The Sam Bankman-Fried Story: Who Won, Who Lost, Who Got Away

NEW YORK (RichTVX.com) — We’ve got breaking news: Borrowing a tactic from the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried´s company, job seekers wearing sandwich boards have re-appeared in New York. The men got the idea from a guy laid-off by Sam´s US entity. At the top of the world power pyramid exists this group which really rules the finance system via obvious proxies and their countless criminal co-conspirators, as well as their well concealed individual agents. Follow Sam Bankman-Fried, also known by his initials SBF, on Twitter and leave a comment in 140 characters or less as to why you deserve a walk-on role in his new movie. A sneak peak at Funny Or Die’s first ever movie. “The Next Coming of J.P. Morgan: The Sam Bankman-Fried Story” a mockumentary about Sam´s life. Don’t worry, it’s totally a normal thing to do, given that he’s got the video games to focus on. Want to freak a friend out? Tell them, “Sam Bankman-Fried is coming back!”, then send them this link. It’s fun, trust us. Here’s your one chance to break into the exclusive “cool kids” Bahamas clique. It’s less hard these days than back in high school. Sam Bankman-Fried reveals his new store, in case you needed “Sam Bankman-Fried” emblazoned sweatpants. People might wonder why you have a giant ZERO in your wallet, but you’ll feel inspired and hopeful on the inside after watching the fake ever-untrustworthy treacherous mainstream media these days. Really, is there any mainstream media entity not participating in the Sam Bankman-Fried Scam cover-up?! Jim Cramer sings hip hop in choir robe “Hip Hop Hooray, Ho, hey, ho.” He seems to identify with Evil By Nature more than with Kanye West, so don’t miss “Cold in the Metropolitan Correctional Center” at the end. Following the disaster of Sam´s shady business practices, an atheist group is running ads on buses in New York, to persuade people that there is no God just in time for the Christmas Holidays. Well, you can’t always blame global warming. We hope that answers your questions.

Play It Again, Sam

The bankruptcy of FTX is an ongoing crisis involving the Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which filed for bankruptcy in November 2022. Prior to its collapse, FTX was the third largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, and had over a million users.

The crisis began on 2 November 2022, when CoinDesk published an article stating that Alameda Research, a trading firm affiliated with FTX and owned by FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried, had held a significant holding in the FTX Token (FTT), a cryptocurrency ‘printed’ and used by FTX in its business operations.^[1][2] Following the allegations, Binance—a competing cryptocurrency exchange and a prior investor in FTX—announced that it would completely sell its holdings in FTT, leading the market price of the token to crash.^[3] The move also triggered a spike in customer withdrawals from FTX, causing the exchange to freeze withdrawals due to a liquidity crisis.^[4] On 8 November, Binance signed an offer to acquire FTX pending due diligence, but withdrew the offer the next day citing reports of mishandled customer funds and U.S. government investigations.^[5]

On 11 November, FTX, Alameda Research, and over 100 affiliated business entities declared bankruptcy. Sam Bankman-Fried resigned from his role of FTX CEO and was replaced by John J. Ray III, who previously oversaw the bankruptcy and liquidation of Enron.^[6] In a bankruptcy filing, Ray described Bankman-Fried’s leadership as a “complete failure of corporate controls” ;^[7] the collapse has been compared to the Enron and Madoff scandals.^[8] Following the bankruptcy, the Securities Commission of the Bahamas froze the assets of one of FTX’s subsidiaries.^[9] Bankman-Fried’s net worth, estimated at $16 billion prior to the collapse, was reported as having been wiped out,^[10] and several institutional investors of FTX wrote off their investment stakes in the company.^[11][12] Some $473 million in funds were later taken from FTX in an “unauthorized transaction”.^[13] The collapse of FTX has resulted in a ripple effect across the cryptocurrency industry, with the price of Bitcoin falling to its lowest price in two years.^[14]

Anonymous sources cited by the Wall Street Journal 10 November 2022 stated that FTX had lent $10 billion from customers’ accounts (over half of customers’ assets at the time) to fund Alameda Research earlier in 2022, a move explicitly forbidden by FTX’s own terms of service; the same sources stated that Bankman-Fried, Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, and other FTX executives were aware of the decision.^{[15][16][17][18]}

FTX and its handling of customer funds is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC),^[a] the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) in the United States;^[19] and a criminal investigation by the Royal Bahamas Police Force and the Securities Commission in the Bahamas.^[20] Anonymous sources cited by Reuters said that between $1 billion and $2 billion in consumer funds could not be accounted for.^[21]

Ponzi scheme

A Ponzi scheme (/ˈpɒnzi/, Italian: [ˈpontsi]) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors.^[1] Named after Italian businessman Charles Ponzi, the scheme leads victims to believe that profits are coming from legitimate business activity (e.g., product sales or successful investments), and they remain unaware that other investors are the source of funds. A Ponzi scheme can maintain the illusion of a sustainable business as long as new investors contribute new funds, and as long as most of the investors do not demand full repayment and still believe in the non-existent assets they are purported to own.

Some of the first recorded incidents to meet the modern definition of the Ponzi scheme were carried out from 1869 to 1872 by Adele Spitzeder in Germany and by Sarah Howe in the United States in the 1880s through the “Ladies’ Deposit”. Howe offered a solely female clientele an 8% monthly interest rate and then stole the money that the women had invested. She was eventually discovered and served three years in prison.^[2] The Ponzi scheme was also previously described in novels; Charles Dickens‘ 1844 novel Martin Chuzzlewit and his 1857 novel Little Dorrit both feature such a scheme.^[3]

In the 1920s, Charles Ponzi carried out this scheme and became well known throughout the United States because of the huge amount of money that he took in.^[4] His original scheme was based on the legitimate arbitrage of international reply coupons for postage stamps, but he soon began diverting new investors’ money to make payments to earlier investors and to himself.^[5] Unlike earlier similar schemes, Ponzi’s gained considerable press coverage both within the United States and internationally both while it was being perpetrated and after it collapsed – this notoriety eventually led to the type of scheme being named after him.^[6]