It’s Miami crypto is last years scam, when it comes to scamming they’re cutting edge there. In fact I would argue that Miami, FL is to scamming what Houston, TX is to the oil and chemical industries. Pretty sure scamming old people is the second largest industry in Florida behind Disney/tourism.
Being right about what crypto is and watching it all unfold has been one of the least fun things ever. I can’t wait to never hear about crypto again. It has to take in more cash than it puts out or the transactions stop working. Just because something is decentralized and tradeable doesn’t mean it isn’t still functionally a ponzi scheme.
Levine’s newsletter today is almost entirely about the SEC lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase and is excellent as always. The most interesting part is probably his predictions for the paths forward:
Umm, isn’t this ignoring that a large part of the case against Binance appears to be that the head of Binance was just straight up embezzling billions of dollars? What am I missing?
I haven’t read details of the Binance stuff but Levine certainly thinks whatever malfeasance is alleged in that department is not as serious as you describe.
I mean, I know lol nytimes and all, but this is what they reported (article linked upthread):
That… sounds like classic embezzlement to me? Kind of almost exactly the same thing that SBF was doing, except I guess, maybe not to the same degree, and maybe it wasn’t so much for personal use? That could be the only saving grace I guess, but still, if it looks like embezzlement, smells like embezzlement, and tastes like embezzlement…
[1] In particular the yacht is just mentioned and dropped. There are weird claims that could be read as ominous: “Since the launch of the Binance.US Platform, Merit Peak’s U.S. bank account received, as a ‘pass through’ account, over $20 billion that included customer funds from both Binance Platforms. Merit Peak then transferred the vast majority of those funds to Trust Company A, in transfers that appear to relate to the purchase of BUSD. As Merit Peak was a purportedly independent entity, sending Binance customer funds to Merit Peak placed those funds at risk, including of loss or theft, and was done without notice to customers.” I think I read that to mean “Merit Peak operated as a market maker selling Binance customers BUSD stablecoins,” rather than “Binance siphoned $20 billion of customer money to its affiliated trading firm,” but the SEC just mentions this and moves on.
