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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   32697 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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We will see how well this theory holds up when he is sentenced and how much time he gets. His connections evidently didn't prevent him from being arrested and sent to the US.

I think he was expecting the Bahamian government to protect him, after he authorised payments to them, rather than arrest him and throw him into such a horrible jail that he'd be better off extradited to the US. There was yet another sub-entity, FTX-DM (FTX Digital Markets), licensed in the Bahamas. Ryan Salame was CEO of this and seems to have blown the whistle (after getting gone) as per the Securities Commission of the Bahamas request for police investigation:

FTX Digital is a company duly incorporated under the laws of The Bahamas and is registered as a digital asset business under the Digital Assets and Registered Exchanges Act, 2020 (“the DARE Act”). The Commission is the regulator of FTX Digital.

…Regrettably, the Commission was informed today by Mr. Ryan Salame (“Mr. Salame”) who is the Chairman of FTX Digital that clients’ assets which may have been held with FTX Digital were transferred to Alameda Research (“Alameda”). Alameda and FTX Digital are related companies, specifically, Mr. Samuel Bankman-Fried is a founder of both FTX Digital and Alameda.

…Based on the Commission’s knowledge, Mr. Bankman-Fried, Mr. Nishad Singh and Mr. Zixiao (Gary) Wang are presently on the Island of New Providence and all normally reside at Albany. Mr. Salame is not in the jurisdiction and is reportedly in Washington, DC at present.

The others involved seem to have been smarter and scattered as soon as things turned sour (Trabucco had resigned a couple of years previously, Salame as above scarpered to Washington before dropping the dime, and Singh and Nishad and Ellison headed back to the US or wherever), while he remained behind. It does seem he thought he could continue to live in Albany (the rich people's enclave on the island) while the government of the Bahamas and the US duelled it out over extraditing him, and by some magic intervention, he would get back control of FTX and make it all right again.

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