• SEC Chairman Gary Gensler in an official government photo from his service as Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. (Photo: CFTC)
    Regulation,  United States

    What Gensler role in Long Term Capital Debacle Tells us about his war on crypto

    25th anniversary occasions a look at SEC chair’s small part

    September 11, 2023 /

    This is the 25th anniversary of the September 1998 collapse of Long-Term Capital Management. That was one of the most stunning events in Wall Street history, as the firm allowed its leverage to grow to more than 100 to 1. But it was shocking beyond the sudden evaporation of $4 billion in value—that was a lot of money 25 years ago— but also because the firm had been put together specifically on the basis of its supposed genius for understanding and managing risk. The firm was dominated not by great traders but by intellectual supermen, including Robert Merton and Myron Scholes. Merton and Scholes had won the Nobel prize just…

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  • Innovators,  Politics

    Sam Bankman-Fried Political Donations Were Hardly ‘Bi-Partisan’

    Dems got 99.5% of disgraced dough, but GOP got plenty from other FTXers

    July 10, 2023 /

    One of the weird little elements to the Sam Bankman-Fried debacle —and there are so many, and we journalists are quite grateful for them — has been the determined way the media has tried to make his political donations appear bi-partisan. “The FTX scandal is prompting lawmakers from both parties,” wrote Politico, “to symbolically give up campaign contributions from the crypto exchange’s top executives, underscoring the firm’s political toxicity in the aftermath of its collapse.” “[Sam] Bankman-Fried, 30, and his younger brother Gabriel donated lavishly to members of both political parties,” the New York Post noted. In fact, SBF was the seventh largest donor of the entire 2022 cycle, according…

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  • Politics

    New York Times Reveals an SBF-DeSantis connection

    Previously unreported meeting puts Fla gov in a room with Sam Bankman-Fried

    June 24, 2023 /

    Buried in the 29th paragraph of a truly nauseating story about fallen crypto guru Sam Bankman Fried’s pay-for-play connections to celebrities and influencers, the New York Times drops a heretofore unreported political name into the mix. According to the Times, the investor Bryan Baum “helped Mr. Bankman-Fried and his younger brother, Gabe, schedule a meeting in Miami with Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, according to three people familiar with the matter and messages viewed by The Times.” The Times offered no further details about the meeting with Gov. DeSantis — when it occurred or its purpose. Modern Consensus will continue to report on this development and will update this story as…

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  • Commentary,  Opinion,  Regulation

    Crypto’s Illness: Regulatory Reluctance

    Pending court decisions challenge SEC’s failed ‘regulation by enforcement’ strategy

    February 14, 2023 /

    The U.S. crypto industry has been learning a rough lesson in regulatory compliance in the past few months. With fines, cease and desist orders, agency warnings, and traditional finance counterparties withdrawing from the industry, it is becoming increasingly apparent that crypto has a compounding problem. Press play to hear a narrated version of this story, presented by AudioHopper. The origin of this isn’t FTX, Voyager Digital, Terra Luna, or any other of the business failures or frauds of 2022. Those are symptoms of another disease. The sickness that’s causing crypto to fumble in front of U.S. regulators and counterparties goes all the way back to the founding principles of Bitcoin…

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