[ad_1]
Sam Bankman-Fried awaits trial for alleged ‘magnificent’ fraud on FTX, many cryptocurrency platforms collapsed, US regulators sell unregistered securities, two major You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s suing a nasty cryptocurrency company. You may try to stay under the parapet for a while. But sadly you would be wrong.
Laughter and moaning this week comes courtesy of a new venture dubbed ‘GTX’, whose co-founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies co-founded bankrupt cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. I am nothing but a person. The fund went bankrupt last year, dragging out many other crypto companies. It is being investigated in the United States for whether it violated rules by misleading investors about the health of its balance sheet.
But the new venture, which is looking to raise $25 million “as soon as possible by the end of February,” according to the pitchdeck, is much more than just an old crypto exchange. Zhu and Davies are affiliated with the co-founders of CoinFLEX. CoinFLEX filed for a debt restructuring last year to recover $84 million in losses. Their aim is to set up an exchange that allows customers to trade cryptocurrency bankruptcy filings.
That’s right, these men – to be fair, can pretty safely be considered bankruptcy experts – offer you Here’s your chance to trade in your claim to get your money back from the likes of FTX and Celsius (another crypto platform that collapsed last year and whose founders have been sued for fraud). All you need to do is hand over your case to these people. In return, they give you their shiny new cryptocurrency, apparently called “USDG”. Why do they call it Venture GTX you might ask?”Because the G comes after the F,” says one of his on that pitch deck.
After ridicule spread on the internet, CoinFLEX said it was just a “temporary” name. But whatever the new exchange is called, it’s clear what they’re trying to do here. It’s about making money off the very failures that they themselves are related to and that have brought so many people their financial ruin.
Zhu told The Wall Street Journal that some of Three Arrows’ creditors — who owed a staggering $3.5 billion in aggregate debt from the company — were “making their claims into new bond deals. We have the option to convert it into shares in the company,” he said.
We must admire the sheer bravery of these people. But surely they can’t get away with this?
The sad part is that in the Wild West of cryptocurrencies they might be able to. The market is showing signs of a resurgence and bitcoin has recovered some of its losses and has been trading for more than a quarter so far this year. at one point worth over $41 billion, founder of the collapsed Terra/Luna ‘algorithmic stablecoin’ project, now litigated in several countries Do Kwon was previously the co-founder of a fairly similarly named stablecoin. Basis Cash bankrupt in 2021.
Francis Coppola, a financial and economic commentator, said, “There are two sides to cryptocurrencies: Scheister and suckers.” “When a shy person walks away from a failed venture, he launches another…why not if he can do it all over again?”
In the non-crypto world, there are rules, norms and conventions aimed at preventing this kind of thing from happening. But Cryptoland is no ordinary place. It’s all freedom of hype, cheating, and charlatanism, largely unregulated, with value only maintained by the idea that there are always bigger fools than you. In a world where shamelessness is rewarded and thrives, why not act as shameless as you can?
“In some ways it seems really silly [they] We would try to monetize cryptocurrency bankruptcy, which also makes sense in terms of cryptocurrency’s general trajectory,” said Jacob Silverman, co-author of next book. easy money, teach. “It costs nothing . . . there are very few accountability mechanisms.”
Cryptocurrency means only one thing, no matter how fancy you may be told. From that perspective, what GTX is trying to do here is just as sensible and rational as in the rest of the crypto world. The only problem, of course, is that it’s also morally bankrupt.
jemima.kelly@ft.com
[ad_2]
Source link
