Tag Archives: Bitcoin

Business, Technology

Is SBF Laundering Money As We Speak?

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Sam Bankman-Fried is accused of committing one of the largest frauds in history. Now out on bail, he may be siphoning off what little money his bankrupt empire has left.

Out this morning from Bitcoinist:

A few hours ago, former Alameda Research wallets came to life, as noted by several on-chain analysts. Oddly enough, the transfers of altcoins come just shortly after Bankman-Fried was allowed to make himself comfortable in his parents’ home, equipped with an Internet connection.

The transactions totaled about $200,000.

Whoever moved the money used tools called mixers to mix the coins with other tokens. This makes them harder to trace.

A liquidator put in charge of the Alameda assets by a court would not use a mixer. This points to the transfers being initiated by a hacker, or by SBF himself.

Shockingly, the terms of SBF’s bail don’t stop him from using the internet.

If SBF is in fact looting the last of Alameda’s assets, he’s committing another crime. This would be ample cause to revoke his bail, putting him in jail until his trial ends.

Since the bail is secured by SBF’s parents’ house in Palo Alto, his parents would also lose their home.

Most people would never consider committing fraud while on bail. They’d be worried about going back to jail, not to mention their parents’ losing their home.

But SBF isn’t most people. If he did this, the level of arrogant stupidity is astounding.

What do you think is going on with these mysterious transfers? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

More on markets:

How SBF’s Hedge Fund Imploded

Seeing Through SBF: How One VC Found the Truth

Why Crypto is Still Massively Overvalued

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Photo: FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

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Business, Technology

Seeing Through SBF: How One VC Found the Truth

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The best venture firms in the world stand to lose billions in the FTX collapse. But one man saw through Sam Bankman-Fried.

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His name is Alexander Pack. Pack planned to invest millions in FTX, until the red flags started to mount.

Pack, managing partner of Dragonfly Capital at the time and currently of Hack.vc, was bewitched by SBF at first. From a new report in Fortune:

“He seemed like one of the smartest people I’ve ever met
He looks different from everybody else; he thinks different from them. So yeah, I was very taken with him. We all were. That’s why we spent so much time and were so interested in it.”

For all SBF’s charisma, warning signs began to appear. The profits of his trading firm, Alameda Research, were dropping bit by bit.

It turned out SBF wasn’t focused on the business he was pitching Pack. Instead, he was working on a new crypto exchange called FTX.

[Pack] was interested in SBF’s new exchange, but Bankman-Fried balked and supposedly told Pack he couldn’t invest in the separate business. Bankman-Fried, he says, haggled, telling Pack he would have to pay more if he wanted exposure. “And that was a big red flag, obviously for our investment,” Pack said.

Pack was right to take this as a huge red flag. A founder who’s distracted from day one isn’t a good bet.

SBF also became increasingly secretive:

“He wouldn’t tell us who [the investors] were because he didn’t want us to talk to them,” Pack said.

Bankman-Fried thought if the seed investors knew he was considering taking venture funding, the seed investors might redeem their money, Pack said.

Pack asked him how he would deal with the situation. “And Sam said, ‘Oh, I probably just won’t tell them at all. You know, we’ll keep it secret. We’ll figure out some way to keep it secret.’”

Pack realized that the FTX founder could easily keep valuable information from him as well. “That was definitely one of the flags,” he said.

Pack is 100% right that if SBF will deceive his existing investors, he’ll deceive Pack too.

What’s more, existing investors should be your biggest cheerleaders! You should be begging prospective investors to talk to them and find out how great you are.

And why would those early investors want to sell if the company was doing well?

In all, we have a picture of a distracted, unscrupulous founder. With hundreds of deals available at any given time, why choose this one?

Pack was considering investing just a couple of million dollars. But he appears to have done more diligence than the giant firms that put in hundreds of millions!

Those big firms have huge teams to diligence a company backward and forward. But they were outmaneuvered by little old Pack.

The lessons for founders and investors are clear.

Founders must be focused and keep their financials tight. And investors should be wary of distracted, secretive, and unscrupulous entrepreneurs.

What do you think of the FTX collapse? Leave a comment below and let me know!

More on tech:

Is SBF Headed to Prison?

Tiger Global Losing $185 Million a Day

Where Did Sequoia Go Wrong on FTX?

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Photo: FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

Business, Technology

Where Did Sequoia Go Wrong on FTX?

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Sequoia Capital is the greatest venture capital firm of all time. So how did it lose $214 million on FTX?

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Sequoia made two large investments in the crypto exchange, which went bankrupt earlier this month. Sequoia has since marked down those investments to zero.

The firm’s top leaders apologized to investors on a call yesterday. From Bloomberg:

Top partners at the powerful venture capital firm Sequoia Capital apologized to their investors in a conference call Tuesday for backing FTX, a pair of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchanges that had allegedly been mismanaged by Sam Bankman-Fried, according to people familiar with the meeting.

Despite the mea culpa, Sequoia defended its process:

Although partners on the call were conciliatory, they also defended the due diligence they conducted on the deal. They said staff reviewed financial statements and asked on multiple occasions about the relationship between FTX and Alameda Research, a trading firm that Bankman-Fried also founded and which reportedly borrowed and lost FTX customers’ money.

Sequoia is wrong to defend this investment.

FTX had no board. This despite being valued at over $30 billion and entrusted with hundreds of millions of investor’s money.

Seed stage companies I invest in routinely form a board when the round closes! This is in line with the best practice recommended by attorneys.

Benchmark General Partner Bill Gurley said it best:

Benchmark avoided the crypto FOMO. The partners stuck to their knitting and kept backing real startups.

Sequoia was not so lucky.

Indeed, its diligence in other crypto deals appears questionable. From The Wall Street Journal:

When FTX declared bankruptcy earlier this month, Sequoia also edited another post for a crypto investment called LayerZero. An earlier version said the Sequoia partnership approved the investment just 48 hours after an investment memo was completed. The newer version removed references to the fast decision-making.

In yesterday’s call, Sequoia said it was considering making startups use Big Four accounting firms in the future. Especially for a huge company like FTX, that’s a no-brainer.

Like most angels and VC’s, I idolize Sequoia. They’re the best of the best.

I hope to see them get back to their roots. And if other VC’s want to chase crypto dreams, let them.

In the words of Sequoia founder Don Valentine:

“What is important is to have the ability and willingness to be different.”

Don Valentine


What do you think of Sequoia’s FTX losses? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

This is the last blog for this week. See you on Monday!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

More on tech:

Hedge Funds Lose Billions as FTX Implodes

Talking FTX, Twitter and Startups at Starta VC

Getting to $10 Million ARR Without a Series A

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Photo: FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

Business, Technology

Hedge Funds Lose Billions as FTX Implodes

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Hedge funds trusted crypto exchange FTX with billions of dollars. Now, they stand to lose it all.

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Some funds have lost most of their assets and may cease to exist. From a report out overnight in the Financial Times:

Hedge funds have billions of dollars stuck on failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX and could face years of waiting to recover anything at all from a marketplace they once believed to be one of the industry’s most reliable bets.

“I lost my investors’ money after they put faith in me to manage risk and I am truly sorry for that,” tweeted Travis Kling, founder of Ikigai Asset Management, which has a “large majority” of its hedge fund’s assets stuck on FTX. “I have publicly endorsed FTX many times,” he added. “I was wrong.”

Other funds, such as Galois Capital, had half or more of their assets on FTX. It could take years to recover those assets, if they’re recoverable at all.

Crypto exchanges typically hold customers’ money longer than stock brokers. This leaves customers more exposed to problems at the exchange.

To add insult to injury, hackers may be looting what little money FTX has left. A series of abnormal transactions have vacuumed hundreds of millions out of the bankrupt exchange.

Rather than place their trust in FTX, hedge funds should’ve used a service like Coinbase Custody.

Coinbase Custody puts customer assets in segregated cold storage. Its parent company is US-based.

As a public company, Coinbase has to make disclosures FTX would never dream of. And it even has SOC 2 security certification.

An exchange like Coinbase is a real, grown-up company. FTX was an amphetamine-fueled commune in a questionable jurisdiction.

But hey, why not trust them with billions in your investors’ money?

I expect to see a lot of the funds that did business with FTX shut down. It’s hard to trade when all your money’s gone.

Investors big and small should be careful about who they do business with. Stick to companies in reputable jurisdictions with the right controls in place.

It turns out the brave new world of crypto is a lot like the old world: full of scammers. Buyer beware.

After the implosion of FTX, who do you think is next? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

More on tech:

How SBF’s Hedge Fund Imploded

Is SBF Headed to Prison?

FTX Blows A Massive Hole in Tiger’s Portfolio

Note: I have no affiliation with Coinbase.

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Photo: FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

Business, Technology

How SBF’s Hedge Fund Imploded

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Let’s say I create $1 million worth of Frankcoin. Will you loan me $1 million with my Frankcoin as collateral? 

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Not if you’re in your right mind, you won’t. But that’s exactly what lenders did for Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research. 

From a report out this morning in The New York Times:

 …Alameda, which held a large stake in the token, began using its FTT holdings as collateral for more loans to facilitate its trading activities. 

Like Frankcoin, FTT had no real value. It was created out of thin air by SBF.

This didn’t stop Alameda from making bold claims in a presentation to lenders:

…it could offer lenders “high returns with no risk” and “no downside.”

At this point, lenders should’ve known this was BS. There are no returns without risk. 

Anyone guaranteeing you a return is a fraud. Con artists, Bernie Madoff among them, love to promise you a sure thing. 

Perhaps these lenders were blinded by the big returns Alameda promised. 

For years, this house of cards stood. But as crypto came under pressure this year, Alameda’s fraud became harder to conceal:

With crypto prices falling, more lenders wanted their money back. The falling prices also reduced the value of FTT, which Alameda had used as collateral for some loans. As the firm struggled to pay lenders back, FTX resorted to using funds that customers had deposited with the exchange for ease of trading to pay Alameda’s lenders back.

What can we learn from this, as investors? 

Never believe anyone who says they can guarantee you a return. There are no guarantees. 

Don’t call something someone invented an asset. It’s funny money. 

And never let the promise of riches blind you to reality. 

What do you think of FTX and Alameda’s collapse? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know! 

Have a great weekend everyone! 

More on tech:

Talking FTX, Twitter and Startups at Starta VC

Is SBF Headed to Prison?

FTX Blows A Massive Hole in Tiger’s Portfolio

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Photo: FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

Business, Technology

FTX Blows A Massive Hole in Tiger’s Portfolio

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It’s going from bad to worse at Tiger Global Management. As crypto exchange FTX implodes, Tiger could lose hundreds of millions of dollars.

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From a new report in Forbes:

Tiger Global Management appears to have just taken another hit.

The hedge fund headed by billionaire Chase Coleman has been among the most prominent investors in Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto exchange.

On Tuesday, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted that his firm was buying FTX’s non-U.S. businesses to rescue it from what he said was a “significant liquidity crunch.”

The hedge fund giant made multiple, huge investments in FTX:

Tiger was part of a group of investors in FTX’s January Series C round that valued the company at $32 billion. It previously also participated in a Series B round that valued FTX at $25 billion. During that raise, FTX took a page out of Elon Musk’s playbook by raising exactly $420.69 million.


Both the Series B and C raised about $400 million. A giant like Tiger would likely have written checks of at least $100 million in each of those rounds.

I’ve seen Tiger in numerous deals, and their typical check size was $100 million or more.

Now, Tiger will likely take a total loss on its FTX stake. Binance is expected to buy the exchange for essentially nothing, simply assuming its liabilities.

This means Tiger could be looking at hundreds of millions of dollars, up in smoke.

This comes at what’s already a terrible time for Tiger Global. Its fund is down 55% for the year, with losses accelerating last month.

Meanwhile, it has only marked down its private portfolio by 8%. That is far too little given the huge losses in the NASDAQ, which means more markdowns to come.

Could this be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Only time will tell.

But even without the implosion of FTX, I expect Tiger to liquidate.

Its fund must more than double to get back to its high point and start charging performance fees again. Those fees make up most of a hedge fund manager’s pay.

Tiger has taken huge losses in both public and private markets. Why does anyone still trust them with their money?

Were I an investor in Tiger, I’d be dumping every cent of it yesterday.

What do you think the future holds for Tiger? Leave a comment at the bottom and let me know!

More on markets:

Hedge Fund Giant Losing $40 Million a Day

Tiger Global Down 52% — Losses Over $18 Billion

Hedge Fund Manager’s Arrest Shows How Market Manipulation Works

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Photo: FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

Business, Technology

Crypto VC’s to Crash: “YOLO”

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Despite cratering crypto markets and a slowdown in venture funding, crypto VC’s are upping the ante. From a report out yesterday in Reuters:

Even as the crypto sector shivers in the bleak winter, venture capitalists are pouring money into digital currency and blockchain startups at a pace that’s set to outstrip last year’s record.

In the first half of the year, VCs bet $17.5 billion on such firms, according to data from PitchBook. That puts investment on course to top the record $26.9 billion raised last year, a warmer and happier time for bitcoin and co.

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Overall US venture funding fell in the first half of the year. But US crypto investments are on pace to increase almost 50% over 2021.

Why are crypto VC’s behaving so differently? Because they don’t have much choice.

Numerous venture firms recently raised huge crypto funds. Predictably, Andreessen Horowitz is at the front of the conga line, raking in $4.5 billion in May.

Electric Capital pulled in $1 billion, and Bain Capital launched a $560 million fund.

All that money has to go somewhere. But deploying giant crypto funds today could be a big mistake.

Giant funds have to focus on late stage deals. After all, there’s no way a16z is going to hand out 1,000 seed-stage checks of $4.5 million.

It’s simply more meetings, diligence, and oversight than any firm could handle.

So they’ll put a lot of that in late stage megarounds. Since the startups are close to going public, their valuations depend on public markets.

But markets in public tech stocks and crypto tokens are extremely unpredictable right now.

These firms may pay prices that public markets soon find laughable.

If that weren’t bad enough, the SEC could soon be breathing down the necks of VC firms.

Yesterday, the SEC announced that it’s investigating Coinbase for offering unregistered securities. Crypto VC’s have likely sold similar securities.

The crypto venture market looks seriously overheated. I see companies with no product or customers getting valuations of $100 million or more regularly.

You don’t often see that in non-crypto deals. And there’s no reason why the rules should be any different for crypto.

I think crypto could have some awesome applications. Cheap international money transfer may be the best use case.

But thus far, speculation has been rife and useful projects few.

Meanwhile, I’m going to keep investing in great early stage companies with awesome products and happy customers. And if a crypto company can deliver that, a salute!

More on tech:

Inside the Seed Funding Slowdown

Why Technical Founders Win

The Top 5 Things I’ve Learned from Angel Investing

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Technology

$1 Billion Still Missing from Bitfinex Hack

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Last week, the U.S. government made its largest asset seizure ever: $3.6 billion worth of bitcoin.

The money came from the 2016 hack of the Bitfinex exchange. The culprits: Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, a young couple from New York City.

Perhaps the most interesting detail in this story is that approximately 24,000 bitcoins are still missing from this hack. They would be worth over $1.1 billion at current prices.

So where are they? Perhaps percolating around the same places where Lichtenstein and Morgan laundered theirs.

The criminal complaint alleges that the couple laundered some of their stolen coins using non-fungible tokens (NFT’s). This could explain why people will pay hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars for an image of an ape.

If two criminals work together, trading the NFT between various accounts they control at ever-increasing prices, all they need is one bagholder to come in and make the illusion real. They take his money, give him the little jpeg, and laugh all the way to the bank.

Another fascinating aspect of this story is how they were caught:

The authorities said they traced the flow of funds through the unhosted wallets and across exchanges, according to the complaint, finding transactions that landed in accounts on exchanges that the two alleged launderers had in their real names. In one instance, according to the complaint, two of these accounts shared a login from the same location in New York.

This is a common mistake: mixing anonymous and real identities. Ross Ulbricht, creator of the Silk Road, did this by logging into his private VPN and his personal Gmail account from the same cafe in San Francisco.

If authorities find a pattern that when an anonymous account is used, your account also tends to be used from the same IP address, you’re going down.

In all, I think this case is good for the crypto industry. The less it seems like a free-for-all, the more legitimate it becomes.

The more legitimate it becomes, the broader adoption will be.

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More on tech:

Tech Plunge Hits Early Stage Startups

How Solana Could Wipe Out Visa and MasterCard

Hedge Funds Pull Back from Tech Amid Big Losses

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Business, Technology

Solana Is the Most Popular Crypto of 2022

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In what’s begun as a tough year for cryptocurrencies, Solana has attracted more investors than any other coin. The high speed network landed $6 million in inflows so far this year.

Larger competitors like Bitcoin and Ethereum have seen outflows in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.

What I find particularly striking is that Solana’s market cap is only a fraction the size of its larger peers. Bitcoin has a total value around $800 billion, and Ethereum nearly $400 billion.

Meanwhile, Solana is worth just $44 billion. Nonetheless, it managed to beat these much larger protocols in attracting investors.

This is a pattern I expect to continue long term. Solana can process tens of thousands of transactions per second for virtually nothing.

Compare that to Ethereum, where completing a single transaction costs about $46!

Would merchants accept a credit card that cost them $46 in transaction fees every time someone used it? Of course not.

Ethereum’s high fees will severely limit its use cases until the fees come down.

Bitcoin looks better at about $2 a transaction. But Solana charges mere fractions of a cent.

A new technology that’s dramatically faster and cheaper will win, regardless of the market. I expect Solana to continue to gain value relative to the older protocols.

At least until a swifter competitor enters the ring!

More on tech:

How Solana Could Wipe Out Visa and MasterCard

A Day in the Life of an Angel Investor

Is Fathom the Future of Blockchain?

Photo: “Solana Beach, CA Neon Sign” by JoeInSouthernCA is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

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Business, Technology

GameStop Now Accepting Dozens of Cryptocurrencies

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GameStop Corp. is now accepting dozens of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and Dogecoin, per a report from Investor Place yesterday.

These cryptocurrencies can be used at any one of GameStop’s locations or online. GameStop is using the Flexa network, which supports a wide variety of cryptocurrencies.

This comes shortly after AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. began accepting crypto payments, including Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Meme stocks trying to draw in the adjacent crypto community is a wise move. All marketing costs money, but accepting crypto provides a bunch of press attention for the minimal cost of joining the Flexa network.

Flexa appears quite robust, with tens of thousands of retail locations on its platform. It reminds me of a Square for crypto; easy payment acceptance for merchants.

If GameStop ever delivers streaming games on its own platform, crypto payments could be particularly useful. Unlike with credit cards, customers from all over the world could purchase access with no foreign exchange fees.

Will accepting crypto payments make or break GameStop or AMC’s business? Of course not.

But for businesses that rely on foot traffic, anything that builds buzz at low cost is a huge win!

What do you think of GameStop and AMC accepting crypto payments? And who do you think will be next?

Let me know in the comments below.

This is the last blog for this week. I’ll see you again on Monday.

Merry Christmas!

More on markets:

Hedge Fund Paid Researcher to Write Misleading Reports on Seeking Alpha

Parody Site Sues Citadel to Stop Shutdown

How Did High Dividend Stocks Perform In the Last Crash?

Photo: Photo: “Retail GameStop” by ccPixs.com is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get your management fees waived for 90 days. With their 1% management fee, this could save you $250 on a $100,000 account.

Misfits Market

My wife and I have gotten organic produce shipped to our house by Misfits for over a year. It’s never once disappointed me. Every fruit and vegetable is super fresh and packed with flavor. I thought radishes were cold, tasteless little lumps at salad bars until I tried theirs! They’re peppery, colorful and crunchy! I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.

Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $10 on your first order.