Earlier this month, as the Houston Astros faced the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series, the home plate umpire presided over the game with the FTX logo emblazoned across his chest. In July 2021, FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, paid Major League Baseball untold millions to be featured on the uniform of every umpire. FTX was the "
The last part of this points to why Trump was so successful in 2016. Too many Democrats, while not beholden to right wing billionaires like Koch and Murdock, are still part of the “money&fame=access” culture that has corrupted all of our political institutions. Citizens United is part of the problem, but failure to ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks is similarly bad for faith in government.
The mere existence of a cryptocurrency bubble suggests we learned the wrong lesson from the financial crisis of the 2000s, i.e. that what we need to fix the economy is new markets that are even less closely regulated. As with the last bubble burst, what will remain the same is who gets victimized by this failure, namely the end users who can't afford to eat their losses.
We've known for a long time the whole crypto 'industry' was a sham, populated by thieves and charlatans. It's good to keep talking about it, as I still think there's too many people who believe otherwise.
Cryptocurrency is speculative in an epic sense: it’s intangible, unregulated, unproven, decentralized, reliant on modern technology and wholly unclear. For some, that’s what makes crypto the exciting investment frontier. Others run as fast as possible in the opposite direction or dig their heels into an allegedly firm but different hill. Me … By nature I stay away from high risk investments and unproven investors. Cliches sometimes are right. When something seems too good to be true, it probably is. When someone starts brandishing money, they probably don’t have as much as they claim or they have no way to sustain it. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen or don’t go there in the first place.
Now do Brian Armstrong of Coinbase. That scam artist paid for a $161M home with CASH and, only a few months later, reneged on hiring 1100 people that had already signed employment contracts. If ever there were a villain, he fits the bill.
Great article, thank you. It's one of the best I've read explaining the black box of crypto investment and why the current implosion. Amazing how cavalier investors are with their funds, "I like how this guy sounds - lets invest millions and millions of dollars with no due diligence!" These guys are NOT geniuses.
No matter what friends told me, I always looked at crypto lilke some kind of Ponzi scheme. A scam where the first ones in & out are fine, but the last folks standing in line will be sorry! And like someone else said (paraphrasing) don't take financial/investment advise from a celebrity who can stand to lose far more than you!
This entire system is just one big scam at our collective expense. If any of this actually mattered to or seriously negatively impacted these capitalist criminals, it wouldn't be happening but they continue on with impunity and without real accountability.
"Sequoia Capital is right that its business, and its investors, will be fine. The same cannot be said for the retail investors who were convinced to entrust their assets with FTX based on the marketing campaigns financed with cash from Sequoia Capital and other venture capital firms. "
tl;dr: a bunch of corporate hustlers suckered some other corporate hustlers, with the willing assistance of b-list celebrities who read a bunch of lies from a script, pocketed their checks (I'm guessing their agents weren't dumb enough to take payment in crypto), and went on their merry way. Or, as we say at the The Church of the SubGenius, they separated some Pinks from their Green.
Of course, a lot of us have been saying that crypto was just three-card monte with electrons for a long time now.
Rule No. 1 for investing: Understand what the company does/sells and be able to explain it to your parents (see Enron). Works every time!
The last part of this points to why Trump was so successful in 2016. Too many Democrats, while not beholden to right wing billionaires like Koch and Murdock, are still part of the “money&fame=access” culture that has corrupted all of our political institutions. Citizens United is part of the problem, but failure to ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks is similarly bad for faith in government.
GREAT column, Judd. We NYers need to start our efforts to oust crypto-flogging Gillibrand from the Senate in 2025.
The mere existence of a cryptocurrency bubble suggests we learned the wrong lesson from the financial crisis of the 2000s, i.e. that what we need to fix the economy is new markets that are even less closely regulated. As with the last bubble burst, what will remain the same is who gets victimized by this failure, namely the end users who can't afford to eat their losses.
Another astounding report, Judd . . . not that I could explain any of the intricacies of cryptocurrency.
We've known for a long time the whole crypto 'industry' was a sham, populated by thieves and charlatans. It's good to keep talking about it, as I still think there's too many people who believe otherwise.
Cryptocurrency is speculative in an epic sense: it’s intangible, unregulated, unproven, decentralized, reliant on modern technology and wholly unclear. For some, that’s what makes crypto the exciting investment frontier. Others run as fast as possible in the opposite direction or dig their heels into an allegedly firm but different hill. Me … By nature I stay away from high risk investments and unproven investors. Cliches sometimes are right. When something seems too good to be true, it probably is. When someone starts brandishing money, they probably don’t have as much as they claim or they have no way to sustain it. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen or don’t go there in the first place.
Now do Brian Armstrong of Coinbase. That scam artist paid for a $161M home with CASH and, only a few months later, reneged on hiring 1100 people that had already signed employment contracts. If ever there were a villain, he fits the bill.
Great article, thank you. It's one of the best I've read explaining the black box of crypto investment and why the current implosion. Amazing how cavalier investors are with their funds, "I like how this guy sounds - lets invest millions and millions of dollars with no due diligence!" These guys are NOT geniuses.
As I've said for years and years, crypto is 1% utilisation and 99% speculation, and that's a bad sign.
No matter what friends told me, I always looked at crypto lilke some kind of Ponzi scheme. A scam where the first ones in & out are fine, but the last folks standing in line will be sorry! And like someone else said (paraphrasing) don't take financial/investment advise from a celebrity who can stand to lose far more than you!
This has echoes to me of the ENRON/Lehman Brothers collapses..........
I want to know if anyone will go to jail for this.
This entire system is just one big scam at our collective expense. If any of this actually mattered to or seriously negatively impacted these capitalist criminals, it wouldn't be happening but they continue on with impunity and without real accountability.
I knew to stay away when I noticed the huge number of random glowing cryptocurrency comments posted on totally unrelated Instagram accounts.
"Sequoia Capital is right that its business, and its investors, will be fine. The same cannot be said for the retail investors who were convinced to entrust their assets with FTX based on the marketing campaigns financed with cash from Sequoia Capital and other venture capital firms. "
tl;dr: a bunch of corporate hustlers suckered some other corporate hustlers, with the willing assistance of b-list celebrities who read a bunch of lies from a script, pocketed their checks (I'm guessing their agents weren't dumb enough to take payment in crypto), and went on their merry way. Or, as we say at the The Church of the SubGenius, they separated some Pinks from their Green.
Of course, a lot of us have been saying that crypto was just three-card monte with electrons for a long time now.