Comment by Melting_Harps | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Melting_Harps | Hacker News Reader

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> AND he bought property in the Bahamas? It's like SBF passed out a "Welcome to Fraud" deck at the beach.

Its worth emphasizing that this HAS less to do with cryptocurrency as a whole, than it is exposing ow rich insiders use their connections within politics, media to set a narrative and get immense amounts of funding from VC and insane valuations to borrow when rates are set at 0% and then when flush with as will even lean on their corporate colleagues to keep the whole farce going and then sell them on the idea of cashing in on the scam (and sell them Bahamas property in the proess) which happened to use their own self-issued crypto currency on an exchange they owned (that was licensed and regulated) to profit from front-running and ultimately funnel customer funds to Alameda and make speculative bets that destroyed billions.

This is more like banksters blowing up the Global economy in 2008 and then deciding to blame mortgages because that is the financial instruments they built around to achieve the malaise in the first place. It's so absurd.

I think it's common knowledge in Bitcoin that exchanges are not to be trusted, even regulated ones, which is why the Not your keys, not your coin meme arose after countless exit scams/hacks etc... we have made an effort to emphasize this very vital aspect but it seems to be all negated when everyone is getting drunk on yield farming, and then play the victim and cry foul when the rugpull finally happens.

> Its worth emphasizing that this HAS less to do with cryptocurrency as a whole, than (...)

Yeah sure. Lets also emphasize that regulation makes these bad behaviors less likely, ok?

> Yeah sure. Lets also emphasize that regulation makes these bad behaviors less likely, ok?

In theory it should, but in practice they don't: FTX was licensed and regulated, as were JP Moran, Duetshe Bank, Goldman Sachs et al. who were being audited by the major 3 rating's agencies and were all rating their investments tripe A despite being filled with NINJA loans, who they had simultaneously bet against in order to profit from their invertible failure (CDS). All of whih led to an economic collapse which we never recovered from and still deal wit to this day.

I wish that regulation alone was the way to deter these things, but all it does is lead to more entrenched regulatory capture which leads to less competition to the incumbents. And before you start with, well SV funds disruptors let me remind you how Sequoia was one of the biggest backers of FTX/SBF.

Again, if taken to it's logical conclusion regulation alone doesn't do what it states it will do, all it does is create more moats that must be guarded by various gate-keepers ebabled by regulations who only let those with the right connections, academic credentials, family connections in thus further enforcing the kleptocratic-aristocratic way of doing things and thus 'business as usual' remains with only a thin veneer of governance is applied.

If it wasn't SBF that did this it would have been Blythe Masters, who was ousted from JPM for her failure to corner the food commodities market via derivatives, or one of her cronies as she and her cohort entered the crypto space in 2014 or so.

The comparison between FTX in 2022 and JP/GS/DB in 2007 is an undue insult to the banks and understates the misconduct within FTX.

On top of that, much of what you write in the latter paragraphs is speculation without much evidence to back up its premises.

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