Heads, They Win. Tails, We Lose.

Adventures in Pronouns and Cryptocurrency.

SAM BANKMAN-FRIED is a 30-year-old billionaire who donated over $40 million this year alone to Democrat candidates and the super PACs that promote them. In fact, he was Democrats’ biggest donor aside from George Soros. He had also pledged $1 billion to defeat Donald Trump in 2024. 

Bankman-Fried was the C.E.O. of FTX.com, a cryptocurrency exchange he founded in 2019, until it went bust last week. FTX’s native token, FTT, has experienced a major sell-off, plunging over 80% since Nov. 6th. Bankman-Fried lost $16 billion, and FTX went from a market cap of $32 billion to Chapter 11 (reorganization) bankruptcy precipitously. (About 130 affiliated companies, the FTX Group, are also voluntarily filing for bankruptcy.) A rival crypto exchange, Binance, backed out of its agreement to purchase its “non-U.S. unit.” (Coinbase and OKX also declined.) It was revealed the company had been using customer’s money to fund its own risky trading activities and the company was insolvent. 

Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have taken an interest in these events and are reportedly investigating any possible mishandling of $10 billion in customer deposits by FTX to prop up Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund. The entire crypto market plunged as a result.

It’s unclear how much S.E.C. Chairman Gary Gensler knew and when he knew it. Somewhat startling, Tether, a “stablecoin” pegged to the U.S. dollar, used to limit volatility, apparently froze $46 million in FTX assets, presumably at the request of law enforcement. Freezing of these assets in private wallets is sometimes done, but never before of wallets of exchanges.

WTF happened? It’s a mystery. Funds just disappeared. But Bankman-Fried took full responsibility. What a guy! He tweeted, “Sorry. I f——d up.” Then he resigned. (Reports are, he will be replaced by John J. Ray, III, the lawyer who cleaned up the Enron mess.) Company executives have suggested there was a possible hacking incident.  Account holders at FTX reported on Twitter their funds had disappeared late on Friday. By 11:52 PM, an admin for the exchange posted on Telegram: “Ftx has been hacked. All funds seem to be gone. FTX apps are malware. Delete them…Don’t go on ftx site as it might download Trojans.” 

The exchange’s general counsel, Ryne Miller, then tweeted, “Investigating abnormalities with wallet movements related to consolidation of ftx balances across exchanges – unclear facts as other movements not clear. Will share more info as soon as we have it.” The remaining funds were then routed to cold storage as a stop-loss measure. 

Elliptic is a company that tracks cryptocurrency and said it had recorded over $701 million in various tokens exiting the exchange on Friday night. It estimated $515 million may have gone missing, with another $186 million representing the cold storage transfer. Nansen, another blockchain analytics firm, estimated movement of $659 million from Friday to Saturday. Tokens involved were Solana, Ethereum, Tron, Avalanche, and Binance Smart Chain. As of Saturday morning, The Wall Street Journal pegged the losses to “approximately $473 million,” while other reports have suggested the amount could be as high as $2 billion.

Apparently, the money went into three separate wallet addresses, before the transferrer send at least $220 million through decentralized exchanges, which Elliptic believes to be a “common tactic used by thieves seeking to avoid seizure of the stolen assets.” Since the alleged hack occurred less than 24-hours after the exchange filed for bankruptcy, questions have arisen as to whether insiders were behind this.

Open Secrets, a campaign-finance watchdog group, says that 96% of the money from Bankman-Fried’s super PAC, Protect Our Future, went to various Democrat candidates or their campaigns for the midterms, including Sens. Robert Menendez (NJ), Cory Booker (NJ), Tina Smith (MN), Richard J. Durbin (IL), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), and Debbie Stabenow (MI). In 2020, the illicit occupant of the White House, Joey Biden, received $5 million. (Interestingly, he and top Biden advisor, Steve Richetti, met at the White House to discuss proposed regulations that could undermine FTX’s competitors. There are other connections, too.) 

The D.N.C. was a recipient of Bankman-Fried’s largess, as well as the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, per records filed with the Federal Election Commission. He even supported the Ukrainian government with crypto. (Of note, Bankman-Fried’s deputy at FTX, Ryan Salame, donated mightily to the G.O.P.). Might the generosity be based on the fact the crypto industry is regulated by the donees, to the extent it is regulated at all? It all reeks of a hybrid Ponzi pay-to-play money-laundering scheme, but time will tell. Perhaps it’s just a big misunderstanding—not.  It’s a developing story.

Trouble at the Northern Border

Sites of protests on the Canadian/U.S. Border. source: ZeroHedge.

THE FREEDOM CONVOY IN CANADA has inspired others throughout the world to protest prevailing fascism, including in places like Paris and Canberra that are acquainted with freedoms previously taken for granted in the West. It’s all making governments nervous, though. Thank heavens they have friends in the private sector, to wit, Canada’s TD Bank, which, on Friday, seized the Freedom Convoy’s money and seemed to cede it to the government.

TD Bank brazenly told CTV News that it planned to apply “to surrender to an Ontario court the money that had not been refunded by GoFundMe,” the fundraising website that stole the Convoy’s donations last week, before eventually being pressured to return it to the donors. After the GoFundMe debacle, spearheaded by the Ottawa Police, the Convoy switched to Christian fundraising platform GiveSendGo, but despite it not being subject to Canadian jurisdiction, is responding to a court order freezing those donations, too. That amount exceeded $9 million.

The amount to be turned over by TD Bank includes about $1 million, plus another $400,000 the Convoy accepted in the form of direct donations. TD’s spokesperson muttered something about distributing the finds as donors intended once their entitlement to a refund is determined. It sounds as though the bank simply wants to be sure they distribute the money lawfully so they don’t get sued, which is a good move legally, but not optically: it appears as if the bank is colluding with government.

The Convoy said in an email to CTV News that they “will be taking expedited legal steps to have the restrictions on the donated funds lifted as soon as possible.” Meanwhile, they are turning to cryptocurrency fundraising with Satoshis. HonkHonkHodl has assisted them in raising over $1 million so far.

The Convoy has been protesting at the busiest land crossing between Canada and the U.S., the Ambassador Bridge in Ontario, despite demands from the Canadian government to disperse. Arrests were supposedly made for excessive horn-honking by some protesters, but video clips on social media showed the participants banging empty gas containers against one another, to protest the fact they were not allowed to receive fuel.

A state of emergency was issued by the Ontario Premier on Friday in response to the Convoy allegedly blocking roads, bridges or other infrastructure. Fines of $100,000 may issue along with jail terms of up to a year for offenders. The activities of the protesters are reported on rebelnews.com, and people are posting live videos on social media to memorialize them, making it a challenge for law enforcement to shut the protests down. On Steve Bannon’s War Room: Pandemic, a Canadian woman recorded a police woman knocking on her door to politely give her ‘information’ about peaceful protests, intimating strongly that her identity had been gleaned from social media, and showing how both protesters and police utilize technology.

Transportation between the two nations is limited and some car manufacturing has been temporarily curtailed as a result of being unable to obtain supplies. The situation is aggravated by supply chain problems originating with pandemic shutdowns.

More Communist Sympathy in the Illegitimate Biden Regime

THE POSITION OF COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY sounds as if it’s a purely ministerial job, but it isn’t, and a communist should not be nominated, let alone conformed for it. The position oversees 3,500 employees and, inter alia, exercises authority over bank account and lending rules. Confirmation is, however, what the illegitimate C.C.P. puppet-in-chief occupying the White House, Joe Biden, is attempting to do by nominating Soviet-born (Kazakhstan) Saule Omarova, who came to the U.S. in 1991 as an exchange student through Moscow State University. Today, Poor Dear claims to have been stateless when the communist regime collapsed as she was studying in the U.S.

Omarova has publicly proclaimed she wants to “end banking as we know it.” Poor Dear was grilled by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on Thursday in some sort of confirmation ruse but had views that raised eyebrows.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), for one, minced no words when he asked her if he should call her professor or comrade given her past membership in the Young Communists. She stated all kids were members, which is surely true, but her uncomforting follow-up on the matter was, “There is no record of me actually ever participating in any Marxist or communist discussions of any kind.” Except there apparently was as late as 2019 in a Marxist Facebook group, which she claims to not remember. In fairness, she did renounce her Soviet citizenship, although, again in fairness, renouncing a state that ceased to exist was redundant.

It turns out there’s more to know about Omarova. She was reportedly arrested on June 2, 1995 in Madison, WI for “retail theft,” a/k/a shoplifting at TJ Maxx, a misdemeanor crime. Her prosecution appears to have been deferred until some time in 1996, when the charge was dropped under their first offender program. A spokesperson noted the arrest was remote in time, arose from “a misunderstanding and a confusing situation,” and Poor Dear was “transparent” about it. They then countered that the reporting of the matter amounted to “tawdry behavior” despite it being a matter of public record.

So, okay, let’s let that go then, shall we? Here’s what’s truly disturbing about this Cornell Law School professor:

As recently as Oct. 2020, she authored a paper entitled, “The People’s Ledger,” which advocated a replacement of the nation’s private bank deposits and allowing the Federal Reserve System to control “systemically important prices” such as food, wages, and real estate. Now she backtracks it as “academic writing.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) helps her cause by blaming opposition to Omarova on “sexism, racism, [and]…Red Scare” akin to Sen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950s.

But McCarthyism aside, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) noted Omarova had proposed that policymaking in economics and ‘climate change’ be removed from Congress and given to a new federal bureaucracy she would call the “National Investment Authority.” It would, in effect, execute the so-called Green New Deal.

And, speaking of energy matters, Omarova had infamously stated “we” want fossil fuel companies to go bankrupt to tackle climate change. To Omarova, it’s “a tricky question” whether higher energy prices are good or bad for America. When probed further, she said she had “misspoke.” She really meant the opposite.

Much of what Omarova believes is foolish at best, dangerous at worst, but some in the G.O.P. were, IMO, needlessly hard on her position on cryptocurrency. They believe it can safeguard savings by negating inflation caused by irresponsible spending by lawmakers. Omarova, however, believes it lessens government control over money. Both are correct in their assertion; both are right in the outcome. This isn’t mutually exclusive.

Yet, Omarova is inconsistent in that she would appear to support a central bank digital currency (or CBDC, which sounds suspiciously like a cannabinoid-induced mental impairment of some type.) This could constitute an extremely concerning micromanagement of economic activity never before contemplated in this country.

Egad. Will the Biden parade of horribles ever end?