Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall
by
Zeke Faux
Published 11 Sep 2023
“In this city we truly understand what it means to be the capital of capital,” he said. “It means to be the capital of Bitcoin.” Suarez declared he wanted to pay city employees in Bitcoin, to accept the cryptocurrency as payment for fines and taxes, and even for the city to invest in it. FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, was paying $135 million for the naming rights to the Miami Heat’s NBA arena, owned by the city, and Suarez said the money would pay for anti-gun-violence programs and summer jobs for teens. The mayor equated Bitcoin’s doubters with his city’s skeptics, who liked to needle him about climate change by pointing out that streets flooded even on sunny days.
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By then, there were $55 billion worth of Tether coins in circulation—an amount that would have made the cryptocurrency company one of the fifty largest banks in the United States. (Tiffany Hagler-Geard/Bloomberg) Engineers on a cherry picker inspect cryptocurrency mining rigs at the CryptoUniverse mining operation in Nadvoitsy, Russia, in 2021. That year, by some estimates, Bitcoin mining consumed as much energy as the entire country of Argentina, population 46 million. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg) Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the crypto exchange FTX, in the Bahamas in the spring of 2022, a few months after he relocated there. FTX had recently raised funding from venture capitalists at a valuation of $32 billion.
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GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT touched an all-time high: MacKenzie Sigalos, “Bitcoin Hits New All-Time High Above $68,000 as Cryptocurrencies Extend Rally,” CNBC, November 8, 2021. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT topped $3 trillion: Joanna Ossinger, “Crypto World Hits $3 Trillion Market Cap as Ether, Bitcoin Gain,” Bloomberg, November 8, 2021. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT 31.7 billion Tethers in 2021: “Tether Papers: This Is Exactly Who Acquired 70% of All USDT Ever Issued,” Protos, November 10, 2021. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT $25 billion valuation: Alexander Osipovich, “Crypto Exchange FTX Reaches $25 Billion Valuation,” Wall Street Journal, October 21, 2021.
Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud
by
Ben McKenzie
and
Jacob Silverman
Published 17 Jul 2023
Under this arrangement, buying Dogecoin on a crypto exchange like Binance was indeed an act of trustlessness, but only in the sense that it was hard to trust any offshore crypto entity. Most crypto investors were effectively putting their trust in the people running FTX, Binance, Bitfinex, or any one of the more than 500 exchanges in existence by 2022. While it was possible to hold the cryptocurrencies you owned off an exchange (referred to as self-custody), practically speaking this could be complicated and, therefore, was not done by the vast majority of crypto investors. “Not your keys, not your coins,” was the mantra thrown around by die-hard crypto fanatics, meaning you should keep your crypto in a “cold wallet” that didn’t touch an exchange—or even the internet.
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.”: Alex Mashinsky (@Mashinsky), Twitter, December 3, 2022, https://twitter.com/mashinsky/with_replies. 229 the Blockchain Eight: David Dayen, “Congressmembers Tried to Stop the SEC’s Inquiry Into FTX,” The American Prospect, November 23, 2022, https://prospect.org/power/congressmembers-tried-to-stop-secs-inquiry-into-ftx/. 229 the year before: Tom Emmer (@GOPMajorityWhip), Twitter, December 8, 2021, https://twitter.com/GOPMajorityWhip/status/1468698269391880192. 230 a former general counsel: Jarod Facundo, “Sen. Gillibrand Hires Former Crypto Lawyer,” The American Prospect, December 2, 2022, https://prospect.org/power/sen-gillibrand-hires-former-crypto-lawyer/. 234 Alameda had invested $11.5 million: Stephen Gandel, “Crypto Firm FTX’s Ownership of a U.S. Bank Raises Questions,” New York Times, November 23, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/23/business/ftx-cryptocurrency-bank.html. 234 SBF was arrested in the Bahamas: CFTC complaint against FTX, United States District Court (Southern District of New York), December 21, 2022, https://www.cftc.gov/media/8021/enfftxtradingcomplaint122122/download. 237 In January 2023: Giulia Heyward, “Cryptocurrency giant Coin-base strikes a $100 million deal with New York regulators,” NPR, January 4, 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/01/04/1146915338/coinbase-settlement-cryptocurrency-exchange-new-york-dfs.
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While our discussion covered some fairly esoteric ground, to me it felt like home; just some obsessive dudes nerding out over how the cryptocurrency markets appeared rife with fraud. As one does. The episode was nominally about celebrities shilling cryptocurrencies and the insanity of the Super Bowl ad campaigns. I pointed out something I had been mulling over internally for weeks: If you acknowledged that crypto-currency markets resembled a Ponzi, then everything about the massive marketing campaigns made sense. If the entire crypto market was predicated on getting more regular folks to gamble via exchanges like eToro, Crypto.com, FTX, and Coinbase, then the exchanges had to go all out for the biggest TV audience of the year to reach the most potential customers.
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
by
Michael Lewis
Published 2 Oct 2023
FTX allowed traders to borrow bitcoin and other easily sellable crypto against the value of their MobileCoin and BitMax holdings. The trader had inflated the value of MobileCoin and BitMax so that he might borrow actually valuable crypto against them from FTX. Once he had it he vanished, leaving FTX with a collapsing pile of tokens and a loss of $600 million worth of crypto. The size of those hacks was an exception, Sam said. All losses due to theft combined had come to just a bit more than $1 billion. In all cases, Gary had quietly fixed the problem and they’d all moved on and allowed the thieves to keep their loot.
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Before I read that line, I had only ever heard Ray refer to Serum (and Solana and FTT) as “Sam Coins” or “shitcoins.” His view of crypto was a bit like his view of people. There was “the good shit” and “the bad shit.” (Though no naive shit.) I’d never tried to argue with him, in part because I thought he was sort of right. Still, there were distinctions worth making that he hadn’t bothered to make. FTT received an actual cash flow—the robust revenues from FTX—and so was more like corporate equity. Solana, because it could process tens of thousands more transactions per second than Bitcoin, was perhaps better designed than Bitcoin to fulfill Satoshi’s original vision and become a means of exchange.
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It went roughly as follows: Global stocks traded $600 billion a day, crypto was now trading $200 billion each day, and the gap was closing. Inside of eighteen months, FTX had gone from nothing to the world’s fifth-biggest crypto exchange, and every day, it was seizing market share from its competitors. They were now the only crypto exchange making a priority of obtaining licenses and going legit. They were also the only crypto exchange that hadn’t in one way or another offended US financial regulators. Once licensed in the United States, a crypto exchange like FTX could also trade stocks or anything else people wanted to trade and challenge, for example, the New York Stock Exchange.
On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything
by
Nate Silver
Published 12 Aug 2024
GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Bloomberg Odd Lots: Matt Levine, “Transcript: Sam Bankman-Fried and Matt Levine on How to Make Money in Crypto,” taizihuang.github.io, April 25, 2022, taizihuang.github.io/OddLots/html/odd-lots-full-transcript-sam-bankman-fried-and-matt-levine-on-crypto.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Celsius had employed: Faux, Number Go Up, 176. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT own dubious token: David Gura, “FTX Made a Cryptocurrency That Brought in Millions. Then It Brought Down the Company,” NPR, November 15, 2022, sec. Business, npr.org/2022/11/15/1136641651/ftx-bankruptcy-sam-bankman-fried-ftt-crypto-cryptocurrency-binance. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT of nearly $2 billion: Erin Griffith and David Yaffe-Bellany, “Investors Who Put $2 Billion into FTX Face Scrutiny, Too,” The New York Times, November 11, 2022, sec.
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“So if I deposit my Bitcoin with you, what are you going to do with that Bitcoin?” “I lend it out to FTX. FTX needs liquidity,” he answered instantly. “You can give it [directly] to FTX. Are they gonna pay anything? No. You deposit through me, I’ll squeeze them to give me three, four, or five times more than they’ll pay you. Because I have a million and a half people that are all together, marching as one.” “That makes sense,” I said, not sure it made any sense at all. “It’s very simple,” Mashinsky replied. What’s clearer is that FTX/Alameda had an appetite for as much crypto as it could get its hands on—and it sometimes borrowed it at interest rates as low as 6 percent from Celsius, far less than they’d been paying from other sources.
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GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT one of FTX’s subsidiaries: “FTX Digital Markets Ltd. (In Liquidation),” PricewaterhouseCoopers, accessed December 31, 2023, pwc.com/bs/en/services/business-restructuring-ftx-digital-markets.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT resigned as CEO: MacKenzie Sigalos, “Sam Bankman-Fried Steps down as FTX CEO as His Crypto Exchange Files for Bankruptcy,” CNBC, November 11, 2022, cnbc.com/2022/11/11/sam-bankman-frieds-cryptocurrency-exchange-ftx-files-for-bankruptcy.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT nerdy, overconfident, Adderall-popping: William Skipworth, “SBF’s Lawyers Are Asking the Judge for More Adderall,” Forbes, October 16, 2023, forbes.com/sites/willskipworth/2023/10/16/sbfs-lawyers-are-asking-the-judge-for-more-adderall.
Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken in and What We Can Do About It
by
Daniel Simons
and
Christopher Chabris
Published 10 Jul 2023
But when these sorts of minor deceptions become business as usual—when millions of people are exposed to made-up quotations, distorted history, or fictitious scientific results—our collective trust in what should be nonfiction declines, and that adversely impacts our ability to reach rational conclusions.20 Even schemes that do take our money can be surprisingly banal at their core. FTX was a popular trading platform for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, and it was backed by top-tier venture capitalists and attracted users with celebrity endorsements and Super Bowl ads. Its customer agreement said, “Title to your Digital Assets shall at all times remain with you.” But when FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, it was discovered that it had been sending customer deposits to a sister company called Alameda Research, which used them to fund its own trading and investment activities—that is, FTX was simply making promises and doing the opposite.21 Examples like these show that knowing when we should pause to check and what we should check for are not obvious.
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A month later, he disappeared.1 Kumbhani was the founder of BitConnect, an organization that offered a way for people to participate in the market for cryptocurrencies, or “crypto”—digital assets whose values are not tied to any particular government’s policies or actions. Bitcoin, the original and most famous cryptocurrency, was invented in 2008 by one or more people using the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto.” Bitcoin has a finite supply, and its value is connected to that scarcity. In that way, it is less like a regular currency than like gold or oil; you can “mine” more Bitcoin, metaphorically, by spending computational resources (literally, computer processing time and the energy required to power it) to solve complicated mathematical problems.
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Indictment filed February 25, 2022, US District Court, Southern District of California [https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.casd.727918/gov.uscourts.casd.727918.1.0_1.pdf]; press release [https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/bitconnect-founder-indicted-global-24-billion-cryptocurrency-scheme]. Glenn Arcano pleaded guilty to participating in the conspiracy to defraud BitConnect investors [https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/56-million-seized-cryptocurrency-being-sold-first-step-compensate-victims-bitconnect-fraud]. 2. The original publication on Bitcoin is S. Nakamoto, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, October 31, 2008 [bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf]. See also F. Schär and A. Berentsen, Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Cryptoassets: A Comprehensive Introduction (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020). 3. S. Williams, “The 20 Largest Cryptocurrencies by Market Cap,” The Motley Fool, December 15, 2017 [https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/07/20/the-20-largest-cryptocurrencies-by-market-cap.aspx]. 4.
Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis
by
Scott Patterson
Published 5 Jun 2023
As bitcoin plunged, one crypto billionaire was marshaling his forces—and his billions—to salvage it. Sam Bankman-Fried, the thirty-year-old titan of a sprawling crypto empire, started snapping up struggling crypto exchanges from Canada to Japan. Seeking to boost popular interest in crypto, the mercurial CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX Trading appeared in magazine ads alongside supermodel Gisele Bündchen and shelled out millions for a pro-crypto commercial featuring Larry David during the 2022 Super Bowl. Bankman-Fried, who’d become known for his unruly shock of curly hair and aversion to business suits, was an adherent of an increasingly influential semi-apocalyptic worldview known as longtermism—a movement that shared elements of Taleb’s precautionary principle.
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CHAPTER 23: THE GREAT DILEMMA OF RISK Spitznagel’s argument captivated Peter Coy Peter Coy, “The Risk-Return Trade-Off Is Phony,” New York Times, November 15, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/15/opinion/risk-investing-market-hedge.html. CHAPTER 24: DOORSTEP TO DOOM Bitcoin rallied in 2021, hitting an all-time high Elaine Yu and Caitlin Ostroff, “Bitcoin’s Price Climbs Above $20,000 After Sharp Crypto Selloff,” Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-price-falls-below-20-000-11655542641. As bitcoin plunged, one crypto billionaire Alexander Osipovich, “The 30-Year-Old Spending $1 Billion to Save Crypto,” Wall Street Journal, August 23, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/crypto-bitcoin-ftx-bankman-fried-11661206532. Since saving the human race is the one and only priority Christine Emba, “Why ‘Longtermism’ Isn’t Ethically Sound,” Washington Post, September 5, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/05/longtermism-philanthropy-altruism-risks/.
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Given the chance that miners could at some point lose interest in bitcoin, in theory reducing its value to zero, he argued that its present value was zero. What likely made Taleb even more dismissive about the digital currency was that it had fallen even more than the market in the crisis of March 2020, showing it was demonstrably worthless as a tail hedge against Black Swans. After tumbling in the Covid-pandemic crash, bitcoin rallied in 2021, hitting an all-time high of $67,801 in November. But in 2022, as the Fed began to crank rates higher, it and other cryptocurrencies collapsed, wiping roughly $2 trillion from the broader crypto market. As bitcoin plunged, one crypto billionaire was marshaling his forces—and his billions—to salvage it.
The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider
by
Michiko Kakutani
Published 20 Feb 2024
Here’s How Future Polkadot Founder Gavin Wood Explained It in 2014,” Yahoo, Jan. 4, 2022, yahoo.com/video/3-future-polkadot-founder-gavin-155942673.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Bitcoin was released: Joshua Davis, “The Crypto-currency,” The New Yorker, Oct. 3, 2011, newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/10/the-crypto-currency. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT spectacular crash of the cryptocurrency exchange: Paul R. La Monica, “Crypto Crash and Gold Sell-Off Show There’s No Place for Investors to Hide,” CNN Business, Nov. 10, 2022, cnn.com/2022/11/10/investing/bitcoin-crypto-ftx-gold. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “associations of a thousand” kinds: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans.
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In 2014, Gavin Wood, a co-founder of the platform Ethereum, argued that “post-Snowden” it had become clear that it was dangerous to entrust our information to “large organizations and governments” that “routinely attempt to stretch and overstep their authority.” Bitcoin was released as an open-source program in early 2009 by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto (possibly a pseudonym for an individual or group), who said that in the wake of the 2008 crash, he wanted to create a secure currency that would be impervious to manipulation by bankers, politicians, and national monetary policies. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies gained popularity as bitterness over bank bailouts grew and investors welcomed the idea of skirting government and Wall Street control. Proponents argue that cryptocurrency will transform commerce and the financial services industry—depending on how it is regulated and how widely it is adopted by the mainstream marketplace.
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Proponents argue that cryptocurrency will transform commerce and the financial services industry—depending on how it is regulated and how widely it is adopted by the mainstream marketplace. Others worry that its rapid growth could be destabilizing, that it could facilitate money laundering and criminal exploitation, and that investing in a currency which possesses no intrinsic value is extremely hazardous—a warning underscored by the spectacular crash of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX in the fall of 2022. Blockchain, advocates contend, has the potential to disrupt industries from e-commerce to music sales to health care by creating virtually tamperproof records and allowing retailers to sell directly to customers without intermediaries. Whereas people now tend to place their trust in marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, blockchain will supposedly empower buyers to make trustworthy purchases directly from manufacturers and vendors.
Breaking Twitter: Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History
by
Ben Mezrich
Published 6 Nov 2023
After first making a name for himself at Jane Street Capital, then starting his own quantitative trading firm, called Alameda Research, at thirty, SBF had founded FTX, one of the fastest-growing crypto exchanges in the world. The stories about SBF were legendary, and unavoidable. How he’d first pitched FTX to a room full of Sequoia Capital VCs, waxing poetic about making his exchange “a place where you can do anything you want with your next dollar,” from buying crypto to art to goddamn produce, all the while his head hovered inches above his laptop, never once breaking from the screen to make eye contact. It was only after most of the room had committed to funding the idea that someone had walked close enough to see SBF’s computer screen.
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Elon could respect a little Zuckerbergian disassociation when it came to dealing with VCs, but other stories he’d heard about SBF and the work culture at FTC and Alameda had a darker tinge. Crypto exchanges, especially those with headquarters overseas, were notoriously sketchy. Though FTX had a US component and engaged in massive mainstream marketing—Super Bowl ads! Stadium naming rights! Celebrity endorsements as varied as Tom Brady and Larry David!—SBF had moved all of his upper management to the Bahamas, installing his coterie of crypto whiz kids in a lavish, $60 million campus. In all, SBF and his team had spent nearly three hundred million dollars in real estate on the island.
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In all, SBF and his team had spent nearly three hundred million dollars in real estate on the island. SBF himself shared a $40 million penthouse with nine roommates, including the titular heads of Alameda and FTX—and according to the rumors, there was a lot more going on in that tropical, crypto Valhalla than the late-night tweaking of trading algorithms. Stories of massive amounts of drug use and rampant polyamorous relations abounded; at one point or another, all ten roommates had paired or tripled up. Like Elon, SBF was a prominent believer in simulation theory, but it appeared the quest he was playing in the video game of life had veered NC-17. Simulation theory, meet stimulation theory.
The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning With the Myth of the Good Billionaire
by
Tim Schwab
Published 13 Nov 2023
Billionaire Chuck Feeney deserves credit for reportedly making good on his promise to give away almost all his fortune, much of it anonymously, yet he carefully organized his wealth creation around tax avoidance—and the sale of products damaging to human health, like the cigarettes and booze sold in his duty-free shops. Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency billionaire facing federal fraud charges (as of early 2023), asked the world to celebrate his rapid acquisition of wealth, promising that he would donate 99 percent of it to charity. In late 2022, Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire came crashing down, and a teachers’ pension plan in Ontario was among the big losers, seeing losses of nearly one hundred million dollars. Staff from Bankman-Fried’s charitable arm, the FTX Future Fund, resigned, issuing a statement saying, “To the extent that the leadership of FTX may have engaged in deception or dishonesty, we condemn that behavior in the strongest possible terms.”
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facing federal fraud charges: Sam Reynolds, “Team Behind Sam Bankman-Fried’s Charity FTX Future Fund Have Quit over Possible ‘Deception or Dishonesty,’” Fortune, November 11, 2022, https://fortune.com/2022/11/11/team-behind-sam-bankman-fried-charity-ftx-future-fund-have-quit-over-possible-deception-or-dishonesty/; Zeke Faux, “A 30-Year-Old Crypto Billionaire Wants to Give His Fortune Away,” Bloomberg, April 3, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-04-03/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-s-crypto-billionaire-who-wants-to-give-his-fortune-away. teachers’ pension plan in Ontario: David Yaffe-Bellany, Matthew Goldstein, Lauren Hirsch, and Erin Griffith, “FTX Crypto Exchange Boss Says He Is Trying to Raise More Money,” New York Times, November 10, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/technology/ftx-crypto-exchange.html.
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teachers’ pension plan in Ontario: David Yaffe-Bellany, Matthew Goldstein, Lauren Hirsch, and Erin Griffith, “FTX Crypto Exchange Boss Says He Is Trying to Raise More Money,” New York Times, November 10, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/technology/ftx-crypto-exchange.html. FTX Future Fund: Reynolds, “Team Behind Sam Bankman-Fried’s Charity FTX Future Fund Have Quit over Possible ‘Deception or Dishonesty”; Tracy Wang, “Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Empire ‘Was Run by a Gang of Kids in the Bahamas,’” Fortune, November 11, 2022, https://fortune.com/2022/11/11/sam-bankman-fried-crypto-empire-ftx-alameda-run-gang-kids-bahamas-who-all-dated-each-other/. Bernie Sanders’s proposal: Thomas Kaplan, “Bernie Sanders Proposes a Wealth Tax: ‘I Don’t Think That Billionaires Should Exist,’” New York Times, September 24, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/us/politics/bernie-sanders-wealth-tax.html.
Billionaires' Row: Tycoons, High Rollers, and the Epic Race to Build the World's Most Exclusive Skyscrapers
by
Katherine Clarke
Published 13 Jun 2023
And the boom in alternative money minted a new class of billionaires. They included known entities like the Winklevoss twins, best known as Mark Zuckerberg’s college nemeses, as well as newcomers like Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, who had founded the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, and Sam Bankman-Fried, the now disgraced creator of the competing exchange FTX. At 111 West 57th Street, there was a contest between two wealthy buyers for one of the building’s most expensive units, a 7,130-square-foot aerie on the 72nd floor asking $66 million. The developers had already accepted an offer on the unit when they got a second offer from Gavin Wood, one of the founders of Ethereum, the blockchain-based computer network.
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The auctioneer started the bidding at $55 million. The assembled spectators looked on enraptured as two major whales emerged, issuing competing bids on the phone via Sotheby’s representatives. The sculpture would ultimately go for $78.4 million to Justin Sun, creator of the cryptocurrency Tron. That Sun was the buyer spoke to the moment perfectly. Cryptocurrency was reaching new heights, Bitcoin billionaires were flashing big checks, and an NFT craze was sweeping the globe. If foreign buyers hadn’t yet returned to the real estate market in force, they were certainly making their mark on the art market. All the while, Macklowe sat among the bidders and onlookers looking dour in a paisley pashmina and velvet loafers.
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Billionaires like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos saw the value of their companies surge as consumers switched their behaviors amid the pandemic, boosting online services. Another pandemic-era development was the sudden popularity of cryptocurrency. As the once fringe world of digital currencies seemed to enter the mainstream overnight, becoming a more accepted vehicle for investment, cryptocurrency prices soared, creating a lot of new wealth. Some of that wealth flowed into a new investment class of NFT art pieces. The explosion of the market for NFTs, which were essentially unique ownership codes tied to digital assets like images and video clips, accelerated as celebrities like Paris Hilton, Melania Trump, and Justin Bieber got into the NFT game.
The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy
by
Nick Romeo
Published 15 Jan 2024
The state of Connecticut approved a program that automatically establishes such accounts for children of low-income families that qualify for Medicaid, but its funding has been delayed and its future is uncertain. ii The Enron collapse, the subprime mortgage crisis, and the 2022 meltdown of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX follow the same basic pattern, in which a sheen of financial wizardry disguises moral corruption and fraud. Conclusion Inflation and the Inevitable The strongest evidence that alternative arrangements are viable is to show that they already exist. Most of this book has examined the work of people and organizations that have already demonstrated the viability of different social and economic models.
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That these topics are not the subjects of chapters reflects constraints of space and time, availability of sources, or the fact that they are already covered well by other authors. Some omissions, however, do reflect a critical assessment. Cryptocurrencies are not discussed because they are hindering rather than hastening the creation of a just economy. A speculative asset without intrinsic value hawked with propagandistic gusto and created by electronic “mining” that generates severe pollution, cryptocurrencies should be more closely regulated or simply outlawed. None of the ideas discussed here represent a single comprehensive solution to economic and political problems.
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In November 2021, after President Biden nominated her for the obscure but influential position of head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a massive lobbying campaign backed by the banking industry—which is directly regulated by the OCC—targeted her. Her skepticism of unregulated cryptocurrencies and her interest in letting the Fed offer some retail banking services, which would make banking more accessible for the poor but reduce banks’ profits from penalties, showed a commitment to the public interest rather than large banks’ interests. By contrast, Trump’s appointee to the office, former banking executive Joseph Otting, referred to banks as his “customers” and appeared to take policy advice from the industry he was supposed to regulate.
Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech
by
Brian Merchant
Published 25 Sep 2023
There are debates about the merits of 2020s tech trends like the metaverse, Web3, and cryptocurrencies. But there’s also a newly insurgent contingent that is unafraid to vocally reject an entire concept or infrastructure outright—to argue not that these technologies should be built carefully, but that they should not be built at all. Or should be dismantled, with a hammer, if necessary. This debate involves workers building technology themselves, too. When Google and Microsoft sought lucrative military contracts, tech workers launched #techwontbuildit, in stark opposition to the projects that in some cases helped tank them. Crypto and NFTs were besieged by critics concerned that they use too much energy, aimed to commoditize the last corners of the digital commons, and were clearing houses for fraudsters and scammers.
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Amazon warehouse workers continue to organize around the long shadow of Jeff Bezos’s brutal and machinistic work policies. Opinion polling from Gallup has shown that Mark Zuckerberg is disliked more than the company he runs. A growing number of billionaire founders have become engulfed in scandal, accused of fraud and malfeasance: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried. Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes. The list goes on. There is an animosity toward specific Silicon Valley elites that has only intensified in tandem with the expansion of their power. When managers use technology to embark on the widespread destruction of status and the pathways to upward mobility.
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Crypto and NFTs were besieged by critics concerned that they use too much energy, aimed to commoditize the last corners of the digital commons, and were clearing houses for fraudsters and scammers. (Sure enough, crypto crashed in 2022, due largely to widespread fraud.) Andreas Malm’s widely read 2021 book How to Blow Up a Pipeline advances the argument that after decades of attempts have failed to peacefully and democratically address climate change, the best viable option is physically destroying fossil-fuel technologies and infrastructure. “Here is what this movement of millions should do, for a start,” Malm wrote. Step one: ban new fossil fuels.
Elon Musk
by
Walter Isaacson
Published 11 Sep 2023
“It’s a real-time news service, and there’s nothing really like it,” he told me. “If you agree it’s important for a democracy, then I thought it was worth making an investment in it.” One person who was eager to be in the deal was Sam Bankman-Fried, the soon-to-be-disgraced founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, who believed that Twitter could be rebuilt on the blockchain. He claimed to be a supporter of effective altruism, and the founder of that movement, William MacAskill, texted Musk to try to arrange a meeting. So did Michael Grimes, Musk’s primary banker at Morgan Stanley, who was working to put together the financing.
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A few weeks after Burning Man, they flew from south Texas to New York for the Met Gala, the costume extravaganza that Grimes relished. They stayed with Maye in her small apartment in Greenwich Village. Musk had just sent his plane to pick up a Shiba Inu dog he had just bought, named Floki, the breed that is the face of the Dogecoin cryptocurrency. He also brought his other dog, Marvin, who did not get along with Floki. Neither were housebroken. Maye’s apartment became a two-bedroom circus. The outfit Grimes assembled for the Gala was an homage to the sci-fi novel and movie Dune: a sheer gown, a gray-and-black cape, a silver face mask, and a sword.
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Grimes replied that Bankman-Fried “would do the engineering for social media blockchain integration” and put $5 billion in the deal. He was available to fly to Austin the next day, if Musk was willing to meet with him. Musk had discussed with Kimbal and others the possibility of using the blockchain as a backbone for Twitter. But despite the fun he had with Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies, he was not a blockchain acolyte, and he felt it would be too sluggish to support fast-paced Twitter postings. So he had no desire to meet with Bankman-Fried. When Michael Grimes persisted by texting that Bankman-Fried “could do $5bn if everything vision lock,” Musk responded with a “dislike” button.
Making It in America: The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S.A. (And How It Got That Way)
by
Rachel Slade
Published 9 Jan 2024
If Americans want to control their fate, if they truly want to innovate, if they want to forge an ethical future, if they really care about the environment and each other, then they need to start making things for themselves. Skip Notes *1 Consider all the hype around cryptocurrencies. Apparently smart people breathlessly tossed around inscrutable jargon, enticing investors who didn’t want to miss out on something big. With the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX in November 2022, the skeptics were vindicated: it was all just a massive Ponzi scheme, after all. *2 This isn’t a new concept. Two days after Robert Kennedy announced his presidential candidacy in 1968, he gave a speech at the University of Kansas which included this remarkable passage: “Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task.
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He knew something was amiss: “I’m pissed about the reporting on that.” Following an investigation, the NRLB determined that Amazon had “essentially hijacked” the election and ordered a second Bessemer election. In the struggle to organize Amazon workers, Ben saw the bigger story of American business. He knew that the American economy wouldn’t be rescued by cryptocurrencies, altruistic billionaires, or rockets aimed at Mars. Not at all. He didn’t even have much faith in policy. He believed that rebuilding the economy would require an army of ordinary heroes just like Whitney and him who believed that domestic industries could support each other, thereby becoming self-sustaining.
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W., 15 Bush, George W., 52, 62, 63, 91 Butler, Dave, 180, 221 Buy American Act of 1933, 129n Berry Amendment, 129n, 232n C Cambodia, 25, 38, 257 Cameron, David, 138 Campbellsville, Kentucky, 257–58 Amazon and, 268–69 Fruit of the Loom closure, 268 Carhartt, 27, 139 Carleton Woolen Mill, Winthrop, Maine, 45–48 Carnegie, Andrew, 180 Cartwright, Edmund, 8 Cascade Woolen Mill, Oakland, Maine, 40–41 Casco Bay Wool Works, Portland, Maine, 39–49, 100 closing of, 49 founding of, 40 income growth and employees, 44–45 loss of suppliers, 48–49 Maine Maid Outerwear, 39–40, 44 NAFTA and closing of, 45–46 CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), 156 Champion Mills, 135 bought out by Sara Lee (1989), 139 factory moved to China, 168 factory moved to North Carolina, 139 NAFTA and move to Mexico, 139 sweatshirt produced by, 135–36 Charney, Dov, 252, 264 Child Labor Amendment of 1924, 134 Chile, 72–73 China American apparel, percentage produced by, 231 American manufacturing sent to, 18 American mills that offshored to, 168–69 Biden administration and, 275 as biggest cotton buyer, 156 British East India Company and, 13–14 Champion Mills moved to, 168 as competitor for American-made goods, 143, 231 currency manipulation and, 212 development of Suzhou, 85–86 global manufacturing domination, 68 global cotton market and, 231–34, 235 hourly rate for labor in, 169 as market for western goods, 46–47 sanctions on, and retaliation, 233 subsidizing manufacturers, 68, 212 sweatshirt production, 29 textile and clothing production domination, 129, 257 as a threat to the U.S., 68 unfair trade practices, 68 U.S. tariffs and, 68 U.S. trade deficit to, 68 Uyghur oppression, 233–34 WHO and, 18, 68, 143 workforce in, 86 CHIPS-Plus Act of 2022, 296 Chouinard, Yvon, 110 CIA, 13, 15 in Chile, 72 in China, 246 in the Congo Republic, 246 Contras and, 15 in the DRC, 246 right-wing coups and, 15, 71 Operation Condor, 15 Cinderella Man (film), 100 Cleaves, Adam, 279 Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992, 195–96 Coastal Enterprises, Inc., 119 Colbert, Stephen, 140 Cold War, 71–72 Common Threads, Portland, Maine, 122–23, 123n, 128 Congo, Democratic Republic of (DRC), 123–24 Congo Republic, 245–47 Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), 64 Conway, Thomas, 217 Coolidge, Calvin, 204, 205 Corbyn, Jeremy, 73 Cornered: The New Monopoly of Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction (Lynn), 259, 261 Corson, Holland, 293 cotton China and, 156, 231–34, 235 cotton gin and, 8–9, 155 environmental issues, 154 futures market and, 156 ginning co-ops, 155 Indian cotton, 154–55 Monsanto’s seed monopoly, 154 Noxubee harvest, 154–55 Pilchman’s American Fabrics and, 168, 231–32 price increases, 231–32 quality monitored by the USDA, 156 U.S. exports, 155–56 U.S. as major grower, 132, 152–56 Covid-19 pandemic, 200–201, 211–13, 227, 234, 242–43, 276, 285 American Roots and, 200–201, 209, 210, 213–19, 223–26, 239, 242–43, 276, 285 brands cancelling orders and, 24 companies closed by, 193, 276 dependency on imports and, 211 drug shortage during, 299, 300n hoarding and, 213–14 market uncertainty and, 232, 276 masks and PPE shortage, 211, 214 national divisiveness and, 222 raw goods shortages, 231 Sintex Industries bankruptcy, 156 vaccines, 231 Waxmans’ Washington Post op-ed, 218, 220 Crawford, Lucy, 5–6, 7 Crown family, 78, 79 Obama and, 78 Whirlpool plant shutdown, 78–80 cryptocurrencies, 14n CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies), 297 D Daitch, Mike, 239–40 Dana, Woodbury, 174–75 Dana Warp Mill, Westbrook, Maine, 172, 174–75 Dartmouth College, 102 Davis, Isaac, 201–2 Dawes Act of 1887, 203 de Kooning, Willem, 59n Dell, Michelle, 88–89 Delphi Automotive, Dayton, Ohio, 77 Delta Air Lines, 153 Democratic Party AFL-CIO and, 52–53, 70, 74 free trade, offshoring, and, 70 neoliberalism and, 70, 195 Department of Defense (DOD) prison labor used by, 129–30n required to purchase American-made goods, 129n, 130, 232 spending on textiles and apparel (2021), 129n Depp, Johnny, 119 Devlin, Patti, 193–97, 211, 274 American Roots investment, 196, 227 on bringing back American manufacturing, 196–98 Dexter, Maine, 189–90 Dexter Shoe Co. in, 189, 190, 191–93 Dickens, Charles, 9 Du Pont family, Winterthur museum, Delaware, 34 E Eastman Kodak, 83–85 Japan’s Fujifilm imports and, 84, 85 Eban, Katherine, Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom, 299n Eddie Bauer, 110 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 63, 207 Enter the Wu-Tang (album), 137 environmental issues agricultural monoculture, 152–54 cotton and, 154 fabric dye disposal and, 22 GDP not inclusive of, 17 textile manufacturing and, 21–22 used clothing disposal, 22–23 WTO’s detrimental effects, 16 Esquire, 146 Trumka profile, 78–79 Evans, Walker, 59n Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America (Andersen), 11 F Factory Man (Macy), 68–69 Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 134 Fairness Doctrine, 191 Fall River, Massachusetts, 217, 243, 279 Merrow company in, 40, 244–45, 247 Fanatics, 289 Farley, William, 258–59, 260 Farmstead Magazine, 33 FDRA (Footwear Distributors & Retailers of America), xii Federal Prison Industries, 129–30n Feinbloom brothers, 135–36 Fetterman, John, 139, 139n Feuerstein, Aaron, 105–6, 109–11, 129, 130 Feuerstein, Raphael, 110 Feuerstein, Samuel, 105–6 Flowfold company, Maine, 213 Floyd, George, 220, 241 Ford, Henry, 203, 256 Frazier, Joe, 137n free trade/free market theory, 4–5, 11–15, 24, 33, 63, 71 American economy and, 19, 235 Chile and, 72–73 devastating effects of, 19, 20, 91 ethical or social agenda absent, 23 first American victims of, 18 IMF and, 71 NAFTA and, 15–16, 18–19 Reagan and, 185 USMCA and, 19 WTO and, 16, 22, 84 See also NAFTA Friedman, Milton and Rose, 11–12, 14, 72, 111 Friedman, Vanessa, 139 Frost, Robert, 106 Fruit of the Loom, 234, 252, 257–60, 268 bankruptcy of, 263, 264 Farley takeover, 258–59, 263–64 offshore production of, 262–63 stock buyback at, 263–64, 263n G General Dynamics, 79 George, Billy, 53, 59 Gildan Activewear SRL, 232 Gingrich, Newt, “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” 192 Glass-Steagall Act, 94 globalization, 18, 70 Buffett’s miscalculation about, 192 NAFTA, WTO, and, 192 U.N.
The Capitalist Manifesto
by
Johan Norberg
Published 14 Jun 2023
It is precisely because we cannot count on their goodwill that we need to control them with free competition and consumer choice, as well as an independent legal system and free media. Capitalism is our way to keep capitalists under our control. That does not stop us from regularly discovering scandals in the business world, such as Volkswagen’s manipulated emissions tests, Theranos’ fraudulent blood tests or the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX. At the same time, such scams are getting so much attention, and causing such a strong market reaction, because they are exceptions. There is a built-in protection against crooks in the market: businesses are voluntary collaborations based on trust; no one wants to collaborate with someone who does not inspire trust.
Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World
by
Nick Bostrom
Published 26 Mar 2024
Immediately after the lecture, in the foyer, there will be a book signing of Green Transcendence, and free samples will be available for you to try. And with this, it is my very great honor to invite to the stage the Dean of our School, who will introduce the speaker. Dean: Thank you for your very eloquent introduction. It gives me such great pleasure to welcome you all here to the FTX Theatre, and to introduce our speaker today, an esteemed colleague and one of the longest-serving members of our University. I will keep my remarks very brief, since I know you have all come here to hear the lecture. I still remember very vividly when I first set foot, on the first day of my freshman year, in this multicentennial institution of scholarship and higher learning.
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Another common failure mode is being based on false views about human nature, or making gross errors of economics or political science. Another typical flaw is a failure to recognize the moral patiency and needs of some oppressed group, such as animals. Comes in many flavors—feminist, Marxist, scientific/technological, ecological, religious. (And now, most recently, crypto?) 2. Post-scarcity utopia Featuring an abundance of material goods and services—food, electronics, transportation, housing, schools and hospitals, etc. Everybody can have plenty of everything (with the important exception of positional goods). Many governance & culture utopias are also, to varying degrees, post-scarcity.