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The Courts Bitcoin

BlockFi Sues FTX's Bankman-Fried Over Shares In Robinhood (cointelegraph.com) 42

Posted by BeauHD from the cough-it-up dept.
Newly-bankrupt crypto lending platform BlockFi has filed a lawsuit against Sam Bankman-Fried's holding company Emergent Fidelity Technologies seeking his shares in Robinhood that were pledged as collateral earlier in November. CoinTelegraph reports: The suit was filed on Nov. 28 in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey just hours after BlockFi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the same court. As per the filing, BlockFi is demanding Emergent turnover collateral as part of a Nov. 9 pledge agreement that saw Emergent agree to a payment schedule with BlockFi that it has allegedly failed to pay.

BlockFi names the collateral as "including certain shares of common stock." In May, Bankman-Fried acquired a 7.6% stake in the online brokerage firm Robinhood, buying a total of $648 million in Robinhood shares through his Emergent investment company.
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BlockFi Sues FTX's Bankman-Fried Over Shares In Robinhood More

BlockFi Sues FTX's Bankman-Fried Over Shares In Robinhood

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  • The only "asset" FTX has that anyone wants is good old fashioned stock. A stock thats lost like 90% of its value is still worth more than all the made up magic jelly beans in the world.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cfalcon ( 779563 )

      FTX doesn't have that asset, Samuel Bankman-Fried does.
      FTX had plenty of crypto assets, and everyone wanted them- which is why they gambled them away. The few that remained were eagerly scrounged up by creditors, governments, and possibly a hacker.
      "A stock thats lost like 90% of its value is still worth more than all the made up magic jelly beans in the world."
      I mean, Robinhood has lost a lot of its value, but not 90% compared to its peak.

      And it's nowhere near the value of those "magic jelly beans"- those

  • Or at least that's what he used to back in the day.

    Maybe now he sells bitcoin futures and bridges in the bahamas or whatever banana republic these defi places call home.

  • Maybe SBF can get the court to settle for some crypto coins.

  • Is it because he gave money to politicians?

    • He may well end up in jail. White collar crimes take forever. Look how long theronos took. Years. And if the guy is smart, he will disappear to a non-extradition country before the charges are brought. As it is, I don't think his whereabouts are known. I imagine he skimmed at least 100M into some swiss bank account.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Arethan ( 223197 )

        As it is, I don't think his whereabouts are known.

        Not to prop up our spooks, but if he uses phones to post literally anything onto major social media, the NSA almost definitely knows exactly where SBF is, at least down to the relative "county" level of a country/province.

        The real question will be: do they want to send in the recovery team and face the subsequent press fallout.

        I happen to think he's the modern Bernie Madoff, so I'd like to see him apprehended and face trial asap.

        And then, well, it's going to take one HELL of an attorney to attempt climbing

      • I guarantee you that he's sitting in the Bahamas somewhere enjoying a drink with a little umbrella in it, feeling very sorry for himself, surrounded by the usual crew of sycophants and gold diggers that accompany any younger person with stupid amounts of money and poor judgement.

    • Yes, his company worked very closely in Ukraine helping launder money out which then large sums went to likes of the DNC to tune of 70mill that we Know of but wouldn't shock me if its higher.

    • The Department of Justice moves slowly, and does not perform investigations in public.

      Arrest requires a warrant or probable cause, and arrest warrants for non-violent crimes require indictments. Indictments require a grand jury to look at evidence, and evidence takes a while to gather - not the bullshit we hear in the news, but actual documented and sworn-to evidence such as witness interviews, affidavits, depositions, document subpoenas, etc.

      For fucks sake, they found top secret documents in TFG's home of

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cfalcon ( 779563 )

      >Is it because he gave money to politicians?

      He gave a ton of money to politicians. He at some point claimed to donate to politicians of both major American parties, but to listen to the media it's mostly him funding Biden (#2 donor according to conservative outlets) and tons of cash to other Democrat stuff. I don't really know or care how he threw money around- it's obvious he was buying favors, and will never go to jail, and on the OFF CHANCE he actually gets busted for completely gambling away all th

  • I remember listening to Zac Price (CEO of BlockFI) on the Animal Spirits podcast. It's a pretty well-known podcast and they asked him about what was going on back then, which was in July this year. Zac Prince said that although media said BlockFi was "rescued", he entertained several options from several organizations. And that FTX gave the best offer. Prince definitely did not come across as a YOLO-ing frat-fucking crypto-bro.

    Turns out that going with FTX really was the fatal mistake here. I think it's a s

    • Re:BlockFI made fatal mistake trusting Bankman-Fri (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Ed Tice ( 3732157 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2022 @08:47AM (#63088250)
      The company made loans using crypto assets as collateral. This has all of the risk of making foreign-currency loans with none of the means of hedging available. Basically they facilitated leveraged crypto investments among other things. The problem with that type of business is, of course, that in order to lend real money, they need to somehow *obtain* real money which has a funding cost. And no other lender is going to accept the crypto as collateral so they aren't going to be getting good rates. However, BlockFi had a way to make money. Just deposit the crypto assets at FTX where they would earn interest (I believe as much as eight percent). They would get interest on the collateral and on the loan. Based on that, they could afford to issue illegal debt at relatively high interest. Until they couldn't.

      I don't know anything about Zac Price. In one sense, he seems to have tried to offer a legitimate banking service rather than anything terribly esoteric and, I imagine, that he would tend to speak like a banker. On the other hand, his business plan relied on receiving interest from an entity that clearly did not have a reasonable business. Apparently, however, many people thought that FTX was somehow legitimate (SMH) so he very well may have been legitimately fooled.

      This is exactly why crypto is a house of cards. The "money making" business are profiting on the backs of money losing businesses and that can't go on forever because there's no real underlying value in any of it.

    • Prince definitely did not come across as a YOLO-ing frat-fucking crypto-bro.

      They were catering to the market sector of suckers that wear suits and think that somehow they can get double the going interest rate by investing magic beans instead of real money. Still suckers, though.

    • It doesn't matter if you are a "YOLO-ing frat-fucking crypto-bro" or not, if your balance sheet is filled with "assets" from other "YOLO-ing frat-fucking crypto-bros".

      Toxic worthless dogshit is still toxic, worthless, and dog shit.

  • It's now something like 3 weeks into FTX being discovered to have pilfered and misused client funds and Sam Bankman-Fried is not in law enforcement custody in any country pending criminal charges a la Madoff. There is not even an open statement by the DoJ that they are pursuing criminal charges against him.

    This is evidence before our very eyes that a two tier system is not only reality, but the upper tier is now shamelessly flaunting it in our faces.

    This is why we need populist radical politicians who are more concerned with hurting the upper tier than anything else. It will not change until the upper 1% get it so good and hard that they beg for fair and consistent enforcement of the law.

    • Don't think there is really a law against what he did because the government operates the same way: make-believe "dollar" token, slush fund budgets laundered through a banking system with fake accounting, scamming money from people who work for their money in the name of the "common good" so that the people running things can live in luxury, tldr: Sam Bankman-Fried for President!

    • Re:Let's interrupt this to remember one little thi (Score:5, Informative)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Tuesday November 29, 2022 @09:24AM (#63088332)

      . There is not even an open statement by the DoJ that they are pursuing criminal charges against him.

      What exact crime did he commit? It's not nearly enough to say "He stole his clients money" or "He lied to regulators."

      You have to say he stole X amount of money by doing Y to his client Z on this exact date. Or he lied about X when really Y was happening in Z regulatory filing.

      Figuring that out takes time. Until someone goes to the FBI or SEC and complains that their money was stolen, or they were harmed by some fraud, there isn't much they can do. A bunch of people lost a lot of money on investments. That happens all the time.

      Now, I don't doubt that crimes *were* committed by Sam Bankman-Fried, but proving that a crime happened in a complicated investment scheme (he had dozens of off-shore companies moving money around) can be tricky. And, the federal government isn't exactly known for moving quickly.

      • It's extremely likely he was operating as a bank without complying with the regulations banks are required to comply with. That said it'll take a while for the doj to wrap their heads around that and actually issue charges and warrants.

        • It's extremely likely he was operating as a bank without complying with the regulations banks are required to comply with.

          You mean like PayPal? "operating as a bank" is a meaningless catchphrase.

    • The problem with radical politicians is that once they get started cleaning out the current managerial classes they overshoot rather badly. The French and Bolshevik Revolutions come immediately to mind.

    • Because you know the status of every current Department of Justice investigation? And SEC investigations too?

      General Garland, is that you?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      There is not even an open statement by the DoJ that they are pursuing criminal charges against him.

      Cases of this magnitude are going to take more than 3 weeks to question related entities, track down evidence, fully investigate their business and and come to a decision - that normally takes the government months.... i 'm not sure why people would think they reach the decision In a few weeks About If, who, and which charges to pursue.

      The DOJ also might like to Not tip off suspects in the case whether they

    • I don't and remain unharmed.

      Fools and their money should be parted. The only way (some few) fools learn is pain so the more the better. Not being one I don't do crypto and laugh at the chumps.

      Crypto is inherently a tool of crime. It cannot and should not be banned but neither do supporters merit respect.

    • Who are more concerned with hurting people than anything else. You want politicians who are concerned with making your life and the lives of people in your community better.

      The goal isn't to hurt the rich. It's to take away enough of their enormous and obscene amounts of money that they can no longer use that money to control our lives. The goal needs to be to do away with kings and queens once and for all instead of just changing their names to CEOs or whatever we're going to pick next.

      If you start
  • Dominos are falling. People want their $$$ and NOTHING is there. NEVER was !!! Newly-bankrupt crypto lending platform BlockFi due to FTX ! The only they had was fools buying late into the ponzai scheme.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jeremyp ( 130771 )

      Dominos are falling. People want their $$$ and NOTHING is there. NEVER was

      The dollars were there once. The clients would have put the dollars in, it's just that the dollars have been taken away without anybody except the thief knowing about it.

      the ponzai scheme.

      Is that some sort of miniature fraud?

  • "You fucked up - you trusted us!" - Sam Bank-Fraud

  • Degenerate gamblers are unworthy of oxygen let alone respect so I can't fault scamming them. Their greed made them crave to trust a grifter.

    It's all quite amusing to those of us above such nonsense. I want believers in crypto (which exists to launder money and facilitate crime) to be ripped off and damaged in every possible way for their financial subversion.

    Cryptoids are not good people misled.

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