More Things That Don't Fit

Here's more of the conventional FTX narrative that just doesn't fit. Remember that new CEO Ray's big complaint about FTX was that not only did they not keep payroll records, they basically didn't have an organization chart. It was just a bunch of millennials with ADHD playing video games in a luxury condo. Right? Here's FTX skeptic Marc Cohodes's take, as quoted by Alex Berenson:

They were glorified interns, they had no experience, they had no exchange experience, they had no capital markets experience. . . which led me to believe this is a giant fraud. . .

This is the basic media narrative and the received explanation, it was all Sam and Caroline and the others makin' whoopie in a yellow submarine. No org charts. No wonder! But wait a moment.

The demise of cryptocurrency exchange FTX has brought an end to FTX Arena in Miami, or at least its name. Naming-rights deals, in which companies spend up to $500 million to put their names on sports facilities, have captured the interest of fast-rising financial technology companies in recent years.

. . . In March 2021, FTX struck a 19-year, $135 million deal with the Miami Heat NBA team and Florida’s Miami-Dade County, which owns the stadium, to put its name on what previously was known as the American Airlines Arena in Miami. The stadium was renamed FTX Arena in June 2021.

Are you trying to tell me that Sam and Caroline somehow just DMed somebody at the Miami Heat and cooked up a $135 million naming rights deal with an NBA team and Miami-Dade County? They just sorta-kinda took a break from League of Legends to do a naming rights deal? Well, how about this?

Sam Bankman Fried a.k.a SBF-led crypto exchange firm FTX and NBA team Golden State Warrior announced a ‘first-of-its-kind cryptocurrency partnership in professional sports.’ As revealed in the press release, the 10 billion contract would enable FTX to be Warriors’ Official Cryptocurrency Platform and NFT Marketplace.

Or this?

The FTX collapse that is ballooning into arguably the biggest financial story of 2022 is worsening for Tom Brady, Steph Curry and other major endorsers of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency platform.

Well, maybe Sam and Caroline just DMed Tom Brady and Steph Curry, too, huh? Or maybe they were poppin' Adderall with their agents or something. Or somebody told them at a party this'd be a great thing, and they could hook up with Caroline on top of it?

No, let's face it, there were power-player agents, publicists, entertainment and sports lawyers, and any number of other experienced professionals setting up those deals. The link above says a class action suit has already been filed against Brady, Curry, and many other celebrity endorsers, and that says that the identities of the actual fixers who set all these deals up will eventually come to light. And as an Aristotelian who looks for causes, I expect there will be a prime mover who set all this in motion, and it will be neither Adderall-addled Sam nor the beautiful Caroline.

There's a hint in the photo at the top of this post, which shows Sam with his arms around Congresswoman Waters on one side and -- wait, who's the old guy to Sam's right? Oh, that's Stanford Law Prof Joseph Bankman, Sam's dad. Just a moment. Doesn't he have classes to teach, papers to grade, articles to write, faculty meetings to attend? What on earth is he doing in Washington?

Sam, to tell the truth, looks kinda woozed out in the picture. He's got a perfunctory simper on his face, but the guy who's almost literally grinning from ear to ear is Prof Bankman. Do you think for an instant that Sam set this meeting up? Not on your life, it was dad Joe. Sam is there like a guy wearing a Mickey Mouse costume who poses with his arms around tourists at Disney World. He's the hired help. Maxine Waters is fully aware of this; she's only slightly more engaged than Sam. It's Joe who tells Sam what checks to write, if Sam is involved at all.

New CEO Ray isn't going to make a big point of all the agents and publicists and fixers; they have nothing to do with the salvage value of FTX, and he's just going to quietly lay them off. No sense adding to the class action feeding frenzy, and the media isn't going to focus on them, either, because that would just expose its role in enabling the whole swindle.

FTX didn't have an org chart. That was by design. The guy who really ran the operation was Joseph Bankman. Darn right he's trying to return the deed to the vacation home in the Bahamas.