Bubbles Popping Everywhere
Today it looks as if another Covid-era hero Sam Bankman Fried is biting the dust. He’s had to sell his crypto exchange FTX to hated rival Changpeng Zhao. From Bloomberg News
A 48-hour crypto drama ended in shock Tuesday as Binance Holdings Ltd. agreed to acquire its most formidable rival, FTX.com, after helping whip up an investor exodus from billionaire Sam Bankman Fried’s three-year-old exchange.
The sharp turn of events will reshape the more than $1 trillion industry amid a possibly prolonged market downturn. The two founders made the announcement on Twitter concurrently. “To protect users, we signed a non-binding LOI, intending to fully acquire FTX.com and help cover the liquidity crunch,” Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, said in a tweet. Terms weren’t disclosed.
This was the tweet that followed from Zhao
This afternoon, FTX asked for our help. There is a significant liquidity crunch. To protect users, we signed a non-binding LOI, intending to fully acquire FTX.com and help cover the liquidity crunch. We will be conducting a full DD in the coming days.
This was from Sam
“A huge thank you to CZ, Binance, and all of our supporters. Our teams are working on clearing out the withdrawal backlog as is. This will clear out liquidity crunches; all assets will be covered 1:1. This is one of the main reasons we’ve asked Binance to come in.”
I can’t even pretend to know exactly what is going on. Apparently FTX had a token called FTT that I guess you used to trade on FTX….and Sam’s investment fund Alameda Research owned ton of the FTT token and that token is down nearly 60% today. I am not even going to bother to really figure out what FTT is or how it works because it will probably be gone before the month is over. I will predict though that before the week is out, Zhao’s company will be announcing that they did the “DD” (due dilligence) and…..they won’t be buying FTX after all and then well….
Anyway, I wanted to give myself a big attaboy for writing this back in August.
Eric - great short summary - there is a BOOK in here somewhere - follow the money - who benefits ? . SBF is/was Massive donor to Dem Party. His parents are huge bundlers for Liz Warren, FTX is Bahamian Corp. so outside U.S. regs - (can foreign company donate to US campaigns ?) Legendary short seller Marc Cahodes has been all over this FTX bullshit since October or earlier. You can't make this shit up .... his Chief Regulatory officer, Daniel S Friedburg, played a KEY role in mid 2000's Online Poker Cheating Scandal at Ultimate Bet - brand new article just landed by Haley Hintz on "Poker.org" website . SBF's "Partner" , FTX Co-Founder - Gary Wang is man of mystery - early success supposedly trading BTC arb pairs - requires(d) CASH money - lots of it. Where did it come from ? Who mentored SBF ? Stories flying all over about his "Alameda Research". family office that was purportedly using client funds from FTX to speculate in shitcoins like LUNA and CEL - so maybe his bailout offer to Voyager and Celsius was just self preservation action.... ? who the hell knows - - check out Cahodes take on FTX on Hedgeeye Video Chat