This is what I think of as a signpost article – it points you to something the mainstream media is deliberately not giving the prominence it needs, but I have no personal expertise or inside knowledge to give you. I am just giving you a start to get going. Several readers will have a much better understanding than I, and I encourage you to give your thoughts in comments below.
It is also worth noting that only the immediate improvement to freedom of speech on Twitter by Elon Musk has brought this to my attention. Several sources – particularly Citizens for Legitimate Government – have suddenly appeared in my feed again after being entirely suppressed.
My own tweets are, for now, less suppressed – my own family have been receiving notifications from me after they were stopped for over a year. I am not in general a fan of billionaires like Musk, and I do not know where Twitter will settle, but there is undoubted initial improvement.
The FTX story seems truly remarkable. From being founded only in 2017 it rose to be a “partner organisation” of the World Economic Forum and the second largest donor to Biden and the Democrat’s mid-term election campaign. It has now gone completely bust, taking every penny of its depositors money with it.
That is some trajectory.
The World Economic Forum has deleted its FTX page, but the Wayback machine has it:
I suppose it is inevitable that dodgy chancers would create derivatives markets for gambling on crypto, but I confess I had not given the matter much thought. It goes without saying that in those five years the founder of FTX had managed to take a huge personal fortune out of the company before it went bust.
FTX was a one man company belonging to Sam Bankman-Fried. The board consisted of him, an employee and the company lawyer. Over US$20 billion of investors’ funds from FTX were funneled to a fund management company, Alameda Research, also owned by Sam Bankman-Fried.
$37 million was donated by Bankman-Fried to the Democrats for the 2022 elections. Every penny of that originated with duped FTX investors. That is in addition to the $5 million given to the Biden 2020 campaign. FTX, of course, crashed instantly after those mid-term elections, which is interesting timing.
The BBC and the Guardian were constantly bombarding us with the term “democracy denier” in their coverage of the US elections, strangely not in reference to Hillary’s ludicrous claims that Russian interference was the cause of her loss in 2016.
I view as a joke any notion that the USA is a democracy. Democracy is about giving citizens a choice of political direction. The 2022 elections saw a simply incredible campaign spend of US$ 9.7 billion. Yes, nearly ten billion dollars. This is not democracy, it is a huge exercise in corporate control from which the ordinary citizen is frozen out.
Despite an aggressive tribalism which has stalemated the political system for decades, the difference in policy platform between Democrats and Republicans is highly marginal, with no alternative on offer to rampant and uninhibited commercial exploitation of the population by the super-wealthy.
The Democrats are marginally more keen on attacking other countries; the Republicans are marginally more against measures to curb carbon emissions. Vaunted differences on immigration and welfare turn out to be very small indeed, with very little changing when the White House does.
American elections are simply about the super rich funneling in vast donations, expecting to benefit when their team gets its nose in the trough, or often donating to both sides to benefit either way.
I am not sure what the connection to democracy is supposed to be.
One simple fact illustrates the true nature of the bribery fest. By far the majority of the funds channeled through Political Action Committees (PACs) are given to incumbents who face no serious threat to re-election anyway. The PAC’s are interested in bribing those in power, not changing those in power. They are simply lobby groups with an opportunity for legal bribery. To illustrate that, the largest donating PACs are:
National Assn of Realtors
National Beer Wholesalers Assn
American Israel Public Affairs Cmte
Credit Union National Assn
Blue Cross/Blue Shield
American Crystal Sugar
It is worth noting that Bankman-Fried donated ten times as much as the largest PAC donation. This brought access – he and his brother had meetings inside the White House on 7 March, 22 April and 12 May.
It is perhaps unsurprising therefore that FTX was involved in Ukraine, offering to exchange cryptocurrency for fiat and send it to Ukraine in an official partnership with the Ukrainian government. This from their press release
Aid For Ukraine is cooperating with the cryptocurrency exchange FTX which converts crypto funds received into fiat and sends the donations to the National Bank of Ukraine. This marks the first-ever instance of a cryptocurrency exchange directly cooperating with a public financial entity to provide a conduit for crypto donations. Earlier this month, FTX already converted $1 million worth of SOL and transferred it to the National Bank of Ukraine.
The collapse of the Bankman Fried scam was allegedly caused by hackers stealing what should have been a comparatively small portion of the assets of FTX, had they not been hived off elsewhere. Doubtless we will shortly hear from state salaried conspiracy theorists that this was Russia/Guccifer/an ISP address traced by Bellingcat to inside the Kremlin.
What we really have here is an Allen Stanford for 2022, with added political connections.
We would do well to heed the advice of crypto developer Nikolai Mushegian, who had as his Twitter profile: “Larpers who self-style as CEOs or CTOs or VCs are a bigger problem than the establishment. They can’t build anything and will sell you out in 2 seconds.”
His final tweet was posted on 28 October:
The next day he drowned in the sea off a beach in Puerto Rico, where he lived. He was fully clothed including a jacket. The police are not treating it as homicide so presumably their theory is suicide by wading out to sea.
States of course have a massive incentive to destroy non fiat currencies, or convert them into a new category of regulation. I am interested in the current discussion on smart state digital currencies where the state can track, control and block any transaction and know in real time exactly where each citizen or entity is spending or keeping every penny.
It occurs to me this is the wrong way round. The state belongs to its citizens, not the citizens to the state. We should be able to track online every single penny of public money in real time and see how it is spent. Imagine being able to follow every penny of the billions the Tories spent on fraudulent PPE contracts, for example.
The only people whose personal currency should be able to be tracked are those who hold, or have held, positions of power in the state. Their wealth and dealings should be available in great detail to public view. As for the rest of us, our money is ours and we are entitled to privacy.
————————————————-
Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
Choose subscription amount from dropdown box:
Paypal address for one-off donations: [email protected]
Alternatively by bank transfer or standing order:
Account name
MURRAY CJ
Account number 3 2 1 5 0 9 6 2
Sort code 6 0 – 4 0 – 0 5
IBAN GB98NWBK60400532150962
BIC NWBKGB2L
Bank address Natwest, PO Box 414, 38 Strand, London, WC2H 5JB
Bitcoin: bc1q3sdm60rshynxtvfnkhhqjn83vk3e3nyw78cjx9
Ethereum/ERC-20: 0x764a6054783e86C321Cb8208442477d24834861a
Subscriptions are still preferred to donations as I can’t run the blog without some certainty of future income, but I understand why some people prefer not to commit to that.
Thank you; a timely searchlight.
There is an allegation that the Ukrainian government gave some of the $60bn for armaments from the US to the FTY division or subsidiary in Ukraine, which sent it back to the Democratic Party. The dates of the meetings in the White House, you mention, just after 24 Feb 2022 are therefore particularly interesting.
It is being alleged that Biden has laundered Billions of taxpayer dollars through Zelensky via FTX back to the US Democratic Party. Now the House has changed hands there will surely be a Congressional investigation into Biden’s “foreign aid” to Ukraine. Doubt this story is going away.
I’ve been ‘into’ cryptocurrency for a few years and sort of know about exchanges and stuff. I’d seen FTX but never got involved with them. Not because I was suspicious or my ‘B.S. detector was red lining’ or anything, no. It just appeared as a bland, run of the mill, American cryptocurrency exchange of which there are ten a penny these days. It had no USP (Unique Selling Point) as far as I could see, so I never became involved with it. Of course, I can see now that it’s mainly an American thing, built on hype but the backstory that is emerging is intriguing and I’m following it for the next instalment on a daily basis! I really hope it acts as a catalyst to shed some light on the shade of American (and UK) politics.
What I can say with 99% certainty is that if Elon Musk hadn’t bought and taken over Twitter when he did, then nobody would have heard a thing about this, or at least as much as we have done so far. Tweets would have been deleted and censored and users suspended, so there one benefit at least of Musk’s takeover.
I started reading about all this in the Guardian 4 days ago. You don’t need Twitter to keep up to date.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2022/nov/11/uk-economy-gdp-recession-trade-hunt-stock-markets-ftse-pound-business-live
The FTX story has been all over the MSM, from the FT to the DFM. The BBC were on it before the collapse:-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63577783
Twitter is the last place I’d look for dependable information.
What is the first place to look for dependable information?
There is no one place. Go to primary sources (a RSS feed reader helps), any place that purports to offer a one-stop shop for information is also serving you a hefty side helping of agenda.
I deliberately ignore anything to do with cryptocurrency since they’re all scams anyway, but here’s one early warning in my feed from 3 months ago:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/20/23314401/ftx-money-isnt-insured-fdic-sam-bankman-fried-crypto-cease-and-desist
The first time I ever heard of FTX was a mention in The Information, a paid publication covering the Tech industry (pro tip: if you are not paying, you are the product, not the customer).
I second that recommendation to use an RSS reader; there are several free ones on the web. Today’s obstacle to finding out what’s really going on is that just about every news source is biased; the best we can do is read several sources, biased different ways. Here is an RSS aggregator site that is not only free, but also doesn’t have ads.
Watch coffeezilla on YouTube.
The blog cryptodamus is also good.
Good stuff, Craig.
FTX was effectively a custodian bank. So although its assets might be huge, and its “valuation” might be huge based on rapid growth, its ability to generate profits that can be paid out as dividends or donations would have been very very limited.
As such the Dem party’s acceptance of £37m shows extreme bad judgement.
And of course the Bidens have a past record – Joe voting to pass tough legislation favouring credit card companies relative to those that owe them money while Hunter was being paid as an adviser to MBNA.
“its ability to generate profits that can be paid out as dividends or donations would have been very very limited.”
Indeed – hence the need to farm out the deposits to sister trading company Alameda.
One point of interest in this incredible debacle is that they were / are operating in an unregulated universe, contrary to financial institutions. As such, with some good lawyers and the obvious political clout their “generosity” entails, they might actually get scot-free on the penal side. I’m not legal expert but their T&C might actually be interpreted as allowing them to do what they did, ie “play” with their depositor money.
As for the huge money laundering the Ukrainian situation is facilitating, not to mention arming half of upcoming bad actors, the book is being written under our own eyes. Absolutely fascinating and outrageous !
Apparently also the CEO of Alameda Research, Caroline Ellison, daughter of two economics professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and herself armed with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, used to be Sam Bankman-Fried’s girlfriend. More and more, Alameda Research looks as if it was set up merely to be the money-laundering slush fund arm of FTX.
Even though FTX was only charging fees of a few basis points on each trade, Michael, the volume of that trade was so large that it had a net income of nearly $400 million in 2021 which, seeing as Sam Bankman-Fraud owned about 60% of the company, gave him more than enough to fund his political donations – or ‘effective altruism’ as he calls it – out of his own pocket. Unfortunately for FTX’s users, his other company, Alameda, took its own positions on crypto (usually long), getting badly burned this summer’s crash, leading to SBF secretly transferring billions from people’s accounts on FTX in an attempt to shore it up. Not sure whether his political largesse etc will see him avoiding jail-time – but the truth is, like Bernie Madoff, he’s probably safer in prison.
Erm, Bernie Madoff died in prison. As also did Jeff Epstein.
Given his connections to the Democrats and to the Ukrainian political elite, if SBF did end up in prison, he may as well stick a dartboard on his back.
Thanks for your reply, Jen. Bernie Madoff died of kidney failure aged 82 after over a decade in jail. As for your Epstein reference, whilst it’s been pointed out that the logos of Alameda Research and the Centre for Effective Altruism resemble symbols that paedophiles use to identify each other (as does the Wall’s ice-cream logo), and Alameda CEO / SBF’s ex, Caroline Ellison, looks and sounds as if she’s about 14, even though she’s supposedly 28, I’m sure that’s all coincidence. Unless SBF is prepared to live completely off-grid for decades, it would be as easy for Pedo Pete’s pedo elite to kill him outside prison as inside – but, if he goes to jail, it will be less easy for one of his disgruntled former crypto ‘investors’ to do it. By the way, with regard to your previous comment, Alameda was set up before FTX, and was initially (very) profitable.
“…and Alameda CEO / SBF’s ex, Caroline Ellison, looks and sounds as if she’s about 14 …”
You’ve got a problem with Jr High School girls running multi-billion dollar companies?
Thanks for your reply, Steev. I don’t have a particular problem with Junior High School-age girls running multi-billion dollar companies since, as they tend to be reasonably conscientious, not embarrassed to ask for help with things they don’t understand, and not taking powerful mind-altering substances on a daily basis, most of them could probably have done a better job than SBF & Ms Ellison – not to mention many CEO’s of S&P 500 constituents – even with being restricted to the few hours available after a full school-day, homework and a couple of after-dinner episodes of ‘Stranger Things’ & ‘Pretty Little Liars’.
“The state belongs to its citizens, not the citizens to the state.” It should be so. Has that ever been more than an illusion? Covid19 seems to have been used as a trial for more surveyance and citizen control especially in that same USA. “As for the rest of us, our money is ours and we are entitled to privacy.” In Canada bank accounts were blocked for people supporting trucker protests. We are in a dangerous place.
A partial answer to your question might be Switzerland. It used to be said that it was the one country where the politicians were afraid of the citizens, instead of the other way round: the barrier to citizen-initiated referenda is relatively low, and a referendum result trumps any decision of parliament.
Switzerland’s image is a country of rich bankers, but actually it is surprisingly socialist. There is universal health care that actually works. There are very few homeless people, partly because of rent regulation (rents are not controlled, but they are regulated in an intelligent way). There is a wealth tax. Because of the referenda, Switzerland is run for the benefit of the Swiss, which exposes it to criticism from some; but in a democracy, what would you expect?
Like every country, it has its problems and defects, but it is closer to a democracy than most others.
This story is becoming a déjà vu re enactment society production.
It has all the trigger points of colourful characters who have, by the strength of their personage, bamboozled loads of wonga out of ‘our betters’ and assorted masters from the universe.
I’ll remind you of some of these “colourful characters” from history. Rasputin, John Law, Charles Ponzi, T.Dan Smith, Camila Batmanghelidjh and now this little joker, who was captured in a selfie with the head honchos from the Tony Blair and the Clinton Foundation.
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/11/14/21/64538669-11426949-Bankman_Fried_s_discussion_with_Blair_and_Clinton_was_off_the_re-a-31_1668460201079.jpg
Our host did a blog on the de professionalisation in the civil service. Perhaps our host could now tell us when our public services have ever been run by professionals…_
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/11/14/sam-bankman-fried-and-the-credulity-of-the-capitalist-class/
This guy knows what he’s talking about and explains it quite well. https://www.commonsense.news/p/the-32-billion-crypto-scammer?utm_medium=email
I think we will also all agree that SBF is not the greatest crook of the 3 pictured in that photo…
This one looks into the Ukraine and Dem money laundering story. In his preliminary view a sideshow and peanuts. In German. https://www.achgut.com/artikel/ein_krypto_absturz_und_der_geruch_von_verschwoerung
Another good one. https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-lose-214-million-in-one-year
“I am not in general a fan of billionaires like Musk,”
In general? Billionaires and the super rich are a net drain on society and should be opposed. Full stop. It’s sad that many people are easily “bribed” by the likes of narcissistic rich guys like Musk, Trump and whomever and get all starry eyed over them when they do something that’s mildly popular. The public are, sadly, quite easy to buy off. (To be clear I am not accusing Craig of being one of them.)
We need to get over the idea that some “superman”, strongman or political leader is going to save us and magically change society for the better. It is going to take a lot more than passively supporting this or that populist character that comes crawling out of the woodwork from time to time. I must add that the standard-bearers of the liberal establishment, by binning the values and freedoms they claim to uphold, makes it easy for the Musks of the world and other shady characters to claim the high ground and gain popular approval.
But, in the absence of a vision for the future that can spark a motivated popular left-of-centre movement with staying power, the gradual slide into authoritarianism and an ever harsher capitalism will continue. It will be entities like the appalling and extremely dangerous German “Green” Party versus unhinged narcissistic goons like Trump, Musk, BoJo etc.
What tends to happen, in IT and social media and perhaps elsewhere, is that companies get founded by individuals who may not be particularly savoury but at least represent something. But if they prove successful, sooner or later the founders step back and generic managers take over. These might as well be running a supermarket. Their interest is in increasing profits and their bonuses and avoiding irritating advertisers and the powerful who might make their cushy lives less cushy. So social media companies start edging out anything controversial in favour of cat pictures and knitting clubs. Musk seems to be throwing this process into reverse, to the dismay of the powerful and their pet media. But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a mad megalomaniac.
Indeed, any business founded by enthusiasts ends up becoming corporate and dull, with any actual enthusiasm being frowned upon, especially amongst the management.
Apologies, slightly off-piste. For anyone who likes Swiss Cheese.
Have a look at the comprehensive rundown of the ‘official’ Skripal story, here:
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/the-day-of-the-skripal
Unfortunately that webpage is experiencing repeated problems whenever I try and access it. An unfortunate coincidental outage, as it looks a very useful piece
Hmm. The Ukraine FTX Biden “triangular trade” conspiracy theory is plausible but let’s be realistic, no amount of campaign funding would have secured Congress for the Democrats had the Republicans not just shot themselves in the head in a sop to their Evangelical base by repealing Roe vs Wade. This was the greatest “get out the vote” operation Biden couldn’t have designed. So of course America is a democracy, it’s just a very flawed and corrupt democracy that presents its voters with a Hobson’s choice every 4 years. But it is not Russia where cadres of the ruling party just invent numbers on polling day and the opposition gets jailed and/or poisoned.
Those in power love it when we waste our time talking about this party, or that party, or democracy. It’s all distractional chaff. The west is run by uni-parties and your vote counts for nothing and changes nothing. ‘They’ do what they want, because they can and with the current system we cannot change a d@mn thing. Our best option is to keep feeding them rope and wait for the inevitable breakdown that may cleanse the system.
And, if you think America is a democracy and Russian voting is more suspect, I’d suggest you carry out a little more research, maybe using sources other than the MSM and Social Media !
Roe vs. Wade was not legislation that is subject to repeal; it was a Supreme Court ruling, affirming the decision of a federal court in Texas that 14th Amendment protections on privacy made Texas’s state law banning most abortions unconstitutional. It was appealed to the Supremes, who upheld the decision. What you are calling the Republicans “repealling” RVW is really the SC reversing their earlier decision.
Surely the reversal of Roe/Wade was a desired major outcome of the engineering of the SC by right wing Republicans?
Yes, it was; and no doubt the Supremes that reversed it are Republican supporters. But the fact is there was no repeal, because there was nothing to repeal. The Supreme Court just reversed it’s earlier ruling.
This is why people were advised not to donate money to Ukraine via the big 13 charities but to send clothes, toys etc instead. What Zelenskyy did not offshore to private accounts he has channelled back to Joe Biden via FTX, which has now filed for bankruptcy with billions missing. People cannot say they weren’t warned Zelenskyy was one of the most cynical, greedy players in the most corrupt country in Europe. They were warned repeatedly.
as a signpost comment – at least for those who can still think….
wars are money laundering for countries
governments are mere corporations
fiat currencies are another form of slave trade
every time we see these inflationary bubbles – our masters devalued the only thing tangible – you and your labor.
so back at it – to pay the taxes on the loans for the money, someone else prints for the government who enslaves you with a currency which is truly worthless.
Gold anyone?
and please note the efficiency of complaints – every major industry has oversight body’s made up of the former high level political executives from the industry they serve. Doctors oversee medical, lawyers oversee legal, FED oversees currency, teachers oversee education etc…. this is how everything which comes to light which may damage that industry gets de-railed before it becomes critical and or public.
Wake up – posting is not going to change the world – demanding change with civil disobedience will
Check out the Naked Capitalism site Craig they have an in-depth article about this.
When the internet started there was so much youthful enthusiasm about it as a source for independent news. There is some of that if one digs deep, but the bigger story is the collapse of independent traditional news media and replacement by a curated news message. News seems to be censored more than it was before the net.
When crypto began there was again much youthful enthusiasm for it as revolutionary and libertarian. Now it’s collapsing and we see the emergence of Central Bank Digital Currencies with experiments conducted in China, Sweden and I think the Fed are just about to start a trial with some banks in the US.
The pattern (if if is a pattern – it might not be) is that something is hyped as revolutionary, liberating the brave new world but then after the initial enthusiasm and excitement, after it has everyone’s attention it’s co-opted by the esablishment as their thing.
Has the thing sold out, is that just how things are, or is that what you do if you want everyone to accept central planning as new and liberating? As something energising coming from youth?
How about the eco movement. That appears to be good, youthful, revolutionary and grass roots. But let’s see what happens…..
The best scams are those that are made incomprehensible to their victims, and crypto, with there being so much computer tech involved, is the pinnacle of this. But cut through the distracting hitech jargon and at its core crypto is nothing more than a computer simulation of commodity money, a form of money where value is intrinsic to the currency. And it’s a scam because, just as the pixellated people in “The Sims” computer game aren’t real, the commodities simulated by BTC, ETH and the rest aren’t real. Bill Gates is right – crypto is a “greater fool” scam; there is no value there.
Cue the crypto shills pointing at fiat as having no intrinsic value and I can’t disagree – but fiat doesn’t pretend to have intrinsic value, just government backing, and both being essentially valueless isn’t much of reason to prefer crypto. Sure, if you’re a far-right libertarian you might go for crypto because of its lack of government control, but you’d be a fool doing so – there are actual real forms of non-scam commodity money out there for you to embrace (ones without a computerised ledger for a state’s security services to examine) and crypto remains a scam.
The intrinsic value of a fiat currency is the embarrassment of the national leaders and the central bankers should it go tits up. When a craptocurrency collapses, there’s nobody to take responsibility. Only people who got out in time enjoying cocktails on a distant beach.
Re. your comment on digital currency, your readers should be reminded that in the ‘bright new future’ of state-operated digital currency, voluntary donations to support your own blog will first be logged, monitored, traced and finally blocked (unless you have a damascene conversion to think thoughts that support deep-state). Those who thought well enough of you to make these contributions, will be invited to the correction centre if they are lucky, otherwise detached from their savings as a punishment.
Everyone should be impressing on their gullible (that’s to be charitable) MPs and MSPs, that any state-sponsored move to digital currencies, must be furiously resisted.
Looks from medical reviews that people do kill themselves by walking into the sea clothed, including due to paranoid disorders. I see that a crypto guy in Puerto Rico, who as a kid had a minor part in that Mighty Ducks ice hockey film, claims Mushegian’s family thought he was deteriorating mentally and killed himself. Apparently he’d also tweeted that he’d become “someone who prays to god to guide the top of food chain national security feds and their ancient karmic laws of banking handlers to come demolish this illuminati roleplay circlejerk.”
Live action role-players again, was he just referring to people being fake or did he think they weren’t real or something. Unfortunately we’re all just apes.
The financial collapse of FTX is throwing up allegations that Democrats, Ukrainians and FTX organized an elaborate financial kickback scheme ‘a la Oliver North neat idea’
These allegations involve claims that members of Congress who sent money to Ukraine were to receive a hefty contribution from the owner of FTX.
Once the U.S. dollars were credited to Ukrainian accounts, some of the proceeds would then buy crypto from FTX, who in turn would send some funds back to the cooperating members of Congress.
This appears to be the pre eminent conspiracy theory for now. The reason it has my interest stirred is down to Tony Blair and Bill Clinton sharing a stage with this artfull dodger…… and a lot of missing money.
So please, check, double check, smile and wave…_
https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/biggest-donors
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/11/13/democrats-keep-the-us-senate-but-crypto-only-has-eyes-for-ftx-collapse/
https://weltwoche-ch.translate.goog/daily/beim-konkurs-der-krypto-boerse-ftx-spielt-die-ukraine-eine-undurchsichtige-rolle-ein-anlass-fuer-die-europaeer-genau-zu-pruefen-wofuer-kiew-die-milliarden-ausgibt/?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc (Translate)
https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/11/14/ukrainian-official-refutes-ftx-ukraine-money-laundering-rumors/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6bRsRw1ChY
The FTX story is maybe not what it seems. I wonder if it will ever be covered correctly by the mainstream press from its origins to the despicable sociopathic characters involved to its eventual expansion by other elements to its rapid closure.
“I view as a joke any notion that the USA is a democracy.”
Fortunately good people are pushing back against precisely this kind of outrageous cynicism and dishonesty. Later today President George W. Bush is going to address a conference in Dallas on the danger of disinformation. The conference is part of the George W. Bush Institute’s The Struggle for Freedom series. He will also interview Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen will also be making an appearance through a taped talk.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/11/10/george-w-bush-ukraines-zelenskyy/10662827002/
Oh wow, the man who gave us WMD, “is going to address a conference in Dallas on the danger of disinformation”
I’ll get my notepad and popcorn ready…_
Where you use the words “good people”, I can’t help but read “deeply involved bad people”. You may be outraged, but it never does any harm to wake up – even if a little late.
The sooner people come to realise that bitcoin and crypto are 2 very different things and that bitcoin is an enormous opportunity to take power back into the hands of the people. We appear to be in an extraordinarily dangerous period of history.
Everyone who doesn’t yet get it, please take the time to understand – it probably takes somewhere about 40 to 100 hours of research for it to click and it will be the most important work of your life. Really.
Lots of great material out there and would recommend listening to the likes of Michael Saylor, Lawrence Leppard and Jeff Booth to get you started.
Good luck all.
Ronnie
The difference between bitcoin and fiat currencies is that fiat currencies are backed by governments who can compel people to exchange them for real things and bitcoin is backed by absolutely nothing.
Another difference is that fiat currencies have built in tax by inflation.
Economists theorise that modest inflation is good for the economy in that it discourages hoarding. The same can’t be said for gold, silver and other alternatives to fiat. There’s a reason governments abandoned the gold standard and commodity money.
It’s common for crypto shills to knock fiat – and many of their criticisms will be perfectly valid. But the implication – that crypto has the virtues of the alternatives to fiat – is entirely false. Crypto is a simulation of commodity money, not the real thing, and has none of its virtues. Its currencies – bitcoin, ether or whatever – have no intrinsic value whatsoever. It is an outright scam.
“Another difference is that fiat currencies have built in tax by inflation.”
It’s not built in. The whole C19th went by in the UK without any inflation. Since then politicians have realised that inflation is a tax on savers paid to borrowers, of which the government is the largest and so have engineered permanent inflation.
Here’s a thing about a bit coin operation being run out of diego garcia, the islands where the UK and US turfed all the inhabitants out to make way for a US base, used to host Bitcoin High Yield Investment Programs and Initial Coin Offerings.
https://fundedjustice.blogspot.com/2017/12/diego-garcias-secret-bitcoin-laundering.html
“Strunk and Levy discovered while the BIOT and Diego Garcia lack a permanent civilian population and a regular economy, inexplicably it does have a fully staffed court system. They plan to file a private prosecution of the worst of the Initial Coin Offerings and High Yield Investment Programs which are virtual citizens of Diego Garcia. “
All the roads of corruption seem to end in Ukraine these days and some seem to start with or go through the family of Biden. The FTX scam is just one element of a huge corruption hub involving Ukraine in some way some of which was disclosed and discussed recently by the EU School of Auditors, which questioned where EU money was going to. There ‘s also the matter of the private selling on of weapons sent there. Such a lot more to come out.
I suspect the FTX/Ukraine/Biden thing will turn out to be bullshit.
Ukrainian corruption isn’t new. A large proportion of internet crime, scams and spamming was based out of Ukraine; if you knew who to pay, you could do it with impunity. It’s got a lot better.
Zelyinsky stood on an anti-corruption platform; I lean to the view that he’s not personally corrupt, but has a marathon to run in cleaning up Ukrainian institutions. It’s hard to eliminate corruption in the middle of a war; checks and balances tend to be treated as unhelpful bureaucracy.
There is some evidence that Zelinsky is personally corrupt and the continual SNAFUs with regard to Nazi regalia and cover ups indicate that the Nazis pet dew is either stupid or considers everyone else stupid.
Jimmeh,
“I lean to the view that he’s not personally corrupt”…… better start leaning the other way…_
https://www.occrp.org/en/the-pandora-papers/pandora-papers-reveal-offshore-holdings-of-ukrainian-president-and-his-inner-circle
“It’s got a lot better.”
Hardly “a lot”. Ukraine has improved from 142nd in the World Corruption Index in 2014 to 122nd in 2021. It has gone from being the most corrupt country in Europe to the second most corrupt country in Europe, whilst remaining the most corrupt country wholly in Europe.
Of course the World Corruption Index is not, in any way whatsoever, fixed.
So I suspect, with Ukraine’s “rehabilitation” since 2014. However, even despite that, it’s still the most corrupt country wholly in Europe.
Zelyinski is honest guy and would never blame Russia a few hours later for attack on Poland. Guy really wants WW3. Just this afternoon 16/11 he might accept that it might have been a Ukraine missile. While I am writing this BBC World is blaming Russia and this would not have happened if bla bla bla. Literally the presenter asked Jens Stoltenberg if there is still a possibility that it was Russia. Whole day I was annoyed with BBC world reporting on “Poland Bombing ” and while I am writing this comment they are doubling down on so called “spill out”.
Zelensky has “cleaned up Ukrainian institutions” by outlawing trade unions and left-wing political parties on behalf of his fellow oligarchs.
In most countries there would be nobody to the right of someone like Zelensky, but Ukraine is far from a normal country.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23128651.record-numbers-unconvicted-people-held-scottish-jails/
“Record numbers of unconvicted people held in Scottish jails”
Seems like the once proud Herald is just trotting after Craig Murray on this issue.
It’s a disgrace whether you’re YES or NO, pro or anti-Sturgeon and the SNP, or just non-aligned like many.
Crypto currency is based on a worthless mathematical formulae, which has no intrinsic value. This Crypto currency is in its very definition of “pyramid” selling.
Obvious to those of us who are not greedy.
Unlike fiat currencies which are based on the so worthwhile utterances of politicians and also have no intrinsic value!
Belief in fiat currencies allows for inflation which is just another tax. I guess you can’t call the users of fiat currency greedy as they know they are being taxed continuously.
Fiat currencies may have no intrinsic value, but they do have a government behind them that both accepts them as a means of paying your taxes, and compels others to accept them at their face value. That is what gives them their value, not “the so worthwhile utterances of politicians”.
Mr Lee, fiat currencies have no intrinsic value but they do have value as Bayard says. Understand what is meant by “intrinsic” here. Some non-fiat forms of money do have intrinsic value, gold for instance, but crypto isn’t one of them. To imply otherwise by criticising fiat’s lack of intrinsic value is one of the tricks played by crypto shills in deceiving you. Don’t be deceived.
I am a fan of gold not crypto. What I don’t like are comparisons between government backed fiat money and crypto when they are both, how should I say, of value only while people accept them. Just look at the Hyperinflation page in Wikipedia.
Looking at what I think are the most famous, first the Weimar Republic which had inflation hit 29,525%, only slightly better than losing everything. Or modern day Zimbabwe with an official inflation rate reaching 2,200,000%, although analysts have calculated it to have surpassed 9,000,000%.
Small consolation that the government forces people to accept their money when your savings have gone to virtually nothing.
“The Democrats are marginally more keen on attacking other countries”
Until the appearance of Bush the Younger the Democrats were overwhelmingly the keener on attacking foreign countries.
It therefore came as no surprise, to me at least, that Obama did not stop the mayhem in Iraq or Afghanistan. Nor that he started wars in Libya and Syria. I may have overlooked some of his other attacks – if so, apologies.
Yemen. DRC, Sudan, coups galore in South America – business (war against civilians) as usual, using proxies and mercs and presstitutes.
I am intrigued as to how a virtual company working virtually can file for bankruptcy, which is a concrete act. At some point there must be some hard currency in the system somewhere?
“FTX’s destruction resulted from a mass sell-off of the company’s native bitcoin token, FTT, by the rival exchange, Binance. Its value plummeted, prompting a three-day “run” on billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency, which in turn created – or exposed – a “liquidity crisis” within FTX, as it did not have the available assets required to redeem client withdrawals. FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11th”. (The Grayzone)