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Last November, the global market value of crypto assets amounted to $3.2 trillion (FT Wilshire Digital Asset Index). Today, it is $861 billion. In other words, the 73% loss in the crypto and NFT (non-fungible token) space in one year has, so far, surpassed $3 trillion and about 38% of the $8 trillion in stock market losses incurred during the 2007-09 financial implosion. The ripple effects of this speculative boondoggle are just getting started as contagion spreads among novice and so-called sophisticated investors alike.
A few weeks back, a CNN interviewer asked crypto-trading site FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) how common Ponzi schemes were in crypto, and his answer is iconic of the era that was. Here is a direct video link.
Forbes, which repeatedly featured SBF as a billionaire wunderkind, is now asking “Where did the money go?“
FTX bankruptcy filings released Thursday revealed that FTX founder Sam Bankman- Fried, his cofounder Gary Wang and two other executives received a total of $4.1 billion in loans from his Alameda Research trading firm.
Of that total, $1 billion went to Bankman-Fried in the form of a personal loan, while $2.3 billion went to an entity he controls, Paper Bird (Bankman-Fried has told Forbes that he owns 75% of the entity, with Wang owning the rest) – so that’s another nearly $1.73 billion at Bankman-Fried’s disposal. FTX’s Director of Engineering Nishad Singh got his own loan of $543 million, while…
