Sam Bankman-Fried

As of this writing, as far as I know, he is a free man and no warrant for his arrest has been issued. But I can't imagine he won't end up in a court of law at some point. Certainly he will be sued. In fact, there is already a lawsuit that names celebrities and sports teams that had endorsement deals with FTX as co-defendants.

Sam Bankman-Fried tries to broker FTX bailout from his home in the Bahamas, despite being booted from the crypto company (CNBC)

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Sam Bankman-Fried is hunkered down in an upscale neighborhood of Nassau [in the Bahamas], still scrambling to raise billions to plug a hole in now-bankrupt FTX.

Who is he? Well his parents are both very respectable people. Law professors at Stanford University. (Wikipedia)

He was also very prominent as a philanthropist in the "effective altruism" movement. (The New Yorker)

Was he just very sloppy, or malevolent? Was it a Ponzi scheme by design or just a terribly run business?

FTX’s Balance Sheet Was Bad (Matt Levine in Bloomberg)

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But there is a range of possible badness, even in bankruptcy, and the balance sheet that Sam Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto exchange FTX.com sent to potential investors last week before filing for bankruptcy on Friday is very bad. It’s an Excel file full of the howling of ghosts and the shrieking of tortured souls. If you look too long at that spreadsheet, you will go insane.

I quite like this bit:

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If you try to calculate the equity of a balance sheet with an entry for HIDDEN POORLY INTERNALLY LABELED ACCOUNT, Microsoft Clippy will appear before you in the flesh, bloodshot and staggering, with a knife in his little paper-clip hand, saying “just what do you think you’re doing Dave?”

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced boy king of crypto, explained (Vox)

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A week ago, Sam Bankman-Fried was the boy-wonder face of crypto: A 30-year-old who founded one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, a celebrated philanthropist worth an estimated $16 billion, and a major Democratic donor who quickly found favor in Washington. By Friday, he was at the center of an epic flameout that left his empire and his image as an uncannily sharp, altruistic billionaire in ruins. In the annals of crypto disasters, the tale of Bankman-Fried may go down as one of the most jaw-dropping. He resigned from his crypto exchange, FTX, as it collapsed from a domino effect of a surge in customers trying to withdraw their funds, and the company filed for bankruptcy. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Bankman-Fried may have illegally taken about $10 billion in FTX customers’ funds for his trading firm, Alameda Research, whose future is also in peril. And Bankman-Fried is now worth close to nothing. The downfall of FTX isn’t a typical story of crypto’s volatility or investor risk-taking; it didn’t crumble due to bad luck, but what now appears to be unsustainable layers of deception. On the surface, FTX appeared to be thriving — in the past year, it made several high-profile acquisitions and bailed out other failing crypto companies. In reality, it was drowning in debt. At least $1 billion in customer funds is reportedly missing. The stunning contrast between image and reality has resulted in Bankman-Fried facing a reputational fall from grace swifter than any in recent memory. According to reporting from several news outlets, the DOJ and SEC are investigating FTX, and his friends and admirers in crypto, philanthropic, and political circles have quickly begun distancing themselves from the man widely dubbed the king of crypto.

The do-gooder movement that shielded Sam Bankman-Fried from scrutiny (Washington Post)

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During Bankman-Fried’s ascent, media portrayals invariably noted that the crypto wunderkind drove a Toyota Corolla and planned to give his billions away, even as he courted celebrities and Washington power brokers. Indeed, his proximity to EA’s brand of self-sacrificing overthinkers often helped deflect the kind of scrutiny that might otherwise greet an executive who got rich quick in an unregulated offshore industry.

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/LAbdDWs