Mark Cuban would ‘be afraid of going to jail’ if he had been Bankman-Fried

“I don’t know all the main points, but when I had been him, I’d be afraid of going to jail for a very long time,” the billionaire Dallas Mavericks proprietor instructed TMZ. “It certain sounds unhealthy. I’ve truly talked to the man and I assumed he was good, however boy, I had no thought he was going to, you already know, take different individuals’s cash and put it to his private use. Yeah, that certain…looks as if what occurred.”

U.S. crypto buyers sued Bankman-Fried earlier this month, claiming the mop-haired 30-year-old—together with celebrities he enlisted—engaged in misleading practices. The category motion lawsuit alleges crypto change FTX focused “unsophisticated buyers from throughout the nation” and that its yield-bearing accounts had been unregistered securities bought unlawfully within the U.S., the place it says buyers suffered $11 billion in damages.

U.S. authorities are investigating FTX after its spectacular implosion and chapter earlier this month shook confidence within the embattled crypto sector and fueled renewed requires tighter regulation.

Additionally named within the lawsuit are NFL legend Tom Brady, NBA star Steph Curry, and Seinfeld co-creator and Curb Your Enthusiasm star Larry David, who appeared in commercials for the crypto change (a Tremendous Bowl industrial in David’s case). FTX turned a sports-marketing heavyweight in its quest to construct up belief in its model, shopping for the naming rights to the NBA’s Miami Warmth stadium.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers cited the stadium deal whereas evaluating FTX’s collapse to the Enron scandal: “Not simply monetary error however—definitely from the reviews—whiffs of fraud. Stadium namings very early in an organization’s historical past. Huge explosion of wealth that no person fairly understands the place it comes from.”

Cuban nonetheless believes in crypto’s potential, nevertheless.

“Separate the sign from the noise,” he stated. “There’s been lots of people making quite a lot of errors, however it doesn’t change the underlying worth.”

Commenting earlier this month on the collapse of FTX and different exchanges, Cuban tweeted: 

“These blowups haven’t been crypto blowups, they’ve been banking blow-ups. Lending to the incorrect entity, misvaluations of collateral, smug arbs, adopted by depositor runs. See Lengthy Time period Capital, Financial savings & Mortgage and Sub-Prime blowups. All completely different variations of the identical story.”

He additionally shared ideas on Bankman-Fried at a convention hosted by Sports activities Enterprise Journal this month, saying:

“First, you’ve bought to know crypto. There’s hypothesis—that’s all of the noise. Then there’s issues which have occurred with [crypto platform] Voyager and with FTX now—that’s anyone working an organization that’s simply dumb as f*** grasping. So, what does Sam Bankman do? He simply—give me extra, give me extra, give me extra—so I’m gonna borrow cash, mortgage it to my affiliated firm, and hope and fake to myself that the FTT tokens which are in there on my steadiness sheet are gonna maintain their worth.”

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