Nov 13, 2022 07:24 AM
I've always liked the idea of crypto-currency, but have never trusted it enough to put any money into it. It's always been too dependent on technology that I don't understand and tech-hustlers who I don't trust. The quantity of bots and scams that surrounded it just turned me off.
Well, here's crypto-exchange FTX. It had about $16 billion in customer assets in customer trading accounts. Reportedly, unknown to its customers, it transferred about $10 billion of those funds to its owners' trading accounts. Apparently the owners thought they could make money for themselves by trading their customers money when the customers weren't using it. (That's what conventional banks and brokerage firms do with customer accounts.) But the owners got in a hole with a succession of bad trades. (Like conventional finance did in 2008.)
Adding insult to injury, some $1.7 billion of that customers money has just disappeared. (The company says "hackers".)
Then there was talk that the FTX owner wanted to sweet-talk Elon Musk into loaning him money to make things balance, but Elon was having none of it.
So FTX is apparently planning to liquidate itself and its customers have just lost their money.
And Twitter was alive today with talk that the owner's private jet had been tracked over the last few hours flying to Argentina. (If he has the $1.7 billion, he should head to Dubai. The UAE has no extradition treaty with the U.S.)
https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/11/12...um=twitter
Well, here's crypto-exchange FTX. It had about $16 billion in customer assets in customer trading accounts. Reportedly, unknown to its customers, it transferred about $10 billion of those funds to its owners' trading accounts. Apparently the owners thought they could make money for themselves by trading their customers money when the customers weren't using it. (That's what conventional banks and brokerage firms do with customer accounts.) But the owners got in a hole with a succession of bad trades. (Like conventional finance did in 2008.)
Adding insult to injury, some $1.7 billion of that customers money has just disappeared. (The company says "hackers".)
Then there was talk that the FTX owner wanted to sweet-talk Elon Musk into loaning him money to make things balance, but Elon was having none of it.
So FTX is apparently planning to liquidate itself and its customers have just lost their money.
And Twitter was alive today with talk that the owner's private jet had been tracked over the last few hours flying to Argentina. (If he has the $1.7 billion, he should head to Dubai. The UAE has no extradition treaty with the U.S.)
https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/11/12...um=twitter