FTX: What we know thus far
Who is Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF)? According to the DailyMail.com he is a “teetotal vegan gamer” who's 30 years old. He lives in a penthouse owned by Tiger Woods and Justin Timberlake in the Bahamas with nine people who work for him at FTX; including Caroline Ellison, 28. His penthouse doubles as his FTX office. Where did “Bankman” come from? Bankman-Free? Crypto guy with Bankman free name…who is destroying decentralized crypto and working behind the scenes for legislation to regulate crypto; do you see it? You will, read on.
Background of SBF
SBF was born on the campus of Stanford University. His parents are both law professors. His mother, Barbara Fried and his father, Joseph Bankman are life long professors at a university which appears to be America’s equivalent of Oxford (meaning it produces many of the people in the news today). Barbara graduated from Harvard Law School. Barbara’s sister, Linda Fried is the Dean of Columbia’s School of Public Health and a epidemiologist. Linda is also a WEF member on the Global Agenda Council for Aging. Barbara was a co-founder of Mind the Gap which is a progressive democrat machine that focuses on progressive candidates and get out to vote groups. She raised $20M in 2018 and $140M for democrats in 2020. Mind the Gap either significantly improved their fund raising apparatus or benefitted from her son’s involvement in FTX. It’s also notable that a fellow Stanford staff member working at Mind the Gap is Graham Gottlieb. Graham worked on Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and in the Obama’s White House as a staffer. Her other partner in this endeavor is Paul Brest, he was the president of Hewlett Foundation which has over $800M in assets. Hewlett Foundation donates to Lawfare, Aspen Institute, Brookings, etc.
Keep in mind how critical the 2018 election was for the democrats. It was imperative to win the house in order to stop Trump. The Mind the Gap effort focused on 20 under performing likely red leaning congressional races. The democrats picked up 41 seats in 2018 elections.
Barbara Fried of Mind the Gap signed a memo (2019) to their 800 plus donors stating to avoid showing the memo to anyone in the media because they did not want the republicans to be able to counter their efforts to elect democrats. The group used statistical models to predict incremental dollar impacts on underfunded democrat campaigns (good thing she knows a couple of math majors to do the modeling). “Our recommendations are all data driven relying on meta analyses of hundreds of randomized, controlled experiments.” This sounds exactly like a video of Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison describing how they found investment opportunities for Alameda I listened to earlier. The effort paid off with 10 of the 20 congressional candidates winning their elections.
Barbara went on to say the 2020 is a “key election” for the country. “This is the most important election of our lifetimes, with grave and in some cases irreversible implications for the country and the planet if we don’t win,” Fried, Brest and Gottlieb wrote in the memo. “The responsibility on each of us is concomitantly large. None of us wants to wake up on November 4, 2020, and think, for the second time in four years, if only we could have done more.” Important enough to set up FTX, one wonders…
“In the memo, Mind The Gap also instructed donors to donate to 501(c)(3) voter registration nonprofits dedicated to registering new voters in swing states. The voter registration groups, which are required by IRS rules to be nonpartisan, were recommended to donors because such organizations are “three to four times more effective than the next best available tactic for increasing net Democratic votes in November 2020.” The organizations recommended for funding were the Voter Participation Center, the Center for Voter Information, a 501(c)(4), and Everybody Votes, which is the secret name of a network of organizations surrounding the secretive Voter Registration Project.” The Voter Participation spent the money funneled to it by Mind the Gap in 2020 on mailing 15M voter registration applications to young people, people of color and unmarried women in key states; almost 5M were returned. “The memo also specifically instructed donors to keep their donations and the names of the organizations secret to avoid detection by Republicans.” They also state they are creating the first large scale site based voter registration in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota which had no such organizations. They used Everybody Votes and the price tag was $16.5M. Imagine what Scott Pressler could have done with that kind of money but Republicans aren’t interested in an actual ground game. Mind the Gap posted the memo on Digify encrypted and asked everyone to keep it close hold. It leaked.
Largest donors include Google exec Shona Brown and venture capitalist Russell Siegalman, Karla Jurvetson (ex of SpaceX board member. Others include:
James Rubin (Former diplomat and U.S Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs)
George Hume (President and CEO of Basic American Foods)
Nancy Serrurier (Board of Trustees for Whitman College)
Simone Coxe (Co-Founder of CalMatters)
Victoria Elenowitz (Chairman of the Board at Bespoke Global)
Greg Serrurier (Co-managing partner of Redwood Grove Capital)
Paul Brest (MTG Board of Directors)
Fran Codispoti (Fundraiser)
Gino DiGregorio (Managing Director of Accenture)
Lionel Spiro (Charrette Corporation)
Amy Lorowitz (International Preschools)
Allen Blue (Co-Founder of LinkedIn and DigiDems)
Chris Vargas (Founder of Emerging Cities)
Gypsy Achong (Director of 2050 Partners Consulting Firm)
David Hitz (Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of NetApp
Russell Siegelman (Venture Capitalist)
Dustin Moskovitz (Co-Founder of Facebook)
Jill Parker (Planned Parenthood)
Samuel Dyer (Employee of MTG)
Shona Brown (Business Executive and Consultant for Non-profits)
Sue Mandel (Director of the ZOOM Foundation)
Ben Appen (CO-Chair and CEO of Magnitude Capital)
Diana Walsh (Writer and Professor at University of North Carolina)
Ronald Conway (Venture Capitalist and Philanthropist)
Roger McNamee (Co-Founder of the venture capital firm, Elevation Partners)
Jeff Horing (Co-Founder of Insight Venture Partners)
Kevin Ryan (Investor and Entrepreneur)
Eric Schmidt (former CEO of Google)
MTG Research (501(c)(4) nonprofit and sister organization to MTG)
Gina Maya (City Director of Human Rights Watch in Silicon Valley)
Anne Devereux-Mills (Businesswoman and Advocate)
Barbara Fried (Founder and President of MTG)
Iris Brest (Wife of Paul Brest)
Judith Estrin (Entrepreneur, Business Executive, and Philanthropist)
Graham Gottlieb (Executive Director and Treasurer of MTG)
Gabe Bankman-Fried who also worked at Jane Street Capital while Caroline Ellison worked there. In 2018, he moved on to Civis Analytics as a data consultant. Civis Analytics is the exact same company Mind the Gap (his mom) used to create the models used to target Silicon Valley donor money into democrat campaigns. Gabe moved to DC and became a legislative correspondent in the US House after helping to secure it for the democrats fro 2019 to 2021. He became director of Guarding Against Pandemics (GAP) shortly after the pandemic broke out in Jul 2020; Guarding Against Pandemics is a company founded by SBF and is was funded by him as well. The company was set up to support legislation the Biden administration was proposing to spend $30B for the containment of future pandemic outbreaks to be embedded in the Build Back Better plan. Gabe’s profile on against pandemics.org states “Prior to that, he was a staffer on Capitol Hill and worked for Civis Analytics, where he improved private House forecasting and resource allocation models that advised Democratic Political Action Committees and large donors giving hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2018 midterm elections.” They’re not ashamed to tell you exactly what they are doing.
GAP also employs “Varun Krovi is the Head of Federal Affairs at Guarding Against Pandemics (GAP). Varun leads GAP's advocacy efforts with the White House, Congress and federal agencies. Varun joined GAP from Invariant, where he was a Director working with technology, startup, and defense clients. Previously, Varun spent eight years in the US House of Representatives for two members, most recently as Chief of Staff to a senior member on the House Appropriations Committee.” And yes, all his affiliations in DC are with the democrat party. Another staff member of GAP “David Manheim is Head of Biosecurity Policy for Guarding Against Pandemics. He is a public policy researcher and advocate specializing in biological and technological risks and the impacts of new technologies. He has done research on topics from COVID-19 to the future of pandemic response and monitoring to forecasting risks at the World Bank, the Council on Strategic Risks, and Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute. In addition to dozens of academic publications in journals ranging from Technological Forecasting and Social Change to Clinical Infectious Diseases, and from Health Security to PLoS Computational Biology, his work on the implications, risks, and management of novel technologies has appeared in Foreign Affairs and TechCrunch.” GAP has its own PAC; GAP donated $137,000 to its PAC. Total receipts were $380,000 with disbursements of $190,000. Most of the incoming funds were from ActBlue, the DNC machine and most expenses were to ActBlue Technical Services and The Money Wheel.
It's important to keep in mind, Gabe’s aunt Linda would be a potential recipient of the funds GAP is lobbying for at Columbia. Speaking of which, in February of 2021 he moved onto OpenLabs R&D while still maintaining his company Guarding Against Pandemics. The OpenLabs has chapters at Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Harvard and….Columbia. His job was to create polls, data, and write articles to be used to push for funding that benefited him, the democrats, and the bureaucracy but not the American people.
Meanwhile back to SBF
SBF areas of interest while in college at MIT was physics and math. He was hired in 2013, upon graduation, by Jane Street Capital (a prominent Wall Street firm). However, after just four years he moved to Berkeley CA and founded Alameda Research (2017). He later moved to Hong Kong and founded FTX in April of 2019. He moved the company to the Bahamas in 2021 due to China’s crack down on crypto activities. By 2022 he was worth $32B.
The ten people who make up the management structure at FTX all live in a single penthouse and are said to be five couples (or at least were in the past). SBF met most of his leadership team at Epsilon Theta a ‘living group’ at MIT which functions as a quasi fraternity minus alcohol and includes females. “Although Epsilon Theta is a fraternity in name, it shares several characteristics of independent living groups (ILGs), and is a member of MIT's Living Group Council (LGC). In addition to accepting women as members, Epsilon Theta prohibits alcohol in the house during social events. House parties tend more towards being small and laid-back.” Epsilon also participates in LARPing, which is live action roleplaying including dressing up in character and playing out fantasy games. SBF hobby is playing League of Legends online fantasy video game.
FTX was taking depositor’s cash and transferring it within a grouping of over 200 companies without the customer’s knowledge or permission. This is against the law in the US and presumably why he was operating in the Bahamas. The transfers were primarily between his FTX crypto exchange and his trading firm Alameda Capital. When customers looked into their accounts it appeared their funds were still assigned to their accounts. Binance was made aware of a leaked balance sheet of Alameda Capital which reflected a poorly ran company. Binance began selling their stake in FTX it created a run of the crypto and trading had to be suspended because the people’s money was not there. SBF after trying to sellout to Binance, which fell through, immediately resigned. “Sequoia, like other VCs who plowed money into the company, proactively marked down their stake to zero. “I don’t want to call it fraud in this moment,” Anthony Scaramucci, the ex-Trump adviser who sold part of his investment business to Bankman-Fried, said on CNBC Friday. “If there was fraud, let’s clean it up to the extent possible and repair the accounts at FTX.”
Background of Caroline Ellison
Caroline attended Stanford and majored in math; she graduated in 2016 and was hired at Jane Street overlapping SBF’s time there. Caroline’s parents (Glenn Ellison and Sara Fisher Ellison) are both economic professors at MIT. “Sara Fisher Ellison is currently Senior Lecturer in the MIT Department of Economics. She has spent most of her career at MIT, but has also held visiting positions at institutions such as the Centre for Economic Studies in Munich, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Hoover Institution, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Paris School of Economics. Her research has investigated a number of questions in industrial organization, with a focus on the pharmaceutical industry and ecommerce.”
FTX
FTX moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to the Bahamas (tax haven) in September 2021. Bahamas does not have any corporate tax, income tax or capital gains and therefore would be a logical location if you anticipate making $32B in a few years with little to no oversight.
Employees of note at FTX
SBF, FTX CEO; donated $40M to demcrats, $201,000 to republicans; $2M nonpartisan (most likely get out to vote efforts of his mother’s)
Caroline Ellison, Alameda Research CEO
Gary Wang, co-founder of FTX and chief technology officer
Nishad Singh, director of engineering at FTX; donated over $8M to democrats
Amy Wu, head of Ventures and commercial under FTX Ventures worked at the Clinton Foundation.
Mark Wetjen, FTX Policy and Regulation; Obama’s commodity futures trading commissioner; brought on to lead FTX in communication with US regulators and legislators. Mark would be the one inside promoting regulation ultimately leading to centralize crypto. Mark also served as Sen Harry Reid counsel and policy advisor.
Daniel Friedberg, Chief Regulatory officer; “Friedberg played a prominent and infamous role in the coverup of the insider-cheating scandal at UltimateBet in the mid-2000s, and he helped orchestrate some of the questionable legal moves that allowed the Portland, Oregon-based site evade U.S. law enforcement efforts throughout its existence. Those business and legal moves included the creation of a false-front office in Canada which in turn allowed for an IPO on the London Stock Exchange, a faked sale of the company to Tokwiro Enterprises (an entity created by the former chief of the Kahnawake nation, Joseph Tokwiro Norton), licensing in various offshore “rubber stamp” jurisdictions, and ultimately, a shadowy merger with another online-poker company, Absolute Poker, which was also riddled with insider fraud and crippled by its own cheating scandal.”
Friedberg, who served as FTX’s general counsel before taking on the company’s regulatory role, was recently described by Coingeek’s Steven Stradbrooke as being “almost comically inappropriate” for the job.
Brett Harrison, president of FTX US; created FTX crypto derivatives
Lead Counsel of FTX was lead counsel to Gary Gentler when he was the commodity futures trading commission chairman.
FTX was considered an off shore company but somehow managed to find itself in the middle of many regulatory conversations internal to the US. Coinbsse, the largest US based company has been attempting, in vain, to work with congress. Coinbase is very much on the side of deregulatory, decentralized crypto and didn’t buy politicians (or get set up by them) and have been completely left out of any regulatory conversations. The stampede of democrat insiders into FTX, their unison cry for regulation as they (a NON US based company) collapse is too contrived to be an accident.
Alameda Research was basically a hedge fund for FTX.
FTX Foundation-Contributions from the FTX foundation found its way primarily to climate change and healthcare initiatives.
FTX is partnered with WEF
Other persons of interest:
Gary Gentler; worked with Caroline Ellison’s father at MIT where he taught a class called “Blockchain and Money”. Was Hillary’s campaign financial officer during Russia gate payments; just prior to Hill’s campaign he was Obama’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman. Gentler would be the guy paying all the operatives in Russiagate. Gentler is currently the Head of Securities and Exchange Commission which would have oversight over FTX SEC investigation. He worked under Clinton in the Treasury and before that at Goldman Sachs for 20 plus years. Gentler is the mastermind behind taking over the DNC books and funneling everything through Perkins Cole. Perkins was paid a total of $9.2M between Jun 2015 and Dec 2016 (between DNC & Hillary).
Recent conferences
FTX hosted Crypto Bahamas with Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton (April 2022) “Crypto Bahamas, presented by FTX and SALT, is an invitation-only event featuring collaboration and networking among leading players in the crypto and traditional finance industry. The event will feature four days of discussion and unique experiences in The Bahamas. Event programming will cover Bitcoin, DeFi, NFTs, regulation, web3, gaming and more. All participants must apply to attend.” Clinton Foundation announces its back in business earlier this year and Bill Clinton attends FTX crypto Bahamas meeting. Anywhere there’s money being handed out, the Clintons are on deck.
Political Contributions
SBF donated $5.2M to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign; $44,000 to NRCC in 2022; $161,000 to ActBlue in 2022; 185 contributions to political entities in 2022 of millions with 99% of them being democrat oriented.
Recent Events
November 11th SBF resigned as CEO of FTX after FTX filed for bankruptcy. FTX is currently under investigation by the SEC.
Other investors:
Shaq, David Ortiz, Kevin O’Leery, Shohei Ohtani, Trevor Lawrence, Naomi Osaka, Stephen Curry, Miami Heat organization, MLB (umpires wear FTX on their uniforms)
Timeline:
2000 Jane Street founded in NYC as small niche traders & technologists; currently 2,000+ and five global offices. Website lists past speakers hosted for training purposes as Case Sustein; Samantha Powers; Stanley McChrystal; Nate Silver; Claudia Rankin; among others. Game theory is mentioned several times.
2009-2013 SBF attends MIT
2013-2017 SBF works at Jane Street Capital on Wall Street
2016 Caroline Ellison graduates from Stanford
2016-17 Caroline Ellison works at Jane Street Capital on Wall Street
Sep 2017-18 Gabe Bankman Fried works at Jane Street Capital
2017 SBF moves to Berkeley founds Alameda Research
2018 Gabe Bankman Fried moves to Civis Analytics “Civis empowers organization like yours to change the world by changing the way you reach the people you care most about”
2018 Barbara Fried&others set up Mind the Gap raises $20M 9 of 20 races funded won by Democrats
Jan 2019 Gabe Bankman Fried moves to DC and works in House as legislative correspondent as democrats assume leadership of 2018 elections
April 25, 2019 Biden announces campaign
May 8, 2019 SBF founds FTX in Hong Kong
July 2020 Gabe Bankman Fried opens Guarding Against Pandemics; serves as Director
2020 Mind the Gap raises $140M
2020 SBF donates $11M+ to Biden; ultimately is 2nd largest donor to Biden in 2020.
2021 SBF moves FTX to the Bahamas
Feb 2021 Gabe Bankman Fried moves to OpenLabs Research and Development while maintaining director role at Guarding Against Pandemics
Feb 2021 Super Bowl commercial starring Tom Brady
Nov 8, 2022 FTX implodes
Nov 13, 2022 SEC commissioner Hester Pierce says FTX collapse could be the one major catalyst needed for regulation. Again, FTX is a foreign company not US. Why would be establish regulation as a result of a bankrupt foreign company? Unless that was the plan all along…
IN A NUTSHELL: FTX was set up to funnel money to the democrats to win 2020 and 2022 and to then self implode to garner legislation to centralize crypto via licensure. When decentralized crypto is bankrupted the big banks move in and buy up the assets at a significant discount and presto you now have centralized crypto.
Watch: