Catching Up to FTX (eBook)

Lessons Learned in My Crusade Against Corruption, Fraud, and Bad Hair

Ben Armstrong (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
224 Seiten
Wiley (Verlag)
978-1-394-21033-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Discover the secret history of Alameda Research, FTX, and Sam Bankman-Fried

In Catching Up To FTX: Lessons Learned In My Crusade Against Corruption, Fraud, and Bad Hair, celebrated YouTuber and podcaster Ben Armstrong delivers the extraordinary and compelling story of the rise and fall of FTX and its well-known founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Tracking the history of crypto exchanges from the original Mt. Gox to FTX and Binance, the author describes the history of fraud that has characterized much of the industry.

Armstrong outlines the history of Alameda Research, FTX, and Sam Bankman-Fried, including a first-hand account of what he saw in the Bahamas when the indicted crypto titan was extradited from his home to face dozens of criminal and regulatory charges in the United States. He also discusses:

• The weird and contradictory motives that drove Sam Bankman-Fried's brazen actions
• A blow-by-blow account of the downfall of Alameda Research, FTX, and Sam Bankman-Fried
• The red flags that many ignored - and a few didn't - that preceded the collapse of FTX

The perfect book for anyone interested in crypto, finance, and corporate scandal, Catching Up To FTX will earn a spot on the bookshelves of everyone looking for an intense rollercoaster of a true story.

Inhalt

Acknowledgments ix

About the Author xi

Introduction 1

1 "Unhinged": October 20, 2022 5

2 What's Beef? 13

3 House of Cards 19

4 Finance Needs an Upgrade 27

5 What's at Stake? 35

6 Rugs and Revolutions: A History of Crypto Exchanges 43

7 SBF: The Man behind the Myth 53

8 FTX: A Myth Born in a Bull Market 61

9 Bear Market 2022 69

10 Contagion 75

11 Scam Bankman Fried 83

12 Whistleblowers 89

13 The Bankless Debates 97

14 A Rival Goes in for the Kill 103

15 "1) What": The Fall of FTX 109

16 Hip-Hop Politics 115

17 My Trip to the Bahamas 121

18 Side Quests 133

19 High Stakes 141

20 Justice? 151

21 The Final Showdown 159

22 Regulators, Mount Up! 169

Epilogue: Catching Up with the Bitsquad 179

Appendix: Timeline of Events 181

Glossary of Terms 183

Notes 187

Index 195

Textauszug

CHAPTER 2
What's Beef?

After that rant on my show, “Bitboy” was a trending term on Twitter for close to a week. That clip was shared and memed millions of times, and there were even a few of those autotune parody songs floating around out there too; it was a whole thing. Usually I would be thrilled to be getting so much attention, but something felt off about this reaction. I couldn't help but wonder why it wasn't Sam's name on the trending page every morning when I woke up? To be fair, his proposal was a hot topic in the industry, and a ton of people disagreed with him, but they were still going relatively easy on him and willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because he looked good on paper and said all the right things. They weren't so charitable when it came to me though. My passion about the blatant corruption that I was seeing right in front of me was seen as a “bad look” for crypto, but everyone thought that SBF was a great representative for the industry. It was one of those classic situations where someone is protesting and everyone wants to analyze their protest instead of talking about the inconvenient issue that they are attempting to raise awareness about in the first place. It doesn't matter which side of the political aisle you're on, this happens across the board to anyone who deviates from the mainstream narrative. The hordes of anonymous accounts with anime profile pictures on Crypto Twitter (CT) seemed convinced that me getting angry on‐air was a bigger transgression than SBF working with politicians to centralize the industry. Dealing with trolls is unfortunately a part of my job and sometimes it can get ugly. I have pretty thick skin, but dealing with so much negativity can be exhausting, especially when you see so many people believing things about you that aren't true. It gets even more frustrating when you see people that you're sure are scammers getting treated with no scrutiny at all. This was the kind of situation that I was dealing with when my beef with Sam Bankman‐Fried began.

Influencer Problems

This wasn't the first time I had been the target of mob harassment online. It's actually become a daily thing since my channel took off. Other influencers warned me when I started to blow up that there would be a target on my back if I ever got to the top, and they were definitely right. The trolling and harassment was relentless. I have even had a SWAT team sent to my house on a fake call after I refused an extortion attempt from one of these trolls. FTX was not my first rodeo and it won't be my last. It was a really tough time for us as a team and as a business though. The bear market had crushed our portfolio, but to make matters worse, we fell victim to the “Crypto Contagion” that took over crypto from the summer to fall of 2022. Exchange after exchange was revealed to be insolvent. We will get much more into this later in the book, and in greater detail in Chapter 10.

Our particular version of the contagion, included losing about $3 million on Celsius. Still locked up to this exact moment. That $3‐million portfolio was full of all types of altcoins that had been crushed. That $3 million we had at the time of Celsius freezing withdrawals was valued at about $15 million at the peak of the 2020–2021 crypto bull run. But still, that $3 million was our cushion that we used to pay our 70 employees, our utilities, and our expenses. That $3 million alleviated a lot of pressure. When it was frozen, we began scrambling. The worst part was the pressure. I never thought I would have to face financial pressure again after the euphoria we had experienced only one year earlier.

We felt the pressure now… and it kept turning up. We knew after Celsius that the writing was on the wall… we had to do the one thing we did not want to do, which was to begin laying off employees and scaling back. It was devastating. We had done everything right to avoid this situation, but we fell victim to the crypto adage “Not Your Keys, Not Your Crypto.” This phrase means that when you trust third‐party centralized exchanges, you are leaving yourself very vulnerable. But thinking of an exchange as big as Celsius or FTX going down seemed absolutely laughable. And, yet, the impossible occurred.

In addition to the financial pressure, other issues were mounting up. In the span of only a few months, I faced the largest internet backlash I ever received. We lost 15,000 subscribers during the onslaught of attacks over a lawsuit I had filed. The internet did its thing and picked a side… and it wasn't mine. There was way more to the story than the internet knew, but no keyboard warrior ever needed truth or information to attack someone.

It was absolutely unbearable for weeks. And when I say unbearable, I don't mean for me. It was not so much me who was having a hard time. It was my employees. It was my business partner TJ. It was my family. They were starting to get beaten down. Every time they picked up their phones to peruse social media, there I was, trending for all the wrong reasons. Emotions in the office were at all‐time highs, which obviously led to a lot of disagreements. To my team, it appeared as if things were completely falling apart in every sense of the word. To me, this was a temporary season that while, no doubt, was hard, would also end as soon as trolls spotted a new target. Everyone who worked for me, including people I considered to be best friends, thought I had lost control of my own business that I built. They could only see what was right in front of them and couldn't shake it. I lost one of my best friends during this rough period due to the elevated pressure and emotions. While some of the conflict was able to be smoothed over, some things were said that could not be taken back. Not only were we about to have to lay off several employees, I also watched one of my best friends leave during this time.

Deep down, as much as it seemed things were in shambles, I knew all of this was part of the process. I planted and watered the seeds of my business in 2018–2019. In 2020, I began growing those seeds. By the end of 2020, I was a millionaire and began harvesting everything I planted years beforehand. What goes up, must go down. Crypto, like everything else in life, runs in cycles. And the cycle for my business as a YouTuber was completed. I found myself back at the beginning again. Ready to build again. I just didn't share everyone else's concerns and I know that was frustrating for people. But one thing was for sure, my Alaskan trip to combo hunt moose and grizzly bear could not have been better timed. Two weeks with no internet in the woods. Time to think. Time to slow down. Time to recalibrate.

When I left for Alaska on September 4, 2022, the only thing I could think about was how my team would make it without even having contact with me for two weeks during a time of turbulence. In the woods in Alaska, I spent a lot of time evaluating how I was going to change things when I got back. But as is often the case, I was focused on how I could control things. The trip was amazing, but it was what occurred on the way home that finally swung the pendulum.

When I arrived back in Seattle for a layover on my way home to Atlanta, my phone started blowing up. And I could not have been prepared for the strange order of events that would occur in order to put me, the hated and controversial influencer, at the exact right place at the exact right time to lead the charge in revealing the largest fraud in human history. I was personally handed a god‐given mission that day. Every player in this story, well, they were where they should have been. I was the one outlier. The person who had absolutely no reason to have been in the middle of this drama. I had never even used FTX. And, yet, there I was.

The Betrayal

Ryan, my policy advisor, called me and explained that there had been some movement on the funding of my bill while I was gone. FTX had agreed to take it to their policy department… which I was already aware of. However, what I was told next rattled me to the core for so many reasons. We had two main backers of our Digital Assets Commission Bill: one Republican and one Democrat. On the Republican side, we had the founder of the Blockchain caucus and former President Trump Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. On the Democratic side, we had former U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer. Boxer tried to pull some strings for us and managed to get in direct contact with the FTX Head of Policy Mark Wetjen. He was a former CFTC Commissioner (who would later delete all of his social media accounts after FTX went down—how convenient). When Barbara Boxer calls from California, you answer. So Wetjen talked to Boxer. Boxer then detailed the entire phone conversation and passed the information back to the lobbying company we were working with.

There were two things she said that made me extremely angry at FTX and Sam. First, they tried to steal her support from me. FTX asked her to leave my team and come to the FTX policy team with her support. One of the traits I value the most is loyalty. So the fact they tried to steal her from me made me livid. Thankfully, Boxer is extremely loyal and was not swayed. Nonetheless, for someone to take my bill, sit on it, attempt to sabotage it, and then try to steal my supporter made me see red. But the second issue was even more egregious. Wetjen revealed to Boxer what their true plans were: to create regulation...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 19.12.2023
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Finanzierung
• Schlagworte: alameda collapse • alameda research • crypto exchange scandal • Finance & Investments • Finanz- u. Anlagewesen • ftx collapse • ftx corruption • ftx cryptocurrency exchange • ftx crypto exchange • FTX Exchange • ftx greed • ftx scandal • Geld u. Bankwesen • Kryptowährung • Money & Banking • sam bankman-fried • SBF • sbf charges • sbf embezzlement
• ISBN-10: 1-394-21033-7 / 1394210337
• ISBN-13: 978-1-394-21033-6 / 9781394210336