The hits just keep on coming for Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX [69]

The news cycle (and the government) can’t seem to let SBF or FTX go

Good afternoon, friends…

Happy December, it seems almost as if Sam Bankman-Fried cannot sit still and his now-fallen crypto empire is on the receiving end of every lawsuit and investigation under the sun. It’s not hard to understand why, SBF appears to have been up to no good at every turn, and every day we learn more about what he might have been doing.

First and foremost is the recent news that SBF was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday after US authorities shared a criminal indictment with the government there. This came right before he was expected to testify virtually before Congress on Tuesday. The US is expected to request extradition.

Of course, once the government has its hooks into you, they don’t let go… So, shortly after SBF’s arrest the CFTC and the SEC filed their own charges. Now that everyone’s got them in their sights, they’ve got everything they need to put him in prison for a long time.

Other recent revelations are equally damming including a report from the New York Times that SBF may be under investigation for the collapse of TerraUSD and Luna. According to investigators, a flood of “sell” orders from FTX during the whole meltdown may have helped along the depeg of the stablecoin and pushed along the destabilization of the crypto industry at the time.

To dig matters even deeper, yet another stablecoin has been implicated, reported CoinTelegraph, that SBF may have tried to force Tether off its peg and destabilize the crypto market in order to save FTX as well. This comes by way of Tether executives and Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the latter of whom confronted SBF on Signal claiming he was doing just that right before the exchange went bankrupt, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Previously, SBF has dominated the headlines by going from one media outlet to another making statements and doing interviews about the collapse of FTX. And has, of course, denied the claims made by the WSJ and CZ.

Of course, the fallout doesn’t end there, the crypto media outlet The Block, has felt the sting as well. Their now-former CEO, Michael McCaffrey, has resigned under a pall after it was revealed that he failed to disclose multiple loans from SBF’s Alameda Research.

According to a statement by Bobby Moran, The Block’s new CEO, formerly the company’s CFO, the leadership team was unaware of the loans and have “seen no evidence that Mike ever sought to improperly influence the newsroom or research teams…”

The Block editor Frank Chaparro extended his disappointment. “I'm absolutely gutted by this news, which was briefed to the company this afternoon,” he said on Twitter. “Underpinning my shock are feelings of utter disgust and betrayal by Mike’s actions, greed, lack of disclosure. He's literal scum. He kept every single one of us in the dark.”

Frank Chaparro @fintechfrank

@FatManTerra Clear SBF was a reckless moron and so was our former CEO

As usual, keep an eye out for more of the non-FTX news further below in the bulleted list that came out during the week, and stay tuned for what’s happening next week! We’ll see you on the blockchain.

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Blockchain Bulletin

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