BitBoy, SBF, and pizza: The collapse of FTX gets surreal

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Hi there,

I am not a fan of crypto influencer Ben Armstrong, aka BitBoy, but I have to admit that over the last week, his show has become one of the best out there.

Normally, Amstrong’s ego and toxic commentary keeps me away. But this weekend, he dropped his normal influencer persona and did some journalism.

He did things a journalist normally does, such as tracking down a newsworthy person – in this case Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the man at ground zero of the FTX collapse.

He went to the hotel where SBF was staying in the Bahamas and got kicked out. He talked to local government officials about why FTX has been allowed to operate in the Bahamas and tracked down real estate plots that have been allegedly bought with FTX client funds.

He then went to a casino, won some cash, and tried to send SBF a pizza in his hotel room. All completely normal things that journalists do.

Well, it used to be normal for journalists to do that – minus the casino and the pizza. Reporting on SBF from mainstream media has been notoriously light and fluffy, with many news organizations painting an image of SBF as the scion of prominent lawyers just trying to make the world a better place.

Caroline Ellison, his sometime-girlfriend and CEO of Alameda Research, is getting the same treatment. She’s been labeled “a mathematical genius who loves Harry Potter,” not the “CEO of a failed hedge fund.”

Watching Armstrong try to chase down and talk to SBF about what happened made for captivating viewing, especially as the contagion from the bankruptcies of FTX and Alameda Research continues to cascade through the markets. You’ll find a lot more news about that further down in this newsletter.

The number of creditors is expected to be in the millions, but if you want to know who the biggest whales caught in the bankruptcy were, you can read about it in this analysis by Gabriel Gareth Foo, a Research Associate at Spartan Labs.

In the end, this weekend’s chase was over much too quickly. While Armstrong actually got SBF and FTX’s bank, Deltec, to agree to talk to him, they both ultimately pulled the usual stalling tactics. Deltex “needed more time to review his questions” and SBF agreed to do a Twitter Space with him “sometime in the next two weeks.”

They’ll now try to ghost Armstrong, and he’ll have to hunt them down. Again. He’ll probably enjoy it.

If you’re tired of reading about all this crypto craziness, maybe it’s time to start looking at something with ties to the real world. How about a nice club? Our Big Story today is from Deepti Sri, who writes about where you can actually use your NFTs for something other than a profile pic.

– Scott

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THE BIG STORY

A new type of private members’ club has emerged within Asia’s Web3 community with more substance than just status symbols. Similar to traditional membership models, these NFT-based counterparts offer holders a variety of benefits. They aspire to be conduits for creativity through programs that center around the arts, current affairs, and networking – coupled with exclusive, private encounters.

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⭐ TO THE STARS

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🌙 TO THE MOON

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🌏 BACK TO EARTH

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STILL A PONZI SCHEME

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MORE TO CHEW ON:

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