FTX's Celebrity Endorsers May Be on the Hook for Investor Damages | Hacker News Reader

FTX's Celebrity Endorsers May Be on the Hook for Investor Damages

bloomberg.com

25 pointsmfiguiere13 comments

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Fraud aside, check out Larry David's ad for FTX. It's hilarious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH5-rSxilxo

some guy: Like I said, it's FTX, a safe and easy way to get into crypto.

LD: nahhh I don't think so. And I'm never wrong about these things. Ever.

:-)

Technically David is safe from investor damages. He never trusted this stuff!

If Brady has to pay out 50mil surely David gets paid 50mil for warning investors.

Hadn't seen this ad before but honestly excellently done. I should go check out this FTX place it seems really disruptive and innovative :)

On that note, I'm curious if they're going after the "some guy"[1] -- he's the one in the ad that actually calls FTX safe.

[1] who turns out to be Michael Dearie:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4408104/?ref_=tt_cl_t_2

I found him by looking up the Superbowl ad, finding that it was called "Don't Miss Out", which led me to find it has an IMDB entry:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23782390/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1

This is a really interesting legal area. I wonder what the legal implications for social media influencers would be if FTX had used them for a PR push? I know of at least one YouTube video[1] pushing a positive sentiment for SBF but I don't think this form of modern "celebrity" was exploited as much as the traditional idea of celebrity was, i.e. Shaq and Tom Brady.

This brings up a really interesting question. If a person or business builds a brand, and another person or company fraudulently uses that brand as a form of promotion and trust building by proxy, is the brand liable for the fraudulent companies behaviors?

This is such a nuanced problem because there's plenty of "snake oil"[2] pushed by celebrities and influencers (Dr. Oz[3] comes to mind), just not at the scale that FTX did. If the court sides with the plantiff, it will set a very interesting precedent where anyone promoting a company will somehow have to do their due diligence. In the case of FTX, I don't know how you would do that research and it seems you would be signing up for accepting liability in the case that the company is fraudulent.

1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPM6rf0-e6M

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil

3 - https://www.cnn.com/2014/06/17/health/senate-grills-dr-oz

This already happened. FTX was paying out lots of money to YouTube finance influencers for promotion. There is some public push back on some of the bigger influencers right now for their role in encouraging people to sign up with FTX, Graham Stephan, Meet Kevin, Andrei Jikh, Jeremy Financial Education are among 4 of the biggest names in this space.

Nobody knows what FTX compensation was, but there are rumors suggesting Graham Stephan was making 5 figures per month from FTX alone.

But, as the article states, legal liability will only apply to things deemed a security. FTX was a company, not a security.

I can't comment on the legal facets of this but if I were a celebrity being pulled into this s-storm I would absolutely hire as many reputable private investigation firms as I could afford, knowing full well there are some bits of this case that may be swept under the rug and some people will get thrown under the bus. Lawyers will not do that type of in the muck leg-work.

I've read many anecdotal stories about how "advisors" prey upon newly rich celebrities. These advisors are scum bags who know celebrities don't know anything about money, and work very hard to charm their marks in convincing they are fully trustworthy. These advisors will lead celebrities into every make-a-quick-buck scheme they can find because they get to skim off every deal, whether it works out or not.

Absolutely. That's why I specifically said reputable. Just like law firms, PI firms have ratings and public feedback. I've worked with some good ones albeit the most dull experience and quickly determined that work was not for me. They all have different levels of shady. One must find the shady shade of grey that allows them to color outside the lines but not so shady they take their clients to the cleaners.

I hope that all of the ways in which you find a product become exposed to whether that product is good or not. This is horrible for online platforms and especially advertising, but it’s good for society.

https://archive.today/aUrmy

Can't see past the first couple of paragraphs due to the paywall but it seems like another factor will be if they actually endorsed FTX and it's products or merely appeared in their advertisements, especially in the role of an actor rather than as their celebrity selves.

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