FTX & Cannabis – Cannabis | weed | marijuana

What is the connection between FTX and cannabis? Is FTX’s appeal to cannabis companies to bank with them? Or is there a larger picture to look at?

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is the former head of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The authorities accuse him of having defrauded customers and investors. He was arrested last month and released on $250 million bail.

If convicted, SBF faces more than 100 years in prison.

While the 30-year-old former billionaire refuses to admit he’s cheated on anyone, this is less about SBF’s hubris and more about how the corporate press covers such stories.

You might think FTX is a failed cryptocurrency exchange that has scammed customers if you don’t read beyond the headline. Therefore, you should not trust cryptocurrency and put all your trust in fiat currency and the government regulated banking system.

It’s the same mindset you get when people label the effects of THC as “psychosis” or believe that legal edibles lead to more hospitalizations in children.

So what is this FTX scandal really about? What is the connection between FTX and cannabis?

Does FTX highlight the flaws in cryptocurrency?

FTX was THE hot commodity in the crypto world. Invited to the White House, supported by celebrities and major sports venues. Sam Bankman-Fried was on top of the world until his initials became synonymous with scam bankrupt fraud.

But SBF and FTX ran a practice called “mortgaging.” This is the case when banks, brokers or other financial institutions take their customers’ deposits and post them as collateral in other transactions. Do this repeatedly and you’ve increased your winnings.

Of course, the initial theft from your customers’ depots is somewhat problematic. Because of this, if you own crypto, you need a hard wallet for cold storage.

When you store your crypto on a centralized exchange, you are putting all your eggs in one basket that cannot be trusted. And the FTX was perhaps the least trustworthy of them all.

The media may portray FTX as a crypto failure, but in reality it is another financial institution failure. What brought FTX down was the same kind of recklessness that decimated the big banks in 2008.

When you deposit with a major bank, that money becomes the bank’s assets. Legally, it’s not your money. It belongs to the bank. You become an unsecured bank creditor and the bank can gamble away your money on bad loans and investment scams.

FTX’s business model was similar to that of your local bank. They took deposits, which became their assets, so their customers became unsecured creditors. You could do this without crypto, which is a daily occurrence in the traditional banking sector.

FTX is not a cryptocurrency failure, promoting transparency and decentralization. FTX’s fall was a bank run. Customers realized their scam and demanded their deposits back.

FTX Political Connections

The propaganda about FTX is like that of cannabis. If you rely on the corporate press, you will be misinformed.

While the corporate press presented the fall of FTX & SBF as a surprise (or ignored it entirely), those who were paying attention saw the writing on the wall. Heck, this YouTuber has done more investigative journalism in twenty minutes than CNN has done in twenty years.

Perhaps it’s because SBF has been one of the largest political donors in the United States, with 99% of its donations going to Democrats. (Politicians will no doubt accept billions in donations, but then pass laws requiring banks to report to the authorities when you withdraw a large amount of your money).

Think how deep this rabbit hole goes.

In 2022, SBF donated $40 million to Democratic Party candidates, second only to George Soros’ contribution.

Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum gave FTX a perfect ESG score. According to the corporate press, FTX was a global leader on environmental, social and governance issues. For those of us who don’t rely on Pravda, we know that a perfect ESG score means they’ve drawn the party line.

After SBF’s fall, the WEF rushed to remove all mention of FTX from its website. Luckily we still have the Wayback Machine.

SBF flew Tony Blair and Bill Clinton to the Bahamas for an FTX event. For a 30-year-old running a three-year-old crypto exchange, he certainly had many elite connections.

But that only scratches the surface.

SBF’s father is a leading tax scholar and worked with Senator Elizabeth Warren to draft a new tax bill. Interestingly, Warren is one of the loudest anti-crypto voices out there. This real Karen has never faced a problem that she feels more government intervention couldn’t solve.

SBF’s mother is a co-founder of Mind the Gap, a secret Silicon Valley PAC that supports the Democrats.

Caroline Ellison was CEO of Alameda Research, a Hong Kong-based trading company founded by SBF. Alameda acted as FTX’s sister company, which helped facilitate the scam. Caroline was rumored to have been in a romantic relationship with SBF.

Caroline Ellison’s father is Glenn Ellison, department head of economics at MIT, where SBF studied. It is a well-known fact that Gary Gensler (the chairman of the US Government Securities and Exchange Commission) was a professor at MIT who offered courses on crypto and blockchain technology.

During his MIT career, Gensler was closely associated with Glenn Ellison and his daughter Caroline.

FTX & Cannabis

FTX was essentially a Democratic Party money laundering scheme. That’s why the corporate press initially ignored it and then reacted cautiously. And now her narrative is so convoluted that few understand what happened beyond cheating customers.

(We also get blatant lies from the corporate press that SBF has been impartial in its political donations, even though 99% of its donations have gone to the Democrats).

But what about FTX and cannabis?

In early 2022, FTX began reaching out to US cannabis companies. Unable to obtain basic banking services, FTX saw an opportunity. The idea was to offer banking services that the traditional financial institutions in the US could not (or would not) offer.

Since FTX’s demise, every potential partnership has likely dissolved. However, this shows how badly US cannabis companies need banking services.

Overall, the lesson behind the fall of FTX and the cannabis industry is one from failing regulators. People assume that if we had the right people in charge with a sizeable budget, the regulators could have caught the FTX scam before it escalated into something more significant.

However, this ignores the connections between FTX players and the referees who are supposed to regulate them.

The Lesson with FTX & Cannabis

Never in history has the idiom about the fox guarding the chicken coop been more relevant. Whether it’s elite-affiliated MIT grads scamming people to benefit the Democrats, or self-serving politicians refusing to back down on cannabis.

Consider, while regulators tried to ignore the growing FTX scandal, the IRS reminded Americans to declare online transactions over $600.

The lesson from this is that state regulators represent their own interests with their own sense of justice.

They won’t help your cannabis business and certainly won’t stop future scammers like SBF from scamming the masses.

The best thing you can do is isolate yourself from this madness. Find a job where an employer can’t fire you for refusing an experimental vaccine. Or where you don’t have to attend “diversity” fight sessions.

Own physical gold and silver. Grow your own food. Secure your property and the energy it requires.

From the corporate states’ reaction to FTX, it is clear that they will not help you when push comes to shove. We are to the elite what cows are to farmers. And while we think this is a dairy farm, they lead us to a slaughterhouse.