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The day before the embattled cryptocurrency exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy, Changpeng Zhao, the chief executive of the rival exchange Binance, sent an alarmed text to Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX's founder...Earlier that week, Mr. Zhao had agreed to buy FTX and save the exchange...

Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto exchange FTX reached late stages of negotiating a $100 million sponsorship deal with Taylor Swift before they ended last spring...

In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, O’Leary said he put about $9.7 million of his spokesman check into crypto tokens with his FTX account, which has dropped to zero after the exchange collapsed last month. SNIP O’Leary said he told the disgraced crypto tycoon, “Look Sam, I am just one investor, but my account has a zero in it, and there are no accounting records. Where did the money go? I need to find where the money went.” O’Leary admitted that he fell into the “groupthink” pitfall, drinking the Kool-Aid on institutional investors’ frenzy to get in on crypto...

House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters told the panel’s Democrats she doesn’t plan to subpoena former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried to testify at a Dec. 13 hearing about the crypto exchange’s rapid demise, according to people with direct knowledge of the conversation. Waters informed committee members of her decision at a private meeting Tuesday with Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler on Capitol Hill, these people said, declining to be named in order to speak freely about the private discussion. Waters said she wants committee staff to try to persuade Bankman-Fried to voluntarily testify, those with knowledge of...

The Canadian investor was grilled by CNBC’s “Squawk Box″ hosts over his failure to properly assess the risks associated with investing and promoting FTX. O’Leary said that he fell prey to “groupthink,” and that none of his investment partners had lost money. “Total deal was just under $15 million, all in,” O’Leary said. “I put about $9.7 million into crypto. I think that’s what I lost. I don’t know. It’s all at zero.”

Beleaguered FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has reportedly tapped a key member of convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal team to represent him following the collapse of his cryptocurrency empire.Bankman-Fried hired Mark S. Cohen, a managing partner and co-founder of the Cohen & Gresser law firm in New York, Reuters reported, citing a message from the former FTX boss’s spokesperson Mark Botnick.

Taylor Swift came close to finalizing a sponsorship deal worth over $100 million with FTX, the massive crypto exchange that just imploded into bankruptcy, The Financial Times reports. FTX’s embattled founder Sam Bankman-Fried — recently seen insisting he “did not ever try to commit fraud on anyone” during a live video interview from the Bahamas — was reportedly a driving force behind the possible partnership. As one FTX employee put it, he’s “a fan of Tay Tay.” The talks with Swift reportedly began last fall and ended in the spring. While one person said that Swift “would not, and did...

Tesla billionaire and new Twitter owner Elon Musk has suggested the disgraced former chief executive of collapsed bitcoin and crypto exchange FTX donated far more money to Democrats than previously thought. (Paywall)

The future of a program aimed at helping formerly incarcerated Chicago residents hangs in the balance after the company that was supposed to pay for it, cryptocurrency giant FTX, has imploded amid accusations of fraud before paying most of its promised $1 million grant. FTX’s participation was announced by Mayor Lori Lightfoot in May, when the cryptocurrency exchange moved its U.S. headquarters to Fulton Market. Brett Harrison, the now-former president of FTX US, pledged that the company would give at least $1 million to help expand a universal basic income program run by the not-for-profit organization Equity and Transformation. The...

Internet pioneer Radia Perlman has argued in favor of centralized infrastructure, while speaking at the International Symposium on Blockchain Advancements in Singapore on Friday. Perlman said that conventional wisdom poses centralised systems as “bad” and decentralized as “good,” however decentralized entities are inherently problematic in multiple ways. “Blockchain as a buzzword started as the technology behind Bitcoin. People made money on Bitcoin and the more hyped it was, the more start-ups leveraged the hype to claim their product has something to do with Blockchain” explained Perlman. “If you hear so much hype, eventually you assume well, it must be incredibly...

Crypto investors should look for exchanges that don't do business like FTX when choosing where to deposit their funds, according to Sam Bankman-Fried. Speaking at the New York Times DealBook summit Wednesday, the bankrupt group's former chief executive said that traders should only put their money into exchanges that provide proof of reserves and regulated reporting of customers' assets and liabilities. "I obviously don't know exactly what's going on at other exchanges. I can tell you what I would think as a customer," Bankman-Fried said. "If I were a customer here, which is look for the things that I wish...

As October turned to November, Sam Bankman-Fried had an estimated net worth of $16 billion. Better known as SBF, the founder of the FTX crypto exchange was predicted by some to become the world's first trillionaire. But he's now worth "close to nothing," he said in a live interview Wednesday with Andrew Ross Sorkin at The News York Times' DealBook Summit. SBF called in from the Bahamas, where he operated his FTX empire. When asked by Sorkin how much money Bankman-Fried now had at his disposal, the disgraced founder answered, "by my knowledge, close to nothing." "I don't have any...

<p>The fall of crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried has been painted as a big blow to the Democratic party, whose candidates were major beneficiaries of his largesse. But in a new interview, Bankman-Fried has claimed he gave equally large amounts of money to Republicans.</p>

In a newly published phone call SBF claims, "reporters freak the f—- out if you donate to a Republican because they’re all super liberal." Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, says he donated equally to both Democratic and Republican politicians before his cryptocurrency platform filed for bankruptcy earlier this month, wiping out billions of dollars in customer deposits. And that fact is going to come as a real shock to right-wing political operatives on Fox News who’ve tried to claim Democrats were the only ones beholden to FTX cash. “I donated to both parties. I donated about the same amount...

The November election is long over, but one item of business remains: a mysterious contribution from one of the top executives at FTX, the high-flying cryptocurrency exchange that recently declared bankruptcy after an old-fashioned run on the bank. The Oregonian reported that the contribution to the Democratic Party of Oregon Political Action Committee, the largest in the PAC’s history, was made in the name of a Las Vegas-based crypto startup called Prime Trust. But it actually came from Nishad Singh, director of engineering at FTX, and the DPO PAC didn’t correct the information until the paper called about it, The...

Beto O'Rourke returned a $1 million donation from controversial cryptocurrency magnate Sam Bankman-Fried less than a week before Election Day, the Texas Tribune's James Barragán reported Tuesday. FTX, Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency exchange, was valued at $32 billion before its abrupt collapse earlier this month sparked widespread panic amongst crypto investors and industry leaders. FTX filed for bankruptcy and Bankman-Fried stepped down as its top executive on Nov. 11, just three days after Election Day. Chris Evans, an O'Rourke campaign spokesperson, told Barragán that the decision to return Bankman-Fried's donation was not connected to the controversy now swirling around Bankman-Fried and FTX....

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced that it would be teaming up with global financial giants to launch a 12-week digital dollar pilot program. The New York Fed’s experiment will review how banks are able to process digital dollar tokens within the central bank system and quantify their impact, with the assistance of the some of the largest financial institutions in the world. Citigroup, HSBC Holdings, Mastercard, and Wells Fargo & Co. were among the major banks said to be participating in the trial, which was led by the Fed’s New York Innovation Center (NYIC), according to a...

“Ya. Hehe. I had to be. It’s what reputations are made of, to some extent. I feel bad for those guys who get f—ed by it, by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.” —Sam Bankman-Fried The FTX Bitcoin empire of 30-year-old CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is in shambles. Or more specifically, his “dumb game” cryptocurrency exchange has destroyed thousands of lives. Electronically, he may have robbed perhaps a million investors, and along with them hundreds of large institutional investors. Mysteriously, only after the conclusion of the midterm elections,...

The FTX scandal is only getting started. Another cryptocurrency by the name of Tether is also on the brink of failing and both FTX and Tether appear to have been tools of the Deep State. A week ago TGP reported that FTX was used as a money laundering scheme in Ukraine where money sent there was sent back to US politicians. Revolver added more to this story overnight. In a lengthy article, Revolver notes first that FTX may not be the largest cryptocurrency-related entity to collapse in the coming months. Another crypto by the name of “Tether” or USDT...

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