FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Attempts To Raise Fresh Cash Despite Bankruptcy (wsj.com) 61
FTX filed for bankruptcy last week, but the cryptocurrency exchange's founder still thinks that he can raise enough money to make users whole, WSJ reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Mr. Bankman-Fried, alongside a few remaining employees, spent the past weekend calling around in search of commitments from investors to plug a shortfall of up to $8 billion in the hopes of repaying FTX's customers, the people said. The efforts to cover that shortfall have so far been unsuccessful. The Wall Street Journal couldn't determine what Mr. Bankman-Fried is offering in return for any potential cash infusion, or whether any investors have committed.
FTX filed for bankruptcy protection Friday, and Mr. Bankman-Fried resigned as chief executive of the company. He remains its largest shareholder. The bankruptcy announcement shocked FTX customers who had hoped they could recover assets. Now-deleted tweets from Mr. Bankman-Fried in the days before the filing assured users that the company was "fine." Companies under bankruptcy protection sometimes receive loans meant to help maintain operations. Debtor-in-possession financing means that if companies survive, the first funds they earn will go toward paying down that lifeline. It is less common for a company to try to raise fresh equity capital early on in the bankruptcy process, since debtholders hold priority over any remaining assets.
FTX filed for bankruptcy protection Friday, and Mr. Bankman-Fried resigned as chief executive of the company. He remains its largest shareholder. The bankruptcy announcement shocked FTX customers who had hoped they could recover assets. Now-deleted tweets from Mr. Bankman-Fried in the days before the filing assured users that the company was "fine." Companies under bankruptcy protection sometimes receive loans meant to help maintain operations. Debtor-in-possession financing means that if companies survive, the first funds they earn will go toward paying down that lifeline. It is less common for a company to try to raise fresh equity capital early on in the bankruptcy process, since debtholders hold priority over any remaining assets.
dollars (Score:4, Funny)
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Do you happen to know if he checked the Bahamas ?
Money for nothin' (Score:5, Insightful)
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I mean, that IS how it works. Demonstrably. At least for him and those like him.
The rest of us slobs have to actually work for our cash. So who's the dummy?
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So who's the dummy?
Totally depends on whether he is introduced to Bubba in jail.
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Does it?
I think it more depends on how much he walks away with, right? I mean, if he gets 2 years in a supermax with "Bubba", and walks into a 2b retirement...I dunno, I could be convinced ( and anyone who says differently are either filthy rich already or lying ).
Re:Money for nothin' (Score:5, Informative)
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When your wealth came from people giving you money for no good reason at all...
There is a reason. It is called "greed".
uh.. yeah (Score:2)
Screw that guy.
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Screw that guy.
The "polycule" of characters with whom he cohabits already do a lot of that.
Crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
Who in their right mind would give that clown another cent after the shenanigans he pulled with customer funds? He's lucky he's not already in prison.
Re: (Score:2)
You have to admire his audacity (Score:2)
Can't figure out if he's high, suffering from Dunning-Krueger, or just plain old shamelessness.
Who in their right mind .. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who in their right mind would give that company any money whatsoever?
Crypto is super extra speculative enough, to add the fact that the limited liquidity his company had was loaned out to other more speculative crypto projects.
Maybe crypto.com should loan them some Shiba Inu (Score:2)
It seems that crypto.com has a lot of Shiba Inu tokens in their "cash" reserves. Maybe they can afford to loan FTX a few billion of them?
I mean, it's not like they're really worth anything. Last I checked, each token was worth less than 1/1000th of a US penny.
FTX Founder Hits Rock Bottom (Score:5, Funny)
Collateral (Score:2)
I know I'm not an expert and this forum is focussed on other topics, I also understand I may be oversimplifying but... is Mr. Bankman-Fried aware of the concepts of "collateral" and "assets" and "monetizable"???
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He is someone who is/was trying to play in crypto, so of course he is not aware of those concepts, since there was never any stable "assets" and/or "collateral".
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He's gotta be aware of the concepts.. My question is: What does he have that would possibly expect make it worthwhile to investors to loan to FTX $8 Billion? He kind of burned the goodwill in their name, and trust is everything when choosing your exchange, so their brand is dirt now.. where's the residual value in the company and profit to be made lending out to them -- what, an expensive way to capture equity in a failing exchange, when the buyer could wait for the bankruptcy liquidation before bidd
That guy (Score:2)
Superbowl (Score:1)
Grifting (Score:5, Funny)
Grifters are going to Grift. Another stable genius with more of the same message. It will really work this time. Trust me.
Re: Grifting (Score:2)
Definition of ponzi scheme (Score:5, Insightful)
Is not this the very definition of Ponzi Scheme, to raise more money to pay off the existing participants?
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It's only a ponzi scheme if the only application of new investment is paying off old. In this case, we also have intermediate fraud and embezzlement.
Re:Money Laundering US taxpayer $$$ to the DNC (Score:4, Informative)
Non-paywalled version at https://fortune.com/crypto/202... [fortune.com]
as well as $7.3 million of a mysterious illiquid asset called TRUMPLOSE.
And then there is a line for $8 billion of liabilities that is described on the spreadsheet as “Hidden, poorly internally labeled ‘fiat@’ account.”
Man, I love these guys. Both whoever put together FTX's balance sheet, and trolls that think that Democrats are both geniuses and idiots simultaneously.
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
I'm sure some of those are words, but absent more context, I'll just assume you are a Trump voter and thus easily misled by shiny objects and violent rhetoric.
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Odd. I don't think I've encountered a worse living person in the US. And I've encountered a few doozies.
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>I am not entirely sure where I stand on DJT at this point but I am still 100% certain of one thing - he is a better person than anyone who would willing associate with our national Democratic party.
Then you *are* entirely sure where you stand on that fascist loser. Congratulations bootlicker!
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You do know that Bankman-Fried bragged about being the second-largest donor to the Democrats, right? It's interesting that he went bankrupt right after the election that this money clearly helped win for a lot of Dems. He donated tens of millions of dollars, now starting to look like it might not have been his money?
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So you're willing to take his word for it? Well, more probably, you're willing to take what someone else says was his word.
Now if you have any decent evidence that your assertion is correct, I'ld like a link. Otherwise I'm going to consider it unsubstantiated rumor, probably false. (But I'd need more than evidence that that he said it before I'd believe it a true statement. He's a known liar and conman.)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Thank you.
I notice that that link said he mainly backed anti-progressives in the primaries. To me this means he supported "conservative" Democrats, against less centralist Democrats, but doesn't really indicate that he supported Democrats against Republicans. (OTOH, he's listed as Democrat, so perhaps he did.)
That said, SOMETIMES the more centralist Democrats have better sense. They're usually more likely to get the rest of the party to go along with their wishes. So he may have been supporting the Demo
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He bragged about it. This information is not difficult to find.
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Its who they are at vary base level; amoral power hungry anti-social scumbags.
Those darn anti-social socialists. Always making piles of money in order to push their anti-capitalist agenda.
There are alternatives (Score:5, Funny)
I'd rather invest my money with Nigerian princes than this guy.
wait whaat (Score:3)
So he wants "investors" to dump money into his bankrupt dumpster fire and exchange to make his clients whole? Why the would they do that? About the only reason I can see for doing that would be to avoid some of the public black eye crypto is deservedly getting from this in the name of protecting the viability of their other investments. Sill that is a lot money flush into what can otherwise be discharged in bankruptcy.
If I was going to invest in a crypto business it would be very hard to sell me on trying to bailout FTX vs buying into one of the (so far) not bankrupt alternatives that now enjoy a less competitive marketplace with FTX out of the way.
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It's like he's saying the quiet part of the Ponzi scheme out loud. Who knows, it may even work. If Crypto has taught us one thing, there's a literal legion of morons willing to part with their money, the more incomprehensible the scheme the better!
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he probably has no choice, if he wants to live a bit longer that is, in the real world you cant tell the cartels he was washing for that you have lost their money, that's the trouble with these crypto bro's they think they can lose billions of serious criminals money without any risk and everything will be cool, unlike Joe Shmoe investors the cartels will hunt you down, and if they cant get you they will get your family and friends.
Maybe SBF (Score:2)
Distrust hyphenated names (Score:2, Funny)
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Hyphenated names are an indication of weak minded parents, often with criminal inclinations.
No one who isn't a British Lord should ever have a hyphenated name.
Fail! (Score:2)
Jeff and Mike to the rescue? (Score:2)
Crypto and NFTs... (Score:1)