by Dirty Bubble Media at Dirty Bubble Media
“History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.”
As the FTX-Alameda criminal enterprise continues to unwind, onlookers have been treated to an ever-more-shocking series of revelations. It appears that FTX functioned as a slush fund for insiders who misappropriated billions of dollars in customer funds through unsecured loans. FTX apparently covered trading losses on the Alameda side and made venture investments using stolen customer money. To buy legitimacy, FTX spread hundreds of millions of dollars among politicians, prominent charities, Ivy League universities, and influencers.
Meanwhile, regulators and legislators have failed to explain their abject failure to identify or intervene in this massive fraud. Despite many warning signs and people sounding the alarm for years, FTX continued to grow and insinuate itself into both the nation’s financial and political spheres. SBF openly described his business model as a Ponzi scheme, yet found open doors when he came calling to Washington, DC. Legislators who received donations from FTX actively intervened to prevent the SEC from investigating FTX, and SBF was allowed to help craft cryptocurrency regulations that are still under consideration in Congress.
While the scope of the FTX saga may seem unprecedented, it turns out that this has happened before. Thirty years ago, the collapse of a major international bank exposed a rat’s nest of fraud, money laundering, terrorism, and corruption. The firm cloaked itself through its philanthropy, making donations to prominent figures and charities. The firm’s allies included a former U.S. Secretary of Defense and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, among other prominent figures across the world. The bank’s name was BCCI, and the similarities between this forgotten scandal and the FTX saga are stunning…
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