Not sure what the value of their collective coffer is, but that might just be chump change for them. And hey, they could just ask the Fed to print more money to cover the refund (lol).
Yeah, I heard this news as well. Was it disclosed where the donation funds came from, i.e., was it from FTX's profits or did SBF use customer funds or something else?
I hate the concept of lobbying; if you ever want a great example of centralized power, look no further than the big, big lobbyists, which would include everything from big pharma to the NRA. If you've got enough money, you can easily get politicians in your pocket. That's probably what SBF thought he was doing, and had he not been scamming the whole time he might have "influenced" politicians' views on crypto for the better (albeit in a corrupt way).
Whatta mess, eh?
It is a massive mess. Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty in his recent court appearance in Manhattan but federal prosecutors have charged him with eight different criminal charges which could bring 115 years in prison if found guilty.
Current
FTX CEO John Ray has said he will try to identify and clawback every investment made using customer funds. To me that basically means it includes every one of the donations it made to over 110 entities and includes all the investments in made over the years. There is a lack of clarity of those donations and investments came from the company (FTX) or from customer holdings.
You cited perfect examples of lobbying. I am not sure what Sam Bankman-Fried wanted to do by donating to a political party but he did share a stage with ex-president Clinton and got his 15 minutes of fame from that event. I think he got carried away living in a bubble knowing what was going on outside but preferred to live inside imagining it was all going to be alright.
That would be an interesting case, clawbacks are common in bankruptcy but never heard of one going back 2+ years.
Days / weeks / months are common. Sometimes even going back a full year, but over that I doubt it would happen.
Too many people would not want to go down that rabbit hole. Funds have been spent, books have been closed and so on.
Even with the Madoff case, they did go back but it was after a lot more then a few million. The time and effort and tacking of funds is too great.
-Dave
This the part that will be interesting to unfold. The
90 days prior to filing bankruptcy protection does not technically cover anything beyond 91 days but for the sake of avoiding negative publicity charities and politicians will probably be rushing to return donations.
I might have this wrong but what seems to be happening here is the new FTX CEO is trying to allege all investments and donations that were made via any money that originated from the FTX exchange were from customer funds and not from the company profits therefore they should be returned even if they were 2+ years old.
This will be a time consuming process for the investigators and a very painful one for investors. When you look at how long has the Cryptopia situation been going without a final resolution, you can get an indication this will go on for a very long time too.
The most valuable asset that did not go bankrupt after receiving investment from FTX was Robinhood and that is being dragged in to the bankruptcy proceedings too. The $500+ million investment from Bankman-Fried and ownership of shares purchased is being contested by various parties including BlockFi.
