It’s Sam Bankman-Fried’s time in the spotlight. Both Alameda Ventures and FTX’s golden boy placed both companies in a winnable position. He seems to now be taking the glory home. This is the recent Forbes piece about secretly insolvent exchanges puts it best, “Like J.P. Morgan during the stock market panic and crash of 1907, Bankman-Fried is taking advantage of the crypto chaos to expand his empire.” Rumors about his involvement in engineering the crash appear to be greatly exaggerated.
NewsBTC reports on FTX’s bailout of BlockFiAnd Voyager Bailing Voyage to Alameda. We summarized the macro congested situation in the first article:
“Over the last few weeks, the crypto market has been trending down. Every company that offered cryptocurrency deposit yields like BlockFi or Celsius, and hedge funds such as Three Arrows Capital was affected by the contagion effects of Terra/ Luna’s extinction event. These companies’ problems and possible liquidation of assets, in turn, sent the crypto market into even more turmoil.”
In the Fobes piece, speaking about BlockFi and Voyager’s bailouts, they paint a similar situation with a crucial difference. Bankman-Fried makes a sacrifice here.
“Between FTX and his quantitative trading firm Alameda, he provided the companies with $750 million in credit lines. Bankman-Fried cannot guarantee that he will be able to recoup the investment. “You know, we’re willing to do a somewhat bad deal here, if that’s what it takes to sort of stabilize things and protect customers,” he says.”
And, as you can read, that’s according to Bankman-Fried himself. A few lines below, the article casts doubt on his assessment, “Bankman Fried’s cash infusions are far from altruistic. He has emerged as a smart vulture capitalist in the beleaguered crypto market, knowing full well that his own fortune depends on its healthy rebound and growth.”
Source : TradingView.com| Source: TradingView.com
Bankman Fried Observes Small Exchanges And Miners
Rumours that FTX wants to hire Robinhood is possible!It is still in circulation today. Forbes has more information on the subject. “Bankman Fried has also bought into crypto brokerage Robinhood, where FTX has already accumulated a 7.6% stake, and is rumored to be considering an acquisition.”
Forbes also estimated that over 600 crypto-exchanges are operating worldwide. Then, they quote Bankman Fried claiming, “there are some third-tier exchanges that are already secretly insolvent”. Does this imply that Fried and his companies might be looking to buy some? Maybe. However, Bankman Fried will be picky about exactly which ones:
“There are companies that are basically too far gone and it’s not practical to backstop them for reasons like a substantial hole in the balance sheet, regulatory issues, or that there is not much of a business left to be saved.”
In a strange turn of events Bankman-Fried, one of Proof-Of-Stake’s biggest proponents, expressed interest in “crypto miners”. It is even stranger that the article goes on to list two Bitcoin mining companies. Who introduced the word “crypto,” Bankman-Fried or Forbes?
“Bankman-Fried also has his eye on crypto miners, many of whom leveraged their balance sheet at breakneck pace to quickly scale and take advantage of this 21st century digital gold rush. The stocks of publicly-trading crypto miners including Marathon Digital Holdings and Riot Blockchain are down more than 60% year to date.”
Ending with Tether for Some Reason
Without warning or apparent reason, the Forbes article ends with Sam Bankman-Fried’s thoughts on Tether. “I think that the really bearish views on Tether are wrong…I don’t think there is any evidence to support them,” he says.
Pixabay | Charts by TradingView