8 ms·

In 2021, FTX had a funding round of $420.69M

52 points by senttoschool 4y ago

kibwen 4y ago
Strong "how do you do, fellow kids" energy. Companies draping themselves in tired, culturally-exhausted trappings in an attempt to conceal their sociopathy under a guise of countercultural relatability. It's just as transparently grotesque when Musk does it.
chrisaycock 4y ago
Anytime I read an article about crypto, I feel as if I'm reading the review to a fantasy novel. Like, is any of this real? The words all sound made up.
- john_alan 4y ago
  I imagine all these rich, successful people investing in this stuff must know something you don't
  - pavlov 4y ago
    People like Sequoia and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan who invested tens of millions into FTX last year, and whose investment is most likely worthless now? Smart people make bad investments too, often out of FOMO.
    - djtango 4y ago
      The FOMO can get institutionalised. When you are incentivised to chase funding (as a GP) if you aren't doing the cypto thing, your LPs will go with another fund and/or you'll get redeemed. And if you have to go in on crypto, FTX was supposed to be a sure bet
  - dvt 4y ago
    This might be satire, but in case it isn't: there are plenty of very rich people that are very dumb. And plenty of brilliant people that are destitute. This disparity is even moreso skewed in industries like finance, which tends to favor luck way more than, e.g., in startup land where you need things like customers and product market fit, so "faking it until you make it" is much harder. Most of the "investment" that companies like OpenSea/FTX/etc. have been getting is pure gambling by the likes of a16z and other institutional investors. There's no traditional "exit" to pursue here, and the whole strategy is essentially a pump and dump (often involving arcane tokenomics) where VCs dump on retail and make 10-100x returns. There's no technology, no value, hardly any users, and if you're not sure who the sucker is, it's probably you.
    - senttoschool 4y ago
      and the whole strategy is essentially a pump and dump (often involving arcane tokenomics) where VCs dump on retail and make 10-100x returns. A lot of people didn't see this. VCs used their reputation to pump a token. Then they dump the token almost immediately on retail. This was a much faster way to make money than waiting years for a traditional startup to exit. VCs were in on the scams. This is why I lost complete respect for a16z and hate that crypto-shill Garry Tan will run Y Combinator.
      - dvt 4y ago
        > This is why I lost complete respect for a16z and hate that crypto-shill Garry Tan will run Y Combinator. Even though I understand this from an ethical standpoint, this is the entire job of venture capital: make a ton of money as fast as possible while minimizing risk. Crypto is literally the perfect vehicle for this. They can't do this in traditional markets because actual hedge funds like Jane Street and Two Sigma will absolutely demolish them. So I think that a16z, Sequoia, etc. have been brilliantly making their clients a lot of money. If we had money in their fund, we'd both probably be very happy campers. I blame governments for being slow regulating crypto and I blame individuals for being greedy. Imo, blaming VCs for making money is like blaming water it's wet.
        4y ago
  - senttoschool 4y ago
    Crypto is a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. This is because the poor is hoping to get rich quick. But the rich has all the inside information in an unregulated environment as well as the ability to pump and dump. Occasionally, someone poor makes money and tells his friends about his new lambo - hoping to get others into the scam/ponzi.
    - ETH_start 4y ago
      Regulations, i.e. centralized control via the SEC, doesn't help the poor. All of the massive returns since the SEC's entry into the crypto market in 2017 have been reserved for venture capital funds. Before 2017, ordinary people were able to participate in Ethereum's token crowdsale and subsequently get returns of 1000X. Narratives like yours are peddled to the poor to manufacture consent for anti-capitalist "consumer protection" laws that deprive them of investment options, so that insiders gain a competitive advantage over them.
      - senttoschool 4y ago
        99% of projects that had ICOs before 2017 are dead. All investors were wiped out. Founders who raised money were free to use the money however they want, including for personal purchases, insider trading, etc. Guess who got wiped out the most? The uninformed poor people.
        ETH_start 4y ago
        The market capitalization of projects that did token sales before 2017 is orders of magnitude greater than the amount invested in token sales before 2017, meaning investors in pre-2017 token sales are, in the aggregate, massively up. This is what venture capital investing is: you invest in 100 projects to hit one homerun. Here is a good paper showing that token sale investments were primarily small, and opening up the venture capital market to the broader public: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11408-020-00366-0 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11408-020-00366-0 You need to insist otherwise because thousands of regulator jobs, and dozens of venture capital funds, depend on it. The poor are just the propaganda fodder the insiders cynically use to gain a political mandate for their repression of the poor.
  - prepend 4y ago
    Obviously. If Matt Damon and Kim Kardashian think it’s a good idea and promote it, it must be good, right?
- pavlov 4y ago
  Even the names of the people are on-the-nose parody. FTX's founder is Sam Bankman-Fried. Sam rhymes with scam, and as of yesterday he's officially a fried bankman. All this would be too ridiculous for a novel.
  - djbusby 4y ago
    Remus Lupin was a werewolf and Sirius was a dog!
- fourstar 4y ago
  I do the same with government.
- highwaylights 4y ago
  $420.69 million dollar round. 69 investors (one of whom was the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan - one of the largest retirement funds in Canada). When I think "prudent retirement planning based on low risk, sound long-term principles" I think of a group of bros giggling at how many weed and sex references they could jam into their sales pitch.
  - thundergolfer 4y ago
    Jeez that’s shameful. What kind of capital management system lets crypto within 100 miles of a pension plan.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Such is life when you're forced to buy negative yielding bonds from the government and still get a return for your investors.
    - tomp 4y ago
      I mean, the issue is that positive yield bonds exist… like, why is the government just printing money?! The only correct risk-free interest rate is 0%. Wanna return? Invest and risk!
      - atdrummond 4y ago
        Bonds aren’t risk free. Just asking holders of Argentina’s.
        pjc50 4y ago
        Well, yes. That's why bonds have a positive and also variable yield. I guess the parent poster doesn't understand the difference between yield and coupon.
      - pjc50 4y ago
        sigh Whether the bonds have a positive yield and how currency is issued have no relation. There have been plenty of positive yield bonds during the gold standard. Indeed, "hard money" standards tend to make borrowing at high interest rates more necessary. This is like the bizarre argument sometimes made that hard money will end war; that's not how it works. The war will happen anyway and a means will be found to pay for it. Gold was heavily used as an inter-governmental currency in WW2 - resulting in a few very expensive shipwrecks.
- lizknope 4y ago
  Yes it is all made up. Or about 95% made up with a tiny amount of actual USD or Euros Just listen to Sam Bankman-Fraud on a financial podcast describe his magical ponzi box. Well now the thing anyone with a brain would have said sounds like a scam has been exposed as a scam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6nAxiym9oc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6nAxiym9oc
323 4y ago
SBF was trying very much at the time to give of Elon Musk vibes, that he is the next one. Elon at the time was posting the 69/420 numbers a lot.
- senttoschool 4y ago
  He tried to be like Elon without actually making something productive for society.
tengbretson 4y ago
Ya know, hindsight is 20/20, but it really seems like all the signs were there to call the top on crypto.
- Workaccount2 4y ago
  I called the top, but it was the wrong one. It really is mindblowing how irrational a market can become, to the point that seemingly everyone agrees thing have become untethered, and the market will still run another 25%.
- rideontime 4y ago
  Plenty of us did. We were told that we were "not going to make it."
- sergiotapia 4y ago
  Matt Damon talking about it was the top. You could tell immediately. Even with Binance now being the last dog standing worth anything (worth, lol), it's all a house of cards. Who will be the last bag-holders until this thing finally has it's death rattle. Hope it ends already, and the this wonderful technology can go back to doing what it does best become a utility and not a vehicle for speculation.
- __derek__ 4y ago
  The top was Sam Bankman-Fried's appearance on Odd Lots, in which he described the mechanics of "yield farming" to Matt Levine.[1] [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/odd-lots-full-transcript-sam-bankman-fried-and-matt-levine-on-crypto https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/odd-lots-...
MarkPNeyer 4y ago
Here’s SBF describing that he totally understood the ponzi nature of these coins but that he basically didn’t expect there to be “people calling bullshit in a coordinated manner.” https://nitter.it/coryklippsten/status/1546902114550439936#m https://nitter.it/coryklippsten/status/1546902114550439936#m
joanfihu 4y ago
I thought FTX was a visual effects company. Aaahh no, it's THX
7e 4y ago
420.69? Was Elon Musk involved? Don’t trust juvenile transaction numbers.

52 points by senttoschool 4y ago

Strong "how do you do, fellow kids" energy. Companies draping themselves in tired, culturally-exhausted trappings in an attempt to conceal their sociopathy under a guise of countercultural relatability. It's just as transparently grotesque when Musk does it.

chrisaycock 4y ago

Anytime I read an article about crypto, I feel as if I'm reading the review to a fantasy novel. Like, is any of this real? The words all sound made up.

john_alan 4y ago
I imagine all these rich, successful people investing in this stuff must know something you don't
- pavlov 4y ago
  People like Sequoia and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan who invested tens of millions into FTX last year, and whose investment is most likely worthless now? Smart people make bad investments too, often out of FOMO.
  - djtango 4y ago
    The FOMO can get institutionalised. When you are incentivised to chase funding (as a GP) if you aren't doing the cypto thing, your LPs will go with another fund and/or you'll get redeemed. And if you have to go in on crypto, FTX was supposed to be a sure bet
- dvt 4y ago
  This might be satire, but in case it isn't: there are plenty of very rich people that are very dumb. And plenty of brilliant people that are destitute. This disparity is even moreso skewed in industries like finance, which tends to favor luck way more than, e.g., in startup land where you need things like customers and product market fit, so "faking it until you make it" is much harder. Most of the "investment" that companies like OpenSea/FTX/etc. have been getting is pure gambling by the likes of a16z and other institutional investors. There's no traditional "exit" to pursue here, and the whole strategy is essentially a pump and dump (often involving arcane tokenomics) where VCs dump on retail and make 10-100x returns. There's no technology, no value, hardly any users, and if you're not sure who the sucker is, it's probably you.
  - senttoschool 4y ago
    and the whole strategy is essentially a pump and dump (often involving arcane tokenomics) where VCs dump on retail and make 10-100x returns. A lot of people didn't see this. VCs used their reputation to pump a token. Then they dump the token almost immediately on retail. This was a much faster way to make money than waiting years for a traditional startup to exit. VCs were in on the scams. This is why I lost complete respect for a16z and hate that crypto-shill Garry Tan will run Y Combinator.
    - dvt 4y ago
      > This is why I lost complete respect for a16z and hate that crypto-shill Garry Tan will run Y Combinator. Even though I understand this from an ethical standpoint, this is the entire job of venture capital: make a ton of money as fast as possible while minimizing risk. Crypto is literally the perfect vehicle for this. They can't do this in traditional markets because actual hedge funds like Jane Street and Two Sigma will absolutely demolish them. So I think that a16z, Sequoia, etc. have been brilliantly making their clients a lot of money. If we had money in their fund, we'd both probably be very happy campers. I blame governments for being slow regulating crypto and I blame individuals for being greedy. Imo, blaming VCs for making money is like blaming water it's wet.
      - 4y ago
- senttoschool 4y ago
  Crypto is a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. This is because the poor is hoping to get rich quick. But the rich has all the inside information in an unregulated environment as well as the ability to pump and dump. Occasionally, someone poor makes money and tells his friends about his new lambo - hoping to get others into the scam/ponzi.
  - ETH_start 4y ago
    Regulations, i.e. centralized control via the SEC, doesn't help the poor. All of the massive returns since the SEC's entry into the crypto market in 2017 have been reserved for venture capital funds. Before 2017, ordinary people were able to participate in Ethereum's token crowdsale and subsequently get returns of 1000X. Narratives like yours are peddled to the poor to manufacture consent for anti-capitalist "consumer protection" laws that deprive them of investment options, so that insiders gain a competitive advantage over them.
    - senttoschool 4y ago
      99% of projects that had ICOs before 2017 are dead. All investors were wiped out. Founders who raised money were free to use the money however they want, including for personal purchases, insider trading, etc. Guess who got wiped out the most? The uninformed poor people.
      - ETH_start 4y ago
        The market capitalization of projects that did token sales before 2017 is orders of magnitude greater than the amount invested in token sales before 2017, meaning investors in pre-2017 token sales are, in the aggregate, massively up. This is what venture capital investing is: you invest in 100 projects to hit one homerun. Here is a good paper showing that token sale investments were primarily small, and opening up the venture capital market to the broader public: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11408-020-00366-0 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11408-020-00366-0 You need to insist otherwise because thousands of regulator jobs, and dozens of venture capital funds, depend on it. The poor are just the propaganda fodder the insiders cynically use to gain a political mandate for their repression of the poor.
- prepend 4y ago
  Obviously. If Matt Damon and Kim Kardashian think it’s a good idea and promote it, it must be good, right?
pavlov 4y ago
Even the names of the people are on-the-nose parody. FTX's founder is Sam Bankman-Fried. Sam rhymes with scam, and as of yesterday he's officially a fried bankman. All this would be too ridiculous for a novel.
- djbusby 4y ago
  Remus Lupin was a werewolf and Sirius was a dog!
fourstar 4y ago
I do the same with government.
highwaylights 4y ago
$420.69 million dollar round. 69 investors (one of whom was the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan - one of the largest retirement funds in Canada). When I think "prudent retirement planning based on low risk, sound long-term principles" I think of a group of bros giggling at how many weed and sex references they could jam into their sales pitch.
- thundergolfer 4y ago
  Jeez that’s shameful. What kind of capital management system lets crypto within 100 miles of a pension plan.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Such is life when you're forced to buy negative yielding bonds from the government and still get a return for your investors.
  - tomp 4y ago
    I mean, the issue is that positive yield bonds exist… like, why is the government just printing money?! The only correct risk-free interest rate is 0%. Wanna return? Invest and risk!
    - atdrummond 4y ago
      Bonds aren’t risk free. Just asking holders of Argentina’s.
      - pjc50 4y ago
        Well, yes. That's why bonds have a positive and also variable yield. I guess the parent poster doesn't understand the difference between yield and coupon.
    - pjc50 4y ago
      sigh Whether the bonds have a positive yield and how currency is issued have no relation. There have been plenty of positive yield bonds during the gold standard. Indeed, "hard money" standards tend to make borrowing at high interest rates more necessary. This is like the bizarre argument sometimes made that hard money will end war; that's not how it works. The war will happen anyway and a means will be found to pay for it. Gold was heavily used as an inter-governmental currency in WW2 - resulting in a few very expensive shipwrecks.
lizknope 4y ago
Yes it is all made up. Or about 95% made up with a tiny amount of actual USD or Euros Just listen to Sam Bankman-Fraud on a financial podcast describe his magical ponzi box. Well now the thing anyone with a brain would have said sounds like a scam has been exposed as a scam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6nAxiym9oc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6nAxiym9oc

323 4y ago

SBF was trying very much at the time to give of Elon Musk vibes, that he is the next one. Elon at the time was posting the 69/420 numbers a lot.

senttoschool 4y ago
He tried to be like Elon without actually making something productive for society.

tengbretson 4y ago

Ya know, hindsight is 20/20, but it really seems like all the signs were there to call the top on crypto.

Workaccount2 4y ago
I called the top, but it was the wrong one. It really is mindblowing how irrational a market can become, to the point that seemingly everyone agrees thing have become untethered, and the market will still run another 25%.
rideontime 4y ago
Plenty of us did. We were told that we were "not going to make it."
sergiotapia 4y ago
Matt Damon talking about it was the top. You could tell immediately. Even with Binance now being the last dog standing worth anything (worth, lol), it's all a house of cards. Who will be the last bag-holders until this thing finally has it's death rattle. Hope it ends already, and the this wonderful technology can go back to doing what it does best become a utility and not a vehicle for speculation.
__derek__ 4y ago
The top was Sam Bankman-Fried's appearance on Odd Lots, in which he described the mechanics of "yield farming" to Matt Levine.[1] [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/odd-lots-full-transcript-sam-bankman-fried-and-matt-levine-on-crypto https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/odd-lots-...

MarkPNeyer 4y ago

Here’s SBF describing that he totally understood the ponzi nature of these coins but that he basically didn’t expect there to be “people calling bullshit in a coordinated manner.” https://nitter.it/coryklippsten/status/1546902114550439936#m https://nitter.it/coryklippsten/status/1546902114550439936#m

joanfihu 4y ago

I thought FTX was a visual effects company. Aaahh no, it's THX

7e 4y ago

420.69? Was Elon Musk involved? Don’t trust juvenile transaction numbers.