I read Lewis’s book - it’s basically a love song to SBF the poor misunderstood renegade. He’s just a victim of being “different”, not a soul less sociopath. And his parent are totally altruists despite his dad complaining about not getting enough money and a bigger piece of the pie. Awful and disappointing.
Check out Lewis' account of the pandemic, "The Premonition." Another credulous hook-line,& sinker take from the 'outsiders'' point of view. If only we had instantaneously followed the lone geniuses advice to -- get this -- *close down all the schools*!!! Yes! The *one thing* we know turned out to be cataclysmically wrong! "A New York Times bestseller!"
I laugh over and over again at those fulminating about Trump being a "fraud" and "con man," when the entire Democrat party is financed by fraudsters and con men such as the Fried Bankman, Zuck and the criminal fabulists who run google. So no surprise that the Dem party is the longest running con job in US history. Now headed, appropriately, by the senile grifter and serial fraud who befouls 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
An unrepentant math geek with forty years of investing behind me and a clear understanding of that scam called, "fiat money," some years back I did a several-week online course in Bitcoin from that corrupt Democrat operative, now chair of the SEC, Gary Gensler.
The idea that printed paper is money is laughable. Every nation that has fallen from within has done so due to the adoption of fiat currency. To be usable as money, an entity must be: portable, durable, limited, and most importantly agreed-upon by its users. Notice that having intrinsic value itself is not a requirement, only that it be usable to set the relative value of things to each other.
Bitcoin fills all these requirements. So do gold and silver, although for large quantities of value are not very portable. Most importantly, Bitcoin is determined mathematically and cannot be printed at will by a corrupt government seeking to steal its citizens' wealth through that stealth tax known as inflation. It's no wonder the gub'ment hates cryptocurrency so much and is doing everything in its power to regulate and strangle it. (but they want us to use THEIR crypto - the one with the back door that will allow them to take ALL your money should you say the wrong thing)
Other nations - also with corrupt governments with a history of destroying their citizens' wealth through inflation - have begun accepting Bitcoin as legal tender. If this trend continues, the US will find itself pushed out of the market. Debasement of the dollar has already started the process of eliminating it as the international reserve currency.
Everything is eventually paid-for. Everything. Our corrupt government's chickens are coming home to roost. Unfortunately they will rest on us all, not those who brought it all about.
'Effective Altruism' is akin to: 'vaping is better than cigarettes'.
The practitioners of EA believe they're doing good, doing the right thing.
To me, having spoken with a lot of people in EA over the last 3 years or so, I'm amazed at how self-delusional they all are. "We're going to earn a ton of money from terrible things, but the terribleness doesn't matter, because we're giving it all away". Such Ivy League BS.
Ya wanna 'do good'? Start small. Network effect, VS humblebrag gigantism, which in the end has been blowing up over and over.
SBF has deep connections with deep pockets. He might yet go free. His parents, are rapacious sociopaths, the golden products of Silicon Valley, and Stanford U, the intellectual darling of the left. This country has become too corrupt to survive.
As someone who was both part of the team at IEX, the company featured in Flash Boys, and a former executive at ErisX, a US-based CFTC regulated crypto derivatives exchange and clearinghouse, I have first-hand knowledge of these stories in reality. Not the second-hand hearsay of friends. Was Flash Boys embellished? Absolutely. Written for accessibility and entertainment over technical accuracy? Certainly. Mostly fiction? Depends on who you ask and their motives. The list of fines and penalties levied for practices illuminated in the book in the aftermath of its publishing are evidence that it was not.
Were there reasons to have questions and concerns about FTX's operations before it collapsed? For someone sufficiently inclined there is a long-read comment letter to the CFTC from ErisX regarding FTX's margin application. For the TL;DR skip to page 9: the Appendix with Open Questions. We now have the answers to a number of those questions. There were, in fact, people raising concerns ahead of the collapse. Theirs were unpopular perspectives when the money was flowing.
I've spent almost 25 years building financial exchanges and electronic trading products. I've worked on crypto and blockchain related products and businesses for 10 years, giving me a pretty firm understanding of both traditional financial infrastructure and crypto financial infrastructure. There are a long list of frauds and manipulations and scams in crypto. They tend to be fundamentally the traditional sort that have happened for the past four centuries in traditional financial markets long before crypto was invented. That is unfortunate, but does not diminish the value and capabilities of the new technology, the business models and products that it enables that have historically not been possible. My bet is that it isn't the naysayers that will be vindicated in the long run, but crypto technologies and new modalities of finance, art, business, and gaming that they enable.
And, Patrick Mackenzie, are YOU nothing like Michael Lewis or SBF? What's your schtick, angle, scheme? Why should we expect you to be the watering hole of truth and justice? As far as I can tell, you're just the guy waiting in the wings to pull off the next big scam by playing the self-righteous seer who "sold a few software businesses and worked in financial technology." That curriculum vitae alone makes me highly suspicious.
I worked on Wall Street for 37 years. Met Bernie, yes that Bernie, and knew immediately he was full of shit. Years later I’m at my daughter’s block party and one of my son in law’s friends approached me. He asked my opinion of cryptocurrency, in its infancy at the time, so I asked how much had he invested. $10k. I told him the minute you make a decent profit sell it before it goes to $0. He just looked at me with a blank stare.
So many frauds and criminals in the crypto space. I read every crypto story I can find - my interest is personal, as I am now 4.5 years into the financial settlement of my divorce from an early crypto programmer (2013). Despite his decade + involvement in investing and writing code, he has steadfastly maintained that at date of separation, he held only 1.2 bitcoin. He obfuscates and lies constantly, and has been twice sanctioned by the courts to the tune of 34.5K thus far. Divorce is difficult in the "best" circumstances, but to be forced to hire crypto experts, in addition to lawyers is so frustrating and costly. I wish someone would do a deep dive of the plight of ex-wives of crypto crooks.
Indeed, the Bitcoin narrative is built on a foundation of half-truths, untruths, Social Darwinism, cynicism, an odd comfort with criminality, and nonchalance about the security provided by the nation-state.
Maybe this isn’t the purpose of the article, but I’m still not seeing the inherent fundamental flaw or lie in crypto. I’m only seeing how some specific people corrupted and exploited it, but isn’t that true of all financial systems?
They make movies out of books that are entertaining...not books that tell the truth. Lewis’ books are entertaining to be sure. Take them at face value and enjoy. 🤷🏻♂️
I read Lewis’s book - it’s basically a love song to SBF the poor misunderstood renegade. He’s just a victim of being “different”, not a soul less sociopath. And his parent are totally altruists despite his dad complaining about not getting enough money and a bigger piece of the pie. Awful and disappointing.
Check out Lewis' account of the pandemic, "The Premonition." Another credulous hook-line,& sinker take from the 'outsiders'' point of view. If only we had instantaneously followed the lone geniuses advice to -- get this -- *close down all the schools*!!! Yes! The *one thing* we know turned out to be cataclysmically wrong! "A New York Times bestseller!"
You've got Lewis pegged exactly.
I laugh over and over again at those fulminating about Trump being a "fraud" and "con man," when the entire Democrat party is financed by fraudsters and con men such as the Fried Bankman, Zuck and the criminal fabulists who run google. So no surprise that the Dem party is the longest running con job in US history. Now headed, appropriately, by the senile grifter and serial fraud who befouls 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
An unrepentant math geek with forty years of investing behind me and a clear understanding of that scam called, "fiat money," some years back I did a several-week online course in Bitcoin from that corrupt Democrat operative, now chair of the SEC, Gary Gensler.
The idea that printed paper is money is laughable. Every nation that has fallen from within has done so due to the adoption of fiat currency. To be usable as money, an entity must be: portable, durable, limited, and most importantly agreed-upon by its users. Notice that having intrinsic value itself is not a requirement, only that it be usable to set the relative value of things to each other.
Bitcoin fills all these requirements. So do gold and silver, although for large quantities of value are not very portable. Most importantly, Bitcoin is determined mathematically and cannot be printed at will by a corrupt government seeking to steal its citizens' wealth through that stealth tax known as inflation. It's no wonder the gub'ment hates cryptocurrency so much and is doing everything in its power to regulate and strangle it. (but they want us to use THEIR crypto - the one with the back door that will allow them to take ALL your money should you say the wrong thing)
Other nations - also with corrupt governments with a history of destroying their citizens' wealth through inflation - have begun accepting Bitcoin as legal tender. If this trend continues, the US will find itself pushed out of the market. Debasement of the dollar has already started the process of eliminating it as the international reserve currency.
Everything is eventually paid-for. Everything. Our corrupt government's chickens are coming home to roost. Unfortunately they will rest on us all, not those who brought it all about.
'Effective Altruism' is akin to: 'vaping is better than cigarettes'.
The practitioners of EA believe they're doing good, doing the right thing.
To me, having spoken with a lot of people in EA over the last 3 years or so, I'm amazed at how self-delusional they all are. "We're going to earn a ton of money from terrible things, but the terribleness doesn't matter, because we're giving it all away". Such Ivy League BS.
Ya wanna 'do good'? Start small. Network effect, VS humblebrag gigantism, which in the end has been blowing up over and over.
SBF has deep connections with deep pockets. He might yet go free. His parents, are rapacious sociopaths, the golden products of Silicon Valley, and Stanford U, the intellectual darling of the left. This country has become too corrupt to survive.
Looking at bankman and his girlfriend, you have to wonder who could take them seriously
As someone who was both part of the team at IEX, the company featured in Flash Boys, and a former executive at ErisX, a US-based CFTC regulated crypto derivatives exchange and clearinghouse, I have first-hand knowledge of these stories in reality. Not the second-hand hearsay of friends. Was Flash Boys embellished? Absolutely. Written for accessibility and entertainment over technical accuracy? Certainly. Mostly fiction? Depends on who you ask and their motives. The list of fines and penalties levied for practices illuminated in the book in the aftermath of its publishing are evidence that it was not.
Were there reasons to have questions and concerns about FTX's operations before it collapsed? For someone sufficiently inclined there is a long-read comment letter to the CFTC from ErisX regarding FTX's margin application. For the TL;DR skip to page 9: the Appendix with Open Questions. We now have the answers to a number of those questions. There were, in fact, people raising concerns ahead of the collapse. Theirs were unpopular perspectives when the money was flowing.
https://cdn.cboe.com/resources/government_relations/comment_letters/CFTC_Margin_Final.pdf
I've spent almost 25 years building financial exchanges and electronic trading products. I've worked on crypto and blockchain related products and businesses for 10 years, giving me a pretty firm understanding of both traditional financial infrastructure and crypto financial infrastructure. There are a long list of frauds and manipulations and scams in crypto. They tend to be fundamentally the traditional sort that have happened for the past four centuries in traditional financial markets long before crypto was invented. That is unfortunate, but does not diminish the value and capabilities of the new technology, the business models and products that it enables that have historically not been possible. My bet is that it isn't the naysayers that will be vindicated in the long run, but crypto technologies and new modalities of finance, art, business, and gaming that they enable.
And, Patrick Mackenzie, are YOU nothing like Michael Lewis or SBF? What's your schtick, angle, scheme? Why should we expect you to be the watering hole of truth and justice? As far as I can tell, you're just the guy waiting in the wings to pull off the next big scam by playing the self-righteous seer who "sold a few software businesses and worked in financial technology." That curriculum vitae alone makes me highly suspicious.
I worked on Wall Street for 37 years. Met Bernie, yes that Bernie, and knew immediately he was full of shit. Years later I’m at my daughter’s block party and one of my son in law’s friends approached me. He asked my opinion of cryptocurrency, in its infancy at the time, so I asked how much had he invested. $10k. I told him the minute you make a decent profit sell it before it goes to $0. He just looked at me with a blank stare.
Indeed Patrick. Meet the new boss (SBF) same as the old boss (John Gutfreund).
So many frauds and criminals in the crypto space. I read every crypto story I can find - my interest is personal, as I am now 4.5 years into the financial settlement of my divorce from an early crypto programmer (2013). Despite his decade + involvement in investing and writing code, he has steadfastly maintained that at date of separation, he held only 1.2 bitcoin. He obfuscates and lies constantly, and has been twice sanctioned by the courts to the tune of 34.5K thus far. Divorce is difficult in the "best" circumstances, but to be forced to hire crypto experts, in addition to lawyers is so frustrating and costly. I wish someone would do a deep dive of the plight of ex-wives of crypto crooks.
Indeed, the Bitcoin narrative is built on a foundation of half-truths, untruths, Social Darwinism, cynicism, an odd comfort with criminality, and nonchalance about the security provided by the nation-state.
--Michael W. Green, May 14 2021
SBF fraud is “okay” because he is a leftist. Pure political bullshit as usual.
Maybe this isn’t the purpose of the article, but I’m still not seeing the inherent fundamental flaw or lie in crypto. I’m only seeing how some specific people corrupted and exploited it, but isn’t that true of all financial systems?
They make movies out of books that are entertaining...not books that tell the truth. Lewis’ books are entertaining to be sure. Take them at face value and enjoy. 🤷🏻♂️