Previous Crabgrass posting addressed SBF's sentencing due late in March, and the DOJ decision to scrub a second trial on Bankman Freid and related campaign spending, as possibly cumulative. Terminating such a follow-the-money possible exercise has pluses and minuses.
In Nov. 2023 The Economist published of Binance and Zhao - an "another one bites the dust" story:
Fictional money,
a shot at inordinate riches and a good chance of landing in jail at
some point. That, in a nutshell, is the popular board game of Monopoly.
But it describes just as accurately the experience of those who have
founded some of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges.
On
November 21st Changpeng Zhao, boss of Binance, resigned after pleading
guilty to criminal money-laundering charges. He becomes the third
founder of a major crypto exchange to be convicted of crimes. In May
2022 Arthur Hayes, who set up BitMEX, was sentenced to
six months under house arrest for violating anti-money-laundering laws.
And on November 2nd this year Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, was convicted on seven counts of fraud. He may face decades in prison.
Mr
Zhao will pay a $50m fine. He may also go to jail—probably for up to 18
months—after he is sentenced in Seattle in February. In the meantime he
has been released in return for posting a $175m bond. Binance also
pleaded guilty to violating money-laundering laws and the International
Emergency Economic Powers Act, the legislation under which America
imposes sanctions. As part of the plea agreement, Binance will be
allowed to continue operating under the supervision of a government
compliance team. It will also pay a $4.3bn fine. Janet Yellen, the
treasury secretary, called the enforcement action “historic”. It will be
the largest such settlement the Treasury has ever been paid.
The
indictment, which was unsealed on November 21st, does not allege that
Mr Zhao intentionally set up a platform that criminals or those under
sanctions could use to evade scrutiny. Instead, it says that he put his
relentless pursuit of market share, growth and profits ahead of all
else.
Binance paid a big-time fine, and Zhou fell on his sword, but Binance is still a going concern. The Economist's story continues, so check out the original post.
Next, the news reader you may follow on YouTube or TV, if TV is your habit, might itself be news; an artifice, not a person. Ars Technica, beginning:
Brands are turning to hyper-realistic, AI-generated influencers for promotions.
Enlarge/ Aitana Lopez, an AI-generated influencer, has convinced many social media users she is real.
FT montage/TheClueless/GettyImages
Pink-haired Aitana Lopez is followed by more than 200,000 people on
social media. She posts selfies from concerts and her bedroom, while
tagging brands such as hair care line Olaplex and lingerie giant
Victoria’s Secret.
Brands have paid about $1,000 a post for her to promote their
products on social media—despite the fact that she is entirely
fictional.
Aitana is a “virtual influencer” created using artificial
intelligence tools, one of the hundreds of digital avatars that have
broken into the growing $21 billion content creator economy.
Their emergence has led to worry from human influencers their income
is being cannibalized and under threat from digital rivals. That concern
is shared by people in more established professions that their
livelihoods are under threat from generative AI—technology that can spew
out humanlike text, images and code in seconds.
But those behind the hyper-realistic AI creations argue they are merely disrupting an overinflated market.
On TV ads those joyously enjoying their new Lexus might be artifices too, with only the Lexus real, and it is happening because there's money in it; and less money for real actors. So the phony Lexus-thrill ad might not be an actor phonying up to make a buck, it might be some geek venturer's brain fart.
LATEST AND GREATEST -
Put the two stories together, crypto and phony influencers, and what do you get. Your likely guess is right. And this is a lesson about trust. Trust and crypto.
For years, rumors spread on social media that Steven Reece Lewis, the
chief executive officer of a now-shuttered cryptocurrency hedge fund
called HyperVerse, was a "fake person" who "doesn't exist." After its investigation, The Guardian has confirmed that no organization cited on his resume "can find any record of him."
According to The Guardian, Reece Lewis's qualifications all appear to
be falsified in an effort to woo investors to sink money into
HyperVerse. After HyperVerse collapsed, accused of operating as a
pyramid scheme, the company suspended withdrawals. According to
blockchain analysts, Chainalysis consumer losses in 2022 were estimated
to exceed $1.3 billion. Thousands of consumers lost millions, The
Guardian reported.
In a December 2021 video, Reece Lewis was introduced as CEO and
touted for making big moves before joining HyperVerse. He supposedly
went from working at Goldman Sachs to selling a web development company
to Adobe before launching his own IT startup.
Digging into his academic history, The Guardian found that neither of
the universities that Reece Lewis allegedly attended— the University of
Leeds and the University of Cambridge—had a record of him in their
databases.
His career background appeared similarly suspicious. Adobe "has no
record of any acquisition of a company owned by a Steven Reece Lewis in
any of its public SEC filings," and "Goldman Sachs could find no record
of Reece Lewis having worked for the company," The Guardian reported.
Fanning out their search, The Guardian uncovered no LinkedIn account
for Reece Lewis "or any Internet presence other than HyperVerse
promotional material." It appeared, too, that Reece Lewis' Twitter account was created just a month before the 2021 video launched.
And you bought some crypto thinking to diversify and hedge your portfolio. Shame on you.
Actually, I'd like Tom Emmer to acknowledge this story. Emmer and the entire Congressional Blockchain Caucus. Yes, they'd likely say it's the chain they love, and endorse no specific product. Which gets back to the start of the post, SBF/FTX mixing politics and money. This link, at the post's UPDATES, where you can quick search the one beginning, "Wouldn't you like to see the money followed?"
But, ain't that a hoot? Crypto, a Ponzi adventure with a phantom CEO, funny unless you bought into that particular product.
