Knightshade
Well-Known Member
@daniel,
I disagree 100% that "crypto is a scam". No, it's not. Crypto is a currency, like any other.
I mean, except for the fact there's literally nothing backing it's value, and unlike other entirely arbitrary currency like seashells it doesn't even have an attractive physical form.
I think you're having difficulty separating the underlying mechanics of cryptocurrency with the machinations of the scammers who are using the obfuscation and lack of regulation to steal people's money, like Sam Bankman-Fried.
Probably because every actual significant use of it so far has been either massive financial scams, or funding other criminal trade like drugs or cybercrime.
So the confusion might be understandable.
But the FTX scam has nothing to do with the fact that the underlying marbles that were being shuttled around were crypto tokens instead of dollars.
Well, it KIND OF DOES.
Because the value of the dollar doesn't go from $1 to nearly 0 overnight.
And much of the missing $ at FTX is because they had "billions" of dollars "worth" of their own garbage tokens "backing" the loans. So as soon as the value of those went near 0 they no longer had billions backing the loans.
If they'd had dollars backing those loans they'd be fine...or at least only mildly insolvent, not sitting around going "where'd that 8 billion go?" they didn't though because they lent out all the dollars and instead took in now worthless magic beans.
Which is more evidence beans aren't much of a currency.
Enron committed fraud that amounted to $20B-$40B
FWIW, the literal guy who took over Enron to guide it through bankrupcy is the same guy now CEO of FTX.
And he stated FTX is, by far, the worst case he's ever seen. Obviously he's talking about more than just in raw $ terms... but the very unregulated and "just making stuff up" nature of crypto is a major reason why that was possible. Unlike Enron they had no need to try and make their books look good.