The Mark Moss Show Nov 30, 2022

little bit more simple so you can understand them. Some of the latest breaking news so you know what's going on, and of course some interesting guests, and I want to talk about some of the big news headlines that have been going over this week, because oh boy, if you're not paying attention like I am every day, you are not able to keep up because the world is changing really, really,

really fast. Now. Something I've been talking about at length is this FTX situation blowing up, which of course is important because it's literally changing the face of cryptocurrency as we know it, not just cryptocurrency. I think it's going to change the face of UH investing, it's going to change the face of regulations in a big way. But I also know that UM tens of billions of dollars, potentially hundreds of thousands of Americans were really impacted by this.

Maybe millions of Americans. I don't know the exact number of customers they have that will all come out through the bankruptcy court. But ft X, the firm went down, Uh I want to say taking customers funds with them, which it was, but I'd even say stealing customers funds. And unfortunately a lot of people lost a lot of money and some people lost everything and it's unfortunate. Um, and not just people but businesses and corporations and investment funds.

I mean, it took down everybody. And so they filed for for chapter eleven through for bankruptcy. And so there's some things going on that that I want to talk about this week that you need to be aware of, especially uh, well, if you're in the cryptocurrency space at all, you need to be aware of these. If you had money there, then you need to be aware of these as well. So if you're anywhere in the cryptocurrency space

or were, and this probably applies to you. But we we know that the like I said, they went chapter eleven. They've got an attorney now that's kind of running them through the bankruptcy court. And man, it is shocking what is coming out we see here says that f t X lawyer says that substantial amount of crypto of the crypto firms assets are stolen or missing and so um. You know, in bankruptcy they kind of change out the management. They bring in a different team, a steering team to

kind of to kind of run them through this. And we see here says that that quote f t X was in the control of inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals and some or all of them were compromised individuals. End quote says James Brawley, Bromley counsel to f t XS new management boy, talk about throwing them under the bus. It was in the control of inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals and they were compromised. What does that mean? Well, Sam Bankman Freed,

the founder, was supposedly the wonder kid. He was supposedly the smartest guy in the world. He was the one on stage with Bill Clinton. He was on the stage with a rubbing shoulders with the most advanced regulators from the SEC, from the cftc UH, from the Financial Services Committee, like Maxine Waters taking pictures Buddy, Buddy. He was being going into Washington, d C. On a very regular basis to set all new regulations and set all new policies

on the entire industry. He was the guy. But it says right here it was in the control, in control of inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals that were compromised. So how is it that the that the guy Sam Bankman freed SPF, the guy who the regulators were bringing up the Biden administration was listening to, that was responsible to put policies in place, was actually unsophisticated and he was compromised. How

was he compromised? Well, we do know that supposedly his entire goal, which everything was alive, So we don't really know what to believe. But supposedly he said he didn't care about money. Supposedly he just wanted to give all his money away to good and he did. He gave a lot of away. Um. He gave forty million, about thirty eight million dollars to the Democratic Party for the mid terms, and not just the Democratic Party but too heavy progressives in the Democratic Party. He was Biden's second

largest donor and last presidential election. Um he wanted to give a billion dollars to the Democrats for the next presidential election eighteen million for COVID pandemic um planning, and so it wasn't just a little bit of money, it was a lot of money. He was in bed with the world that comic Forum um and so maybe that's what they're talking about as comprised individuals, is what they say. But it says here quote what we have here is a worldwide international organization, but which was run as a

personal fiefdom of Sam Bankman Freed. Mr Bromley said, so, if you know anything about businesses like corporations, you know that once you start getting into corporations, you have things like corporate law, and then you have certain things that have to be done and you can't run them like a personal fifdom. They have something called com mingling of funds, and that means that your businesses are supposed to be separate from your personal and your businesses are supposed to

be separate from each other as well. We know that when the bankruptcy, when the when the bankrupty attorney went in there to kind of figure this out, which, by the way, he was in charge of the largest kind of scandal bankruptcy and history, the Enron scandal. And he's now working on this one. He said, this is the worst one he's ever seen in his career. And they you know, there are thirty thirty two billion dollar company, two different companies, Alameda and f t X, and they

ran them like all out of one account. Customer funds and deposits and investor funds and proceeds all just run out of one account, with no ledger to even break down who this belonged to, which is why it says here a worldwide international organization, but which was run as a personal fiefdom of Sam Bankman freed. That's illegal. It's

highly illegal. The Washington Journal has reported that f t X was a chaotic mess of corporate entities, customer assets, and Mr Bankman freed himself almost from the firm's inception, so he ran this just as his personal slush fund, including all his political donations. That's all illegal. F t X as quote one of the most abrupt and difficult collapses in the history of corporate America and the history of corporate entities around the world. End quote. This is

a big deal. But what's going to happen out of it is it's a big deal. These customers, they lost their money. Now it's in bankruptcy court? Will the Democratic Party give any of that money back? When you are a politician running and you're soliciting campaign contributions, you have a very very very high bar that those contributions are supposed to match. As a matter of fact, we know that Denis to Susa, who's a conservative filmmaker. Um, he he got in trouble for taking a small amount Susan,

Let's see how much did he see? I would here sentenced Manhatto Court to five I should have looked this up ahead of time, um. Denis to Susan sentence in Manhattan Federal Court to five years of probation for campaign finance fraud. Denista sus attempted to illegally contribute over ten thousand dollars to a Senate campaign, willfully undermining the integrity of the campaign finance process. Like many others before him, all political stripes. He has to answer for his crime

here with a felony conviction. So how dare he? In the two thousand twelve election, um it limited campaign contributions to five thousand dollars from any individual to one candidate, But in March of two thousand twelve, just Susan contributed ten thousand dollars to the Senate campaign of winning Wendy long On behalf of himself and his wife, agreeing in writing to attribute the contribution as five thousand from his

wife and five thousand from him. Um, so you can only contribute five thousand, but he gave ten five thousand from him five thousand his wife, which they thought would pass, but nope, they did and he got five years of campaign fraud. Now, what about the thirty eight million that was just given to Democrats? Where did that money come from? Is there going to be any scrutiny to that? I'd sure like to know. I want to talk now about what's going to happen with customer funds. Will customers get

any of their money back? And more important, they also we're talking about what did they actually do with that money To'll be back with all that and more in a minute. If you're just tuning in, you're listening to the Mark Moss Show breaking down the latest breaking news in the cryptocurrency space this week. I'll be back with all that and more in a minute, So don't go away. I'll be right back all right. If you're just tuning in,

you're listening to the Mark Moa show. We're talking about the latest breaking news around the Sam Bankman freed f t X debacle. We'll just call it that, and it's it's it's tragic. Uh, it's horrible, and I feel bad for anybody caught up in this mess. And if you're anywhere in the cryptocurrency space, you're probably caught up because there's contagiou and going all over. I want to talk about that other potential risks that there may be coming down the pipe that you need to be aware of.

Like I said, if you're anywhere in the cryptocurrency space, you don't know about this because it's set off just a series of dominoes. The first thing I'd say is that you know there's a headline from Walster Journal saying, well the FTX crypto customers ever see their money again?

And unfortunately I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think the answer is probably no. Fd X file for bankruptcy on November eleven, um the the attorney for the bankruptcy says, quote, only a fraction of FTX digital assets have been located and secured, but we know that they have managed to find somewhere about a billion

dollars of assets. The problem with that is that the creditors are owed over three billion, so there's not even a third of the money the creditors need, and so the creditors are going to be first in seniority to get their money back. You, as a depositor, have have no recourse. You're at the end of the line. And so what we know is that they've only been able to find about a third of what the creditors are owed. My guess is actually probably even way less than that.

Um A lot of the asset they have right now are cryptocurrency assets, which are just losing value, and my guess is the money they're able to find is going to be only a fraction of what's going to be owed to the debtors, to the creditors, and you, as a depositor, will most likely not get anything. Now, I don't want to crush your dreams and your hopes, but

I think that's going to be the case. And what we can really hope is that there's going to be some justice here, that Sam Bankmin Freed and his cohorts will be held up for justice of stealing these people's money. I am appalled why he's not already in handcuffs right now. When burn he made off was finally found out that he was running one of the biggest ponzis that we've seen in US history, he was handcuffed immediately. We just

saw Elizabeth Holmes from Thorano's. She just got sentenced to eleven point to five years in prison for defrauding sophisticated investors. Here's Sam Bankman Freed SPF stole from you, from retail, not from sophisticated to credit investors, from retail people. And what did he do with it? It says right here Bankman Freed's f TX senior staff and parents bought Bahamas property is worth three hundred million dollars. Now, Sam Bankman Freed supposedly, I don't need any money, I don't want

to be rich. I just drive it toward a Corolla. I'm giving all my money to charity. Meanwhile, he was living a lie. He was living in a I think a thirty million dollar mansion, and he gave his parents and three hundred million worth of property. Now his parents, so Sam Bankman Freed, it's a hyphen aid last name. One of his parents' is bankman, and one of his parents is freed. I think I believe it's the father's

bank when his mother's freed. They're both attorneys, they're both tax attorneys, and they're both heavily and they're both professors, and they're both heavily involved into the Democratic Party. They're bundlers, so they raise money for the Democratic Party. And his father writes policy for Elizabeth Warren. So when you're a tax law professor teaching and writing writing regulations for Elizabeth Warren, you know better, all right, you know better. You're not

just some unsophisticated person. You don't just take three hundred million dollars worth of property out of this, out of this. I'll call it what it is a conspiracy. It says here attorneys for ft exit on Tuesday that one of the company's units spent three hundred million in the Bahamas buying homes and vacation properties for its senior staff, and the FTX was run as a personal fifetom. We already

talked about that. So uh, luxury beach front homes including seven condom miniums and an expensive resort called Albany, costing almost seventy two million for that one million, so you know, Sam Bankman for you. Oh, I just want to get rich so I can save the world. And I just drive a Corolla and I don't care about money. Meanwhile, living in a seventy two million dollar resort called Albany. Mm hmm. So um. Not only is he a a liar, he's a scammer, he's a fraud ster. And yet he's

still not in handcuffs, still not in handcuffs. As a matter of fact, it's not that he's just not even still not in handcuffs, which is incredible on its own. On top of that, the New York Times still has him scheduled to speak and of commuting on November. Um, he's booked to speak with the same stage and meeting as Janet Yelling, the Treasury Secretary and President Zelinsky from Ukraine. And and this isn't just like they haven't got around

to update in the website. I've been following this and they just updated the website and they took down one somebody and they put up Ben Affleck, the actor. So they just updated to put him on there. They couldn't have updated to take Sam Bankman freedoff. He's still scheduled to speak. He's not in handcuffs. I mean, this is just insanity. This is just insanity. On the flip side,

we have I've talked about this before. There's a developer that wrote a piece of software for like a cryptocurrency project. He wrote a piece of software. He didn't use it. He created it that other people could use. Is called Tornado Cash. Alex per Per TASIV is to remain in jail until at least late February. So this guy, a Russian national living in the Netherlands, was accused of facilitating money laundering by developing an app. So he created an

app that other people used. Supposedly they use this um illegally. Allegedly, he didn't. He just created a piece of software that people used potentially illegally, we don't know. He was arrested immediately. He's being held indefinitely and he's not even scheduled to have even a hearing until February for creating a piece of software that potentially, allegedly people might use for things that might be potentially illegal. Maybe if they find out,

it doesn't matter. He got picked up, he's whole. He's being held indefinitely and maybe he'll get his hearing in UM in February and maybe they'll find something. Think about that for a minute, But SBF is prayed in around town and still said to go whole talks and appearances. The one thing that you can tell about the position of the state where your government is how they prosecute crimes.

How do they prosecute crimes against their own citizens? So how are they prosecuting crimes that SPF has committed against the citizens of the United States versus how do they prosecute crimes against their own power. So here's the Netherlands resident from Russia that create a piece of software, And look what the U S is doing, And look what they're doing to somebody like Sam BigMan Freed, who literally defrauded billions of dollars from U S. Citizens. And they're

doing nothing. They're still propping them up, They're still allowing to speak on the same stage with the US Treasury Secretary of Treasury Jenny Ellen. It's a sad day. It's a sad day when you can see the position of the state by how they prosecute crimes against their citizens versus crimes against themselves. Tax evasion, that's fifteen years, oh, ten billion dollars from citizens. No worries. We'll still invite

you to speak at the White House. Anyway. If you're just tuning in, you're listening to the Markma Show, we're talking about some of the latest breaking news that's going on in the cryptocurrency space this week. I got more to cover when I come back. Don't go away, I'll be right back, all right, Welcome back. If you're just tuning in, you're listening to the Mark Mos Show. We're running through the biggest headlines happening in the cryptocurrency space.

In the we look at the world through the lens of politics, finance, and technology as we're witnessing the technological revolution happening, the decentralized revolution happening. We're talking about f t X is blowing up, and then we're talking about how the regulations against f t X versus like someone who created a piece of software like Tornado Cash, are

so glaringly different. Another one that I want to talk about is I've been talking about a while, which one of the big pieces that really led to this whole domino effect, this cascade and effect in the cryptocurrency space with Celsius. Celsius was what's called a c FI. It's

centralized finance. So there's DeFi, which is supposed to stand for decentralized finance, and then there's c FI, which is more like centralized finance, so supposedly defied decentralized finances like an open source software protocol where you could stake your tokens and you could earn rewards back. Where a c FI is like a as a company, a centralized company that's supposed to do that for you. And so I give my tokens to this company, they invest them on

my behalf, and they give me a return back. Celsius was a big one. Of course, Block five is a big one. And I've you know, I've been outspoken against these these uh for quite a while. UM I did do some UH some ads for Block five back in the day. It's been over two years since I decided to walk away from all of that. I'm just not a fan of it. I'm not a fan of the risk and reward ratios of that, and so as an investor,

I'm always looking for what I call asymmetric returns. I want something that gives me more upside than downside, right, and so um, I think right now bitcoin is probably still one of the best asymmetric opportunities that we have in the world today. UM, I think there's an easy hundred x upside in front of us, or it could go to zero. I could lose it all, so that would be a one x downside. I could lose everything, or I have a one hundred x upside. I like

those odds. But when I'm giving my cryptocurrency or my bitcoin to a platform like block fire Celsius, I'm potentially risking it all. So I have a hundred percent risk of loss with only a four or six percent upside return. So a hundred percent on the downside with a six percent on the upside, that doesn't sound good to me. That's not the type of returns I'm looking for. I want to risk six percent and have a hundred percent upside. But they do it the other way. So I'm not

a fan of that. And unfortunately for people who use selsie us and who use Block five, they had to find that out the hard way. They did lose. I mean, if you had funds on that, it's gone at this point now. Uh, for Block five, it's not looking good because Block five had all their money on on ft X, And as I talked about before the commercial break, if you had money on the f t X, it's not looking good for you there. And so what happened with Block five, and this is even a bigger scam. Block

five might have been okay on their own. Potentially they had other offers to help build them out, which would have helped save customer deposits. But when f t X, when Sam Bankman Freed came in like the savior to save the whole industry. He said, hey, block Fire, don't worry, I got your back. I'll help you out. Here's what we're gonna do, though, here's gonna do. What we're gonna do is uh we f t X, me, Sam Bankman Freed and ft X. We will guarantee your customer deposits.

We're not gonna give you any money for the equity. For all the people that invested money in the company, they're all screwed. But we're gonna take care of your customers. Don't worry. But what we have to do in exchange in order for us to to guarantee all that is you need to now give us all your deposits. So all those customer funds that that that block Fire was holding, now you gotta give it to us. We'll hold it for you though, and we're going to guarantee all those deposits. Now.

The shady shady shadiness of this is that SpFN alameter already bankrupt at this point. They already knew this. You didn't know this, but they already knew this. So they fraudulently went out and pretended to be something that they weren't. They made promises and guarantees that they couldn't live up to, and they promised to take care of these uh customer deposits in exchange for giving him to us unless holding him, and they just stole those two. So those are gone.

And so unfortunately, if you had money on Block five, then it was auction on FTXC, and unfortunately it's probably gone. If you were with Celsius, there might still be a ray of hope, a little sliver of hope. And I don't want to give you false hope, but I've been documented this. I'm covering it because if you have money there, you have exposure there. I want you to know. But there was a couple of different ways people had money on Celsius. So one people had it just as storage,

so they're just holding my keys for me. Those people have a decent chance of getting a good majority of their money back. Then there was loan products, so I was getting a loan from Celsius and they held a bit of my cryptocurrency as collateral. And then there was yield where I gave you my cryptocurrency and you gave me a percentage back on that um. And so there's differences there. I think the yield and the loan customers might have a tough time, but there might still some

be some money there. Um. The big news this week is that the U s courts approved a deadline for Celsius customers to file proofs of claim. So, if you had money on Celsius, they've given you a debt, They've they've approved a a new deadline for you you to file a proof of claim. So customers of the bankrupt crypto lender have until January three to proofs of claim um.

And so if you had any money there, you need to go check this out, all right, Just go onto your favorite search engine and just google that US court approves deadline for Celsius customers to file proof of claims, but you have until January and so if you have money there you can file it and hopefully you can do it for free. You can claim by mail, by hand, you can do it through their website. You can go to Stratt oh S t R E T t O Stretto's website and you can do it there. And you

need to get that claim in there. Now they might already have your claim, but you need to make sure because you want to get inline for some money back. I'm not saying you're gonna get money back, but at least there might be a chance. Now this is continuing to get worse. So now ft X goes down, they take block fives customers funds with them. They've also taken a big chunk of money from Genesis. Now Genesis is

probably the biggest company you might never heard of. Genesis provides these yield products for a lot of these front and customers. So Gemini, which is another big cryptocurrency exchange run by the Winkelvoss twins from Facebook fame, they have an earned products. So you could park money with Gemini and they would pay you a yield on that. I believe they're paying eight percent on their earned product, but

it was actually Genesis that was doing that. And now Genesis is having trouble because they had a bunch of money parked on ft X that's now gone, and because of that, they're not able to pay back the earned products or the yield products. We can see that Genesis halted a redemption shortly after revealing on November ten that had a hundred and seventy five million dollars locked in an f t X trading account, and now Genesis is scrambling.

They've spent the last several days seeking at least a one billion dollar injection of fresh capital, but it doesn't look like that's going super good. Doesn't look like it's going super good at all. It says that they have no plans to file bankruptcy yet. Our goal is to resolve the current situation consentually without the need for any bankruptcy filings. But the bigger problem is that Genesis is a counterparty to many other players in the digital assets space,

so that's the problem. It's also gauged as as a kind of a sign of the overall industries um strength. If you had money on Gemini in that UM, you're in limbo. The seven hundred million dollars of customers money tied up in this, and there could be even more contagion coming from this. I want to talk about that more in a minute. The bigger risk and contagion we're

gonna talk about the Gray Scale Bitcoin Trust. I do want to say a real quick before I take a break that if you have money earning yield anywhere, I would take it out. If you haven't lost it yet by now, consider yourself lucky and get it out. It's not worth the risk, and most likely this contagion is going to take every urn yield type of product down, and so pull your money out of that UM because

it's not looking good. But what does this mean for Genesis and their partner companies Specifically, I'm talking about DCG Digital Currency Group and the Gray Scale Bitcoin Trust, which holds over six hundred and fifty thousands sift bitcoin, and if that goes down, that could shake the entire industry. So I want to talk about that, the potential, what that means, why there's such a discount um, the potential risks, who's betting on that um? And more. When I come

back in a minute. You're just tuning in. You're listening to the Mark Mo Show talking about the Decentralized Revolution, talking about some of the latest breaking news of the week. I got a lot more to cover when I come back. You don't want to miss it. We're back. Don't go away, all right, welcome back. If you're just tuning in, you're listening to the Mark Mo Show, we're talking about the decent relized Revolution, and we're running through some of the

latest breaking, biggest news headlines of the week. And we're talking about this crypto contagion that's going on and started back in May, and it's just gotten bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. Took f t X down and now it's taking down even some of the bigger players. And so we talked

about Genesis. Genesis had at least close to two hundred million dollars of exposure to f t X that's now thrown their whole plan into a tel spin and a lot of people are fearing what comes next because Genesis is a sister company to UH founding company DCG, Digital Currency Group, and Digital Currency Group is also um responsible

for the Gray Scale Bitcoin trust. Now the Gray Scale Bitcoin Trust has been away um I believe since twenty fifteen to buy bitcoin through like a four oh one K or mutual fund or like a regular stock account. So if you have this one of these types of retirement vehicles, you're not able to buy bitcoin directly, or you weren't at least at that time. And so UM this was formed as a trust and it was a way that you could buy bitcoin or get access to

bitcoin's price exposure through that. When you buy into the Gray Scale Bitcoin Trust or as it's called g BTC, you don't actually own the bitcoin. The trust owns the bitcoin. You have exposure to the price of bitcoin, sort of like um, when you buy a gold ETF, you buy the gold ETF, you don't actually own the gold. You just own the e t F which supposedly owns gold, and then you have exposure to the price of gold.

But the problem is that people are saying, well, shoot, if if Genesis goes down, it could take out Gray Scale Bitcoin Trust. And if it takes out Bitcoin Trust and they're one, if they're forced to liquidate, what does that do to the overall bitcoin and cryptocurrency market if they have to sell six hif bitcoin and to what happens to all the creditors, what happens to their creditors, And so I want to talk about that briefly. Um it said that, so Genesis already had to halt customer

with draws. Where did where talked about that? However, Genesis does not directly affect g b TC all right, they are separate. Even if Genesis is unable to raise liquidity for its lending book, even if it files for bankruptcy, the creditors that would go after the assets of Genesis would have zero claim, no attachment to the g b TC assets at all. Now, Gray Scale Investments, which manages the g b TC Trust, and Genesis, they're both owned

by the same company d CG. But just because they're owned by the same company doesn't mean they have cross liability to each other. Now, if you have assets like a business, like a car, like a house, like a rental property, you should also have a structure like this as well. So you're supposed to have these assets into different structures, different entities, so there's no cross collaterization. So, for example, I have like rental properties and they're in

separate entities. So if somebody works lip and fall and get hurt there, they don't sue me and take everything I own. My business is an entity over here, my rental properties, and another entity over here, and so you want to compartmentalize them. And that's exactly what they've done here. And it says that the g btcs trust structure protects its holders and remains ring fenced from failures within d

c G or the DCG group entities ring fence. That's exactly what it's supposed to be, exactly what I've explained. It sits over here and its own entity, and even if DCG goes down, even if Genesis goes down, it shouldn't have any effect on the trust. Okay, then what about the trust specifically, why is it having so much trouble? Well, Currently, GBTC trades at a massive about somewhere somewhere in the range of forty five to fifty discount to the price

of the underlying bitcoin, which is pretty interesting. It's traded out a premium before, meaning you would actually a more to own bitcoin in the trust than you would own it directly. Now it trades at a discount, and the premium or the discount that we have now is because of the market sentiment if people want to hold this

or not. Now, a couple of things have happened. One I said earlier that when it first started, when the when the bitcoin trust first started, you couldn't really own bitcoin through a lot of these types of retirement accounts for oh one case iras, etcetera. But now you can. So now there's a lot of other companies that have

come up since that allow you to own it. So for example, Unchanged Capital as a company that I work with, and you can own bitcoin through an IRA or a Wrath IRA through them, you don't need to buy the trust. So the demand for this this type of a product has come way down. The other thing is that you don't actually own bitcoin, right, you just have exposure to the price. Now the discount is for the risk that

you have for doing this. Of the risks, well, some of the risks are that the Gray Scale Bitcoin Trust charges you a fee to manage it. As a matter of fact, they say that Grace the Gray Scale Trust generates about three hundred million a year just in fees, and so a lot of people are saying, well, you know, if DCG goes down, or if Genesis goes down, they're gonna shut down Gray Scale. Why would they shut that business down? It's making three hundred million dollars a year.

If I had a business making three in a million year, I wouldn't be wanting to shut that down, as I'm sure they won't either. And so they generate that through fees. And so if you own bitcoin through there, they take about two percent of your money per year in fees, which is expensive. Why would I want to pay that um? And so if I own that share, I don't actually

own bitcoin. If I own bitcoin, I can go sell it on the market at the market price, which at the time of this recording is a sixteen thousand, one thirty dollars. But if I own the trust, I can't. I don't have hands out for the bitcom price. I have to find someone to buy the share of my trust. There's not a lot of people that want to buy that right now. So someone's like, well, I ain't gonna buy it for sixteen thousand, but I'll give you eight grand for it. How about eight? Will you take eight?

And someone's like, well, shoot, I need my money, so I guess I'll just take the eight. And that's what provides the discount, and you get the discount for the risk that's involved. So what are the risks? One? Like I said, if they shut it down, I think that's overblown because they're making three in a million a year. Why would the want to shut it down. I think what a lot of people may want to buy this and hope for is that it gets back up or closer to par, or back to even to what bitcoin is.

And so maybe you have like a big sovereign wealth fund, you know, like a Saudi Arabia or some some big fund that wants to just come in and buy the whole thing out. That could be possible. If you're a big, a big sovereign wealth fund. You can't just go buy six hundred thousand bitcoin like they're just not available. You just can't buy that many. So does this be a way for some a big player like that to come in and buy all this at one at once? And if they did that, it could push it all the

back up to par. And so if I was holding shares of this trust, not only would I get the appreciation in whatever bitcoin did, but I would also get the reverse back to what we call nav or net asset valuation. And we see people are doing this, I know people doing this. We see Cathy Wood's arc uh invest buys one point five million in Gray Scale Bitcoin Trust this week. The firm purchase the shares at a record discount to their net asset value. Like I said,

it's about a fifty discount. Cathy Woods Arc Investment Management bought a hundred and seventy six thousand shares or one point five million, in Gray Scales Bitcoin Trust on Monday, as the crypto markets slumped to a two year low um, trading at discount to their nav net asset value. So, you know, Cathy Wood is a very polarizing figure in Wall Street. She did really really really good with her fund when the markets did really really good. Since the

markets have sold off, her funds have done absolutely horrible. Now, how if you're playing the long game, she could turn out to be a genius. Right now, it hasn't done too well. And what will happen with this trade? You know time will tell, but it says has purchased Art purchased three hundred thousand shares, where two point eight million last week. So it purchased two point eight million last week,

another one point five million this week. The investment firm now holds six point four million g BT shares worth fifty three million, So she's not just buying a little bit. She continues to add and add and add and add fifty three million. So I would say that that probably helps out a lot, because, let's say, if this continues to go down, down, down, ARC potentially has the ability to raise the money to buy this whole thing out. They just go buy all the bitcoin and there had

a discount. If you had the money to buy it would probably be a pretty good option. And that's what a lot of the holders are betting for. That. I'm sure that's what she's betting for. And if anybody wanted to buy the bits woin bitcoin a gray scale trust, they may be betting on the same thing. If you're just tune in, you're listening to the Mark Moas Show, we're talking about the latest breaking news in the finance and the cryptocurrency space, talking about FTX and the fallout. Uh,

there's so much to cover. I got a whole lot, a whole lot more to cover. When I come back, I gotta take a short break. Um, don't go away, I'll be right back with more, all right, welcome back. If you're just tune in, you're listening to the Mark Moa show. We're talking about the decentralized Revolution every week, and we're talking about the latest breaking news in the space. Uh it is. It is big. It's reaching every corner,

it's reaching millions of people, it's reaching all the big companies. Um. You know, when things go good, you don't really think about all the downsides, all the risk. It's only when things go bad. As Warren Buffett would say, a rising tide rises all boats. But it's only when the tide goes out do you see who's swimming naked. And so that's exactly where we're at here. You know, when things are going good, everybody's friendly, everyone's having fun, everyone's laughing,

everyone feels rich. The wealth effect is in effect. But when everyone starts losing money, than people are mad, people are fighting, and more importantly, people want to point blame. Now. I did a whole part talking about regulations that I think could come and what that means. I am not pro regulation. I think that we should be able to put our money into whatever we want, and we should

take responsibility for ourselves. I've been saying a lot really through UM both really what came through the pandemic UM people being forced into taking vaccines UM also now through the financial markets, the cryptocurrency markets. I've been saying that I believe the age of personal responsibility is coming back now. Mainstream media wants to tell you just listen to the experts. During the pandemic, major news outlets even ran headlines to say,

don't do your own research. Don't And I think that is the most idiotic thing that anybody could ever say. It's up to you, period, It's up to you. Now you don't. That doesn't mean you have to be This doesn't mean you have to be the expert on everything, but you need to know enough at least to go find the right experts to listen to. Because at the end of the day, it's your responsibility. If you're forced to take a medication that gives you an adverse reaction,

that's your fault. You got to figure out who you gotta trust. If you lose money by putting money into some poor investment, that's on you. Now I get it, like sometimes you relied to sometimes you were scammed, and that's illegal and those people should pay UM. And we have laws against that kind of stuff. But ultimately I believe the age of personal responsibilities coming back. It should come back. We all need to be responsible. Unfortunately we're

not quite there yet. And so some of the big news headlines this week on top of this push for regulations. Please government, any state, we need you to save us. Right. I don't know what I'm doing. You needed to me what I can do with my money, so you protect me. On top of that, we see here headline Tom Brady,

Poor Tom Brady can't catch a break. His football team is not doing any good, he's getting divorced, and he just lost a ton of money in ft X. We don't know how much, but estimates are somewhere well in

the eight figure numbers. So horrible football season, divorce um and losing a ton of money in ft X. And if that's not bad enough, now he's getting sued Tom Brady and Steph Curry uh and ft X endorsements are probed by Texas regulators, so not just sued by people, but now Texas investigation investigators are trying to dig into this as well for what's for looking at whether endorsements

violated security laws. So it says here Tom Brady, the Golden State Warriors Steph Curry are among the celebrities that a Texas regulators investigating for potential securities law violation tied to the promotions of crypto exchange f t X. Mm hmmm, that's not good. We're taking a close look at them, Rotunda said Texas State Securities Board. It says, though the stars endorsements aren't the most immediate priority, there's still a focus in the regulators larger probe into the ft X collapse,

he said. Um It says that even before the collapse of the us UM Securities and Exchange Commission was cracking down on plugs without proper disclosures, so they have to

have proper disclosures. But the problem is is like are they have they done the proper disclosures and also are they saying the right things so we can see here for example, UM, if a celebrity says like something like in the endorsement, I've looked into this investment and it's terrific and you ought to put your money into it, but they haven't really looked into it, then that would

be a misrepresentation. So even there, they're getting paid to say something and most likely they're probably given the script to say, UM, and they were probably giving the script to say and they probably believe the company's legal team look through it. They still have to be responsible for what they're saying. They should probably have their own attorney or lawyer look at that. So if they say I've

looked into it, it's great, it's terrific. You should put your money to it, but they didn't, then that would be a misrepresentation. That's a problem. UM. It says here that they also, on top of, like I said, the regulators, they also are now defendants in a class action lawsuit. So now the regulators look into it, but we also have this class action lawsuit UM basically going after Tom

Brady and Steph Curry as well. There's thousands, if not millions of consumers nationwide that believed they were defrauded and pulled into this investment because of these UM stars Brady Curry, Gizl Buncheon and Shaquille o'nee ill two. I think this is ridiculous. I think if you put your money into something because somebody on TV said, like a star like a Tom Brady or Shaquille O'Neil said that they're in it, and you put your money into it, that's on you.

That's on you. But I've also had to learn that, you know, I have to live in the world that we're in, not as I think it should be, not as I wanted to be, but as it is, and as it is. This is, this is what's going on now. We can see here. If what's being market is deemed to be a security they're basically doing something that may very well violate state security laws. The attorney said, we can see here. Um, poor Kim Kardashian. Kim Kardashian had to pay a big fine. The sec UM enforced actions

against against Kim Kardashian. Um they made. They ruled that she had to pay one point to six million one point six million to settle allegations that she broke securities rule is by promoting a crypto token on her Instagram without disclosing to her followers that she was paid to pitch it. I mean, this is just it's completely ridiculous.

In my opinion, it's a complete waste of time by taxpayers money in the sec If you don't know by now that influencers on Instagram are promoting products they're paid to promote. Then I don't know what to say about you, like really, like that's the whole model. You build up a big following on social media and then you're an quote unquote influencer. Everybody knows that Kim Kardashian is like

the biggest influencer on Instagram. Everybody knows that they've known that for like whatever, I don't know, five or six years. At least, that's the model. The fact that she didn't tell someone how much she was paid, it is ridiculous. But she she had. She had to pay up one point two six millions. She had to pay to the SEC to set all that. Now, Sam Bankman freed, who just told ten billion dollars you know, never mind that

he's still walking around free. But oh, that Kim Kardashian, we better take her money because she didn't tell people on Instagram that she was paid to promote something, I mean, assist in sanity. I don't know. I don't know if they're going to use the same thing with Tom Brady and Steph Curry. I mean, did they not disclose how much they were paid? I mean, obviously they're in a commercial. Do you think people are doing these commercials on TV

without getting paid. Do we really need the FDC. I'm sorry the SEC to go after these people because they didn't tell us they were getting paid as a spokesperson. We know that they're on a commercial. That's what they do, that's how this works. And furthermore, am I supposed to defer my responsibility to them? Well? Tom Brady told me to put my money into this thing because he's some big investment grew. I mean, come on, this insanity needs

to stop. And meanwhile, like I said, you have a real criminal, Sam Bankmin Freed who literally posted on Twitter days before he froze. I'm not gonna say Frozen stole all your money. Posted on Twitter days before all the money is there. We have all the money for the customers. Will return every customer's money. He said that, the head of that company said that before he stole it all,

and he's still walking around a freeman. But oh, Kim Kardashian, she promoted something on on on Instagram and didn't tell us that she got paid for it, so we're gonna go after her. It's insanity. Like I said, you can tell the state of the government by how they prosecute crimes. They don't care if you steal from each other, just don't steal from them. You're listening to The Markma Show breaking down the latest news, and that's what I got for you today. Thanks for listening.