Kevin O’Leary did a CNBC interview two days ago and in it, despite it being rather short, a lot of interesting stuff was revealed. Among them he eludes to the problems with FTX seem to stem from their relationship with Binance.
FTX and Binance
In the interview, Kevin O’Leary mentions he had talked recently with SBF, the former CEO of FTX and his best bud? Then he reveals that in these talks SBF mentioned all the regulatory hiccups FTX faced time and time again thanks to Binance being an early investor in them. This item culminated with SBF seemingly having had enough and was forced to buy out Binance. A buyout that cost around $2 billion dollars.
When asked if SBF used FTX funds to buy out Binance Kevin O’Leary seemingly deflects rather than saying he doesn't know. As pretty much anyone expected, CZ the Binance counter, and CEO did not take these slights particularly well.
CZ responds to Kevin O’Leary
Whether the allegations stem from SBF or Kevin O’Leary simply is speculation based on what SBF has told him is really of little consequence here. Especially to CZ, in a series of tweets did not as much dissect these arguments as much as took a machete and our right went all Jason Voorhees on them. Seemingly giving Kevin O’Leary more than his own share of whopping as well.
CZ more or less is calling out Kevin for being a greedy sellout. And seeing how he still seemingly is defending SBF in an interview after interview. I kind of have to agree with CZ here. But one thing I have to commend Kevin for is the fact that at least he appears to be loyal to the bone. That or SBF has some serious dirt on him.
CZ goes on and shows that the buyout in question happened back in 2021. And after that FTX has gone on to invest around $5.3 billion after buying out Binance. And that would put the rumors about the buyout causing great financial strain on FTX to rest. Unless it was the buyout that caused SBF to start using customers' funds to pay for stuff. Not that that would make it Binance fault.
But if one adds the $2 billion from the Binance buyout on top of the $5.3 billion invested. If we then add on the $300 million FTX spent on mostly private homes and vacation homes for senior staff. It gets pretty dam close to $8 billion with the total landing at $7.6 billion.
One of FTX's lawyers has also called for an investigation into the sale of Binance share in FTX. Is this because they think that it is the starting point of the missing funds as well?
Kevin O’Leary and his business practices
I thought it worth taking a look at what appears to be Kevin O’Leary’s business practice that got revealed in the interview as well. We often hear about the "do your own research" in the crypto space. So whom better to learn from than a very successful millionaire entrepreneur? In the interview, he briefly talks about changing his mind about crypto. And as far as I can tell, reading between the lines, his change came about with the growth of crypto as more and more people started to make serious money and it just would not go away.
He then saw what looked like a golden goose, SBF and FTX. So he thought he would hitch his ride to that gold-laying machine. When asked about doing his due diligence, the same things DYOR but because you got a lot of money it has to have a separate name. He confesses to simply trusting the other rich investors having done their due diligence.
He also goes on to say he more or less got lined by the fact that SBF was the only American alternative. So that apparently also worked in favor of SBF. Which I find especially funny as Kevin is from Canada. ^^
Wo who knew that multi-millionaires are just like you and me? No one reads the whitepaper and looks at the creators of a project because they want to buy $100 of $DOGE coins. You buy it and hope that Elon Stank will tweet about it so you can sell it.
If you want to watch the interview you will find it here. It is merely 5 min long, so it is not exactly a big commitment. =)
Please share your thoughts on all this. Do you think I might be on to something about the missing funds, or am I simply seeing correlation and not causation? Please sound off in the comment section down below. If you would like to support me and the content I make, please consider following me, reading my other posts, or why not do both instead.
See you on the interwebs!
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