🇺🇸 Crypto King in Cuffs

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Crypto King in Cuffs

Sam Bankman-Fried, or SBF was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday and has been charged with fraud in relation to the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX. It’s expected the US will request his extradition.

Reporting from the Right: SEC charges Bankman-Fried for alleged 'massive, years-long fraud' (Fox Business)

Reporting from the Left: Washington’s new crypto shocker: Sam Bankman-Fried’s arrest (POLITICO)

From The Flag: We’ve covered SBF’s fall from grace and his recent public appearances in which he claimed to have made mistakes, but denied wrongdoing. Here’s more from both sides.

LEFT-LEANING SENTIMENT

Greed, Privilege, and Lefty Anger, Culminating in an Arrest

• Many in the venture capital world are making themselves out to be victims amid the downfall of FTX, but they’re not totally innocent.

• Commentators have noted women could never adopt SBF’s disheveled appearance with unkempt hair and tee shirts.

• Many progressives find themselves angry with SBF for his alleged crimes, as his background and upbringing are very familiar.

“​​FTX Benefited From Venture Capitalists’ Suspension of Disbelief” Robert Burgess and Chris Hughes, Bloomberg Opinion: “The narrative that emerged in the days after the collapse of FTX… was that it had to be the result of some highly sophisticated and nefarious scheme that only came to light following a series of unfortunate events. After all, some of the smartest minds in the financial world were sucked in… And that’s what the venture capital and pension funds that seeded FTX surely want you to believe. That they were unwitting victims in an unfortunate and complex saga nobody could have foreseen. Don’t fall for it. While we still don’t yet know all the facts, they shouldn’t go blameless. Without their continual funding, stamp of approval and lack of questions, FTX never would have grown as big as it did. Their carelessness means FTX customers are out billions of dollars they are unlikely to ever recover.”

“What Sam Bankman-Fried’s grungy T-shirt reveals about genius and gender” Margaret Wertheim, Los Angeles Times Op-ed: “Is slovenliness an index of genius? This is one of the questions raised by the downfall of ‘crypto wunderkind’ Sam Bankman-Fried… Flouting business dress codes became a marker of Bankman-Fried’s supposed brilliance. … On Twitter, Emily Peck, a journalist at Axios, has noted… ‘No female founder could show up dressed like this in public and expect to get handed billions of dollars.’ … One female chief executive tweeted back ‘a woman can’t show up in a t-shirt (even for the internal team stuff)’ — let alone meetings with funders. … I do not mean to imply here that anyone should have to dress ‘well.’ I’m just saying that men are allowed to disregard their appearance in ways women cannot contemplate... We will not have an equal society until women have the same right to sartorial carelessness.”

One more opinion piece from the Left: How effective altruism let Sam Bankman-Fried happen Dylan Matthews, Vox

RIGHT-LEANING SENTIMENT

A Blind Eye Was Turned to the Scam That Now Crashes Down

• Despite numerous warning signs, SBF and FTX were allowed to thrive largely unchecked by regulators and other entities.

• SBF’s girlfriend, who also ran his connected trading fund, may be turning on him after hiring a high-powered law firm.

• SBF was the poster boy for corporate do-gooders, but he was just a cynical, spoiled brat who acted like the king of FTX.

“Why didn’t anyone see that SBF was one of the most obvious scam artists of all time?” Ben Shapiro, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Op-ed: “He placed at the head of human resources the girlfriend of the director of engineering, as chief operating officer his own intermittent girlfriend and as head of his associated hedge fund yet another intermittent girlfriend. The red flags were endless. And yet the scam continued. … SBF was a key cog in a political machine dedicated to the proposition that a coalition of like-minded leftwingers can seize the reins of capitalist enterprise and then work with friends in government to reconstruct the world. … Where were the regulators with whom SBF was close? Where were the supposed advocates of ‘ethical capitalism,’ who posit social responsibility, but whose friends seem to repeatedly be caught with their fingers in the cookie jar, dating back to Bernie Madoff?”

“King and queen of the crypto con may be turning on each other” Charles Gasparino, New York Post Opinion: “Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison, the two executives at the center of the collapse of cryptocurrency firm FTX, appear to be turning on each other. After Bankman-Fried suggested she might be to blame for a missing $8 billion in customer money, Ellison could be signaling she’s willing to flip on her old boyfriend with the hiring of the law firm Wilmer Hale… (which) has a reputation for cutting deals with the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office… Prosecutors are investigating whether (FTX) customer funds were misappropriated and used to make up losses in an affiliated prop-trading fund known as Alameda Research. Alameda is said to be 90% owned by Bankman-Fried, but Ellison was the crypto funds CEO… The two lived among a ‘cabal of roommates’ at a luxury penthouse in the Bahamas, where they reportedly all dated each other.”

One more opinion piece from the Right: ‘Save the World’ is a tacket; stop falling for it Laura Hollis, Times-Republican Op-ed

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Judging SBF’s Interview, and Examining Civil Action

A Twitter poll launched by self-proclaimed cryptocurrency trader Cantering Clark asked if SBF’s recent interview with Andrew Sorkin of the New York Times was a soft-ball job, or rather delivered “tough questions.”

The majority said Sorkin “soft-balled it,” (57%) compared to those who said it asked tough questions (43%).

Meanwhile, while SBF faces challenges in the public square and with prosecutors, there have also been seven class action lawsuits filed against him so far, according to records (Cointelegraph).

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