Where is Gary Gensler in this FTX debacle, and how did SBF and Alameda end up controlling so much money?

By Medic Saves On Dec 3, 2022

Friday 02 December 2022 10:56 am

The week in review

It’s been another where it feels like the world is jammed on full throttle and heading into crazy town while screaming as loudly as possible. All I can do is try and make some sense of it – hopefully before we get there.

As ever, the airwaves have mostly been filled with the fallout from the FTX debacle. Sam Bankman-Fried appears to be talking to everyone and anyone, although he’s sometimes vague and he’s clearly uncomfortable with certain questions. Whether he’s genuinely attempting to make amends, protect himself or simply face the music on his own terms we can’t be sure at the moment, but in any case we can be sure it’s making his lawyers very nervous.

The wider implications of this event are becoming clear and, in retrospect, the whole thing is utter madness. How was it possible for these twenty somethings (SBF and Caroline Ellison of Alameda Research) to end up controlling vast sums of money – money that had been effectively generated out of thin air via the FTT token – and using it to bankroll losses created by either a total lack of business acumen or outright fraud? And where was Gary Gensler in all of this?

These questions, and many others, were addressed by a fully revved-up Max Keiser on the Tucker Carlson show this week. If you like a colourful, forceful, but ultimately well informed, opinion, it’s worth a watch, even if you don’t agree with every point.

FTX, however, is a story that’s going to rattle on for a while and I suspect a film or Netflix mini-series is inevitable. In fact, there was a rumour that Jonah Hill and Maisie Williams were pegged to the play SBF and Caroline Ellison a couple of weeks ago (a genius bit of casting if I may say so) but this has since been debunked.

Meanwhile, Twitter has become… strange. I am no longer able to view ‘latest’ tweets properly on my favourite search terms, see the feeds of the people I follow the most (meaning I now have a list of profiles I have to go to daily to see their latest posts) and I’ve noticed the number of promoted tweets has increased significantly. This is not looking good for Elon Musk’s latest adventure and I’m wondering if we’re witnessing the beginning of the end of Twitter. I hope not.

This week also saw the publication of an embarrassingly bad bit of research concerning Bitcoin’s future written by Messrs Ulrich Binseil and Jurgen Schaaf who appear to have got themselves stuck in 2017. The result was an explosion of ridicule across Twitter feeds (well, the ones I could actually see of course) and an entertaining open letter in response.

Why the fuss? This was published on the official blog of the European Central Bank and the authors are proponents of Central Bank Digital Currencies. Agenda, much?

In Europe, Russia lost another 3,850 square kilometres of control over the last few weeks and now only occupy 16.6% of Ukraine, barely 10% more than they did before February 24. All at a cost of approaching 90,000 Russian and 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers, plus civilian casualties, refugee migration and negative impact on the global economy. Worse, we’re now back in the exact same trench warfare we saw in the First World War, having seemingly learned nothing in the last 100 years.

We can only hope that common sense prevails, although that does seem to be in short supply right now. I rather suspect that’s why Satoshi Nakamoto made sure we humans were entirely out of the picture when it came to the operation of Bitcoin and why it’ll probably outlast all of us in the end.

After all, even the most reliable humans get it wrong sometimes. Just ask the German football team.

Have a great weekend!

Want to learn more about what’s going on in our global financial system and how Bitcoin fits in to it? Come to my next free webinar on December 14 at 6pm to find out, ask any questions, and grab some free Bitcoin*. Click here to register.

Yesterday’s Crypto AM Daily in association with Luno

In the markets

The Bitcoin economy

*Data can be found at https://terminal.bytetree.com/

Total crypto market cap

The total capitalisation of the entire cryptocurrency market at time of writing is currently $853.427 billion.

What Bitcoin did yesterday

We closed yesterday, December 1 2022, at a price of $16,967.13. The daily high yesterday was $17,197.50, and the daily low was $16,888.39.

Bitcoin market capitalisation

Bitcoin’s market capitalisation at time of writing is $326.2 billion. To put it into context, the market cap of gold is $11.984 trillion and Tesla is $605.71 billion.

Bitcoin volume

The total spot trading volume reported by all exchanges over the last 24 hours was $21.392 billion. High volumes can indicate that a significant price movement has stronger support and is more likely to be sustained.

Volatility

The price volatility of Bitcoin over the last 30 days is 54.39%.

Fear and Greed Index

Market sentiment today is 27, in Fear.

Bitcoin’s market dominance

Bitcoin’s market dominance today is 40.30. Its lowest ever recorded dominance was 37.09 on January 1 2018.

Relative Strength Index (RSI)

The daily RSI is currently 40.23. Values of 70 or above indicate that an asset is becoming overbought and may be primed for a trend reversal or experience a correction in price – an RSI reading of 30 or below indicates an oversold or undervalued condition.

Convince your Nan: Soundbite of the day

“Bitcoin is digital energy. Eventually the world will figure this out. Until they do, you have an advantage.”

Michael Saylor Founder & Executive Chairman Microstrategy

What they said yesterday

B is for Bitcoin…

https://www.cityam.com/profile/crypto-am-founders-series/

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