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> There are multiple agencies that BOTH claim the right to regulate crypto AND refuse to actually do so. I bet all those political contributions that SBF made
by flanked-evergl 4y ago
> There are multiple agencies that BOTH claim the right to regulate crypto AND refuse to actually do so.
I bet all those political contributions that SBF made did not hurt his prospects in this regard:
https://fortune.com/2022/11/10/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-joe-biden-democratic-party-second-biggest-donor/ https://fortune.com/2022/11/10/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-joe-bid... (https://archive.ph/BBpQN#selection-417.0-424.0 https://archive.ph/BBpQN#selection-417.0-424.0)
> The 30-year-old Bankman-Fried has been a major force in Democratic politics, ranking as the party’s second-biggest individual donor in the 2021–2022 election cycle, according to Open Secrets, with donations totaling $39.8 million. That ranks only behind George Soros (about $128 million) but ahead of many other big names, including Michael Bloomberg ($28.3 million). What’s more, he had promised to spend far more on Democrats moving forward, predicting in May that he’d fund “north of $100 million” and had a “soft ceiling” of $1 billion for the 2024 elections.
> This mess is fundamentally the fault of congress which has refused to address the question. And it is congress that should make this decision, not the courts, both in a legal and democratic sense.
SBF was using congress as sock-puppets to ghost-write regulation:
https://prospect.org/power/sam-bankman-frieds-multimillion-dollar-game/ https://prospect.org/power/sam-bankman-frieds-multimillion-d...
> Crypto’s supporters in Congress are determined to ignore the massive gap in capacity between the two agencies; in fact, they likely understand that its incapacity is part of its appeal to FTX. A bill proposed by Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) seeks to grant the CFTC “exclusive jurisdiction over any agreement, contract, or transaction involving a contract of sale of a digital asset that is offered, solicited, traded, executed, or otherwise dealt in interstate commerce, including market activities relating to ancillary assets.” Perhaps in anticipation of such a move, FTX has stocked up its ranks with former CFTC officials. Former CFTC commissioner and acting chair Mark Wetjen is FTX’s head of policy and regulatory strategy. Ryne Miller, who was legal counsel to Gensler when he led the CFTC, is FTX’s general counsel. The Tech Transparency Project has also identified 14 other cases of CFTC alumni revolving into the crypto industry.
- skippyboxedhero 4y agoThe current Chairman of the SEC worked with the CEO of Alameda's dad. Gensler initially didn't support the FTX bill, but was reportedly lobbying for it a few weeks before FTX collapsed (to be clear: this is a guy who was saying crypto should be regulated, SBF appears with a big chequebook, and he then says that his own regulator shouldn't be doing the regulating...not suspicious at all...).
- flanked-evergl 4y agoCrypto may be a magnet for grifters, but in this case the grifters were all mainstream political-media-finance elite.