THE CONTINUING FTX SAGA: NOW THEY’RE CLAIMING THEY WERE HACKED

The news of the out-of-control corruption of the uniparty in the Swamp is now reaching new depths.  Today, as I compose this blog and listen to the radio, it seems that between the time I reach for my glass of iced tea, and actually raise it to my lips to take a small swig, either a new batch of classified documents has been discovered in Bai Den Jo's corvette in his locked pagoda, or some new revelation about the extent of FTX's crypto-corruption  has been unearthed.  It's all a blur and becoming difficult to keep up with.

In this case, it's the latter, as this article shared by L.G.L.R. drops yet another intriguing tranche of revelations:

FTX says hackers took $415 million in cryptocurrency

Now in case you missed it, thus far FTX has been accused of laundering money, via its crypto-currency blockchain operations, to mostly Democratic but also a few Mitch-McConnell-approved Republican candidates, leaving various investors nothing. Somewhere in that mix, as I recall, the Ukraine was somehow involved, or was that Burisma, or Hunter's laptop?  It's all so confusing and hard to keep track of. But anyway, I do recall that when the crypto-"currency" phenomenon first began there was a great deal of horn-tooting about the security and nearly unhackable nature of the blockchain and its "distributed ledgers"  and so on.  At the time all I could think of was the magical armor "impervium", impenetrable to all projectiles. Impervium was and is, of course, a myth and a fiction, and so is "cyber-security", which strikes me as more of an oxymoron than a myth.  Catherine Fitts has said it best and most succinctly: "There is no such thing as a cyber system that is secure."

Well, according to this article, yet another blow has been struck against the security of crypto-currencies. Ponder the opening statements of this article:

 

The scandal-plagued cryptocurrency firm FTX has a new challenge: trying to recover nearly half a billion dollars worth of cryptocurrency that it says hackers stole from its accounts.

The total value of the assets at the time of the theft was $477 million. That valuation came from analytics firm Elliptic.

FTX suffered a cataclysmic collapse in November when investors simultaneously attempted to withdraw their stakes in the firm, leaving it unable to fully remunerate them. Reports quickly emerged of missing investor assets and suspicious funds transfers to Alameda. The company is attempting to locate its missing assets in order to pass it on to investors who have not yet been fully remunerated.

...

So, on top of the money laundering in the form of donations to the two branches of the uniparty, we have a supposedly secure technology and a criminal corporation that was hacked to the tune of $477,ooo,ooo.  Now, of course, that's mere pocket change in a world where the derivatives still sloshing around in the system are estimated to be about $14 to $17, 000,000,000,000,000.00, but that's still a hefty amount of money if you're on the list of FTX's investors.

Surely it can't get any worse.

Au contraire mes amis:

Acting FTX CEO John J. Ray III has decried the company's prior management, remarking on the extremely poor record keeping.

He has attributed the collapse of the firm to "plain old embezzlement" and described the company's situation and lack of a paper trail as a form of "paperless bankruptcy."

"The issue here I was speaking to is I've never seen an utter lack of record keeping, absolutely no internal controls whatsoever," he said. "It's really unprecedented in terms of the lack of documentation."

Now, wait just a minute. No record keeping??

"Plain old embezzlement?"

"Lack of a paper trail?"  Unprecedented "lack of documentation"?

Is anyone out there as mystified and troubled by these words as I am? I thought the whole point of blockchain technologies, distributed ledgers, and crypto-currencies was precisely the difficulty of forging documentation, not to mention getting rid of documentation, or worse, not having any at all!  What is going on here?  Is this a way of admitting that the standard features of crypto-currencies were totally lacking and absent in FTX's case? That the crypto-currency aspect was just a front for - as the Acting FTX CEO John Ray puts it - "plain old embezzlement?"  But even embezzlers have to keep some books, even if doctored.  If the standard features of crypto-currencies were not totally lacking in FTX's case, then why are there no records somewhere in cyber-space? To erase such things seems to betoken a heavy hitter in the cyber-security arena, someone with, perhaps, intelligence connections.

The bottom line here is that there appears to be a much deeper rabbit hole to this story than even met the eye on its first iteration. We're looking at something more than just money laundering via a crypto-"currency."  Now we're looking either at the complete absence of standard crypto-currency features, or at records that might once have existed, but now have disappeared into thin air. Something is massively wrong, still, in this story.

But one thing we may take away, and it bears repeating. Crypto-"currencies" are manifestly not currencies at all. If this type of thing can occur with them, then any trust reposed in a central bank version of them is massively misplaced, given the record of the financial system itself.

See you on the flip side...

 

 

Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

No Comments

  1. Bob on January 24, 2023 at 4:30 pm

    Ummm, with FTX having repeated and even made a big deal of blockchain being more secure than other approaches, doesn’t this defense open them to yet another fraud charge?



  2. FiatLux on January 23, 2023 at 11:26 pm

    Hacked, shmacked . . . “Hacking” has become the all-purpose explanation/coverup/excuse for nefarious moves made by the powers-that-be. The Russians tried to hack us, the energy pipeline was hacked, the food factory blew up because it was hacked, we can’t find the money we illegally funneled to our friends . . . because we were hacked. On and on it goes.

    If we look at who we know received some of the FTX laundry’s largesse and consider who was involved in running the company, can we escape the conclusion that this op was created/permitted by somebody at the highest levels of power, influence, and intel? If J. Edgar Hoover had set up a money-laundering front to pass money to domestic politicians, foreign entities, and whomever else, would he have left a paper trail? Of course not. Today’s J. Edgar Hoovers and Dulleses aren’t going to set up an operation and leave a trail, unless the purpose is to use that trail to incriminate someone.



    • ragiza on January 24, 2023 at 10:56 am

      >can we escape the conclusion that this op was created/permitted by somebody at the highest levels of power, influence, and intel? <

      I can't, anyway. This has obvious deep state intel signs all over it, especially with Sullivan and Cromwell taking part the clean up.

      What's different is that unlike most of their projects, this thing went off the rails early on and wasted time, effort, money and left them without an asset, because of the ridiculous FTX Alameda personnel. That's consistent with Hillary and the feminists having had a role in it. Maybe yes, maybe no.



  3. Robert Barricklow on January 23, 2023 at 9:05 pm

    Technology is moving more into inhuman territory and spiritual impoverishment.
    Checks against these trends, are bringing liberation. “They’re” attempting to rewrite a national story to weave a new consciousness.
    The government can’t trust the people[of course! Because the people can’t trust governments].
    Hence, the story of “blockchain”: You can absolutely trust blockchain!
    So pick your poison: Government or Machine[blockchain].
    Blockchain says governments are made up of fallible people; blockchain[machine] moderates trust.
    But what of blockchain’s developers? Those who write code, the law?
    Blockchain governance is not unbiased or neutral; it’s just shifting bureaucratic rules to more technical roles. .
    Paper and pencil was prone to falsification, but widely legible.
    Blockchain is “tamper proof”, but legible to only a select few; whose technology of record keeping has been increasingly more complex[by design].
    Blockchain is beholding ONLY to its maker[coder].



    • Robert Barricklow on January 23, 2023 at 9:35 pm

      “So please grip this fact w/your cerebral tentacle.
      The doll and its maker are never identical”
      To An Undiscerning Critic, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1912

      “”You know the conjuror gets no credit; when once he has explained his trick”.
      A Study In Scarlet [Sherlock Holmes]



  4. marcos toledo on January 23, 2023 at 7:59 pm

    There have to be records somewhere in order to know where the money is going to and from whom it’s been taken from. Now after the steal, the records can be destroyed to cover the trail of the theft.



  5. Kevin Ryan on January 23, 2023 at 4:40 pm

    The acting CEO decries the lack of recordkeeping/documentation? Was that a feature? A bug? Was that how the money launderers planned to hide their laundering? Are the money launderers and hackers the same people? “I don’t recall” is the liar’s refuge. Is “there’s no documentation” the corporation’s version of “I don’t recall”? Good records, paper trails, accurate files are typical and traditional safeguards. Sometimes court houses were burned to destroy records to facilitate nefarious land grabs/theft. Was this just a money laundering op with embezzlement on the side where an interested party smelled a cheat and decided to get even by hacking FTX? Did a third party burn FTX’s records? Before this story is over, we’re going to need a flow chart. And with these kinds of losses, has there been reporting on the forms of life insurance for the principal defendant?



    • FiatLux on January 23, 2023 at 11:03 pm

      > Was this just a money laundering op with embezzlement on the side where an interested party smelled a cheat and decided to get even by hacking FTX?

      I’d say it was a money-laundering operation, pure and simple. Missing documentation would thus be a feature, not a bug.



  6. escdc on January 23, 2023 at 11:58 am

    While I will admit I fell for crypto scams, of which there are many of various different types, the ledger idea is on the blockchain. Blockchain is the ledger tech that is supposed to foster open record-keeping. It’s a weird “add, but not update or delete” kind of data store on a network. BUT, FTX was a centralized trading platform. So traders go OFF the network to buy and sell and let FTX handle all that complicated record-keeping stuff. So it’s like all the cons of crypto without any of the benefits (save an easier interface to trade).

    Again, I am not a fan of crypto and am done with it forever, but centralized exchanges are not the same as being on the blockchain. Which makes crypto even more sketchy than the original idea.



  7. ragiza on January 23, 2023 at 9:57 am

    Ray:
    “The issue here I was speaking to is I’ve never seen an utter lack of record keeping, absolutely no internal controls whatsoever,” he said. “It’s really unprecedented in terms of the lack of documentation.”

    Unprecedented?
    >Earlier this year, a Michigan State University economist, working with graduate students and a former government official, found $21 trillion in unauthorized spending in the departments of Defense and Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015.<
    https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2017/msu-scholars-find-21-trillion-in-unauthorized-government-spending-defense-department-to-conduct

    By precedence, missing money and missing documentation is almost GAAP level.

    It's out there somewhere, just like Hillary stupidly thought wiping her server would eliminate her SENT emails, which were also stored on her servant's laptop, which the servant's husband (a Dem Congressman) was also using to expose himself online to underage girls, which got him under Federal charges, with the FBI investigating and finding the Hillary emails…..

    NSA likely has all the FTX transactions and I doubt they had to go to the bother of breaking encryptions – I'm sure Sam understands that he better be cooperative (that is, with the Deep State, not Ray).



  8. Billy Bob on January 23, 2023 at 8:24 am

    Isn’t a crypt “An underground vault or chamber, especially one beneath a church that is used as a burial place.”? Wouldn’t the goal of cryptocurrency be to hide the money and bury the evidence?



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