Until recently, Sam Bankman-Fried, or SBF, was considered crypto’s golden boy(obviously not by me, not for a second), known for building his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, into a multi-billion giant in just two years.
I always called FTX a ponzi scheme(I had other more long&specific names for it) and tried to save friends, investors and colleagues from losing their savings from this scam and all other scams existing in the exponentially hyped “crypto industry”. But, this post is not about me.
Sam Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF, is an MIT educated 30 year old, whose fortune peaked at $26.5 billion dollars before the recent messy collapse. The pre-collapse descriptions about SBF included “genius entrepreneur, crypto mogul, financial guru” yet now, billions stolen later, he is known to be just your not-so-average CON MAN.
SBF’s modus operandi included pretending to be a left-leaning social warrior(like many of current billionaires) to persuade and con investors, employees and much of the public opinion. At certain periods during SBF’s con cycle, with money from his wannabe-fake-crypto-like-bank he donated tens of millions of dollars to the Democratic party for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign(second largest donor) and is well connected to the large media companies and many powerful people. No wonder, big media is currently avoiding underwriting him and pushing his “victim-like/he didn’t know” narrative.
The missing funds related to the collapse and loss in SBF’s company, FTX, are $52 billion dollars in collateral. This is no joke and places SBF as one of the greatest scammers in history, if not the largest, alongside Bernard Maddoff, Charles Ponzi, Elizabeth Holmes and Lehman Bros’ and Enron’s mis-accounting culprits.
Regardless of how much the media tries to twist the narrative what happened was an orchestrated fraud, there is no feasible or logical way SBF could have thought FTX could end up profitable for customers, even if the crypto ponzi lasted for more years.
It has now been 24 days since FTX filed bankruptcy and lost $10 billion+ in customer funds.Meanwhile, not a single executive has been arrested and SBF is still living in his Bahamas penthouse. This fraud case has been described as “worse than Enron” by bankruptcy advisors.
SBF claims to only have $100,000 left on his personal account yet some of the best and most expensive lawyers are defending him. Who is funding this?
While this is a terrible and worrisome story, let’s all wake up, because it is not only him, in fact we could say this has become the standard quality of today’s billionaire “heroes” leading the way and managing funds and plans for billions of humans.