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A forgotten banking scandal suggests FTX is the tip of the crypto iceberg
- mikeburgersburg 4y agoFraud, money laundering, and corruption on a global scale, yet regulators seem asleep at the wheel. This has happened before...
- Khelavaster 4y ago"Of particular significance was the bank’s involvement in the Iran-contra affair, a major scandal during the Reagan administration that involved illegally selling arms to Iran to finance right-wing guerillas in Nicaragua." MIT Media Lab was founded by Nick Negroponte, the brother of the US's Nicaraguan-rebel-supporting ambassador to Honduras at the time John Negroponte. The Securities & Exchange Commission's chairman, Gary Gensler, has also been an MIT Media Lab & Economics crypto-economist professor since 2018. MIT's department head of economics, Glen Ellison, is the father of Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison. Small world.. John Negroponte's well-known for covering up Nicaraguan & Honduran death squads, serving as ambassador to Iraq through the false Senate 2004 Iraqi WMD Intelligence report, and rising to Director of National Intelligence and Deputy Secretary of State by the end of G.W. Bush's presidency. Sources: https://www.media.mit.edu/people/gensler/overview/ https://www.media.mit.edu/people/gensler/overview/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Ellison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Ellison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Negroponte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Negroponte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Negroponte "Ambassador to Honduras (1981–1985) Assistant Secretary for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries (1985–1989) Ambassador to Mexico (1989–1993) Ambassador to the UN (2001–2004) Ambassador to Iraq (2004–2005) Director of National Intelligence (2005–2007) U.S. Deputy Secretary of State (2007–2009)" https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7468275 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7468275 : "Papers Illustrate Negroponte's Contra Role" https://theintercept.com/2018/11/28/killing-asylum-how-decades-of-u-s-policy-ravaged-central-america/ https://theintercept.com/2018/11/28/killing-asylum-how-decad... : "The History of John Negroponte and the Contra Death Squads in Nicaragua"
- sasattack 4y agogood catch that bank was a top financial asset for the cia and mi5.
- throwayyy479087 4y agoThe Negropontes were the founders of the One Laptop Per Child Project. Kind of makes you wonder about ulterior motives...
- AlanYx 4y agoJohn Negroponte wasn't a founder of the OLPC project. His only involvement IIRC was in helping Nick negotiate the Intel partnership for OLPC.
- mikeburgersburg 4y agoFascinating, thanks for this information. Amazing how entangled everything is…
- LatteLazy 4y agoThe most interesting thing to me about the ftx collapse is how totally unoriginal it was. Enron included decades of fake accounting, complex legal structures used to make debt look like assets, new ways of breaking laws. Ftx was just 1400s style fraud in a new, tech wrapper. Very unoriginal. People have been doing that since banks were invented. I don't want to lessen the culpability of SBF and other senior leaders at FTX. But it is stunning that the SEC and groups like Sequoia Capital assisted in this. Have they never seen basic fraud before? Did they think controls and transparency were just red tape?
- ShivShankaran 4y ago>But it is stunning that the SEC and groups like Sequoia Capital assisted in this FTX also invested in Sequoia in return. These are all just big boys group with big boy pants and big boy money.
- Saris 4y agoCrypto in general is kind of like watching people re-learn the last thousand years of banking practices.
- imtringued 4y agoIt's a fraudulent company in the Bahamas. It is as cliche as it gets.
- throwaway22032 4y agoYes, centralized crypto exchanges are pre-failed. Really. They've already failed, it just hasn't manifested on the time axis yet.
- halpmeh 4y agoThe story about BCCI, while interesting, doesn’t seem related in the slightest to FTX.