GOP Leader: "Gary Gensler Might as Well Bring a Cot" to Congress

SEC chair riles Wall Street, Republicans — even some Democrats

The growing list of gripes about Gensler threatens to weigh on his political capital as he tries to finalize sweeping regulations opposed by industry, navigate upcoming House GOP investigations and secure his agency’s role in overseeing digital assets as Congress responds to crypto exchange FTX’s failure.

“Gary Gensler might as well bring a cot because he’s going to be spending a lot of time in front of the [House Financial Services Committee],” said Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the incoming No. 3 House Republican.

Silvergate, Provident, Signature Were Banks Holding the Bag in FTX Implosion

Crypto is no exception. While major banks stayed away from what Jamie Dimon called a “decentralized Ponzi scheme,” many small lenders saw a profitable niche in helping to service companies operating in the fledgling space. They include Silvergate Capital Corp., Provident Bancorp Inc., Metropolitan Commercial Bank, Signature Bank and Customers Bancorp Inc., among others. The recent collapse of FTX puts their business in the spotlight.

My bad: The YouTube financial influencer network paid to pump FTX

For the group of popular self-styled YouTube finance gurus Creators Agency represented, the sponsorship deals to promote FTX to their millions of followers were highly lucrative.

Kevin Paffrath, a 30-year-old YouTube star with 1.85 million followers to his real estate and financial tip page Meet Kevin, says he was paid $2,500 every time he mentioned FTX in one of his videos. And he believes he had one of the smaller deals with the crypto exchange; others have claimed six-figure deals with the firm.

“If I could go back in time, I would undo it all in a heartbeat. We failed here,” Paffrath said by phone from a cruise with his family. “Everybody was fooled.”

Paffrath and other prominent finance influencers have posted apology videos and scrubbed their YouTube channels of clips in which they sang the praises of the company and its 30-year-old boy wonder founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. Paffrath says his FTX deal only made up about 3% of his total income in the last year.

Miami’s Crypto Bet May Fail, But It Was Worth the Gamble

If you want a sense of how far crypto sentiment has fallen, look no further than Miami, which has aspired to be the capital of digital money. Gone are the laser eyes from Mayor Francis Suarez’s Twitter profile; the FTX sponsorship deal for the Miami Heat’s basketball stadium; and the pie-in-the-sky dream of helping fund local government with altcoin proceeds instead of taxes (MiamiCoin, the token at the center of that harebrained fantasy, has plummeted about 99% from its peak.) The change in crypto’s fate from a year ago is as stark in Miami as it is anywhere after Bitcoin lost three-quarters of its value and one of the most iconic crypto exchanges in the world fell headlong into bankruptcy.

But for Miami, it was a bet worth placing. Think of South Florida’s economic development model as resembling a venture capital portfolio. The VC model calls for making a lot of small bets with the understanding that many will fail, but a few winners will bring such exponential growth and extraordinary returns that that they will pay for the losers in spades….

Tom Brady, Steph Curry FTX Endorsements Probed by Texas RegulatorTampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady and the Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry are among the celebrities that a Texas regulator is investigating for potential securities-law violations tied to their promotions of crypto exchange FTX.

The regulator is scrutinizing payments received by the celebrities to endorse FTX US, along with what disclosures were made and how accessible they were to retail investors, Joe Rotunda, director of enforcement at the Texas State Securities Board, told Bloomberg News in an interview.

Five Things You Need to Know to Start Your Day

Here’s a difference between crypto right now and the mortgage disaster of 2008: Whereas people always need housing and are willing to pay money to live in a home, there’s no equivalent fundamental human need (or even want) that is currently satisfied by cryptocurrencies, and the financial structures that have been built around them.

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This isn’t to say all the coins are going to zero. It’s doubtful that the desire to speculate on crypto’s future will be expunged entirely, in part because the promise of decentralized finance (or a decentralized internet more broadly) is too tantalizing. But until there’s some kind of service delivered that’s the equivalent of how the mortgage market helped people get in homes, then the future will be more spirals such as this one.

Electric Scooter Company Hit With SPAC-Related Securities Suit

After a several months-long lull in which relatively few SPAC-related securities suits were filed, plaintiffs’ lawyers have now in the past several days filed several new cases. The latest example is the lawsuit filed late last week against the electric scooter company Bird Global, Inc., which merged with a publicly traded SPAC in November 2021. The lawsuit comes after the company’s announcement on November 14, 2022 that due to a reporting error the company would be restating its previously published financial statements for prior several prior reporting periods. A copy of the November 17, 2022 complaint can be found here.

Exclusive: Bankman-Fried’s FTX, parents bought Bahamas property worth $121 million

Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, his parents and senior executives of the failed cryptocurrency exchange bought at least 19 properties worth nearly $121 million in the Bahamas over the past two years, official property records show.

Most of FTX’s purchases were luxury beachfront homes, including seven condominiums in an expensive resort community called Albany, costing almost $72 million. The deeds show these properties, bought by a unit of FTX, were to be used as “residence for key personnel” of the company. Reuters could not determine who lived in the apartments.