The half-spent gift cards fall under something called "escheatment." It's the doctrine that abandoned property belongs to the state. It is usually run at the state level in the US.
Thank goodness for us all that Hunter Biden is working with his 'business partners' to create an online anonymous banking platform to 'help the unbanked'. So, don't worry everyone, Hunter and the boys are totally on it, and with impeccable timing I might add.
FTX had so many subsidiaries to make it easier to conceal the truth from its customers and its investors. It's difficult to figure out what's happening to the whole if it's been separated into many small parts.
The subsidiaries, especially FTX Property, might've also been an attempt to keep some assets away from the creditors and government lawyers when the day of reckoning came. My guess is Bankman-Fried isn't as dumb as some want to believe.
Ugh, throwing money around to curry favor with people in power is not altruism. I wish they would stop repeating the canard that funneling money to democrats is altruistic. It buys into their bogus self-conception of being heroes fighting an existential battle against evil and saving the world for democracy. How self-absorbed and deluded can they be?
Kinda like when BLM’s Patrice Cullors used donor money and bought a $6 million dollar house which BLM defended because the mansion was needed as ‘a space where Black creatives could come and create their art and influence things for the movement.’ Also it was to be used as ‘a safe house when people were feeling threatened or receiving death threats, other things.’
The big thread connecting all the leftists fads now is disconnection from reality, the substitution of make believe for the real world.
Replace biology with gender theory. Something that represents actual work and work product with pretend money.(Sorry libertarian crypto lovers it all comes from the same swamp)
Replace truth with words that sound good.
Replace actual military with just telling lies and hoping that works.(the brilliant contribution of the Biden admin to military science)
But reality is like a rubber band and when they distort it enough it will snap back and bite them.
"Mallbucks" are like the underlying commodity exchanged by FTX -- bitcoin, et al. They're both alternatives to the fiat currencies used by their governments. Currencies are useful so that we don't have to lead cattle wherever we go to trade for XBoxes or whatever goods we need. But bitcoin and other cryptos haven't really been used as currencies, only as speculation. So the FTX clients aren't merchants with real products and real cash flow, but speculators hoping for easy profits. Speculators are always ripe for scams, thinking they're too smart to be scammed. There's no reason for any sympathy for FTX's willing victims. They went to the School of Crypto to receive lessons from professor Sam, and they got it, good and hard. Maybe they'll learn to be more careful. Probably not.
Yes. This is no different than Bernie Madoff or the preacher on TV telling you to send him money that will "sprout and multiply" -- eventually enriching the donor as well.
I have a minor quibble at the end -- the reason that some people felt 'safe' putting their money onto FTX was the presence of regulators in the first place. The country has been waiting for 'legal' crypto exchanges for years, and SBF and his 'generosity' provided that air of legitimacy. (This is really no different than a plant in the con man's audience excitedly telling the crowd that the con man can perform miracles)
Money always is an abstract concept that perfectly demonstrates humans' ability to create a reality out of thin air. Money only has the meaning we give it. So is it any surprise that some people have taken it once step further and created another agreed-upon reality on top of the other agreed-upon reality? And then abused the people who bought into that second reality? Of course, what we see here is when two separate realities collide, which has lessons for our current culture and society writ large. Everyone must abide by a single agreed-upon reality for this thing to all work.
Having said all that, I want to thank you. I have probably a half dozen articles in my "saved" folder trying to sort through what FTX is all about, but you have written a highly accessible accounting that makes the whole thing much easier to understand.
Any money or resource not in your immediate control is no longer yours. Sure, you expect to get it back almost always do so - with interest or ROI or similar, but until that money and whatever more money it was used to create is in your pocket, real or metaphorical, it's not yours.
Oh sure, laws and contracts and indemnity and all the rest of phariséean legalese that just grows from year to year like mold.
I like how my ancestors struck bargains and made deals and compacts: at the Ting, in public, before witnesses not related to or indebted to any of the ones making the deal. Meaning, pre-christian Iron Age Sweden had a more fair and transparent system for contract law, deals, et cetera than any modern nation today.
Makes one wonder, how would it look today if it worked like that? No secrecy - all contracts public.
At the very least, all government contracts should be public. No reason to hide the details in the contracts of the millions of jabs we paid for, right?
Absolutely. I'm a very firm believer in that whatthe public pays for, the public owns. From that then flows that state (any level) and private shall be kept separate. Exactly what is best handled as public works or as private will vary from place to place and also over time. A very simple example which I think borders on universal is garbage collection:
First, since it is imperative for the environment (especially the water table) that waste is handled in a safe manner, that part might work best as a public venture - a municipal dump kitted out to handle most things, even if only for storing and then transiting to a major regional plant. And it's not expensive to run it once it's built (and with proper projections for growth up to a50 year horizon). So that lands on the tax side.
But the actual pick-up and transport to the dump? No need for that to be anything but private, be it private businesses or private citizens driving out to the dump themselves. Could even be a net environmental benefit in rural areas, not having diesel trucks roaming the land looking for full garbage cans.
Heck, make it an app and slap a QR-code on the garbage can, offer a subscription service to households: "10 pick-ups per year free, and only $10 for any more - every fifth one free too!".
I mean, where we live in the woods, we could handle all our garbage ourselves since anything organic becomes compost, paper and wood I burn in a barrel, and the restwe taketo the dump once or twice a year. So all we really need is the actual dump.
Mother, who lives in a town and really can't lug garbage around due to age, would instead benefit from the app system, or similar
But no. Thanks to neoliberal economic theory permeating all of Sweden's public works since the 1990s, the county pays a private company our taxmoney to haul garbage, and there's no opt-out clause... so we get the worst of both systems.
I find it hard to feel sorry for all the ‘clever’ dummies who bought into the scam. But anyway, you describe Fiat money in essence - the other scam run by all Governments, the difference being when there isn’t enough ‘real money’ to back the funny-money in circulation being used to bribe-for-votes, they just debauch the currency by printing more and let inflation and loss of purchase power do the rest. Counterfeiting is a crime, unless the Government does it. In olden times any citizen caught debauching the currency had his ears and nose cut off. We should bring that back.
Ironically this is why I'm so big on bitcoin to begin with. Money is too important to be left in the hands of bankers and politicians, who ALWAYS find excuses to print.
________ has no ceiling because the dollar has no floor.
Just about everything fits into that blank line (bananas, milk, cars), and I doubt bitcoin will be any different.
Found this today. Has some things I didn't know. Hope it informs, and doesn't waste your time:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/who-is-william-macaskill-the-oxford-philosopher-who-shaped-sam-bankman-fried-s-worldview/ar-AA14pSL7?
(I have found Coindesk to be informative.)
At the very least it goes into the 'read later' folder :) Thanks!
The half-spent gift cards fall under something called "escheatment." It's the doctrine that abandoned property belongs to the state. It is usually run at the state level in the US.
Exellent (part one) expose, more in depth than this one:
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3748655-ftx-the-enron-case-on-steroids-fueled-by-woke-capitalism/
Bonus: I have no time to give my thoughts. :-o
Edit: (But isn't it ironic that ever since The Hill got rid of its Leftist-hijacked, high school ad hominem comment section, its journalism has vastly improved. Another case in point: https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3750121-the-great-american-homewashing-is-happening-under-our-noses/)
Thank goodness for us all that Hunter Biden is working with his 'business partners' to create an online anonymous banking platform to 'help the unbanked'. So, don't worry everyone, Hunter and the boys are totally on it, and with impeccable timing I might add.
FTX had so many subsidiaries to make it easier to conceal the truth from its customers and its investors. It's difficult to figure out what's happening to the whole if it's been separated into many small parts.
The subsidiaries, especially FTX Property, might've also been an attempt to keep some assets away from the creditors and government lawyers when the day of reckoning came. My guess is Bankman-Fried isn't as dumb as some want to believe.
He's not dumb at all. He knew who to pay off and who to flatter.
Ugh, throwing money around to curry favor with people in power is not altruism. I wish they would stop repeating the canard that funneling money to democrats is altruistic. It buys into their bogus self-conception of being heroes fighting an existential battle against evil and saving the world for democracy. How self-absorbed and deluded can they be?
Exactly the case.
"When we take money, it's not like those greedy SOBs OVER THERE who take money!"
Kinda like when BLM’s Patrice Cullors used donor money and bought a $6 million dollar house which BLM defended because the mansion was needed as ‘a space where Black creatives could come and create their art and influence things for the movement.’ Also it was to be used as ‘a safe house when people were feeling threatened or receiving death threats, other things.’
Access to this 'safe house' was -- of course -- severely restricted.
The big thread connecting all the leftists fads now is disconnection from reality, the substitution of make believe for the real world.
Replace biology with gender theory. Something that represents actual work and work product with pretend money.(Sorry libertarian crypto lovers it all comes from the same swamp)
Replace truth with words that sound good.
Replace actual military with just telling lies and hoping that works.(the brilliant contribution of the Biden admin to military science)
But reality is like a rubber band and when they distort it enough it will snap back and bite them.
"Mallbucks" are like the underlying commodity exchanged by FTX -- bitcoin, et al. They're both alternatives to the fiat currencies used by their governments. Currencies are useful so that we don't have to lead cattle wherever we go to trade for XBoxes or whatever goods we need. But bitcoin and other cryptos haven't really been used as currencies, only as speculation. So the FTX clients aren't merchants with real products and real cash flow, but speculators hoping for easy profits. Speculators are always ripe for scams, thinking they're too smart to be scammed. There's no reason for any sympathy for FTX's willing victims. They went to the School of Crypto to receive lessons from professor Sam, and they got it, good and hard. Maybe they'll learn to be more careful. Probably not.
Yes. This is no different than Bernie Madoff or the preacher on TV telling you to send him money that will "sprout and multiply" -- eventually enriching the donor as well.
I have a minor quibble at the end -- the reason that some people felt 'safe' putting their money onto FTX was the presence of regulators in the first place. The country has been waiting for 'legal' crypto exchanges for years, and SBF and his 'generosity' provided that air of legitimacy. (This is really no different than a plant in the con man's audience excitedly telling the crowd that the con man can perform miracles)
Money always is an abstract concept that perfectly demonstrates humans' ability to create a reality out of thin air. Money only has the meaning we give it. So is it any surprise that some people have taken it once step further and created another agreed-upon reality on top of the other agreed-upon reality? And then abused the people who bought into that second reality? Of course, what we see here is when two separate realities collide, which has lessons for our current culture and society writ large. Everyone must abide by a single agreed-upon reality for this thing to all work.
Having said all that, I want to thank you. I have probably a half dozen articles in my "saved" folder trying to sort through what FTX is all about, but you have written a highly accessible accounting that makes the whole thing much easier to understand.
That was the goal :)
It is astonishing how easy it is to scam people. Were I an unethical sort, I would be a billionaire today.
"You ever notice that the worst of us have all the chips?
It really kinda take the sheen off people gettin' rich"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dgH1mlXDhA&list=PL_rR2s4GqBlaoriE6n0AvLGu_3e0_nHgr&index=11
This really drew me in. Good job! Looking forward to part 2.
So what you're saying is that I should invest in mall bucks?
What could go wrong?
No, no, no. Invest in WardBucks!
Sounds like Econ 101 to me, honestly.
Any money or resource not in your immediate control is no longer yours. Sure, you expect to get it back almost always do so - with interest or ROI or similar, but until that money and whatever more money it was used to create is in your pocket, real or metaphorical, it's not yours.
Oh sure, laws and contracts and indemnity and all the rest of phariséean legalese that just grows from year to year like mold.
I like how my ancestors struck bargains and made deals and compacts: at the Ting, in public, before witnesses not related to or indebted to any of the ones making the deal. Meaning, pre-christian Iron Age Sweden had a more fair and transparent system for contract law, deals, et cetera than any modern nation today.
Makes one wonder, how would it look today if it worked like that? No secrecy - all contracts public.
At the very least, all government contracts should be public. No reason to hide the details in the contracts of the millions of jabs we paid for, right?
Absolutely. I'm a very firm believer in that whatthe public pays for, the public owns. From that then flows that state (any level) and private shall be kept separate. Exactly what is best handled as public works or as private will vary from place to place and also over time. A very simple example which I think borders on universal is garbage collection:
First, since it is imperative for the environment (especially the water table) that waste is handled in a safe manner, that part might work best as a public venture - a municipal dump kitted out to handle most things, even if only for storing and then transiting to a major regional plant. And it's not expensive to run it once it's built (and with proper projections for growth up to a50 year horizon). So that lands on the tax side.
But the actual pick-up and transport to the dump? No need for that to be anything but private, be it private businesses or private citizens driving out to the dump themselves. Could even be a net environmental benefit in rural areas, not having diesel trucks roaming the land looking for full garbage cans.
Heck, make it an app and slap a QR-code on the garbage can, offer a subscription service to households: "10 pick-ups per year free, and only $10 for any more - every fifth one free too!".
I mean, where we live in the woods, we could handle all our garbage ourselves since anything organic becomes compost, paper and wood I burn in a barrel, and the restwe taketo the dump once or twice a year. So all we really need is the actual dump.
Mother, who lives in a town and really can't lug garbage around due to age, would instead benefit from the app system, or similar
But no. Thanks to neoliberal economic theory permeating all of Sweden's public works since the 1990s, the county pays a private company our taxmoney to haul garbage, and there's no opt-out clause... so we get the worst of both systems.
Ah, the 'public/private partnership' that somehow manages to be worse than either by itself.
I find it hard to feel sorry for all the ‘clever’ dummies who bought into the scam. But anyway, you describe Fiat money in essence - the other scam run by all Governments, the difference being when there isn’t enough ‘real money’ to back the funny-money in circulation being used to bribe-for-votes, they just debauch the currency by printing more and let inflation and loss of purchase power do the rest. Counterfeiting is a crime, unless the Government does it. In olden times any citizen caught debauching the currency had his ears and nose cut off. We should bring that back.
Ironically this is why I'm so big on bitcoin to begin with. Money is too important to be left in the hands of bankers and politicians, who ALWAYS find excuses to print.
________ has no ceiling because the dollar has no floor.
Just about everything fits into that blank line (bananas, milk, cars), and I doubt bitcoin will be any different.
good stuff. crypto is just the tip of the iceberg. it gets way uglier https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/a-grand-unified-theory-of-the-ftx
https://milkyeggs.com/?p=175
Thank you for introducing me to RTE. Excellent resource.
"Plus ça change .... "