Citizens United and the FTX meltdown
The Keating Five were amateurs.
The collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and its affiliated businesses has left a million creditors holding the bag for a chaotically managed, corrupt enterprise that created vast personal fortunes for the conspirators who ran it, even as it stole the life’s savings of retail investors who bought into its lies.
Could the unsuspecting public have been shielded from the FTX Ponzi scheme? Hindsight is 20/20, but there’s good reason to believe that FTX could have been brought down in a controlled glide, rather than a nose-first crash landing and ensuing fireball.
Earlier this year, the SEC sent a letter to FTX seeking answers about its business practices — a letter that sought to determine whether FTX was as scammy as it appeared. The SEC never got the answers it sought, thanks to the intervention of eight Members of Congress — the “Blockchain Eight,” four Dems and four Republicans — who wrote to Chairman Gary Gensler demanding that he back off:
Five of Blockchain Eight received substantial cash contributions from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) or his employees or affiliated…