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☆ Breakingviews: Sam Bankman-Fried lacks cover of systemic risk
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-13 | by ( Antony Currie | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

MELBOURNE, Dec 13 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Sam Bankman-Fried couldn’t be blamed for mulling over past financial scandals with a degree of envy. The former boss of bankrupt crypto exchange-cum-hedge-fund FTX was arrested on Monday in the Bahamas at the request of U.S. prosecutors. No senior executives ended up facing criminal charges, or were hauled off in handcuffs even, though several Libor traders went to jail. loadingCONTEXT NEWSSam Bankman-Fried, the former chief executive of now-bankrupt crypto firm FTX, was arrested in the Bahamas on Dec. 12. The attorney general’s office for the Caribbean state said it took Bankman-Fried into custody after receiving formal confirmation of criminal charges from U.S. prosecutors.

☆ FTX's collapse prompted the largest-ever outflow of bitcoin from crypto exchanges, with investors pulling $1.5 billion last month
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-12 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

In November, investors pulled nearly $1.5 billion in bitcoin from crypto exchanges. The fallout of FTX's collapse has rocked the crypto market, and November's bitcoin outflows were the highest ever. Meanwhile, in the first week of December, investors pulled 4,545 bitcoin from centralized exchanges, up from 3,846 in the same period in 2021. Former FTX Group CEO Sam Bankman-Fried's downfall has renewed concerns about the safety of user funds held in centralized exchanges. All this has weighed on public confidence in crypto, and traders have grown more wary over security.

☆ A US recession is coming - here are 5 reasons why
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-12 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Bank of America's strategists said the US could fall into a recession over the next 10 to 12 weeks. Bank stocks have tumbled in recent days. Frankly, a broad recession won't be a surprise to anyone at this point (especially Opening Bell readers). In other news:Whether or not the US is in a recession is a politically charged debate. These nine funds offer strong positioning through a recession and into the next bull market, in Bank of America's view.

ORLANDO, Fla., Dec 8 (Reuters) - When Yogi Berra famously said it's difficult to make forecasts, especially about the future, he probably didn't have financial market analysts in mind. However, this is precisely where clients might reasonably expect their well-remunerated investment bank and fund management experts to earn their corn. The median earnings growth forecast was just under 8%. Right now the S&P 500 is below 4000, down 17% year to date and on course for one of its biggest falls in 80 years. A Reuters poll of 41 strategists published on Nov. 29 showed that the S&P 500 will end next year at 4200, up 6.8% from Wednesday's close.

☆ FTX t-shirts and swag were stashed away in trash bags during Miami's Art Basel, and some crypto diehards took them home as souvenirs
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The Solana Embassy, once backed by Sam Bankman-Fried, gave away free FTX t-shirts at Art Basel. Among the stash were close to 1,000 FTX Miami t-shirts, FTX bean bags, a framed Miami Heat jersey that featured an FTX logo, and a signed poster of chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen who took part in an FTX-sponsored tournament. Solana tweeted about its events in Miami and said it had "about 1,000 FTX Miami shirts to get rid of." The t-shirts were originally only supposed to be free for those who opened FTX accounts at the Solana Embassy. The Solana Embassy previously housed an FTX Lounge, and the exchange was its biggest financial sponsor, according to Norby.

☆ Jamie Dimon sounds off on the economy, Fed, and crypto
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

There are few top executives who draw as much attention and speak as freely as Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan. "Inflation is eroding everything…and that $1.5 trillion will run out sometime mid-year next year," Dimon said. Never one to mince words, Dimon then blasted the cryptocurrency sector when asked what he thought of the FTX collapse. Meanwhile, days after the EU's $60 per barrel price cap kicked in, oil prices slumped to levels not seen since before the invasion of Ukraine. There's been much debate about how the measure will alter oil prices moving forward — but PIMCO commodities strategist Greg Sharenow said it's going to come down to three factors.

☆ Dimon calls crypto a 'complete sideshow' and says tokens are 'pet rocks'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Jesse Pound | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

And I've made my views perfectly clear, that crypto tokens are like pet rocks," Dimon said on CNBC's " Squawk Box ." Dimon has long been a skeptic of cryptocurrencies, though his bank does offer crypto research and some services . Dimon did say on Tuesday that there could be value in some of the crypto technology, if not the coins. That doesn't mean smart contracts won't be real or web 3.0. "The regulators that are beating up on banks should maybe focus a little more on things like crypto," Dimon said.

☆ Credit Suisse business is stable, chairman tells broadcaster SRF
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-05 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

ZURICH, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Credit Suisse (CSGN.S) is "definitely stable," Chairman Axel Lehmann told Swiss broadcaster SRF on Monday, adding that the embattled bank had seen a stabilisation in the outflows of client funds. "Thankfully, the outflows have stabilised," Lehman told SRF in an interview to be broadcast on Monday. Funds were also starting to return to the bank, he said, particularly in its Swiss home market. "What is the earnings power of the Swiss business, wealth management, asset management and the part of the investment bank we retain, and then from 2024 produce positive numbers." Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Mark Porter and Nick ZieminskiOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Blackstone's grand ambitions for attracting retail money faces a hiccup
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

It's also a key part of the firm's push to attract retail investors, Insider's Rebecca Ungarino reports. Bloomberg previously reported that both firm CEO Steve Schwarzman and President Jon Gray have each put $100 million of their own money into BREIT since July. But as nice as it is to have the bosses' money backing your fund, that's not the target audience. And while there is a lot of upside to attracting retail investors — its private wealth arm has quadrupled in size to $233 billion in assets in four years — there are risks, too. Click here to read more about the recent headwinds facing Blackstone's big bet to attract retail money.

☆ I was laid off from Lehman Brothers right before it collapsed. Here's what the final chaotic weeks were like from the inside.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Emma Magnus | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Adam Taylor had been working in M&A at Lehman Brothers in London for 2½ years in 2008. I had started working at Lehman Brothers in the summer of 2005, when I was 25. In retrospect, there were warning signs before it collapsedAt the time, nobody thought Lehman Brothers would go under in 2008. I had friends who bought shares in Lehman Brothers when they were really low, thinking they were only going to go up, but they lost their money. I lost the sense of identity I had linked to the companyFor 2½ years, I'd been "Adam Taylor who works at Lehman Brothers."

☆ Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says FTX crash marked the Lehman moment for crypto as substantial harm hit investors
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen likened the collapse of FTX to that of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Substantial harm fell upon investors, especially those who weren't well informed about the risks, she said at the DealBook Summit. Still, Yellen maintained that while FTX's crash has been dramatic, it hasn't spilled over into the traditional banking sector. Two weeks ago, Yellen said that the collapse of FTX strengthened her view that the cryptocurrency market requires "very careful regulation." "I have been skeptical, and I remain quite skeptical," she said Wednesday.

☆ U.S. Treasury's Yellen says cryptocurrencies need regulation
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( David Lawder | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/2] U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen holds a news conference in the Cash Room at the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington, U.S. July 28, 2022. Yellen told an event hosted by the New York Times DealBook that it was important to ensure that crypto assets had adequate customer protections. Yellen told DealBook that the United States was involved in discussions with allies about regulating cryptocurrencies and the Treasury Department had also done a number of reports mapping out "significant" concerns. "The good piece of an explosion like we saw is that it hasn't spilled over to the banking sector. "It's a Lehman moment within crypto, and crypto is big enough that we've had substantial harm with investors."

☆ BlackRock bond chief Rick Rieder says he's never seen a market this rich in income opportunities. He told us how he's invested in it.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Marley Jay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

After the end of a multi-decade bull market, Rieder says investors have a lot of new opportunities. Rieder told Insider what he's buying, and says investors can get strong returns with little risk. Suffice to say, Rieder's happy to see the beginning of a new fixed income environment. "I think the ability to create income in fixed income is maybe the strongest that I've seen in my career." Right now, he describes the fixed income market today as a much more appealing and less high-pressure place to be than it once was.

☆ A Republican super PAC run by former NRA executives lost more than $158,000 in an email hack, federal records show
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Madison Hall | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

A GOP super PAC lost more than $158,000 in an email hack, filings with the FEC indicate. The PAC, Secure Our Freedom Action Fund, is run by two former high-ranking NRA executives. Letter from Secure Our Freedom Action Fund to the Federal Election Commission. Sen.-elect Katie Britt, a Republican from Alabama, is one of the candidates that super PAC Secure Our Freedom Action Fund supported this year. The political action committees of three large trade associations reported stolen checks and fraudulent activity this election cycle as well.

☆ Nomura CEO says U.S. becomes profit driver despite one-off losses
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

TOKYO, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Nomura Holdings Inc's (8604.T) U.S. wholesale business has emerged as a profit driver despite some large one-off losses in the region that had dragged down the bank's earnings in the past, Chief Executive Officer Kentaro Okuda said. Nomura's wholesale division consists of the global markets and investment banking arms. Japan's biggest brokerage and investment bank has had a long troubled history in its attempts to expand overseas, including the acquisition of assets from the collapsed Lehman Brothers in 2008 which it later wrote down. Okuda said the wholesale business overhaul in 2019, which included cost cuts and scaling back of lower growth segments, has helped turn the business leaner. To help the business become more resilient to market swings, Nomura plans to boost equity, private markets products as well as advisory and wealth management businesses, he said.

☆ Crypto startup MoonPay hires Time president to lead its enterprise business
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( Riley De León | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

In this article LTH Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNTKeith Grossman, Time president TIMEPieces Artist Jeremy CowartTime president Keith Grossman is leaving the legacy publisher to take on a new role as the president of enterprise at crypto startup MoonPay, effective December 31. Before his three-plus years at Time, Grossman had held leadership posts at major publishers including Bloomberg and Condé Nast-owned Wired. "I think it's important to separate a bad actor from an industry," Grossman said of the FTX fallout. Crypto's confidence crisisIn the 12 months since bitcoin topped out at over $68,000, the crypto industry, once valued at roughly $3 trillion, has fallen to around $900 billion. Enterprise adoption has been fueling this belief, with companies including Nike , McDonald's , Adidas and Starbucks launching their own NFT collections.

☆ As BlockFi files for bankruptcy, what to know about crypto investor protections
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( Greg Iacurci | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

The ongoing FTX fallout — and bankruptcies earlier this year for lenders Celsius Network and Voyager Digital — is teaching crypto investors a hard lesson about their protections relative to more traditional asset classes. Howey Co., established the so-called Howey test to determine what constitutes a security, or "investment contract." More on how the Howey test works can be found below. Here's why this is important for crypto: It's unclear in many cases if digital assets are an "investment contract" under the 76-year-old Howey test. The Securities Investor Protection Corporation insures investors for up to $500,000 in the event a brokerage firm liquidates and their holdings are tied up in the insolvent firm.

☆ Cathie Wood breaks down FTX, Elon Musk, and Twitter in a new interview. Here are her 9 best quotes.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-25 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Cathie Wood spoke to Bloomberg on Tuesday in a wide-ranging conversation on crypto, FTX, Elon Musk, and investing. She compared Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, and shared her thoughts on Elon Musk, Twitter, and Tesla. "We do think bitcoin — and you can see through the behavior of the infrastructure it hasn't skipped a beat, not one beat — it's more secure than yesterday, the day before, the day before. "We think bitcoin is coming out of this smelling like a rose." "Think about the amount of data Twitter has, and think about the combination of that and artificial intelligence.

☆ 'You're an absolute fraud': CME Group CEO says he called out Sam Bankman-Fried the first time he met him, months before FTX's collapse
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-23 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

CME Group CEO Terry Duffy said he called Sam Bankman-Fried a "absolute fraud" in March. "Right away my suspicions were up," Duffy told CNBC on Tuesday. "Right away my suspicions were up," Duffy told CNBC on Tuesday, after he initially recounted his meeting with Bankman-Fried last week on the "On the Tape" podcast. "And then when I met with [Bankman-Fried], I knew right away this a joke, this is absolutely going nowhere." "You're a fraud, you're an absolute fraud," Duffy said he told Bankman-Fried at the meeting in March earlier this year.

☆ History shows this 4th quarter rally is likely almost over
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( Michelle Fox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Canaccord Genuity isn't expecting the S & P 500 to go much higher before year-end. "History shows any year with such a weak start through the first three quarters leads to a fourth-quarter rally with an end-of-quarter gain between 8-12%," Dwyer wrote in a note Monday. Only 2008 saw a negative fourth quarter after a similar weak start, he added. The S & P is up 10.16% so far this quarter, as of Monday's close. "The SPX closed last week in the middle of that expected outcome range suggesting no significant tactical edge into year-end," Dwyer said.

☆ Why protections for crypto investors are linked to orange groves
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-21 | by ( Greg Iacurci | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

watch nowHow orange groves impact crypto protectionsThe reason why largely hinges on a 1946 Supreme Court case about investors in Florida orange groves. Howey Co. — established the so-called Howey test to determine what constitutes a security, or "investment contract." (More on how the Howey test works can be found below.) Here's why this is important for crypto: It's unclear in many cases if digital assets are an "investment contract" under the 76-year-old Howey test. Why the 'security' distinction mattersThe Howey test has four parts to determine if something like bitcoin is an "investment contract."

☆ FTX collapse shows why crypto must be regulated before it threatens stability of financial system, says Bank of England official
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-21 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The Bank of England's deputy governor for financial stability spoke at a conference on Monday. Crypto must be regulated before it's large enough to threaten overall financial stability, he said. Jon Cunliffe, the bank's deputy governor for financial stability, spoke at a conference at Warwick Business School on Monday. Cunliffe said that while crypto isn't large enough "to threaten the stability of the financial system, its links with mainstream finance have been developing rapidly." In his speech on Monday, Cunliffe added that some crypto technologies could also improve the financial system.

☆ A top exec at OKX explains his call with Sam Bankman-Fried as FTX scrambled for a rescue - and why he couldn't give him a billion-dollar lifeline
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-19 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

In an interview with Insider, the director of financial markets for OKX recounted two phone calls he had with Sam Bankman-Fried before FTX collapsed. Bankman-Fried initially asked for $1 billion to $2 billion from OKX, but called back hours later asking for more. The exec advised Bankman-Fried to consult the CEO of Binance regarding the liquidity of FTX's native token, FTT. To save FTX, Bankman-Fried sought emergency capital from rival crypto exchanges, including OKX, which says it's the second-largest crypto exchange by spot trading volume. In an optimal scenario, OKX would've created a strategic partnership with FTX, Lai explained, since it strengthens the industry if big players could support one another.

Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s 30-year-old founder, became the face of the company and, to some, crypto at large. The first red flagsNot long after Bankman-Fried started FTX, crypto began to boom. Venture capital money flooded into all things blockchain and crypto, and crypto platforms moved to attract customers beyond the technologists and blockchain evangelists that once fueled its rise. These digital tokens use blockchain technology, in which computers contribute to a shared ledger that can be used to track digital assets. Graeme Sloan / Sipa USA via APThe Wall Street Journal and CNBC, also citing anonymous sources, reported that Alameda had used FTX funds for trading.

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