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☆ Congress considers crypto consumer protection bill that Sam Bankman-Fried backed before FTX collapse
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-13 | by ( Chelsey Cox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

The shocking collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX has increased the urgency in Congress to understand what went wrong and pass legislation to try to prevent another debacle that would affect hundreds of thousands of investors. One bill, the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act, introduced in August, gives the Commodity Futures Trading Commission more authority to regulate digital commodities like FTX. The bill arrived before FTX's collapse ignited fresh debate over how to protect consumers in the relatively young and untamed crypto industry. Bankman-Fried was charged in a U.S. indictment with eight criminal counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud and securities fraud, individual charges of securities fraud and wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to avoid campaign finance regulations. Nor does it make the CFTC the 'primary' crypto regulator," Stabenow said during an agriculture committee hearing Dec. 1.

CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin reported that the charges against Bankman-Fried include wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and money laundering. Bahamas Attorney General Ryan Pinder said the United States was "likely to request his extradition." "While the United States is pursuing criminal charges against SBF individually, The Bahamas will continue its own regulatory and criminal investigations into the collapse of FTX, with the continued cooperation of its law enforcement and regulatory partners in the United States and elsewhere," the statement said. The Bahamas and the United States have had an extradition treaty in place since the early 20th century, when the Bahamas was still under British control. Legal experts told CNBC that if the federal government pursues wire or bank fraud charges, Bankman-Fried could face life in prison without the possibility of supervised release.

CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin reported that the charges against Bankman-Fried include wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and money laundering. Neither the Attorney General of the Bahamas nor the Royal Bahamas Police Force would confirm the nature of the charges against Bankman-Fried. "I didn't ever try to commit fraud," Bankman-Fried said. The CFTC and lawmakers have begun their probes into FTX and Bankman-Fried, who told Sorkin he was down to his last $100,000. Failed lender BlockFi sued Bankman-Fried in November, seeking unnamed collateral that the FTX founder provided for the crypto lending firm.

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried is set to testify before Congress on Tuesday. He could be grilled on his past statements — and expose himself to more legal risks.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-12 | by ( Sindhu Sundar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Sam Bankman-Fried plans to appear remotely before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday. The House Financial Services committee has its own investigative mandate, outlined by its role in inquiring into financial failures, and in helping to craft legislation to prevent similar episodes in the future. Participating could expose Bankman-Fried to more legal risksTestimony provided to House lawmakers would usually be under oath, thought not necessarily so. The House Financial Services committee, chaired by Democratic Representative Maxine Waters of California, comprises progressive political stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. The House Financial Services committee hearing is scheduled to kick off at 10 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday.

☆ New FTX CEO to tell Congress about bankrupt crypto firm's 'spending binge,' loans to insiders
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-12 | by ( Brian Schwartz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Ray lists those items among five things that he and his team have discovered since replacing Bankman-Fried last month, when the company filed for bankruptcy. The crypto trading firm imploded in spectacular fashion following a run on assets similar to a bank run. The firm made more than $1 billion in "loans and other payments...to insiders." Alameda's role as a market maker for crypto inspired it to place money into other exchanges that were "inherently unsafe." The committee made Ray's opening testimony public on Monday, a day before the hearing that will focus on FTX's collapse.

☆ Larry Page, Sergey Brin Post-Google Lives: Investments, Yachts, Islands
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-11 | by ( Hugh Langley | Rob Price | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +33 min

Even before their retirement from Google, Page and Brin relied heavily on their respective family offices to bring order to their worlds. The Bay Area headquarters of Koop, Larry Page's family office, is nondescript and gives little indication of the billionaire's empire. Insider; Marianne Ayala/Insider Show less Bayshore Global Management, Sergey Brin's family office, is based in Palo Alto and has a bit more of a public face. Insider; Marianne Ayala/Insider Show lessThe difference in styles holds true for Brin's family office, Bayshore Global Management. The CEO of Page's family office is Wayne Osborne, a former elder in the Presbyterian Church who attended Princeton Theological Seminary.

☆ Alameda ex-CEO Caroline Ellison taps SEC's former top crypto regulator as lawyer in FTX investigation
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-10 | by ( Bethany Biron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Caroline Ellison hired Stephanie Avakian and law firm WilmerHale to represent her in the FTX investigation, per Bloomberg. Sources close to the matter told Bloomberg that Avakian, as well as fellow WilmerHale lawyers, will represent Ellison. Avakian and WilmerHale will represent Ellison during the federal probe into her former company, Alameda Research, the trading firm and corporate sibling of fallen cryptocurrency exchange, FTX. Ellison has remained an elusive figure in the collapse of FTX, staying mum and largely unreachable during its downfall. As noted by Bloomberg, while Bankman-Fried has publicly placed blame on Alameda in numerous interviews, Ellison has stayed silent.

☆ Binance's CEO tried to warn Sam Bankman-Fried: 'The more damage you do now, the more jail time.'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( Zahra Tayeb | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Binance's CEO got alarmed by Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto trading moves as FTX collapsed, per the NYT. The more damage you do now, the more jail time," Zhao wrote in a group chat. "Stop now, don't cause more damage," Zhao wrote in a group chat with Bankman-Fried and other crypto executives. The Binance boss pointed to a $250,000 trade by Alameda that he believed was orchestrated by Bankman-Fried to depeg Tether. Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried is reportedly now being investigated over allegations that Bankman-Fried manipulated the market for two cryptocurrencies in the spring.

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and chief executive officer of FTX Cryptocurrency Derivatives Exchange, during a Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has agreed to testify before the House Financial Services Committee at a hearing about the crypto exchange's collapse on Tuesday, he said in a series of tweets Friday morning. There's been a lot of back and forth in Washington over whether lawmakers would have to subpoena Bankman-Fried, who said he would voluntarily testify since the committee "still thinks it would be useful." In his tweet thread, the disgraced former "darling" of crypto appeared to lay blame on Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao. Before Bankman-Fried agreed to testify, CNBC reported that Waters was not planning to subpoena the ex-billionaire.

☆ Bahamas attorneys file emergency motion in FTX case for access to databases with client information
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( Rohan Goswami | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Attorneys in the Bahamas filed an emergency motion on Friday asking a Delaware bankruptcy judge to compel U.S. leaders of failed crypto firm FTX to give them access to databases as part of the proceedings. The emergency motion claims that despite "many attempts to obtain access," FTX employees and counsel have stymied Bahamian regulators in their effort to get critical financial information located in Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Portal databases. They're seeking data on FTX international customers that is stored on AWS servers, including "wallet addresses, customer balances, deposit and withdrawal records, trades, and accounting data." FTX filed for bankruptcy protection last month after a liquidity crunch at the crypto exchange, which was intermingling assets with sister hedge fund Alameda Research. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who had an estimated net worth of $16 billion before the collapse, will appear before U.S. lawmakers next week.

New York CNN —Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the failed crypto exchange FTX, has agreed to testify before the Senate Banking Committee next week as questions and confusion swirl about the collapse of his companies. One of the key questions prosecutors are likely to probe is whether FTX misappropriated customer funds when it made loans to Alameda. “I didn’t knowingly commingle funds,” he told The New York Times last week. The Times said the issue is part of a broadening inquiry into the collapse of FTX, and it’s not clear whether prosecutors have determined any wrongdoing by Bankman-Fried. In a statement to the paper, Bankman-Fried said he was “not aware of any market manipulation and certainly never intended to engage in market manipulation.”

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried says he'll take the hot seat and testify before lawmakers probing FTX
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( Sindhu Sundar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Sam Bankman-Fried tweeted that he would testify to a House committee this month. The House financial services committee is inquiring into his failed crypto lending company FTX. Committee chair Rep. Maxine Waters emphasized the stunning scope of 'over a million' FTX creditors. The onetime billionaire and former CEO of the crypto lending giant Tweeted on Friday morning that he would testify before the House Financial Services committee at a hearing scheduled for Dec. 13 on his company's failure. Bankman-Fried tweeted that he would address FTX's customers and how it could "return value" to its international base, and suggested more mea culpas could be forthcoming.

☆ Premarket: Oil stocks are pointing to higher gas prices to come
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

New York CNN —Brutally high oil and gas prices were the talk of the town in 2022 and one of the largest contributing factors to sky-high inflation. Oil prices and energy stocks are closely interlinked — so this discrepancy is an odd one and could mean that lower gas prices may not be here to stay. What’s happening: The price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil, the US benchmark, which is a large driver of gas prices, has fallen to its lowest level of the year this week — under $72 a barrel. But even though gas prices are falling, they’re still higher than they have been over the past few years. Exxon and Chevron are also speculating that crude prices will remain elevated and that demand will grow.

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried secretly invested in crypto news site The Block by funneling money to its CEO: report
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( Travis Clark | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried secretly funded crypto news site The Block, Axios reported. Axios said the the news site, The Block, has been funded by payments from Alameda to the site's now-former CEO, Michael McCaffrey. Employees were previously unaware of the investment, Axios reported, but the revelation could raise conflict-of-interest concerns. "Just before Thanksgiving, Mike told me that in early 2021 he was evaluating ways to merge, sell or restructure The Block," Moran wrote in a blog post. A $16 million batch of funding from Alameda was used in part to purchase an apartment in the Bahamas for McCaffrey, Axios reported.

☆ Former FTX boss Sam Bankman-Fried says he thought of himself as 'a model CEO'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Sam Bankman-Fried said he considered himself a "model CEO who wouldn't become lazy or disconnected." "I had thought of myself as a model CEO, who wouldn't become lazy or disconnected. Which made it that much more destructive when I did," Bankman-Fried tweeted FridayHe added: "I'm sorry. In a Twitter thread Friday, Bankman-Fried said he would testify before the US House Committee on Financial Services on Tuesday. Bankman-Fried tweeted: "I still do not have access to much of my data – professional or personal.

☆ CZ says Sam Bankman-Fried was unhinged when Binance pulled out of earlier FTX investment - but SBF shoots back: 'There's no need to lie'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Binance pulled out of its investment deal with FTX over 18 months ago, and CEO CZ said Sam Bankman-Fried was "unhinged." "As an early investor in FTX, we became increasingly uncomfortable with Alameda/SBF," CZ wrote on Twitter. Bankman-Fried responded to CZ with a tweet of his own: "There's no need to lie." Binance became an early investor in FTX three years ago, before later exiting, as CZ noted Friday. In early November, Binance agreed to takeover FTX, which was struggling with a liquidity crisis, but backed off a day later, with CZ later saying FTX was beyond saving.

☆ Binance boss says Sam Bankman-Fried's trading firm tried to undermine key token Tether — risking a crypto rout
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( George Glover | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Binance boss Changpeng Zhao accused Sam Bankman-Fried's Alameda Research of trying to drive down the price of Tether, according to the New York Times. The stablecoin’s collapse would likely trigger a crypto crash, analysts have warned. US federal prosecutors are already investigating Bankman-Fried for manipulating the price of both of those cryptocurrencies, the New York Times reported Wednesday. Having reached $1 again in July, Tether slipped away to fall to $0.9963 on November 10 as FTX's bankruptcy sent ripples through the crypto sector. Analysts have repeatedly warned that the stablecoin's collapse would cause a wider crypto crash — and argued that Tether poses a systemic risk to the crypto sector.

☆ FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is said to face market manipulation inquiry by U.S. prosecutors - NYT
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The prosecutors are looking into whether Bankman-Fried controlled the prices of two interlinked currencies, TerraUsd and Luna, to benefit the entities he controlled including FTX and Alameda Research, the report said. Regulators around the globe, including in the Bahamas where FTX is based and in the United States, are investigating the role of FTX's top executives including Bankman-Fried in the firm's stunning collapse, Reuters has previously reported. In recent weeks, U.S. authorities have sought information from investors and potential investors in FTX, according to two sources with knowledge of the requests. Federal prosecutors in New York are asking for details on any communications such firms have had with the crypto firm and its executives, including Bankman-Fried, the sources said. FTX and Alameda research did not respond to Reuters request for comments.

☆ Coinbase CEO slams Sam Bankman-Fried: 'This guy just committed a $10 billion fraud, and why is he getting treated with kid gloves?'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The CEO of Coinbase said that it's "bizarre" Sam Bankman-Fried is "getting treated with kid gloves." "I mean, this guy just committed a $10 billion fraud, and why is he getting treated with kid gloves?" "We appreciate that you've been candid in your discussions about what happened at #FTX," Waters tweeted. Criminal Activity!," Waters tweeted. He's not the only crypto CEO who's criticized the former FTX CEO recently.

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried: US lawmakers want answers from FTX founder
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Allison Morrow | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN —Lawmakers are demanding that Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the failed crypto exchange FTX, appear before the Senate Banking Committee next week over “significant unanswered questions ” surrounding the collapse of his companies. FTX was one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world until last month, when it faced a sudden wave of customer withdrawals that it couldn’t cover. One of the key questions prosecutors are likely to probe is whether FTX misappropriated customer funds when it made loans to Alameda. The Times said the issue is part of a broadening inquiry into the collapse of FTX, and it’s not clear whether prosecutors have determined any wrongdoing by Bankman-Fried. In a statement to the paper, Bankman-Fried said he was “not aware of any market manipulation and certainly never intended to engage in market manipulation.”

☆ It turns out Taylor Swift has better due diligence than half of Silicon Valley
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Taylor Swift in the "Bejeweled" music video. Taylor Swift has better due diligence than half of Silicon ValleyIt's SBF. Just when you thought the FTX debacle couldn't get any weirder, let's add Taylor Swift into the mix. What Taylor Swift album does Sam Bankman-Fried most identify with? Perhaps the most pressing question, however, as pointed out by senior finance editor Michelle Abrego, is this: How does Taylor Swift have better due diligence practices than half of Silicon Valley?

☆ U.S. lawmakers press federal banking regulators on the industry’s exposure to crypto after Alameda stake in bank comes to light
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Chelsey Cox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Top Senate Democrats pressed key banking regulators on possible ties between the industry and digital currency exchanges following the bankruptcy of major cryptocurrency firm, FTX. "Banks' relationships with crypto firms raise questions about the safety and soundness of our banking system and highlight potential loopholes that crypto firms may try to exploit to gain further access." Silvergate Capital Corp., Provident Bancorp Inc., Metropolitan Commercial Bank, Signature Bank, Customers Bancorp Inc. are among several noted banks experiencing heightened volatility after the FTX failure. "Banks' relationships with crypto firms raise questions about the safety and soundness of our banking system and highlight potential loopholes that crypto firms may try to exploit to gain further access to banks," the senators wrote. To better understand the banking industry's exposure to crypto, the senators asked for responses to a roster of questions, including all business relationships between FTX, Alameda and Moonstone, by Dec. 21.

☆ FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is being investigated for crypto market manipulation: NYT
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Huileng Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

US federal prosecutors have launched a probe into FTX founder SBF for market manipulation, per NYT. The probe is in its early stages and it's unclear if prosecutors have determined any wrongdoing. FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on November 11 after an intense week-long liquidity squeeze. The investigation is in its early stages, and it's unclear if prosecutors have determined any wrongdoing by the crypto exchange founder. Bankman Fried told the Times in a statement on Wednesday he was "not aware of any market manipulation and certainly never intended to engage in market manipulation."

☆ FTX has reportedly hired a team of forensic investigators to trace billions of dollars missing in customer funds
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Zahra Tayeb | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

FTX has hired forensic investigators to find billions of dollars in lost customer money. The move comes after as much as $2 billion in client funds vanished following FTX's implosion. The forensic team will carry out "asset tracing" measures to recover the funds, per the WSJ. Up to $2 billion in customer funds has reportedly vanished following FTX's collapse, Reuters reported, after its ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried quietly transferred $10 billion from FTX to its sister firm Alameda Research. According to the Wall Street Journal, the forensics firm will conduct "asset-tracing" to recover the missing funds.

☆ FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried is 'one of the greatest fraudsters in history' and a 'master manipulator,' Binance CEO says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( Morgan Chittum | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Binance's CEO says FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is "one of the greatest fraudsters in history." "FTX killed themselves (and their users) because they stole billions of dollars of user funds," the CEO said. Bankman-Fried chalks up FTX's collapse to accounting errors and denied allegations of the misuse of customer funds. "SBF is one of the greatest fraudsters in history, he is also a master manipulator when it comes to media and key opinion leaders." Bankman-Fried chalks up FTX's collapse to accounting errors and maintains he never intentionally misused funds or defrauded anyone.

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