Castles Made of Sand Dollars: SBF, FTX, and other Three

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Kha, 8 Dis 2022 1:19 PG

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Castles Made of Sand Dollars: SBF, FTX, and other Three Letter Agents

How stablecoins and the unstable con, Sam Bankman-Fried, built a corrupt castle of sand and how it all washed out.

Kisah Bitcoin has certainly had its fair share of nefarious characters, criminal activity, bad haircuts and worse wardrobes, and yet our anti-hero du jour has seemed to outdo them all. Sam Bankman-Fried, better known by the three letter acronym SBF, burst onto the scene at the peak of the 2017 bubble, founding Alameda Research that September, just four years after graduating from an internship into a full-time position at one of the world’s largest market makers, Jane Street Capital.

SBF is the son of Stanford Law professor and founder of left-wing super PAC Mind The Gap, Barbara Fried, and Stanford professor Joseph Bankman, an expert on tax shelter laws and government regulation. At the start of 2018, SBF had struck digital gold while taking advantage of the arbitrage opportunity presenting itself between a higher demand for bitcoin in the Asian market, colloquially known as the “kimchi premium”. By the end of the year, and after amassing a considerable fortune from this high-volume bitcoin/dollar spread, he officially moved to Hong Kong, formally founding the derivatives exchange FTX in the following spring.

. Bitcoin network that SBF rode from rags to riches and back again was partially launched in direct response to the fiat money experiment rearing its ugly head in the subprime mortgage, real estate and eurodollar crises that culminated into what is now known as the Great Financial Crisis of 2007 to 2009.

“??EThe Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks%”

- Satoshi Nakamoto, January 3, 2009

This now infamous inscription in the genesis block made clear the inappropriate fractional reserve banking and predatory loan fiascos of our regulated banking industry was to be put to rest once and for all by this emergent monetary protocol; a completely transparent and decentralized ledger would de-incentivize fraud and prevent obfuscation of illicit activity. A new competitor to the dollar arose from the ashes of the meltdown, and with it, a new standard for financial fairness, complete with predictable issuance, controlled once and for all by the people for the people. Yet in any system made with good intentions, criminals like SBF and his bought-and-paid-for political and media allies manage to find a way to hurt innocent people for the advantage of an unknown few. Like most intriguing stories of fraudulent financial crimes, this one starts in the Bahamas, and ends with a tidal wave of asset liquidations and broken homes.

"Jika anda fikir Bahamas telah merosakkan sistem cukai global anda, anda mempunyai sistem cukai global yang agak dahsyat."

- Steven Dean, Summer 2020 [1]

Melancarkan Stablecoin, CBDC Race To The Bottom

Bahamas nampaknya tidak berbahaya, namun terdapat sejarah panjang pengelakan cukai AS, lengkap dengan pencuri yang menjalankan rum semasa era larangan. Meneruskan tradisi ini, pusat perbankan Caribbean, termasuk Bahamas dan Kepulauan Cayman, setakat Ogos 2022, merupakan pemegang sekuriti perbendaharaan asing keempat terbesar, di belakang hanya Jepun, China dan UK Sejurus selepas penubuhannya, FTX telah mengambil kesempatan sepenuhnya daripada era wang percuma yang bermula dengan kemalangan 2008 dan dikekalkan oleh kadar faedah rendah hingga sifar yang dibawa oleh pentadbiran Trump.

These rate cuts were started by the Trump-nominated and Biden-renominated Jerome Powell and were further exacerbated by both of their administrations’ COVID responses. An unprecedented pumping of all things dollar denominated occurred, with real estate, stock indexes, bitcoin and a whole bunch of unregistered securities known as altcoins reaching new highs across the board. In June 2019, one month after the founding of FTX, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced Libra, a digital currency based on a basket of international currencies; a novel take on stablecoins. This launched the stablecoin and CBDC race in earnest, and coincidentally enough, the Central Bank of the Bahamas became the first such institution to announce its own CBDC, the sand dollar, in October 2020. The sand dollar itself was pegged to the Bahamian dollar, which is itself pegged to the United States dollar, and thus with its government-sanctioned launch, the birth of the first central bank-issued stablecoin dollar came to be on the sandy beaches of SBF’s new home.

"What is the reserve currency of the crypto economy going to be? Right now it's unambiguously the USD. And interestingly it's USD whether or not you're looking at the American crypto economy."

- Sam Bankman-Fried, November 5, 2021

Walaupun kerajaan AS berpura-pura takut terhadap risiko sistemik pada masa itu, kerajaan China memahami projek Libra sebagai dolarisasi pintu belakang mata wang G7 yang dikhabarkan akan dimasukkan ke dalam bakulnya. Pengambilan Metaverse pada Plaza Accord 1985, pelan perbankan pusat yang diselaraskan ini akan menyebarkan pengguna rangkaian USD merentasi rangkaian terbesar internet, dipercepatkan oleh halaju tinggi yang tersedia dalam pembayaran digital berpusat dan diglobalkan oleh sifat tanpa sempadan pangkalan pengguna Facebook .

The digital yuan was trialed in April 2021 with great haste in reaction to this development, and by the Winter Olympics 2022, had launched for foreign attendees in Beijing. Not to be outdone by these new-look, same-shit fiat cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin made its own financial history when President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador took to the stage at Bitcoin 2021 to announce the legal tender aspirations of his small but dollarized nation. On March 9, 2022 President Joe Biden signed Executive Order #14067–”Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets”, which included aspirations for mitigation of financial risks in digital asset markets, as well as a clause stating that within 210 days, the attorney general, in consultation with the secretary of the treasury and the chairman of the Federal Reserve, must provide a formal proposal for a government-issued CBDC.

Pada ketika ini, Bitcoin financial system had been utterly and properly dollar-ified, with billions of dollars in liquidity of dollar-denominated trading pairs making up the lion’s share of market activity. The same can be said for the Ethereum network, which has seen its compliance-driven perversion by non-native assets taking the wheel from its token Ether, as stablecoin and other dollar derivatives now uphold the majority of economic weight of the system. Both stablecoin giants Circle, issuer of USDC, and Tether came out in support of the merge, further ossifying their stake in the now-nearly-70%-OFAC-compliant blockchain. [2] As of this article’s writing, over 15.5 million ether are currently staked without active withdrawals in the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain, worth nearly $18 billion dollars.[3] Fortunately for Bitcoin, the consensus weight of its system is not manipulated by user stake, and thus the Bitcoin market has been seemingly unaffected – negatively anyway – by this decade-long development. At least until scammer Do Kwon and his ponzi-scheme Luna wreaked havoc on investors at the start of May of 2022.

"[Crypto] jelas serius...anda mahu melakukannya dengan betul dalam ruang kawal selia."

- President Bill Clinton, April 27, 2022 (Allegedly) [4]

Penularan Merebak

Only a few weeks after SBF hosted a keynote with former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bill Clinton at the FTX-organized Crypto Bahamas conference, one of the largest-ever over-the-counter bitcoin purchases was announced by the LUNA team.

Terraform Labs and the non-profit Luna Foundation Guard, two entities headed by Do Kwon, had begun a campaign to purchase bitcoin as a reserve asset in the event that their algorithmic stablecoin, UST, deviated from its $1 peg. Shortly before their collapse, the plan had ballooned to the lofty goal of stacking over $10 billion in the hardest known digital commodity known to man. This purchase was financed with Three Arrows Capital, or 3AC, and was facilitated by cryptocurrency broker Genesis.

"Terra's remarkable growth has continuously reshaped crypto markets over the last two years”, said Joshua Lim, head of derivatives at Genesis. “Genesis is excited to be a liquidity partner to the Terra ecosystem, connecting it to a broader audience of institutional market participants."

Dengan bitcoin reserves of Luna Foundation Guard totalling 80,394 BTC, valued at over $3.1 billion on May 5, 2022, this purchase placed LFG among the top-10 bitcoin holders in the world. [5] But only for a moment, for while it might feel like a lifetime ago, what happened next should look awfully familiar; the peg was attacked, the recently-purchased bitcoin fortune was liquidated, Binance, led by CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ), aptly halted all trading on LUNA and UST pairs – with notable exceptions to their own stablecoin BUSD – and Kwon seemingly fled to outside of U.S. jurisdiction to Asia. [6]

Thus begins our first of many repeatable points of inquiry; where exactly did this bitcoin go? According to an audit released in November 2022, over 33,000 bitcoin were transferred to Binance on May 10, 2022, and sold along with other assets while failing to defend the peg. [7] The same day the nearly $1 billion dollars worth of bitcoin melanda Binance’s order books, bitcoin’s USD price broke below $30,000, falling from $40,000 just a week before.

Pada 13 Mei, SBF membeli 7.6% pegangan dalam Robinhood, platform dagangan yang berada di bawah pengawasan kerana menghentikan dagangan semasa kegagalan GameStop pada awal 2021. Bloomberg telah melaporkan bahawa kira-kira 40% daripada hasil Robinhood datang terus daripada menjual pesanan pelanggan kepada firma sedemikian sebagai Two Sigma Securities, dan Citadel Securities. [8] Citadel telah didenda $700,000 pada Julai 2020 untuk dagangan hadapan yang dibuat oleh pesanan pelanggan, dan pada bulan September tahun yang sama, Robinhood sendiri telah disoal oleh Suruhanjaya Sekuriti dan Bursa AS (SEC) kerana memaklumkan pelanggan secara tidak wajar tentang menjual dagangan saham kepada firma perdagangan frekuensi tinggi yang terkenal.

Sebelum ini pada Disember 2020, Robinhood telah bersetuju untuk membayar $65 juta untuk menyelesaikan pertuduhan salah nyata berulang kerana gagal mendedahkan resit pembayaran mereka daripada firma perdagangan tersebut. [9] Apabila Setiausaha Perbendaharaan yang baru dicalonkan Janet Yellen memberi taklimat kepada Presiden Joe Biden yang baru dilantik mengenai konflik kepentingan ini pada Februari 2021, dia sendiri terpaksa memperoleh penepian etika kerana telah menerima sekurang-kurangnya $700,000 yuran penceramah daripada Citadel LLC pada tahun sebelum. [10] SBF telah mendedahkan pembelian ini melalui borang Jadual 13-D yang difailkan dengan SEC, berharga $648.3 bilion dolar dan memberikannya 2.8% kuasa mengundi dalam struktur saham dwi-kelas mereka, di bawah entiti Emergent Fidelity Technologies; nama yang dikatakan dijana secara rawak. [11]

“Pada 13 Julai, Coinbase Exchange akan menyatukan buku pesanan USD dan USDC. Sebagai sebahagian daripada proses penyatuan, buku pesanan USDC akan digabungkan di bawah buku pesanan USD untuk mencipta pengalaman dagangan yang lebih baik dan lancar dengan kecairan yang lebih mendalam untuk USD dan USDC.”

- Coinbase Exchange Twitter, June 29, 2022 [12]

Circle, entiti di sebalik stablecoin USDC yang semakin digunakan, sebelum ini telah mengembangkan tawaran antarabangsa mereka dengan operasi anak syarikat yang berpangkalan di Bermuda dengan pengumuman yang dibuat pada 22 Julai 2019. [13] Entiti ini, difailkan di bawah Akta Perniagaan Aset Digital 2018 ( “DABA”) bermakna Circle ialah pengeluar stablecoin utama pertama yang menerima lesen DABA Kelas F (“Penuh”) yang meliputi pengendalian penjagaan, perkhidmatan pembayaran, pertukaran, perdagangan dan lebih banyak perkhidmatan kewangan mereka dalam bidang aset digital. Rakan kongsi perbankan Circle yang lain, Signet, Signature Bank dan Silvergate Capital telah membuat pinjaman USD kepada Celsius, Voyager, Block Fi, Three Arrows Capital dan Alameda Research. Pada masa artikel ini ditulis, semua telah memfailkan kebankrapan. Dua daripada sekutu perniagaan mereka yang lain, Galaxy Digital dan Genesis, juga telah melaporkan kerugian besar dalam kejatuhan FTX, dengan khabar angin kesan penularan selanjutnya akan datang. Coinbase, bursa yang didagangkan secara awam di bawah ticker $COIN, mengumumkan dalam surat pemegang saham Q2 2022 bahawa hampir satu pertiga daripada jumlah hasil diperoleh daripada faedah ke atas pegangan dalam denominasi USD, termasuk kedudukan USDC yang besar:

“Pendapatan faedah ialah $33 juta, naik 211% berbanding S1. Peningkatan ini didorong terutamanya oleh aktiviti USDC kami, serta kadar faedah yang lebih tinggi kerana kami menjana faedah ke atas dana penjagaan pelanggan fiat… pada akhir Q2, kami mempunyai $6.2 bilion dalam jumlah sumber $USD. Selain itu, kami mempunyai $428 juta aset kripto.” [14]

Apabila surat itu dikeluarkan pada penghujung Ogos 2022, faedah ke atas pegangan USDC selama 12 bulan adalah sehingga 4.7%, manakala hasil sebulan adalah genap 4%. Menjelang 16 November 2022, hasil USDC turun kepada 0% merentas semua rangka masa.[15]

“1) Binance converts USDC --> BUSD, and we see the change in supplies. Thus begins the Second Great Stablecoin War.”

- @SBF, October 23, 2022 [16]

Pada September 4, 2022, Binance announced that it would be auto-converting all USDC, USDP and TUSD, three major dollar stablecoins, into its self-issued BUSD, effective in just 25 days. [17] This led to continued concerns about Binance’s solvency with the preceding few months, especially July 2022, seeing the largest known outflows of bitcoin in the exchange’s history, eclipsing even March 2020’s black swan bottom.

Pada 11 Oktober, 216 hari selepas perintah eksekutif Biden dengan klausa 210 hari yang disebutkan di atas, BNY Mellon, bank kustodian terbesar di dunia dengan lebih $43 trilion dalam buku, dan secara kebetulan, penjaga rizab Circle yang menyokong USDC, mengumumkan pelancaran program penjagaan aset digital. [18] Terlibat dengan lebih daripada 20% daripada aset boleh labur dunia, bank yang diasaskan oleh setiausaha pertama perbendaharaan, Alexander Hamilton, juga disenaraikan sebagai rakan kongsi dalam perintis FedNow. [19]

Despite these institutional developments, a continued bear market weighed heavily on the now-plummeting bitcoin price. Paradoxically, more and more Bitcoin hash rate poured onto the network. These concurrent movements saw Bitcoin’s hash price plummet to an all-time low, spurring a massive liquidation of bitcoin liabilities off mining operators books. On October 26, Core Scientific, then the largest Bitcoin mining operation in the world, filed for bankruptcy with millions of dollars in debt liabilities, thousands of ASICs, and yet in their filings, held only 24 bitcoin total when the circus came to town. [20] Where exactly did all this bitcoin go? On that same day, barely two weeks before the FTX collapse, Binance saw its largest single day outflow, with 71,579 coins, totalling over $1.1 billion in dollar terms. [21] This pushed net outflows to nearly 95,000 coins from the world’s largest exchange since just that July. Again, where exactly did all this bitcoin go? The very next day, October 27, 2022, SBF appeared on The Big Whale and announced future plans for FTX to launch its very own stablecoin. [22]

Lebih Banyak Pasir Daripada Dolar

“CIA dan Mossad dan pedo elit menjalankan beberapa jenis pemerangkapan pemerdagangan seks cincin pemerasan keluar dari Puerto Rico dan pulau-pulau caribbean. Mereka akan membingkai saya dengan komputer riba yang ditanam oleh bekas gf saya yang merupakan seorang pengintip. Mereka akan menyeksa saya sampai mati.”

- Nikolai Muchgian, October 28, 2022 [23]

Pada 24 Oktober 2022, MakerDAO meluluskan cadangan komuniti untuk menjaga hampir $1.6 bilion USDC dengan Coinbase Prime. [24] Empat hari kemudian, Nikolai Muchigan, pengasas bersama MakerDAO dan pencipta Rai, syiling kandang DAI-fork, menulis tweet bahawa nyawanya berada dalam bahaya kerana cincin pemerasan pulau Caribbean, kononnya disokong oleh ejen perisikan Israel dan AS . Tiga hari kemudian, pada Halloween, pengekod berusia 29 tahun Muchigan ditemui mati, setelah lemas di laut di Pantai Condado di Puerto Rico. [25]

Two days later, on November 2, 2022, CoinDesk reporter Ian Allison released findings that over a third of all assets – around $5.8 billion of $14.6 billion – on the balance sheet of SBF’s Alameda Research was intrinsically, and soon to be fatally, linked to FTX’s exchange token FTT. A “bank” run commenced, and after three days of nearly $6 billion in withdrawals, FTX was left with literally one single bitcoin. Where exactly did all this bitcoin go? The next day in an interview with Fortune, Coinbase founder and CEO Brian Armstrong made note that USDC will become the de facto central bank digital currency in the U.S. [26]

“Penggubal dasar di AS akan menetapkan rangka kerja yang perlu diikuti supaya pasaran persendirian benar-benar akan mencipta penyelesaian, dan syiling USD telah meningkat dengan pesat… persekitaran kawal selia merupakan salah satu langkah besar yang akan kami lakukan. mempunyai dari segi mengembangkan industri ini dan mungkin juga mendapatkan harga untuk naik semula ke arah yang betul”

- Brian Armstrong, November 3, 2022

On November 6, CZ announced Binance would liquidate a remaining portion of FTT it had acquired from exiting FTX’s equity, having received around $2.1 billion in BUSD and FTT. Minutes after his announcement, Caroline Ellison, SBF’s partner and the CEO of Alameda Research, offered to purchase the tokens at $22 each, in an over-the-counter fashion. [27] By November 8, CZ and SBF had a phone call and seemingly came to a tentative deal for acquisition, reserving the right to back out of the deal at any time, while interestingly also leaving both U.S.-based proprietary exchanges, Binance.us and FTX.us, outside the scope of the deal.

“Things have come full circle, and FTX.com’s first, and last, investors are the same: we have come to an agreement on a strategic transaction with Binance for FTX.com (pending DD etc)”, SBF tweeted. [28]

Pada petang itu, FTX secara rasmi menggantung semua pengeluaran aset. Sebagai sebahagian daripada syarat pengambilalihan, SBF terpaksa membuka buku FTX dan menunjukkan bahagian bawah poketnya; melihat lebih banyak pasir daripada dolar, CZ menarik diri daripada perjanjian itu. Beberapa kenyataan penting telah dibuat dalam tempoh 48 jam atau lebih yang membawa kepada malapetaka mendadak ini, termasuk daripada Suruhanjaya Sekuriti dan Bursa AS sendiri yang sangat tenang.

“Liquidating our FTT is just post-exit risk management, learning from LUNA. We gave support before, but we won't pretend to make love after divorce. We are not against anyone. But we won't support people who lobby against other industry players behind their backs. Onwards.”

- CZ, November 6, 2022 [29]

Pada 7 November 2022, SEC secara rasminya menganggap LBRY, atau Library Coin, tawaran keselamatan tidak berdaftar, menetapkan duluan yang memusnahkan sepanjang pasaran mata wang kripto yang diperluaskan. [30] Di Mahkamah Daerah Amerika Syarikat untuk Daerah New Hampshire, memorandum dan perintah itu berbunyi, “Suruhanjaya Sekuriti dan Bursa (SEC) berpendapat bahawa LBRY, Inc. menawarkan dan menjual sekuriti tidak berdaftar yang melanggar Seksyen 5 Sekuriti Akta 1933", akta yang dikenali sebagai The Howey Test.

Disebabkan LBRY menempah pralombong hampir 400 juta token LBC, dan pengetahuan bahawa syarikat itu sehingga kini telah membelanjakan kira-kira separuh daripada LBC pralombongnya, SEC menentukan perusahaan biasa lengkap dengan kekurangan pendedahan dan pemfailan yang betul mengenainya. kini dikatakan menawarkan keselamatan melalui saluran yang diperlukan dalam SEC yang dipengerusikan Gary Gensler. Implikasi daripada pemfailan ini menimbulkan gelombang kejutan di seluruh industri token pra-lombong, termasuk bursa yang menyenaraikan token ini serta entiti di sebalik pengeluarannya. Secara mudahnya, keesokan harinya ialah 8 November, pilihan raya pertengahan penggal Amerika Syarikat, dengan keseimbangan senat dan dewan — dan mungkin laluan kawal selia industri aset digital — sekali lagi dipertaruhkan.

Mencari FTX di FEC.gov memaparkan 456 sumbangan kempen individu daripada SBF, Ketua Pegawai Eksekutif Ryan Salame, dan lain-lain. [31] Sumbangan Salame berjumlah lebih $14 juta kepada calon GOP, manakala "altruisme berkesan" SBF menyumbang lebih $20 juta dalam sumbangan kepada ahli politik DNC. Setelah menjadi penderma kedua utama untuk kempen Biden, pada masa pengiraan akhir dari malam pilihan raya dilancarkan, wang SBF akhirnya telah mengejar moralnya, dan dia mendapati dirinya hampir muflis sepenuhnya.

By November 9, the day after the elections, SBF had reportedly lost 94% of his net worth, down to $1 billion from more than $15 billion, leaving him with the largest single-day loss by a person according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. [32] Early in the morning of November 10, SBF took to Twitter to explain what happened, writing “I'm sorry. That's the biggest thing. I fucked up, and should have done better”, before making a specific note that “THIS IS ALL ABOUT FTX INTERNATIONAL, THE NON-US EXCHANGE. FTX US USERS ARE FINE!” [33]

Bab 11

“The administration [...] has consistently maintained that without proper oversight, cryptocurrencies risk harming everyday Americans…The most recent news further underscores these concerns and highlights why prudent regulation of cryptocurrencies is indeed needed.”

- White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, November 10, 2022 [34]

Pada hari kesebelas bulan kesebelas, FTX dan Alameda Research secara rasmi memfailkan perlindungan kebankrapan Bab 11, dan SBF meletak jawatan sebagai CEO. Di samping itu, 130 syarikat gabungan yang berkaitan atau dikaitkan dengan FTX juga memulakan prosiding sukarela di bawah Bab 11. [35] Air pasang telah surut, dan hampir semua orang yang terlibat ditangkap berenang telanjang, sebagai gelombang pasang surut yang hampir tidak berkesudahan pembubaran dalam denominasi dolar dibuat kerja pantas empayar Caribbean SBF.

Walaupun titisan pertama dolar CBDC mungkin telah bermula di Bahamas, monsun peraturan yang akan datang dan penularan Perang Stablecoin Besar Kedua masih belum berakhir. Dolar, setelah jatuh 10% daripada paras tertinggi DXY 35 tahun sejak September, mencari cara baharu untuk berinovasi dan terus memperdagangkan pasaran di seluruh dunia.

On November 15, just four days after the SBF tsunami crashed to shore, BNY Mellon, as well as a dozen or so other banking institutions, announced the start of a twelve-week digital dollar pilot program with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. [36] On the very same day, BlockFi announced plans for bankruptcy filings, only five months after taking a $250 million loan from FTX, and Circle announced users would now be able to settle payments by accepting Apple Pay. [37,38] With a significant 43% discount now showing on the highly-regulated Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, further community requests for proof of reserves are growing around Genesis and Grayscale, both owned by the Digital Currency Group, and even their custodian, Coinbase Custody. [39,40] As of this writing, these requests have so far been denied for security reasons.

Walaupun kelihatan sedang mengharungi gelombang revolusi aset digital yang berkembang pesat, mengumpulkan sokongan selebriti dan sekutu politik, ternyata SBF sedang lemas dalam hutang dan salah pengagihan modal di antara pujian yang lantang dan arus perdana. Kemudian pada bulan itu, pada 30 November, SBF ditetapkan untuk muncul secara peribadi di acara New York Times, yang ditaja oleh Accenture, bersama Setiausaha Yellen, Ketua Pegawai Eksekutif Meta Mark Zuckerberg, Presiden Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, Ketua Pegawai Eksekutif BlackRock Larry Fink, Ketua Pegawai Eksekutif TikTok Shou Chew, bekas Naib Presiden Michael Pence, Ketua Pegawai Eksekutif Amazon Andy Jassy, pengasas bersama Netflix dan Ketua Pegawai Eksekutif Reed Hastings, Datuk Bandar New York City Eric Adams, dan lain-lain; tiket untuk acara itu disenaraikan pada $2,499 setiap peserta.[41] Temu bual antara SBF dan Andrew Ross Sorkin telah distrim seperti yang diiklankan, walaupun dengan kedua-dua pihak merakam dari jauh.

Bitcoin tends to be a ballast of truth, bringing all sorts of ballooning fraud rushing to the surface. FTX and Alameda Research will take their place amongst the seemingly too-big-to-sink players that ended up doing just that. They will certainly not be the last. However the following weeks, months, and years play out, it is clear that SBF was but a small fish in an ocean-sized, dollarized pond. And as he quickly found out, there is always a bigger fish.

“Pada satu ketika saya mungkin mempunyai lebih banyak perkara untuk dikatakan tentang pasangan sparring tertentu, boleh dikatakan. Tetapi anda tahu, rumah kaca. Jadi buat masa ini, apa yang saya akan katakan ialah: bermain dengan baik; Anda telah menang." [42]

– Sam Bankman-Fried, 10 November 2022