They're well connected ivy-league kids with a politically and financially enriched background. They had rich folks who know other rich folks, and they were trying to do a capture of an emerging financial sector (that they then lobbied to regulate with the government).
It was a scam from the start that would turn crypto into political party money - forever.
On the contrary, they were being touted as a shining example of responsible crypto. They paid for a good reputation by donating to the “correct” causes and politicians.
Because they were pumping projects like XRP and XLM. They got rich dangling CBDC while knowing they never needed crypto to facilitate CBDC. Go look how many former fed and us govt adjacent ppl are in those institutions. The Crypto era was basically scammers from all areas of life finding their grift and attaching it to the bandwagon.
It's a strange read, because the article forgets to mention how crypto companies have influenced the politics in the USA with their money. The former FTX CEO claims he gave more than 1 b$ to Democrats, and the same amount to the Republicans (but anonymously). And that's just the legal donations, there were other activities, like invitations of influencial people to high-class event.
I don't assert that some political representatives were bought, of course it can't happen in such a democracy with high moral standings, but maybe these billions of dollars had a purpose?
I would be surprised if these people had full access to private Telegram chats and the most interesting thing they found was the crypto hype squads weren't always on the level. They didn't capture any other malfeasance from traditional businesses, governments, or just common criminals?
They are either industry saboteurs planted by big banking interests or they are complete imbeciles.
Same can be said about people who gave them money. It's just retarded. The whole business went completely against the core purpose of cryptocurrency. Anyone who invested in him or had their money sitting on his exchange (or any bankrupt exchange) deserved to lose it. It's scary to think what damage large amounts of capital could do in the hands of such idiots; society is better off now.
I'm surprised anyone is surprised. The selling point of crypto always seemed to be the ability to elude regulation, and so they did, and so the obvious temptations were tempting...
A vocal community has been calling out the blatant scams and corruption for years. The information was readily available to anyone doing even the most basic due diligence.
Is this just a big deal because crypto or purely because of the amount of money defrauded?
This whole thing is sort of bizarre to me. It just seems to me a lot of people are blaming crypto as part of this problem when it was basically a couple of people who let the popularity/success of what they created get to their head and began to cover up mistakes of mismanagement and poor decision making. Now they face the full brunt of the law for that as they well should.
In this case, it’s somewhat more fair: everyone involved was trying to find much higher returns than they could get in regulated financial markets so while it’s sad that they were defrauded it’s also part of the risk they voluntarily took on by using cryptocurrency.
I think these people have been useful idiots for crypto, and crypto grifters have fanned their flames and encouraged this cult of technology, but at this point they're an independent entity that will gladly latch onto any narrative that resonates them in the vacuum left behind crypto. They were never making money off this. If anything, they were the ones going broke in bait-and-switches.
And why were they all stock trading? "We are cool and do donuts in our chargers"... lol Like at least have etherscan up ? "Did you get that address?" XD I mean, if their aim is to help people get stolen funds , ok. But, that is a slippery slope. The whole idea of crypto is self sovereignty.
What was it "meant to be"? I'm completely ignorant of the politics but my assumption was that every cryptocoin post-bitcoin was a way for the creators/developrs/owners to make money.
Edit: Looked deeper into it. It's a really weird story, where it looks like they got hacked (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/russian-c...), he tried to fake financial data to make it look like they had money, and he got caught. In the end, he's making more money off of lying and the original investors are screwed. That's really lame.
It's also unfortunate, because a lot of the vibe I get from crypto people I run into (more online than in-person), is survival of the cleverest, and anything is cool if you can get away with it. People I knew outside of crypto who are into it (more on the eng-side), are pretty cool, though and usually don't only trust Bitcoin and see most alt-coins as scams.
It was a scam from the start that would turn crypto into political party money - forever.
It's actually a surprise they didn't succeed
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