“Digital Currency”

Evan Luthra says he lost more than $2 million when the FTX cryptocurrency exchange imploded last month. And he feels doubly injured seeing disgraced founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried making the media rounds, stating that he had no idea about the “huge management failures” and “accounting f–k-ups” that led to the collapse.

That Bankman-Fried has been holding court from what appears to be a stately home in the Bahamas, where he resides untouched by American law enforcement, is like salt on the wound.

After a week in which Sam Bankman-Fried was gabbing to just about anyone who would listen — repeating his questionable theory as to how his $32 billion crypto exchange’s collapse was a fraud-free mistake — what people were talking about this past weekend was what wasn’t said by his former top lieutenant and ex-girlfriend, Caroline Ellison. On Sunday afternoon, Autism Capital — an anonymous Twitter account that has been a go-to source for rumors (some true, some not so much) about everything related to Bankman-Fried — posted two pictures that appeared to show Ellison at a coffee shop in Manhattan.

Ha!

Usually when a person defrauds investors of millions of dollars and launders the funds to personal pet projects, he goes to jail. (See: Bernie Madoff.) But in FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s case, you get kid gloves.

It was obvious corporate media decided to treat SBF differently from the start. When FTX first crumbled, the New York Times characterized SBF’s fall from grace as pure mismanagement. SBF was described as a “charitable entrepreneur,” while the words “fraud,” “crime,” or “stolen,” do not appear anywhere in the article.

On December 11, 2008, Bernie Madoff was arrested and criminally charged with one of the biggest financial frauds in history — an audacious, long-running Ponzi scheme that resulted in tens of billions of dollars in lost investor funds. At the time, the scandal sparked a national conversation about the gross deficiencies of our country’s white-collar enforcement regime, but ever since the initial revelations about the problems at FTX and about Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal exposure, the Madoff case has resurfaced as a point of comparison for Bankman-Fried’s alleged misdeeds — and as a rallying cry for people who believe he should already have been locked up by U.S. prosecutors.

Bankman-Fried was asked about the comparison by Good Morning America anchor George Stephanopoulos and (of course) rejected it, arguing that FTX was a “real business” in contrast to Madoff’s outright Ponzi scheme.

O’Rourke’s people, and possibly other Democrats, may have known something before Sam Bankman-Fried’s investors knew it.

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF)’s “I’ve had a bad month” stands alongside Ron Burgundy’s “Milk was a bad choice” as an understatement.

Investors put something close to $2 billion into his cryptocurrency outfit FTX only to see it evaporate along with SBF’s fortune. For the allegedly defrauded FTX investors looking for their lost money, SBF’s tailor and barber — just a hunch — probably did not get their hands on any of it.

The campaign coffers of people with Ds affixed to their names did contain a lot of this money. But since the scandal broke just days after the election — how convenient, for some! — good luck getting any of it back. Democrats excel at giving away other people’s money, just not their own.

FTX executives spent wildly and showered workers with lavish perks such as free food and massages, and Amazon deliveries by private jet in the months before the cryptocurrency site’s catastrophic collapse, according to former employees.

FTX’s headquarters in the Bahamas featured daily catering “in addition to the free groceries, barbershop pop-up and bi-weekly massages,” a former worker told the Financial Times.

Workers also enjoyed a “full suite of cars and gas covered for all employees [and] unlimited, full expense covered trips to any office globally,” the ex-employee added.

… In response to allegations that he had run a ‘massive Ponzi scheme, he said: ‘I was CEO of FTX and that means whatever happened I had a duty to our stakeholders … to do right by them.’

‘I didn’t do a good job of that, I made a lot of mistakes,’ he added. ‘I did not try to commit fraud on anyone.’

Liar.

Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried claims he has just $100,000 left in his bank account after the implosion of his cryptocurrency empire.

The remarks Monday marked Bankman-Fried’s first attempt to explain his current personal wealth during intense scrutiny over his handling of FTX’s finances. The firm’s new leaders have condemned Bankman-Fried’s management of the company as they navigate a disastrous bankruptcy.

For some reason I don’t believe him.

Billionaires signal virtue to avoid paying tax

Elizabeth Holmes dressed in the same style every day: black turtleneck sweater, black slacks, and black low-slung shoes. This “uniform” underlined her deified status as a busy billionaire dedicated to changing the world, setting her apart from mere mortals with time to choose their clothes. “My mom had me in black turtlenecks when I was, like, eight,” she told one women’s magazine. “I probably have 150 of these. It makes it easy, because every day you put on the same thing and don’t have to think about it — one less thing in your life. All my focus is on the work. I take it so seriously; I’m sure that translates into how I dress.”