{"id":1744361,"date":"2022-11-18T17:17:30","date_gmt":"2022-11-18T22:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1744361"},"modified":"2022-11-18T17:17:40","modified_gmt":"2022-11-18T22:17:40","slug":"the-real-victims-of-sam-bankman-frieds-ponzi-scheme-are-not-celebrities-or-institutional-partners-but-everyday-investors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-real-victims-of-sam-bankman-frieds-ponzi-scheme-are-not-celebrities-or-institutional-partners-but-everyday-investors\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Victims Of Sam Bankman-Fried\u2019s Ponzi Scheme Are Not Celebrities Or Institutional Partners, But Everyday Investors"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">34<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-real-victims-of-sam-bankman-frieds-ponzi-scheme-are-not-celebrities-or-institutional-partners-but-everyday-investors%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1744361&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>There are likely over <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/business\/2022\/11\/16\/ftx-collapse-crypto-exchanges-regulation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">one million<\/a> victims worldwide and untold billions of dollars forever lost through the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried\u2019s digital asset empire, propped up by his once enormously popular FTX cryptocurrency exchange, which last week <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2022\/11\/11\/sam-bankman-frieds-cryptocurrency-exchange-ftx-files-for-bankruptcy.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">filed for bankruptcy<\/a> in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>When liquidity concerns issued by FTX\u2019s competitor sparked a crypto bank run on the exchange earlier this month, the world discovered that many of these assets turned out to be nothing more than paper IOUs. FTX\u2019s real <a href=\"https:\/\/www.visualcapitalist.com\/ftx-leaked-balance-sheet-visualized\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">balance sheet<\/a> did not come anywhere close to matching the numbers on the screen. And given the panicked withdrawals, the \u201cFTT\u201d digital token through which Bankman-Fried\u2019s empire maintained their claimed wealth, lost about<a href=\"https:\/\/coinmarketcap.com\/currencies\/ftx-token\/\"> 90 percent<\/a> of its value in a day\u2019s time. FTT was a token that Bankman-Fried and his cofounders created, encouraged customers to purchase, then manipulate its value to pitch future investors on. <\/p>\n<p>We have since discovered that Sam Bankman-Fried was running a massive Ponzi scheme. But with the collapse of FTT, that Ponzi now has no chance of recovering. It is officially game over for Bankman-Fried and the massive fraudulent empire he built.<\/p>\n<p>There seems to be a clear consensus of overwhelming evidence that Bankman-Fried has committed an open-and-shut case of massive fraud. If justice is served equally, he would seemingly be destined to a similar fate to that of the last infamous Ponzi finance fraudster, Bernie Madoff, who was sentenced to 150 years in the big house. But Bankman-Fried has friends in high places.<\/p>\n<p>As part of his efforts to de-risk the Ponzi, Bankman-Fried has made considerable efforts over the last couple of years attempting to bolster his ties to regulators and legislators, seeking to obtain both regulatory dominance for his exchange and good favor with people in positions of power. Over the most recent election cycle, Bankman-Fried granted enormous sums of political donations to Democrat politicians. He is second only to George Soros in doling out political expenditures for Democrats.<\/p>\n<p>As I\u2019ve documented on Twitter, he also has close ties to the very congressional committee that is set to <a href=\"https:\/\/financialservices.house.gov\/news\/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=409920\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">investigate<\/a> the collapse of FTX next month.<\/p>\n<p>Bankman-Fried has also networked himself in with the executive branch, having <a href=\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/news\/republican-lawmaker-claims-sec-chair-was-coordinating-with-ftx-to-obtain-regulatory-monopoly\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">secured meetings<\/a> with SEC Chair Gary Gensler and other top Biden administration officials.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, honest law enforcement authorities in the U.S. have an admittedly enormously complex case on their hands, because Bankman-Fried\u2019s FTX did most of its business overseas. FTX (which is a separate entity from FTX US, the U.S. registered and regulated entity) was headquartered in the Bahamas, where Bankman-Fried lived in a penthouse apartment commune with his friends, lovers, and colleagues (all one in the same), <a href=\"https:\/\/dossier.substack.com\/p\/the-true-believer-how-sam-bankman\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">who were all fellow ideological travelers in the far-left effective altruism movement.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>For more on that thread, and how the ideology of effective altruism fits into this debacle, check out <a href=\"https:\/\/dossier.substack.com\/p\/the-true-believer-how-sam-bankman\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">my piece in The Dossier<\/a>: \u201cThe True Believer: how Sam Bankman-Fried\u2019s worldview facilitated the creation and destruction of a crypto Ponzi empire.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>FTX had a massively influential<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Retail customers who held assets on FTX are learning a hard lesson on the importance of taking custody of their own wealth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1553,"featured_media":1744364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1744361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1744361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1553"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1744361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1744361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1744364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1744361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1744361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1744361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}