is on the chain. And for the most part he didn't even use 'real' crypto. He conjured up his own company scrip and passed it out.

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SCA's avatar

Monopoly money, it never goes out of fashion.

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SimulationCommander's avatar

I'm amazed he got so many people to look past the obvious fraud. I guess that's what getting a piece of the action will do.

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SCA's avatar

I'd think a whole heck of a lot of morons thought that his very important intelligent exceptionally-credentialled parents gave him the very best of pedigreed bona fides.

"Ha! Fooled ya!"

It is not rare for really smart parents to produce idiot children. You guys can use all the finance-world clues you want to prove how this guy smelled.

For me it was a 30-yr. old guy who lisps like a toddler. Screaming sirens from the first video clip I saw.

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HardeeHo's avatar

His gain of a few billion via some smart arbitrage trading made him a financial genius to many. He built a fine house of cards as he was blessed by the right teams.

OTOH, imagine all those who bought Bitcoin at $65k/coin as it sits at $16k. Greater fools eventually learn the hard way. But they do well until they don't.

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Shan's avatar

So he made a pseudo crypto? Did he try to sell it as real crypto? I understand the basics of his Ponzi set up and his money laundering, those are as old as time, but IтАЩm not getting what people thought they were investing in when they handed him cash?

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SimulationCommander's avatar

He made a 'shitcoin' to facilitate trades on his exchange (similar to the BNB token on Binance). Then he paid people in said shitcoin.

Many people were legit crypto traders that simply had balances on FTX during the collapse. (Remember FTX was given legitimacy by regulators) This is why we say (over and over) NOT YOUR KEYS, NOT YOUR COINS! Other people were in on the scam and were the ones who actually got the money before the curtain was pulled back. Don't let the badly written articles fool you. The wealth did not 'evaporate', it was stolen.

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Shan's avatar

Oh so he never gave investors the keys to the coins, just some sort of self-generated receipt (read iou)? He held the keys to the actual coins backing up the IOU? Which, didnтАЩt exist, of course. ThatтАЩs so Bernie and his 1,000 year old PCs from the 80тАЩs in some back room that only he was allowed to see. And of course SBF got regulatory legitimacy. With pedigree like his, who would deny him? Thanks for taking the time to explain. I sincerely appreciate it. Love your work.

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SimulationCommander's avatar

With bonus backdoors that allowed him to move money without alerting auditors.

From what I've read, on the last day of 'solvency', FTX had $900M in 'liquid' assets backstopping $9B.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ftx-held-just-900-million-105931146.html

But yes, the big story of the day is that the 'regulators' were in bed with the scam -- tale as old as time!

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Mr. House's avatar

well you know, so many people went to jail for 2008, how could you expect any less?

If you realized in 2008 like many did that the entire system is a scam, every industry in this damn country, then 2020 wasn't much of a surprise to you.

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SimulationCommander's avatar

"I'm already against the next bailout."

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