FTX’s bankruptcy estate has been holding customers’ bitcoin that has quadrupled, yet it will only repay about $16,871 per coin. The post Bitcoin is worth $69,000 — unless you’re an FTX creditor appeared first on Protos.

    • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 months ago

      Before the collapse, FTX had a lot of mainstream credibility. The head of the SEC was personally meeting with the CEO, along with various other government figures, who were getting huge donations. Celebrities were endorsing the exchange, which on the surface seemed massively successful and legitimate. Yes, people in the know warned about the suspiciously high rewards it offered for keeping your money there, and there was information to make the correct choice to stay away out of caution, but to the average investor this wasn’t the equivalent of a nigerian prince email. The cryptocurrency community should have done more to foster skepticism. The government should have been investigating for the criminal fraud instead of chumming around with its lobbyists. The blame doesn’t all land on dumb investors.

      • ericjmorey@programming.dev
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        6 months ago

        FTX had a lot of mainstream credibility.

        this wasn’t the equivalent of a nigerian prince email

        Hard disagree. There were red flags all over FTX if you spent a minute on their own website.

          • ericjmorey@programming.dev
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            6 months ago

            The fact that they used a cryptocurrency they invented to be the basis of account for all internal funds and accounting. This cryptocurrency they invented was for the sole purpose of keeping their records in the invented cryptocurrency as disclosured prominently on their website.

            • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              6 months ago

              That was definitely incredibly sus but not something I would expect the average person mostly unfamiliar with finance and cryptocurrency to identify as a red flag and not an “innovation”, especially before the cascade of disasters related to various schemes of this type.

      • TootSweet@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        The “scam” I’m referring to is cryptocurrency, not FTX.

        And I suspect FTX always looked more “legitimate” to folks who were already bought into the blockchain delusion than to the general public.

        • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          6 months ago

          Right, I just thought I’d give you the benefit of the doubt. The article is about FTX, and FTX was a scam, but crypto is clearly not, by any reasonably specific definition of the word.