Are we allowed to talk about Bitcoin?

Sam Bankman-Fried Faces Possible Trip to US for Questioning Over FTX Crypto Collapse

Extradition? Nah!!!! We're all friends, so why don't we take a nice "trip" to the U.S.?

 

Genesis Trading suspends redemptions and new loans in wake of FTX

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/16/gen...withdrawals-in-aftermath-of-ftx-collapse.html

There is contagion.

 

When you pay a bill electronically or send someone money via Venmo, or use a credit card, etc. ... the dollars themselves are not digital. The currency underlying the transactions you make was not created by Paypal or Citibank or Mastercard. So all transactions are settling in dollars, whose issuance is controlled by the Federal Reserve (which controls the supply of dollars) and the Treasury which physically issues those dollars.

A digital dollar would make the issuance and usage of those dollars entirely digital. Everything would exist in a digital payment / transfer ledger that the government controls. Depending on where they go with it, they could put private commercial banks out of business. ... or they could use those commercial banks as their tool. The issuance of new currency will remain very centralized and under their control, but if it is digital (and this should be what creates red flags for people, but won't), it will allow them to control that currency beyond just its issuance. The benefits they will try to sell are are that physical currency is expensive to make and handle and electronic transfers can be slow because of the middlemen and differing private systems out there. But really what they want is full control over the currency so they can see what you are doing with it, and so that they will ultimately be able to regulate a lot more and control our behaviors. It differs from the cryptocurrencies due to the "crypto" part. Cryptography creates a secure way to decentralize control over a token or currency, so that no one entity has control over the currency itself. Governments see cryptocurrencies as a threat, so they want to try to impose something that looks similar -- it's digital, easy to use (poor people who don't bank due to fees might benefit, for example) -- but that doesn't have the properties they are threatened by.

 

This is the guy who oversaw Enron's bankruptcy!

John Ray, the new CEO of FTX in a filing a few minutes ago: "Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented."

New CEO Says FTX Suffered 'Complete Failure of Corporate Controls'

 

Oh, and for the pure entertainment factor, CZ, the Binance CEO, was on CNBC about an hour ago. He didn't exactly inspire confidence in the whole industry surrounding crypto trading. Noriel Roubini (who came up during the interview) has described CZ as one of the "seven C's of crypto": concealed, corrupt, crooks, criminals, con men and carnival barkers.