FTX Scandal: Democrats, Dubai, Bahamas, Hollywood movie deal and Stanford Law Professors

Last Updated on 15 November 2022 by CryptoTips.eu


Jeroen Kok

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The fall of crypto platform FTX is coming with a lot of baggage for a lot of people and places. As the time of writing, here’s the latest.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the 30-year-old son of an upper-middle-class Jewish family in California, is currently ‘under supervision’ in the Bahamas. He is said to be accompanied by his father Joseph Bankman, who can provide legal assistance. Both his parents are in fact professors at Stanford Law School.

There was speculation that he had fled on a private jet to Argentina, but he replied to a Reuters journalist on that with a simple “nope” via text message. Case closed.

Bankman-Fried is also the second largest political donor to the Biden campaign, and so there will be a lot of pressure on the Democrats if he’s not sent to jail for fraud.

There is even reporting that he’ll be the subject of a new Michael Lewis book, after the famous writer is said to have spent the last six months alongside Bankman-Fried. That will surely make for entertaining reading. Lewis’ agent claimed that the new book would focus on the rivalry with Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao as well. According to the New York Times yesterday evening, Lewis is even considering selling his draft in exchange for a Hollywood movie.

Fraud and write-downs

FTX has lost billions of investment dollars to prominent companies in Silicon Valley, US and Tokyo, Japan. For example Softbank is said to be writing off a 100 million FTX investment in its next quarterly earning already.

Venture capital firm Sequoia, who plowed money into the company, proactively marked down their stake to zero. “I don’t want to call it fraud in this moment,” Anthony Scaramucci, the ex-Trump adviser said.

If there was fraud, let’s clean it up to the extent possible and repair the accounts at FTX.

Escape to Dubai

Meanwhile the CEO of Alameda Research and rumored girlfriend of Sam Bankman-Fried, Miss Caroline Ellisson, is holed up in a luxury five-star hotel in HongKong and is said to have tried escaping to Dubai (which has no extradition treaty with the US).

Meanwhile most analysts agree that the hole left by FTX will probably leave a big stain on the cryptosphere.