Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Balaji Profile picture
@balajis
Nov 15, 2022 • 11 tweets • 7 min read • Read on X
Scrolly
The net result of FTX is that billions of dollars was stolen from crypto investors to give to Democrat-aligned politicians, nonprofits, and journalists.

This is why there may be no prosecution.
Why is SBF so protected?

Why is everyone from SEC to NYT running interference for him?

He was basically Soros junior — just with stolen customer money — and evidently bought off the entire media, nonprofit, political, and regulatory establishment.
archive.ph/HYdcM
The author is a born-rich journo. So he knows Bankman-Fried’s milieu.

And the overall picture you get is of rats scurrying around now that SBF’s money has been cut off — and very much not wanting defrauded crypto investors to clawback those stolen funds.
archive.ph/HYdcM
The stage is set for an absolutely insane zero-sum match.

On one side, one million crypto investors robbed of ten billion dollars by SBF.

On the other side, a network of dark money Democrats who will fight to keep as much of those stolen funds as possible.

The fur will fly.
The bankruptcy case may play out on social media.

Crypto investors seeking to get FTX funds back may hire lawyers like Irving Picard, who clawed back ~75 cents on the dollar for Madoff victims.

And who would they claw it back from? The groups SBF funded.
archive.ph/Uzsos
The fundamental question is: when did SBF start stealing from customers, and how much did he steal?

This can only be answered by forensic accounting.

The headline amount given to Democrat politicians of $37M+ understates it. FTX Foundation alone was $190M.

How much was stolen?
We need a list of all the “donations” SBF made, potentially with stolen money. Here are at least four:

- $69M in political donations, mostly to Democrats, some to Republicans via his subordinate
- $190M to a foundation
- $128M to a PAC
- Undisclosed amount (!)

There’s more…
All kinds of obfuscation games have been played here. Donations made with possibly stolen funds. Numbers that are publicly known may just be the tip of the iceberg.

Where did the ten billion go? How much was stolen? And when was it stolen?
The Crypto Clawback

Anyone with money on FTX may want to learn the following terms:

- clawback
- lookback
- fraudulent conveyance
- unjust enrichment
- voidable preference

Ask a lawyer. You may be able to recover funds by pursuing the organizations SBF “donated” your money to.
This is why the establishment has been so muted on SBF!

It’s because one million crypto investors might clawback billions of dollars, by pursuing the many nonprofits, politicians, and media corporations SBF “donated” their money to.
Ask a lawyer. If FTX stole your money, you may be able to sell your bankruptcy claim.

An investor might buy claims for X cents on the dollar, taking on the risk of getting Y>X at a future date.

For $10B, many groups SBF “donated” to could be pursued. lowenstein.com/media/6418/nat…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Balaji

Balaji Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @balajis

Balaji Profile picture
May 17
The state is going to pursue killer AI. It’s called drones.

So the entire idea of “AI safety” regulation is moot. For better or worse, the drone arms race has begun and you have to defend yourself.
The state may *also* try to regulate open source AI. But that isn’t because it’s a threat to you. It’s because they think of tech in general as a threat to them.

Take the EU. In the name of protecting privacy we got cookie banners. Now in the name of AI safety we get logic bans.
You want my extreme troll-but-true comment?

AI safety is actually crypto.

Because the only secure backends are onchain. Web2 systems get hacked all the time, but Ethereum doesn’t. So that’s where the drone private keys will be stored.

Hence, safety through cryptography.
Read 5 tweets
Balaji Profile picture
Apr 26
Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore did well in the 20th century while the Chinese mainland was gripped by a mind virus.

Quite possible that Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore do well in the 21st century while the Western world is gripped by a mind virus. Image
Why Australia and New Zealand?

They’re arguably the best-run countries in the Anglo world. I compiled some graphs in the thread below. But you can see that they’re qualitatively less indebted than the G7.
Australia’s small size and proximity to China has resulted in a totally different economy than America.

They don’t have illusions of having the strongest military or reserve currency.

Instead they dig stuff out of the ground and sell it to China.

So, they have a real economy. Image
Read 5 tweets
Balaji Profile picture
Apr 8
REALITY PRECEDES PROSPERITY
I think we agree on one point and disagree on two points.

THE BUKELE ANTIBODIES
1) First, yes, force alone is not the recipe for an ailing country. Ultimately you need community. Latin America suffered from generations of drug dealing and money printing. So now they have developed antibodies in the form of crime prevention and Bitcoin adoption. And Bukele is the incarnation of those antibodies. But society basically has to be ready to turn around before a Bukele can appear. He can wield force against the 1.6% of criminals because he has much of the 98.4% of non-criminals on his side.

I saw this in India as well, after generations of socialism. And in Vietnam, after generations of communism. Those societies finally had the antibodies to fight off the mind viruses that had brought them low. Of course, many societies just succumb. Is Cambodia mounting a comeback anytime soon? Or North Korea, or Cuba? Not really.

This is also the problem in the US. Many in the US have yet to even acknowledge it's declining. Many Democrats are Stalinist Bidenists, whose monthly checks are dependent on mouthing the party line. And many Republicans have replaced G-o-d with G-o-v. They see the US military as a god replacement, in its stern father form, and can't bring themselves to admit the country ain't what it was. They're Soviet conservatives, patriotic to a fault, saluting the worst because they've captured the flag.

I don't think this is true for everyone — people like @realchrisrufo and @davereaboi know what time it is — but it's true for too many. If you still think, like Biden recently said, that his empire is still "the most powerful country in the history of the world" and that it just isn't trying or is like one election away from being fixed — you are wrong in a deep way.

The values that underpin the valuations have been broken. The current society is coasting on fumes. Fixing this is at least a generational rebuild. It's not something one vote will solve.

IT'S NOT RICH
2) We also disagree that the US is a rich country. It has a fake economy, built on debt, with exponentially increasing interest payments, that doesn't have much runway left, and doesn't have factories to fall back on when the money printing stops.

For example:

^ Why are interest payments suddenly spiking? Because the bill for QE is coming due. Either die by high inflation or high rates. Or both.

^ Why is the country issuing debt at emergency levels, without acknowledging it's an emergency? Because that's the only thing that can keep this fake economy afloat through the 2024 election.

^ Why is China the world's #1 trade partner on just about every physical good? Because the US only exports (a) printed money and (b) technology. Anyway, I could keep going, with literally dozens of graphs like this. But X only allows four per post.

IT'S NOT STABLE
3) On the topic of whether it's a country with a "turbulent history of...violence", the level of drug addiction, violent crime, homeless encampments, squatters, road blockages, and massive BLM/Hamas mobs swarming the streets has obviously spiked in recent years.

2020 didn't represent a one-off, it's a preview of what is to come, particularly in Blue America. Crime statistics are systematically faked — in San Francisco, you can actually see some dashboards where things like car ticketing have gone to zero — so we don't have an accurate picture.

Until you see undeniable things like stores closing and people moving out of blue states. And then blue politicians yell at those companies, and try to stop them from moving out. This is systematic: blues always disable the warning lights that tell you we're crashing into the ground, just like the mortgages labeled AAA in 2008, just as a mosquito anesthetizes you before drinking your blood, just as a snake evolves to employ camouflage before it strikes. Alongside lawfare, faking the stats is a core competency of both communist reds and woke blues.

TLDR: I think we just have very different mental models of the prosperity and stability of today's United States. Wokeness is hegemonic and the damage is deep. I wish it weren't so — but agreeing on reality precedes prosperity.

A few more citations follow 👇Image
Image
Image
Image
Here's how SF fakes its crime statistics. The law is not enforced so the crime is not reported.
This is a BLM/Hamas mob.
And this is a scene from World War Z.
Complete with the fast zombies.
That guy in the car did nothing wrong.
Other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Namely, Blue America.
This doesn't happen in a stable country.
Read 4 tweets
Balaji Profile picture
Feb 17
I just got back from Prospera.
A startup city on the island of Roatán.
It’s crypto, it’s bio, it’s robo.
And it’s not San Francisco.
We’ve started new companies, new communities, and new currencies.

Now we’re starting new cities.
My body, my choice.

That’s what personal medical sovereignty means.

If you can legally go skydiving or bungee jumping, you should be able to take a calculated risk on new treatments.

And that’s what Prospera has legalized.
Read 4 tweets
Balaji Profile picture
Jan 21
We now understand the 2010s.

It’s when legacy media fought a ferocious but ultimately doomed rearguard campaign against the Internet.

That’s why they pushed censorship so hard and constantly thumped their chest about being “journalists.”

It was protectionism.
They were dying.
Image
Many journalists spent the better part of a decade attacking the Internet for a living.

You understand it better when you realize it was existential for them. They didn’t just lose money, they lost power.
Even legacy media now admits it. Trust in newspapers has collapsed. Image
Read 5 tweets
Balaji Profile picture
Nov 16, 2023
1) Ban China
2) Be China
3) Beat China

These are the options. I get the logic, but banning signals technological and cultural weakness. Yet so does capitulation of the Newsom variety. The best way is to build something *better* than China, as Elon and others in tech have done.
Image
Democrat concern about Russia is similar to Republican concern about China.

I get where it comes from. But the real answer is to build a more compelling product that can win on the global internet.

Otherwise you're giving up on soft power.
Why isn't China submissive anymore?

The unspoken truth: because they don't respect America anymore. For example, they feel they can build better cities than the US.

The best way to prove them wrong is to outbuild them.
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

Send Email!

:(