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Fun story, I was in a Telegram room with SBF once when my team at another company was listing FTX data on our platform. This was 2021. I asked where their headq
by artursapek 3y ago
Fun story, I was in a Telegram room with SBF once when my team at another company was listing FTX data on our platform. This was 2021. I asked where their headquarters was (a standard piece of data we listed for each venue) and none of their team knew what to say. Eventually he chimed in with “let’s just go with Antigua”
I remember thinking wow how strange, I wonder if these guys are doing sketchy shit. Little did I know.
- jowea 3y agoFrom what I heard they weren't all that good at hiding the sketchiness when you got anywhere close. Even the outside investors saw the unprofessionalism and decided that yes playing LoL in the middle of meeting is actually a positive and bad accounting was not a disqualifier. Thinking about it it's crazy to me that the simple fact of avoiding being headquartered in the US to evade financial regulations is not enough to be treated as a highly suspect enterprise and being restricted from advertising to US consumers on TV.
- HWR_14 3y agoI don't see how bad accounting wasn't a red flag. Accounting is a core competency for an exchange.
- jowea 3y agoTo be honest I think I misremembered about the accounting. It was very bad but I can't remember if any external investor noticing, it was just weird that none of them asked for a seat on the board and also failed to conduct enough due diligence to notice how bad it was. In a way, it's like Theranos, it wouldn't be that hard to conduct just enough due diligence to notice something amiss, like the machine barely worked...