Yes, I am totally behind the times and only now looking into the whole saga that lay behind the bloody wounds that now grace the face of the crypto market.
A month ago I didn't even know who this Sam Bankman-Fried character was and to be honest, I doubt very much that I would have fallen for this guy's ploy if I had come across him before.
The worlds most generous man? Hmmm you only give that much money away to charity if you're trying to buy favour or if you're trying to make a name for yourself. Many celebrities give money to charity but many of them don't even let the charities know it's from them because they would prefer to avoid the media attention.
This guy? Well to be honest when I learned that he sat playing a game while in an investor meeting, it left a rather sour taste in my mouth. The kicker?
The investment firm tweeted that they loved him for it.
Now please explain to me in what universe it's ok to play an online game while talking to a firm investing a luscious lump sum of money? This just reeks of disrespect to me. In my day, any business meeting you attended whether online or face to face, you took seriously. You looked your best. You'd shine your shoes. You'd do your hair and make sure that you are the best representation of your company.
Apart from the fact that this strange bunch lived together in the Bahamas, bought numerous mansions and yet slept at the office, the alarm bells should have been going off when the auditors didn't pick up anything odd. It just screams greased palms to me for them to look the other way.
I don't like this new generation of kids that have no conscience about using investors money to place some rather dubious bets, that have no financial background, are all involved somehow romantically or the like and live together...how is any of this of a professional nature? And yet, he was being hailed as some sort of genius. Weird.
Personally I would have never looked up to this guy when he presents himself as not even trying to put his best foot forward. His girlfriend is a whole other kettle of strange and said some really questionable things while being interviewed. And yet, it took this long for anyone to catch on...and now the entire crypto space is suffering as a result. What other dodgy deals are going to be uncovered in the next month that they were also involved in I wonder?
The people that are pushing for regulation are no doubt going to use this as a very good reason to get regulation underway sooner rather than later. I used to be very anti regulation, but I think that it may clear up a lot of issues and could be the clincher for a lot more institutional investment into the crypto space, but I don't claim to know much about how far they will take it. Of course it's going to be heavily taxed and there will be some erroneous regulations that aren't going to sit well with people...I mean we are after all talking about government having a say in something that is essentially meant to be decentralized. But governments all the world over are always wanting all the power to pull the strings, so it was bound to happen.
It really annoys me when a group of people with little in terms of a moral compass get together and dream up a huge shady deal, implement it and then crash the entire market. We've had enough bad news for one year! It looks like all of his ill gotten gains are being taken away and it just shows that you can only do illegal things for so long before you get wrecked.