SBF vs Musk??♂?, Mark Cuban Ghosts Crypto??, Grand Theft Auto takes the moral high ground ??

The big talk ??

There are two bin fires raging on the internet at the moment: Twitter and FTX. While the two seem far away from each other: FTX is a now defunct cryptocurrency exchange run by a controversial billionaire, and Twitter is a now defunct social media company run by a controversial billionaire, oh wait a minute!

But thanks to a whole bunch of disclosures this week, it turns out Twitter and FTX, or rather, Musk and Fried have a strange history together. I’m going to tell you all about it.?

Shitposting Or Secret Posting????

Mr Musk has been gleefully telling everyone how he knew SBF was “bullshit” all along and that he never met him or had any real dealings with him.?

But new reports suggest that isn’t true. Thanks to some stellar journalism from the good people at Semafor, they found that on May 5, a fortnight after clinching a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion, Musk texted Bankman-Fried and invited him to increase his already $100 million stake in the company further.?

On the balance sheet Bankman Friend submitted to investors in his panicked attempt to raise some cash a few weeks ago, there was $43 million in Twitter stock on FTX’s books.?

Musk tweeted Wednesday that "neither I nor Twitter have taken any investment from SBF/FTX" and also said Bankman-Fried "certainly does not own shares in Twitter as a private company." While that may be all true, it could all be held through FTX, what’s interesting here is how the connection between the two has been ongoing, and hidden. Let’s dig in further.?

“A possible joint effort”???

Back to the piece from Semafor, Bankman-Fried’s philanthropic adviser, Will MacAskill, texted Musk on March 29 — a week before the Tesla boss made his stake public — to suggest “a possible joint effort”.??

SBF at the time said he was “happy to chat about Twitter (or other things whenever!)” with the Tesla founder.

Musk’s banker, Michael Grimes, later added that Bankman-Fried was in for $5 billion and possibly up to $10 billion. Bankman-Fried and Musk later spoke on the phone, Axios reported, and whatever was said led Bankman-Fried to not invest at that time. But Musk had a different way of framing how that went down during that same November 12 Twitter Spaces chat.

"To be honest, I'd never heard of him. But then I got a ton of people telling me [that] he's got, you know, huge amounts of money that he wants to invest in the Twitter deal. And I talked to him for about half an hour," Musk told viewers. "And I know my bulls**t meter was redlining. It was like, this dude is bulls**t — that was my impression."

But what was never revealed in court is that Musk, according to Semafor, had circled back to SBF on May 5, just two weeks before the Twitter agreement was signed. The Tesla CEO reportedly reached out to SBF just before midnight, asking that he contribute his $100 million stake to a privately-owned Twitter. That's a major chunk of company control to offer to someone who allegedly causes your "bullsh**t meter" to "redline."

Now, briefly putting my tinfoil hat on for a moment, it's worth mentioning that FTX rival Binance, which contributed an additional $500 million towards Musk's acquisition, is widely credited with exposing FTX's financial vulnerabilities, which ultimately led to its demise. Do I smell a conspiracy??

Probably not. But hey it’s fun to wildly speculate isn’t it??

So what’s really going on? ??

At first blush, it’s a good old fashioned Twitter spat, with one of the world’s richest men using his influence to try and prevent private discussions becoming public. Nothing new there you might think. What is new is how social media, in particular Twitter, has become a battleground between rich and powerful people, particularly in crypto, who use it to further their own causes, often at the expense of others.?

As you’ll see below, Chanpeng Zhao, another billionaire with a love of Twitter, previously used Twitter to accelerate FTX’s demise, has recently been using the platform again to undermine the finances of one of his main rivals.??

The FUD, or Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt if you don’t spend all your time on crypto Twitter is a powerful tool used in crypto to repel negative press, or to attack others.?

Want my completely unprofessional, un-proven, un-warranted opinion? Stay away from companies that have CEOs that use Twitter to bully or intimidate people.?

YOU’RE WELCOME!?

What people are shouting about: ???

• CZ is building is $1 billion crypto rescue fund - the benevolent overlord of crypto (depending on whom you ask) has been gathering the crypto forces to build a giant safety net, that of course, Binance gets to decide whether it’s worth deploying. Not only that, he’s looking to pull a Sam Bankman Fried on Sam Bankman Fried by buying up Voyager Digital at a heavily discounted rate. Context: when Voyager went belly up in the summer after Terra collapsed, SBF bought it for a fraction of its worth, only to now be suffering the same fate. ? ?
• A $500 million crypto fraud scheme has been busted - Two Estonian men have been charged with defrauding thousands of investors out of half a billion dollars through Polybius, a crypto bank that, yep, you guessed it, was never a bank. Instead, it laundered funds out of people’s wallets into luxury property and cars. According to court documents, Potapenko and Tur?gin, both 37, allegedly defrauded hundreds of thousands of victims through a multi-faceted scheme.
• The Tornado Cash developer is still in jail - remember Alexey Pertsev? The creator of Tornado Cash, the loathed (by regulators anyway) crypto mixing service that allegedly helped criminals and North Korea launder billions of dollars in ill gotten gains? Well, while the crypto world turned to ash, a judge ruled he must stay in jail till at least February as he’s deemed a flight risk. Which feels particularly harsh given Sam Bankman Fried is alleged to have mis-used billions in customer assets and is due to attend a literary event next week.??
• America’s biggest public Bitcoin miner has lost $1.7 billion this year - Core Scientific, the largest US publicly-traded Bitcoin mining company in terms of computing power, said its loss for the first nine months of the year climbed to over $1.7 billion. Thanks to soaring energy costs and the collapse in the price of BTC, the company says it may have to file for bankruptcy if the company can’t find more funding to repay its debt that amounts to over $1 billion. Yikes.
• A Mt. Gox hacker is trying to move some of his loot - but everyone noticed - While crypto burns, a criminal connected with the Mt.Gox hack way back in 2014, tried to move 10,000 BTC earlier this week. But Ki Young Ju, an analyst spotted the money moving and swiftly reported it to the exchange the hacker was trying to siphon it through. Transparency FTW!?

The at first glance incredibly boring, but in reality, incredibly insightful and interesting thing you should read this week ??

CZ, the all conquering king of crypto, has been tweeting about how Coinbase, another one of its rivals, had no reserves. He’s deleted the tweet, but you can find it here, god bless the internet!?

In response, Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s CEO released a statement that showed the exchange’s reserves were larger than anyone expected. Twitter’s crypto community considered CZ's salvo to be both ignorant and uncalled for.

Messari founder Ryan Selkis pointed out that Coinbase already had audited financials proving it held roughly 2 million Bitcoin. Why is this interesting? Because in crypto, loose tweets sink ships (see FTX), and CZ, is probing his competitors for holes.

Chart of the week ??

Where all of FTX’s customers are based? Anyone else think it?odd that a tiny island nation is disproportionately represented here?

Strange but true ???

• The world’s first metaverse based accounting firm immediately sued - An accounting firm billing itself the world’s first to open its headquarters in the metaverse has been accused of turning a blind eye to racketeering at FTX. Prager Metis CPAs LLC, an auditor for FTX, was sued by an investor who claims to have lost almost $20,000. I wonder if he filed the suit in the metaverse??
• Mark Cuban is ghosting crypto - the billionaire investor and one time lover of all things crypto - he’s invested in a lot of crypto projects - appears to be unfollowing crypto projects on Twitter faster than you can say, “bear market”. Strangely it seems to be focused on DeFi and NFT related projects. Go figure.?
• The Onion is giving away all the world's global assets as NFTs - Awww The Onion, how I’ve missed your lampooning ways. The old internet’s favourite piss-taking website, has NFT’d the world, and now you can buy it. My favourite? The letter “E”.?
• Macy’s is launching a virtual NFT-based Parade - One for all our Ameri-Can friends, Macy’s the US retailer is having a parade! Which I’ve been told is perfectly normal this time of year. But twist! They are doing a virtual one, with NFTs. Which might sound like poor timing for anyone who has been keeping an eye on NFT sales recently. But hey, who are we to judge. If you do take part, remember: don’t shill them to your friends.?
• Grand Theft Auto takes the high road with crypto - Yup, the gaming franchise that lets you do pretty much anything to anyone in its crime-ridden paradise has decided crypto and NFTs are a step too far. In a recent post, a spokesperson for Rockstar, the owner of the franchise said they want to prevent “commercial exploitation” brought on by users bringing digital currencies into the game. Isn’t that like, the whole plot to GTA??

Et voila. That's another edition nailed for Zero Knowledge!

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MWAH ????