Did somebody mention celebrities? 
Did somebody mention celebrities?
Also, I hope the media will learn to be a bit more skeptical about claims of a company's value. Otherwise I could create a corporation with a trillion non public shares, sell one to a buddy for a dollar, then claim I own a trillion dollar company.
Or maybe I'll just skip to sending Forbes a press release without even doing that. Less trouble and harder for the IRS to tax.
MadScientistMatt said:Also, I hope the media will learn...
Good luck with that
Peabody said:MadScientistMatt said:Also, I hope the media will learn...
Good luck with that
I feel like perhaps if banks were to adjust the interest on their savings accounts to match the percentage they've increased the interest on their lending, fewer inexperienced savers would be taking stupid risks.
When we moved, the new bank offered me a whopping 1% rate on a savings account and 1.3% on a GIC.
They're high if they think I'm leaving my money with them for that sort of return.
Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:As for campaign contributions, contributions are limited to candidates.
Yes but it appears he was making scads of contributions on behalf of individual account holders without their knowledge to get around those limits.
ShawnG said:I feel like perhaps if banks were to adjust the interest on their savings accounts to match the percentage they've increased the interest on their lending, fewer inexperienced savers would be taking stupid risks.
When we moved, the new bank offered me a whopping 1% rate on a savings account and 1.3% on a GIC.
They're high if they think I'm leaving my money with them for that sort of return.
My ex-brother in law said the same thing back when savings accounts brought 10% interest and he lost $100,000 speculating in penny stocks.
That was 40 years ago.
The more things change.....
In reply to ShawnG :
That's been a part of the problem for awhile. The lack of a good savings rate on bonds etc. has led to riskier and riskier investment practices. So you get things like this and the other trendy investments out there that get the hype. I mean up till recently it was a fraction of a percent APR on savings.
In reply to Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) :
I'd love to get 10%
1.3% is losing money when you calculate the real rate. At least precious metals keep up with inflation.
No way I would play with penny stocks. Might as well hit a slot machine.
If you're buying stocks, just remember, everyone needs a phone, everyone needs food, electricity, gas, entertainment, etc. Owning a bit of the bank returns way more than keeping your money in the bank and if a company doesn't pay you at least every year for owning their stock, why bother?
RX Reven' said:Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:As for campaign contributions, contributions are limited to candidates.
Yes but it appears he was making scads of contributions on behalf of individual account holders without their knowledge to get around those limits.
Well, I suspect there will be immediate action on the part of the recipients to return those contributions. Maybe set up an account to at least partially compensate those who were defrauded. Right?
If the fraud charges are true, he's going to jail. Hopefully for a long time.
What is more infuriating is that many of his attempts to buy politicians are completely legal.
The complaint by CREW quotes an interview with Bankman-Fried, who is known as SBF, that suggests he donated up to $37 million or more to GOP-linked campaign efforts in a manner that avoided legally required public disclosure of those contributions.
Most of Bankman-Fried’s publicly disclosed campaign contributions, which totaled nearly $40 million in the 20222 election cycle, went toward Democrats, FEC records show.
RX Reven' said:Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:As for campaign contributions, contributions are limited to candidates.
Yes but it appears he was making scads of contributions on behalf of individual account holders without their knowledge to get around those limits.
If that's true then he's just stupid. There are other ways of donating a lot of money that are perfectly legal. They could nail him for that. Whether they do or not. Who knows.
He was set to testify before Congress the day...after...he got arrested. Coincidental timing?
If he goes to trial he'll still be called to the stand, but it will take longer for that to happen. And it won't be in front of Congress critters.
That's if he makes it to the stand.
I saw the list of charges brought against him. Basically amounts to a life sentence. Supposedly his sister or some other relative (besides his parents) were in on it with him.
The parents were whining somewhere I read that they were going to have to pay for his legal fees. Welp, I guess they'll have to sell that mansion in the Bahamas he bought them. Shucks.
Coinbase's (another crypto exchange) president laid into the little E36 M3head something fierce. Good for him. This isn't really an issue with crypto per se, that was just the mechanism that was used to pull the scam.
Anyone else think it's The Simulation winking at us that the E36 M3head's name was "Bankman Fried"?
Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:Call me cynical, but my first thought is "He's white-collar, they'll let him off light". Power protects their own.
That only works if you don't steal from rich people.
volvoclearinghouse said:Anyone else think it's The Simulation winking at us that the E36 M3head's name was "Bankman Fried"?
Almost as crazy as a con man named "Madoff" :)
volvoclearinghouse said:Coinbase's (another crypto exchange) president laid into the little E36 M3head something fierce. Good for him. This isn't really an issue with crypto per se, that was just the mechanism that was used to pull the scam.
Yeah... this get-rich-quick scam is going to make the Long Con a heck of a lot harder to pull off.
I never considered Crypto to be investing but rather speculating. If there is no thing behind the investment, it might as well be gambling. When my brother had his crypto wallet hacked and lost his password I felt bad... but I also just sorta said "welp".
...maybe I'm just a total rube but I think the stock market in general is barely better than a scam for the average consumer.
There have to be a lot of layers to this for so much money to be involved - and gone. I'm betting that he is just the face of a big money laundering scheme with government(s) involved. Send unaccounted billions to 'fight a war' and get your piece of it back through a chain of hard to trace transfers.
Cypto, NFTs, the Metaverse. It is a load of sh!te.
To quote Steve Zissou, "I don't understand but I can tell its bullE36 M3"
I admit I don't really understand the crypto market, but it seemed like some kid in his 20s and his girlfriend, who had zero qualifications, started a business and convinced people to give them billions of dollars and they lost it. Unlike banking and other financial entities, there was apparently no oversight or rules for these kids, and celebrities helped promote their obviously sketchy product, and the money is just gone and no one seems to know where it went.
All that money had to go somewhere. Somebody has it. The kid and his family don't. It could be the Winklevoss Brothers, various Russian Oligarchs, Putin himself, Chinese businessmen, Central American druglords? Somebody out there was collecting real currency in exchange for bitnothings.
pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) said:I admit I don't really understand the crypto market, but it seemed like some kid in his 20s and his girlfriend, who had zero qualifications, started a business and convinced people to give them billions of dollars and they lost it. Unlike banking and other financial entities, there was apparently no oversight or rules for these kids, and celebrities helped promote their obviously sketchy product, and the money is just gone and no one seems to know where it went.
I think the kid might have been the putz laundering the money. The people sitting on the money took everything and then they threw him under the bus to go to prison. I would be more interested in where the money went. He may not be as smart as he thinks he is.
Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:All that money had to go somewhere. Somebody has it. The kid and his family doesn't. It could be the Winklevoss Brothers, various Russian Oligarchs, Putin himself, Chinese businessmen, Central American druglords? Somebody out there was collecting real currency in exchange for bitnothings.
From what I have read at least one of the major frauds here came about because of Alameda Research. Apparently he had two companies, FTX and AR. FTX was sort of like a bank -- you deposit your crypto currency and they hold it for you. AR was a trading fund, they tried to make money by investing/speculating in crypto assets, and they had a line of credit open with FTX. In principle there's nothing wrong with those ideas, the problems came about because AR got special treatment from FTX and their line of credit was effectively unlimited. So AR got deeper and deeper into debt and FTX kept letting them have more and more money, all of which came from investor funds until it collapsed.
I'm speculating here, but it seems to fit a familiar pattern -- it started out legit (well, as "legit" as crypto gets) but when the investment side starts losing money he decides to "borrow" a little bit from another pile, probably with the full intention of putting it back once he makes up the losses. But that loses more so he needs to do it again and again, each time going riskier and riskier in order to try to make enough more to cover everything.
As for the exchange of real money for crypto, I suspect a lot of the losses here are "paper losses". aAs with any economic exchange, the market value of a stock/bond/bitcoin/whatever is driven by the supply and demand for that security. This is not a zero-sum game, if there are 1M instances of a particular security and the demand increases such that the price goes up by $1, then the total market value of all of those securities has increased by $1M, even without any injection of real money. That can happen in the opposite direction as well, of course.
So where did the money go? It disappeared into the market, spent on a lot of speculative trading that appears to be an honest transaction on the other side. It's not much different from the guy who owns the bank taking his customers' money and going to Vegas with it.
Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:93EXCivic said:I was wondering why they were arresting a small block Ford.
Thank you. No offense to the OP, but the way people throw around acronyms like everyone is supposed to know what the hell they mean these days gets pretty annoying. This is a berkeleying car board. "SBF" means "small block Ford". Period.
/rant
And there are a lot of large block Chevys out there.
Ford seems to have made an Outback Sport but I haven't seen one yet.
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