Tema: PPCC-Pisitófilos Creditófagos-Otoño 2022

[sudden and sharp]

Izzy Kaminska sobre las cripto...

https://twitter.com/izakaminska/status/1591330379746656256

I hope this is the point people realise that 99.9% of crypto and blockchain are total utter bullshit that do absolutely nothing technologically to reduce the need for trust in financial intermediaries. After all this becomes self-evident the only residue will be a CBDC.

CBDC: Monedas digitales de los bancos centrales.

Es el plan. Lo comentábamos aquí hace años. Destruir todo el sistema para implantar las CBDC programables (y programadas) y esclavizar definitivamente a la humanidad con ellas. Antes se dieron pasos como el pasaporte -mundial- Covid, y ahora nos van a colocar una "huella de carbono" individual.

Cada día pisan más el acelerador. No lo hacen por nuestro bien; no son los buenos.

¿Quién te va a obligar a usar nada de eso?

¿Quién te va a obligar a inyectarte un medicamento para poder ir a un bar? Eso no tiene ningún sentido 

¿Nadie?

[el malo]

Izzy Kaminska sobre las cripto...

https://twitter.com/izakaminska/status/1591330379746656256

I hope this is the point people realise that 99.9% of crypto and blockchain are total utter bullshit that do absolutely nothing technologically to reduce the need for trust in financial intermediaries. After all this becomes self-evident the only residue will be a CBDC.

CBDC: Monedas digitales de los bancos centrales.

Es el plan. Lo comentábamos aquí hace años. Destruir todo el sistema para implantar las CBDC programables (y programadas) y esclavizar definitivamente a la humanidad con ellas. Antes se dieron pasos como el pasaporte -mundial- Covid, y ahora nos van a colocar una "huella de carbono" individual.

Cada día pisan más el acelerador. No lo hacen por nuestro bien; no son los buenos.

¿Quién te va a obligar a usar nada de eso?

¿Quién te va a obligar a inyectarte un medicamento para poder ir a un bar? Eso no tiene ningún sentido 

¿Nadie?

Y sin embargo mucha gente se lo inyectó para poder salir, viajar, etc.

¿Sabes cómo van a convencer a la gente para que lo use? De la misma manera que se les convenció que el medicamento era obligatorio.

Yo tuve una discusión bastante acalorada en 2021 en Madrid con un conocido que me insistía que no se podía viajar y que los aeropuertos estaban cerrados, que lo "habían dicho en Telecinco" (les prometo que no trolleo, me lo dijo así), hasta que lo le dije "vale.. ¿dónde vivo?"
"En Londres"
"¿Dónde estoy ahora mismo?"
"En Madrid"
"Si los aeropuertos están cerrados.. ¿Cómo he llegado?"
...
...
...
"No sé, pero en Telecinco han dicho que las fronteras están cerradas. Que tú hayas volado es otra cosa"

 

[sudden and sharp]

Sí, y te digo más... tampoco pueden cerrar los bares:








 

[Derby]

https://twitter.com/conorsen/status/1591399797478809601

Seems way worse than Enron and Madoff and Theranos tbh:

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/67b1899f-4b1f-4676-b264-0d19e205d64e

How Sam Bankman-Fried seduced blue-chip investors

Their support helped lend FTX credibility before its sudden collapse this week

It was a surprise phone call from an old university professor that launched private equity investor Orlando Bravo into becoming one of the most prominent and vocal supporters of Sam Bankman-Fried and his crypto trading firm FTX.

The call was from Joseph Bankman, a professor of law and business at Stanford University who had taught Bravo in the late 1990s. At the time, in mid-2021, Bravo’s $122bn private equity firm Thoma Bravo was opening an office in Miami, the city where Bankman’s son Sam had just paid $135mn for a 19-year naming rights contract with the local NBA team.

Bankman told Bravo his son was looking for guidance on philanthropic projects in Miami to further his “effective altruism” mission. Only after they spoke did Bravo learn that Bankman-Fried was also in the process of raising a $900mn Series B funding round at a $18bn valuation, with a who’s who of investors including Sequoia Capital, BlackRock and SoftBank. He quickly called Bankman back seeking an introduction and a way into the deal, which was progressing quickly and would be the largest capital raising in crypto exchange history.

When Bravo and a partner Tre Sayle began due diligence for the funding round, they were taken aback by FTX’s numbers. The two-year-old start-up led by a relatively small staff of young traders was on course to earn over $200mn in operating profit for the year, unprecedented margins for an early-stage growth company that would normally be losing money. Bravo was blown away. Thoma Bravo invested more than $125mn in the round in June 2021, becoming one of FTX’s largest backers.

Thoma Bravo is just one of the blue-chip investors, including Singapore state-owned fund Temasek, Tiger Global and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, whose support helped lend Bankman-Fried’s business empire credibility before its sudden collapse this week, driven by concerns about its links with his Alameda Research proprietary trading group.

Since its launch in 2019, FTX has raised $1.8bn and was most recently valued at $32bn. Among its shareholders are some of the world’s most-respected hedge fund managers, including Brevan Howard Asset Management’s Alan Howard, Millennium Management’s Izzy Englander and the family of Paul Tudor Jones.

Now with FTX having filed for bankruptcy, their investments look to be a complete wipeout. Investors including Sequoia, SoftBank and Paradigm, which was co-founded by former Sequoia partner Matt Huang, have marked their holdings in the company to zero, vaporising hundreds of millions of dollars in value.

These investors will be left facing tough questions from their own clients about how they got it so wrong, why they did not demand seats on FTX’s board, and whether they ever really understood how the business was making money.

It was not meant to end this way. Investors said that FTX’s eccentric 30-year-old founder, who presented himself as the acceptable face of a wild west industry, was able to capitalise on a desire by people from more traditional corners of finance to invest in cryptocurrencies and also their fear of missing out on the next big thing.

California-based Sequoia, an early backer of Google, PayPal and WhatsApp, invested $210mn in FTX, and emerged as one of Bankman-Fried’s biggest cheerleaders.

In September it published a lengthy and flattering piece about the FTX boss, which said the firm had been wooed by his “vision about the future of money itself — with a total addressable market of every person on the entire planet”. His “intellect is as awesome as it is intimidating”, gushed the profile, which was deleted this week when Sequoia wrote its investment in FTX down to zero.

“We were seduced,” said a top investor that piled large sums into FTX. With hindsight, he thinks that when his firm questioned Bankman-Fried before investing, it “should have focused more” on details about the crypto exchange’s governance and financial controls — rather than its founder’s snowballing celebrity profile. The investor’s due diligence on FTX, he added, was only as good as the questions its executives asked the young entrepreneur, whose company was at the time being frantically courted by the world’s largest funds and banks.

The investor said he had some reservations during initial calls with Bankman-Fried, including the way the entrepreneur “comported himself” and a sense that he believed everyone else in the financial world “were idiots”. 

“I wouldn’t have touched him,” he added, but it was not his ultimate decision.

One venture capitalist who invested in FTX said that due diligence did not reveal the high levels of leverage in the business — investors were only shown the balance sheet at quarter end and the leverage was not on it.

Mainstream asset managers have been scrambling to get exposure to cryptocurrencies, to woo customers interested in the sector. Such is the pressure that a senior executive at a major financial institution said his firm even briefly debated buying FTX as part of an internal push to “go bigger on crypto”. But the idea was discarded because of the “highly speculative nature of the business model and the underlying assets”, he added.

It is normal practice in venture capital for investors to ask for a seat on a portfolio company’s board, but at FTX, none of the investors had board representation.

After the rapid rounds of dealmaking, FTX’s only board directors were Bankman-Fried, FTX executive Jonathan Cheesman, who has subsequently left, and a single outside director, an attorney based in its corporate home of Antigua and Barbuda.

Orlando Bravo would become one of Bankman-Fried’s most vocal backers on Wall Street and a champion of cryptocurrencies and FTX. He believed the company had the potential to supplant some of the world’s biggest banks, a future championed by its founder. Bankman-Fried even declared last year that if FTX became the biggest crypto exchange, buying Goldman Sachs “is not out of the question at all”.

Multicoin Capital, a crypto hedge fund, told its investors this week its exposures were numerous. Its funds had invested in FTX and the firm also used the company to trade crypto. Multicoin was able to pull a quarter of its overall assets from FTX before withdrawals were suspended, but it told investors this week that about 10 per cent of the fund’s assets remained stuck.

The firm was also an active trader of the FTT token that appears to have been part of FTX’s demise. It sold the FTT tokens during a plunge this week, but the fund was not able to withdraw the assets. Multicoin said that Solana, a cryptocurrency affiliated with Bankman-Fried, was its single largest investment position. The value of the token, it said, had plunged as Bankman-Fried sold tokens to try to support his trading empire.

Solana has lost 45 per cent of its value over the past week.

“[All] of Multicoin’s operating entities and funds and employees are fine,” co-founder Kyle Samani told the Financial Times.

Even when a string of cryptocurrency exchange failures this year led to increasing pessimism on the industry, many investors maintained their optimism on FTX.

In September, Bravo said he was pulling back the firm from new crypto investments amid concerns about the industry’s business practices — but maintained high expectations for FTX.

He told an investment conference in Cannes the company was going to be “a big winner”, and he described Bankman-Fried as “one of the best entrepreneurs” he had come across.

[sudden and sharp]

¿Quién podía imaginárselo...?   

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/f05fe9f8-ca0a-48d5-8ef2-7a4d813af558

FTX held less than $1bn in liquid assets against $9bn in liabilities

Vast gap highlights the dire state of Sam Bankman-Fried’s exchange before it collapsed into bankruptcy

Sam Bankman-Fried’s main international FTX exchange held just $900mn in easily sellable assets against $9bn of liabilities the day before it collapsed into bankruptcy, according to investment materials seen by the Financial Times.

The largest portion of those liquid assets listed on a FTX international balance sheet dated Thursday was $470mn of Robinhood shares owned by a Bankman-Fried vehicle not listed in Friday’s bankruptcy filing, which included 134 corporate entities.

The document, shared with prospective investors before the bankruptcy, provides a detailed picture of the financial hole in the FTX crypto empire and suggests customers of FTX international may face steep losses on cash and crypto assets they held on the exchange.

FTX’s collapse has delivered a powerful blow to a crypto industry already reeling from a string of corporate failures this year.

Bankman-Fried had been a leading figure in the sector and had presented himself as an entrepreneur keen to bring the wild west crypto market in line with mainstream regulation. The 30-year-old had secured backing from blue-chip investors, became a major donor to the US Democratic party and plastered his FTX exchange’s logo on the Miami Heat arena during his meteoric rise following the founding of his trading venue in 2019.

Bankman-Fried on Friday put his $32bn international exchange, along with FTX US and his trading firm Alameda Research, into bankruptcy proceedings in federal court in Delaware.

John J Ray, the veteran insolvency practitioner brought in to run the bankruptcy as FTX chief executive, said on Friday that the cryptocurrency group “has valuable assets” and that the bankruptcy proceedings would allow the company to “assess the situation and . . . maximise recoveries for stakeholders”.

The process has already run into issues after barely 24 hours, incorrectly listing entities FTX did not own in its initial filing and suffering an apparent hack on Friday night.

FTX declined to comment.(...)

In all, the spreadsheet says FTX Trading’s assets were $900mn of “liquid” assets, $5.5bn of “less liquid” assets consisting of crypto tokens, and $3.2bn of illiquid private equity investments. There is also an obscure $7mn holding called “TRUMPLOSE”. There are no bitcoin assets listed, despite bitcoin liabilities of $1.4bn.

Other documents provided to investors say that FTX US, Bankman-Fried’s onshore exchange, held $115mn of cash. Of that sum, $48mn was listed as corresponding to customer US dollar balances of $60mn.

[sudden and sharp]

Daily Crunch: Sequoia Capital writes off its $210M investment in crypto exchange FTX
https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/10/daily-crunch-sequoia-capital-writes-off-its-210m-investment-in-crypto-exchange-ftx/

Another domino falls: It was probably already a fiasco, but Binance deciding to not buy FTX led Sequoia Capital to claim its minority stake in FTX as nothing more than some unrealized gains, Connie reports. Investor letter and everything.



[ Sequoia... Sequoia... Porque no se me dan bien las rimas...    ]

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/1a894d4c-4c3d-49e5-86c2-6e1809fd7b9b

Companies rush to raise cash as stocks steady and inflation eases

Issuance of bonds tripled this week and share sales boomed on improving market conditions

Companies in the US are rushing to raise cash as a steadier stock market and softer inflation data open a rare window to sell bonds and shares.

Bond markets enjoyed their busiest week in months, with about $2bn of shares sold in secondary deals — the busiest since a brief boom following the US Labor Day holiday on September 5.

Bankers and investors predicted the burst of activity would continue as companies and shareholders took advantage of the better mood, with equity sales by listed companies and large secondary sales by shareholders also up this week.

Issuance of both high-grade and junk-rated bonds more than tripled from the previous week to $45bn and $6bn, respectively, making it the busiest week for riskier bond deals since June. Oracle and General Electric Healthcare led the charge among the more highly rated borrowers, raising $7bn and $8.3bn apiece in deals that drew strong demand.

“Everyone that wanted to come to market came to market this week,” said Andy Brenner, head of international fixed income at NatAlliance.

Senior bankers said many companies had been preparing so they could move quickly if conditions improved as there are unlikely to be many more opportunities before the end of the year with holidays looming.

“We’ve been advising issuers and sellers to remain nimble,” said David Ludwig, head of equity capital markets at Goldman Sachs. “We are currently in one of those receptive periods, and those that have been prepared to move quickly achieved their financing objectives at more efficient terms.”

Interest in the corporate market was so heavy that it dented appetite for Wednesday’s $35bn auction for benchmark 10-year Treasuries and left primary dealers, whose role is to buy up the debt not taken by other investors, with their largest holding in over a year.

Participants were encouraged by the market reaction on Thursday to softer inflation data. Stocks surged by the most in more than two years while volatility measures dropped to levels last seen in August on hopes the US Federal Reserve could slow the pace of future interest rate rises.

Traders are betting on an 81 per cent chance of a 0.5 percentage point increase at next month’s Fed meeting, compared to a 62 per cent chance a week ago, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.

“I think there has been a desire on the part of investors to not believe Powell, to think the Fed will pull back. Anytime there is a bit of good news — including CPI [Thursday] — investors think, ‘now he’ll relent’,” said Marty Fridson, chief investment officer at Lehmann, Livian, Fridson Advisors, referring to Fed chair Jay Powell.

However, despite the improvement in conditions, few are expecting it to fuel an uptick in the more risky market for initial public offerings. While follow-on share sales can be completed quickly, IPO roadshows tend to last at least a week, raising the risk the process is derailed by a sharp market reversal.

Craig McCracken, co-head of equity capital markets at Wells Fargo, said, “Certainly after that CPI release people will start evaluating their options but you need day-to-day analysis of the markets right now . . . follow-ons and converts can get done at the moment, but we need longer-term evidence before we see IPOs.”

[Derby]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/alameda-ftx-executives-are-said-to-have-known-ftx-was-using-customer-funds-11668264238

Alameda, FTX Executives Are Said to Have Known FTX Was Using Customer Funds

Trading firm Alameda’s troubles helped lead to the bankruptcy of crypto exchange FTX

Alameda Research’s chief executive and senior FTX officials knew that FTX had lent its customers’ money to Alameda to help it meet its liabilities, according to people familiar with the matter.

Alameda’s troubles helped lead to the bankruptcy of FTX, the crypto exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried. Alameda is a trading firm also founded and owned by Mr. Bankman-Fried.

In a video meeting with Alameda employees late Wednesday Hong Kong time, Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison said that she, Mr. Bankman-Fried and two other FTX executives, Nishad Singh and Gary Wang, were aware of the decision to send customer funds to Alameda, according to people familiar with the video. Mr. Singh was FTX’s director of engineering and a former Facebook employee. Mr. Wang, who previously worked at Google, was the chief technology officer of FTX and co-founded the exchange with Mr. Bankman-Fried.(...)

[sudden and sharp]

Acabáramos... No busquéis más...   

[Derby]

Quien tiene un amigo en Bahamas tiene un tesoro... 

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/12/ftx-users-may-be-cashing-of-bankrupt-crypto-exchange-through-a-bahamas-loophole.html

FTX users appear to be cashing out of bankrupt crypto exchange through a Bahamas loophole

*Analysis by Argus Research found unusual trading patterns that suggest “desperate” customers are relying on FTX users in the Bahamas to withdraw their money, according to Argus.

*Some have been buying NFTs that appear to be owned by Bahamian citizens, at astronomical prices. In one case, a digital collectible that traded for $9 three weeks ago sold for $10 million.

*“This NFT activity is highly irregular at a macro level when the NFT market overall is declining, both in value and in volume, and in this specific case when there is limited trading on other FTX markets,” says Owen Rapaport, cofounder and CEO of Argus, a blockchain analytics company.

Some FTX users appear to have found a way to move money off of the exchange through a back door in the Bahamas.

Analysis by data firm Argus found unusual trading patterns over the past five days as FTX was gating customer withdrawals. Most irregularities had to do with digital collectibles, known as NFTs. The patterns suggest “desperate” customers were turning to FTX users in the Bahamas for help, according to Argus.

The now-bankrupt global cryptocurrency exchange is only allowing withdrawals in the Bahamas after halting FTX liquidations everywhere else in the world. The once $32 billion firm, partially based in Nassau, said in a tweet said it had to facilitate Bahamian withdrawals to comply with local regulations.

High-net-worth users are paying astronomical prices for NFTs on FTX at a time when the broader crypto and digital collectible market has nosedived. In one case, a collectible that traded near $9 three weeks ago sold for $10 million on Friday. Another NFT that was similarly priced a month ago, sold for $888,888.88 this week.

“This NFT activity is highly irregular at a macro level when the NFT market overall is declining, both in value and in volume, and in this specific case when there is limited trading on other FTX markets,” said Owen Rapaport, cofounder and CEO of Argus, a blockchain analytics company that specializes in insider trading.

Argus said this type of trading is likely an attempt by FTX users to access money in any way they can. One likely possibility, according to Rapaport, is that traders have an agreement with the Bahamian users to pay some percentage of the assets, and in return receive them once they’ve been successfully withdrawn from FTX.

Elsewhere, trading volumes for nonfungible tokens have dropped 97% from their record high, according to data from Dune Analytics. The price of bitcoin is down 75% from its all-time high a year ago.

These trades are visible on the blockchain, which acts as a public ledger for tracking the movement of money. While anyone can see where the money moves, identities are still anonymous. Argus could not say for certain who these customers were and that FTX appeared to have shut down the irregular trading on Friday. There are still “bids” or offers to buy these now pricey collectibles, but no buy orders have been executed since.

FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Some Twitter users have called out similar irregularities this week. A popular crypto podcast host, who goes by Cobie, was among the first to suggest users were purchasing NFTs that are put up for sale by Bahamian users. He pointed to one wallet withdrawing $21 million worth of the cryptocurrency Tether from FTX, and sending it to an address that appeared to be based in the Bahamas.

TWEET: https://twitter.com/cobie/status/1590974648552148992

FTX has reportedly seen mysterious outflows after filing for bankruptcy protection. Reuters reported early Saturday that between $1 billion and $2 billion in customer funds had “vanished” from the exchange, citing two people familiar with the matter. Meanwhile, data firm Elliptic estimates that $473 million has been moved off of FTX in a suspected hack.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Friday after a week of turmoil. The exchange, run by 30-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried, has been accused of misusing customer funds and was close to being bought by its biggest rival after a liquidity crisis.

[el malo]

Anda que como al final sea FTX lo que provoca el efecto dominó que desencadena el apocalipsis financiero no me iba a reír ni nada. Y luego dicen que las cripto no sirven para nada 

En Reddit han puesto una captura de flightradar24 con el jet privado de Bankerman-Fried sobrevolando Argentina (desde Nassau). Por lo visto es el 3er mayor donante a la campaña de Biden. Imagino que habrá huído por si lo suicidan en un calabozo de Wisconsin mientras espera el juicio.

De aquí sale culebrón para varias temporadas.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.diariovasco.com/economia/vivienda/hipoteca-media-vasca-20221112211951-nt_amp.html

Saludos.

[wanderer]

Izzy Kaminska sobre las cripto...

https://twitter.com/izakaminska/status/1591330379746656256

I hope this is the point people realise that 99.9% of crypto and blockchain are total utter bullshit that do absolutely nothing technologically to reduce the need for trust in financial intermediaries. After all this becomes self-evident the only residue will be a CBDC.

CBDC: Monedas digitales de los bancos centrales.

Es el plan. Lo comentábamos aquí hace años. Destruir todo el sistema para implantar las CBDC programables (y programadas) y esclavizar definitivamente a la humanidad con ellas. Antes se dieron pasos como el pasaporte -mundial- Covid, y ahora nos van a colocar una "huella de carbono" individual.

Cada día pisan más el acelerador. No lo hacen por nuestro bien; no son los buenos.

¿Quién te va a obligar a usar nada de eso?

¿Quién te va a obligar a inyectarte un medicamento para poder ir a un bar? Eso no tiene ningún sentido 

¿Nadie?

Y sin embargo mucha gente se lo inyectó para poder salir, viajar, etc.

¿Sabes cómo van a convencer a la gente para que lo use? De la misma manera que se les convenció que el medicamento era obligatorio.

Yo tuve una discusión bastante acalorada en 2021 en Madrid con un conocido que me insistía que no se podía viajar y que los aeropuertos estaban cerrados, que lo "habían dicho en Telecinco" (les prometo que no trolleo, me lo dijo así), hasta que lo le dije "vale.. ¿dónde vivo?"
"En Londres"
"¿Dónde estoy ahora mismo?"
"En Madrid"
"Si los aeropuertos están cerrados.. ¿Cómo he llegado?"
...
...
...
"No sé, pero en Telecinco han dicho que las fronteras están cerradas. Que tú hayas volado es otra cosa"

 

¿A nado?

Como decía Groucho, ¿a qué prefiere creer, a las chorradas que yo le diga o a sus propios ojos?