Bitcoin and NFTs

[caja-dglh]

The Big Short, Liars Poker, Moneyball - even that football book - they always had a very obvious side of where public opinion lies.

Flash Bois is supremely technical and he basically sided with big finance, which, sure - meh. That he didn’t know how to read Crypto isn’t surprising.

Personally I think the good book on finance out there is in a micro point the basis trade, but is really about how the US government (and others internationally) basically regulated banks out of facilitating the business for pension funds and everyone’s retirement and forced it into the unregulated financial world. It is a terrible story of unintended consequences and political whack-a-mole.

unfortunately people only want to buy a three volume 75000 page book about the Beatles*

[Hot Pepsi]

Personally I think the good book on finance out there is in a micro point the basis trade, *

What?

[caja-dglh]

It is basically the big financial to-do transaction that has been going on for years now which nobody outside the industry is particularly aware of. Hence there is a book in it.

[ursus arctos]

This is embarrassingly stupid framing

https://twitter.com/BusinessDesk/status/1710566914454675856?t=J_ABn38PL9dbxjl_H05Jcg&s=09

[Hot Pepsi]

We desperately need to stop assuming that people who get good grades in school are morally superior to those who don’t. I’ve met a lot of those people. If anything, they skew a bit evil.

[Lang Spoon]

Math nerds have wrought untold damage the last few decades. Is the guardian just being stupid or is it related to their continuing soft soaping "effective altruism"?

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/davidzmorris/status/1712509715643584729?s=12&t=xvOireV8JOIS_CpbTtDBow

The defence has been weird from the jump

[ursus arctos]

Levine today

In June 2022, as crypto prices spiraled and Alameda’s lenders were calling in their loans, [Caroline] Ellison said she prepared seven “alternative balance sheets” that would conceal Alameda’s large borrowing from FTX customers, in response to a request for financial information from one of its lenders, Genesis. Alameda had borrowed around $10 billion from FTX customers and had loaned around $5 billion to FTX executives and affiliated entities. “He suggested I should prepare some alternative ways of presenting the information and send it to him,” she said. “I understood him to be directing me to come up with ways to conceal things in our balance sheet we both agreed would look bad.” Bankman-Fried told her to send Genesis her Alternative 7 — which didn’t disclose money taken from FTX customers. It cut Alameda’s liabilities from $15 billion to around $10 billion. She testified that the document was “dishonest.”

If you prepare a balance sheet for a lender and your boss says “why don’t we present this information in a different way,” you probably need a lawyer. If you prepare SEVEN BALANCE SHEETS and your boss is like “let’s go with Alternative 7” then one of you is going to prison absolutely forever. Caroline Ellison smartly decided it wasn’t going to be her.

[john the revelator]

'dishonest' .... not sure whether Caroline Ellison is ridiculously naive or the master of understatement


Separately last FT weekend section had book reviews of 4 books about crypto - mostly Michael Lewis's SBF fanzine and a couple of others, Tokens by Rachel O'Dwyer sounds interesting.
https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2957-tokens

[ursus arctos]

She appears to have some genuine difficulty in fully comprehending the gravity of what she participated in.

Another example is the way the she recounted the specific charges that she has plead guilty to (wire fraud, money laundering, etc) without any colour or real detail.

None of these people strike me as being particularly strong in emotional intelligence, which isn't at all surprising.

I still can't believe that Lewis is repeatedly positioning his book as a "letter to the jury". It is as if he has also become completely divorced from reality.

[Ginger Yellow]

She appears to have some genuine difficulty in fully comprehending the gravity of what she participated in.

I mean, less so than SBF.

[ursus arctos]

Yes, he is the edge case for all of these attributes

[Hot Pepsi]

https://Twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1709271340337815655?s=12&t=xvOireV8JOIS_CpbTtDBow

Is that really the cover of the book?

I looks like it was knocked up in MS Paint in the 90s.

[ursus arctos]

Yup, this is the US edition



Penguin took a different approach for the UK

[Gangster Octopus]

For some reason it's the Book Of The Week on Radio 4.

[Gangster Octopus]

And the penguin is invisible...

[ursus arctos]

Does this work?

[ursus arctos]

The marketing budget is massive

Norton reportedly gave Lewis USD 5 million

[Gangster Octopus]

Yup. And by lurking, I've accidentally on purpose missed the latest episode...

[Hot Pepsi]

Does this work?

That’s not much better.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/innercitypress/status/1713711029614448686?s=12&t=xvOireV8JOIS_CpbTtDBow

[WOM]

One of my favourite stories just got better: file under Bridging Financing, Coco Paving, The One condo, Mizrahi. Add Natasha Sharpe.


"Natasha Sharpe, the former chief executive of Bridging Finance Inc., was a part-owner of a luxury condo development known as The One when the troubled lender secretly backstopped the project with investor funds, a recent court action alleges.

Until now, only two people had been identified as co-owners of The One: Developer Sam Mizrahi and Jenny Coco, a former road-paving magnate who co-founded Bridging with Ms. Sharpe in 2012.

However, Bridging’s receiver has alleged in a new court filing that Ms. Sharpe had, at least, a 2.5-per-cent stake in The One, a development that is currently under construction at the intersection of Yonge and Bloor streets in Toronto. Ms. Sharpe was allegedly an owner in the project at a time when Bridging was owed millions of dollars from some of Mr. Mizrahi’s companies, and when Bridging investor funds were allegedly used to backstop a $213-million loan advanced to The One."


It goes on....


"Around this time, The One was in need of financing and negotiated a $213-million loan from China-East Resources Import & Export Co. (CERIECO), a Chinese-state lender. To secure the funds, Ms. Coco put up her family company, Coco Paving, as collateral.

However, Coco Paving did not fully meet the conditions required by the lender so Ms. Coco allegedly arranged for Bridging’s flagship investor fund, the Bridging Income Fund, to act as one of several guarantors."

With $1.6 Billion in debt, nowhere near completion, and mired in innumerable lawsuits, The One (1 Bloor West) has been put into receivership.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/gift...I72VLZI34HT6M/

[ursus arctos]

Levine's email today is full of great Crypto stories, including

So if you send someone $16,000 worth of Bitcoin to buy a $16,000 thing, (1) some of your money will go missing in transit, (2) the Bitcoins you send won’t be worth $16,000 and you’ll have to send some more, and (3) the $16,000 thing was a murder and now you are in prison.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr...rder-hire-plot

and

• In 2012, someone stole 50,000 bitcoin from the Silk Road, an illegal dark web marketplace. Over time, the value of the stolen bitcoin skyrocketed to more than $3 billion dollars and for years it remained one of the biggest mysteries in the world of cryptocurrency.

• Almost a decade after the 2012 hack, the thief made a critical mistake that allowed the IRS-CI to crack the case.

• CNBC obtained never-before-seen footage that shows how investigators linked the thief to the crypto heist.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/17/crypto911.html

[ursus arctos]

What is about real estate projects called The One?

The mega-mansion known as “The One” sold Thursday for $126 million at a bankruptcy auction. That’s a huge discount from its $295-million listing price, even with a 12% auction fee bringing the total to about $141 million.

https://www.latimes.com/business/sto...n-auction-sale

[Hot Pepsi]

What is about real estate projects called The One?



https://www.latimes.com/business/sto...n-auction-sale

Niami has been attempting to regain control of the property. In December, he proposed creating a cryptocurrency called The One Coin that would be backed by the mansion and pay off all the home’s debts.