More FTX Shenanigans

The infamous FTX. So Ryan Salami, an executive at FTX, was tried this week for two counts. One, he actually admitted to committing them. He pled guilty. One was the federal campaign finance and another one was the money transmitting crimes. Now, if you don't know about FTX, the cryptocurrency trading company was endorsed by people like Tom Brady, where lots of famous people lost millions of dollars and totaling billions of dollars in loss. And Sam Bankman Freed was the person that basically created a large crypto Ponzi scheme, but it looked more or less like it was a big laundromat for people to put money in and out of. So interestingly enough, Salami gets brought up on charges, pleads guilty. He's got a return and forfeit $1.5 billion. But his federal campaign finances, because there was about $80 million over the course of the midterms in 2022, where he directly financed political campaigns. And then another thing is, is that the money transmitting crimes. So I kind of had to look this up, money transmitting crimes is. So according to the U.S. code 55330, failing to properly license a money transmitting business can result in $5,000 in fines and can bring up to five years imprisonment for each in violation of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. Now, interesting enough, it keeps on bringing up money. It doesn't say currency. It says money. So what is money? Money is a current, a current medium of exchange in the form of coins and bank notes. So interestingly, they keep saying that it's money transmitting crimes. Truth is, is what kind of, were they physical coins or were they digital coins? What was the regulation of these coins? And really, were there any bank notes involved at all? And so when you look at it, I think there's a little bit of something else that's underneath the wool here that we're not being brought to light, but the money transmitting crimes is basically taking people's money and then turning it over and returning it to them. So right now the coins, I guess you could say FTX handled crypto coins, but again, that's an unregulated currency. It's not the coin that's referred to in money. Those coins are the physical coins that you have and you live with day to day, you know, these coins, that's what they are. It's not the standard coins that you see digitally. So when you really start to think about all of this, it makes you wonder like, why did he fund so much political campaigns? He funded democratic campaigns. They funded, when I say he, I mean Salami and Freed. They funded democratic. They funded Republican. They put a lot of money backing political campaigns in the United States and the federal campaign finance law. It's a whole laundry list of things. You can go just Google it, look it up, and you can start to educate yourself on that. But the truth be told is that why were they donating so much to these political parties? What made that such an interesting thing? If you knew that you were, you know, doing something illegal, why would you turn around and make yourself so well known to donate to these massive campaigns? What kind of intelligence were you really trying to operate under? And so when you look at the Sam Bankman, Freed, and now Ryan Salami, is where does this all go? And how do they become better through this? And if they are going to be better? And if they were, you know, told to do this, or, you know, this or that, how does that really turn out for both of them? Freed's going to go on trial here in October. And Salami, I think it will, you know, get whatever he gets, but he did plead guilty. So we'll see how that goes.