A 29-year-old CEO is Pushing Crypto During the Super Bowl by Giving Away Millions in Bitcoin (washingtonpost.com) 58
Americans tuning in to the Super Bowl on Sunday will be inundated with ads from cryptocurrency companies, including the trading platform FTX, which plans to give away millions of dollars in bitcoin. From a report: FTX has spent heavily on sports partnerships to try to make itself a brand name in crypto, including an ad with NFL star Tom Brady, a sponsorship with Major League Baseball and a $135 million deal to rename the Miami Heat's stadium the FTX Arena. Co-founder and chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried, who recently moved FTX's headquarters from Hong Kong to the Bahamas, says the ads are as much about courting U.S. regulators as getting customers to download its trading app.
"We want to make sure that we're painting, hopefully, a healthy image of ourselves and the industry," said Bankman-Fried, 29, who has a net worth of more than $24 billion, according to Forbes. "We're optimistic that we're going to be able to grow our U.S. business -- a lot of that is working with U.S. regulators on bringing new products to market." The crypto industry includes virtual currencies such as bitcoin and Ether, as well as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, that can provide proof of ownership for assets such as digital images or weapons within video games. Both cryptocurrencies and NFTs are built using an information-storing technology called blockchain.
"We want to make sure that we're painting, hopefully, a healthy image of ourselves and the industry," said Bankman-Fried, 29, who has a net worth of more than $24 billion, according to Forbes. "We're optimistic that we're going to be able to grow our U.S. business -- a lot of that is working with U.S. regulators on bringing new products to market." The crypto industry includes virtual currencies such as bitcoin and Ether, as well as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, that can provide proof of ownership for assets such as digital images or weapons within video games. Both cryptocurrencies and NFTs are built using an information-storing technology called blockchain.
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I haven't watched any this year. But I'll watch the Superbowl to see how Joe Borrow does
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I must say, not mattering to the police is a pretty wonderful feeling.
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Driving the speed limit REALLY helps. It pisses everyone else off but you become invisible to the police. You also save on gas since you won't be constantly braking and speeding up again while trying to win the race home.
It's also less stressful driving the speed limit because you know you aren't going to get pulled over. If you are going 10+ you always have your head on the swivel looking for police so you can take your foot off the gas. So much easier to not have to waste that energy that you don't even r
selective vision must also be a wonderful feeling (Score:3)
I'm usually going 20-50% over the limit on the rural roads (60 in a 40, that kind of normal behavior). Yet I have never been beaten or shot by the police. Funny
You also save on gas since you won't be constantly braking
not braking explains the speed I am going...
Try it some time.
I start every single day where for a brief moment where I am going under the speed limit. I believe physics has described this miracle as acceleration.
Is this post a troll? Maybe. Did I intentionally miss the point? definitely.
But the question I have for you. Do you intentionally miss the point, or is this
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Driving the speed limit REALLY helps.
If you actually do the math on it, speeding doesn't save much time on the average commute or trip to the grocery store. While I'm sure people pulling in the kind of money this crypto CEO makes couldn't care less about the pain to their bank account, most of us average folks have expenses that are higher priority than paying completely avoidable extra taxes (which is essentially what speeding tickets are).
Re: I stopped watching NFL games (Score:3)
Speed limit (Score:3)
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The last two weeks of playoff matches were all good games. The Cincinnati/Kansas City game was one of the best games I've watched all year, probably the last two years. If the Superbowl is even half as good as that, I'll be happy enough with it.
The commercials use to be fun and entertaining. They came up with some great ideas that went on to become a theme for that brand. Now you just have big companies wanting to show they same shitty items or some super PAC is pushing some fucking ad no one wants to watch
Re:I stopped watching NFL games (Score:4, Informative)
What's the Venn diagram for the people who say "disrespected national anthem" and the people who say "disrespected Capitol Building"?
Republican politicians prefer "legitimate political discourse" for the latter [nytimes.com] case...
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> the disrespected national anthem
Are you referring to the 'black national anthem' vs the 'brown, yellow, white national anthem'?
https://news.yahoo.com/nfl-pla... [yahoo.com]
So what with the "giving away" part? (Score:4, Informative)
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From the linked article:
The FTX ad promises to give bitcoin to four winners, equivalent to the time that the ad is shown during the second half of the game. If the ad appears at 9:45 p.m., for example, each winner will get 9.45 bitcoin.
Doh! I'm in Pacific Standard Time, so I only get 6.45 bitcoin :(
let's have some long reviews and long poweroutage (Score:3)
let's have some long reviews and long power outage.
So they can lose there ass on bitcoin.
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From the linked article:
The FTX ad promises to give bitcoin to four winners, equivalent to the time that the ad is shown during the second half of the game. If the ad appears at 9:45 p.m., for example, each winner will get 9.45 bitcoin.
Doh! I'm in Pacific Standard Time, so I only get 6.45 bitcoin :(
Either way, I'd insist on using 24 hour time ...
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The FTX ad promises to give bitcoin to four winners
That's pretty much an apt analogy for cryptocurrency. Four winners and a whole nation of loooosers! (imagine it in Jim Carrey's voice for maximum effect)
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This isn't a new thing either. Shitcoins have been advertised in Times Square before.
It's a classic pump-and-dump. This crypto must be legit, they clearly have the cash to pay for Super Bowl ads, right? In a few months it will be worth nothing, and this guy will have cashed out.
Ah the sweet smell of a slashvertisment (Score:3, Insightful)
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The amount of money involved makes it interesting.
And crypto. It's interesting to see mainstreaming (it's a Super Bowl ad, not the Slashdot target market), regardless of your take on such. (My take - crypto's value, as with any fiat currency, is based on trust/transferability - people agreeing to trade goods and services for a "currency", nothing more complicated, a government isn't needed).
Crypto Ads (Score:5, Insightful)
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Honestly, the people I've met in real life who are hawking bitcoin trading/investment platforms all seem to fit that profile to a disturbing extent.
As kind of a Tesla enthusiast, I'd joined a few social media forums for them. That's when I learned some of these people hang out there, under the assumption that Tesla owners are a wealthier demographic who would be tech savvy enough to be talked into crypto investing.
I talked to one lady for weeks, wondering why she was being so friendly, until she finally wen
Re:Crypto Ads (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually if the CEO of a new trading company has a `net worth` of $24 billion, customers and potential customers should be very worried. How did he get that much money if he's just running a company. I think the summary meant "unrealized worth that's just on paper until the digital assets are sold"? But evne then it's worrying. The CEO of most banks don't have that much net worth.
Now he could have had crypto holdings before he became a CEO, in which case his net worth is utterly irrelevant to how well the company is doing. But if most of that net worth came from being CEO, then clearly a lot of potential profits for customers and investors have been siphoned off. This may be the next Shkreli?
As an obligatory automobile analogy, if you go to take your car in for service and you see that the owner of the place is driving a brand new Bugatti, then one's first thought would be that you're going to get gouged and end up paying too much and should take your business elsewhere.
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It's like there's this one rich guy at the top of the heap, and there's all these layers of investors at the lower levels, each one a little less wealthy and a little more numerous in a broad pile shape. And everything is find and dandy until someone with a Cyrillic keyboard comes along takes half and the whole thing collapses.
Re:Crypto Ads (Score:5, Insightful)
A member of the ruling class if you like. He has what he has because of his birth.
Re: Crypto Ads (Score:2)
re: poor getting rich (Score:2)
It's just common sense that if you start out with a lot of inherited wealth, you're going to have a FAR easier time keeping it and expanding on it than if you start out poor. (All you gotta do is hand it to an investment broker, really, and try not to spend more than the percentage of money it's earning as investments.)
Still, Americans tend to believe in the "work hard enough and you can get rich" concept because it CAN happen here! In many governmental systems, your level of wealth is pre-determined. Gove
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Still, Americans tend to believe in the "work hard enough and you can get rich" concept because it CAN happen here!
The measurement you're looking for is Social Mobility, and America is pretty bad at it. Here you are at number 27. [wikipedia.org]
In many governmental systems, your level of wealth is pre-determined. Government decides what you'll do for a living and you're educated along those lines....
Like where? North Korea certainly but is that who you're comparing yourselves too?
You shouldn't believe the propaganda you're fed. You could have it so much better than you do.
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By those linked scores/stats, that puts America FAR ahead of nations like China or Russia, and even a bit ahead of Israel, Greece or Spain. Miles ahead of Saudi Arabia. So IMO, that's not too shabby....
That said, "social mobility" isn't really the measurement I was looking for, because that's an all encompassing measurement that tries to factor in things like availability of higher education and "technology access". My only point had to do with the possibility of attaining wealth/financial success, which
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Obviously you just want to troll the USA. But yes, comparing America to Russia isn't too far a stretch at all. When I used to live in the DC metro area, I made friends with a guy who was working in one of the foreign embassies there. He eventually moved to Russia to teach courses at one of their universities. The photos and stories he shared with me after his move constantly emphasized how both of our nations are far more alike than different, at least when you talk about the everyday lives of people. Onl
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I think there's a lot of propaganda in America (maybe less than there was 20 years ago?)
The propaganda in America is relentless, and all pervading, as your comment clearly demonstrates, for example:
Socialism keeps them from being more successful than they are...
It is really sad that you think "socialism" is what is keeping Russians poor.
But yes, if you had ever left your country, you would have discovered that people are people, no matter where you go, not that that has any bearing on the subject at hand.
Re: re: poor getting rich (Score:2)
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I think that's fairly telling of the companies that are trying to get involved in that space.
Gives you and idea of Slashdot editors as well, given how many crypto slashvertisment are being run on the site.
The great simoleon caper became reality?! (Score:2)
What a great time to be alive!
The grand master plan of crypto (Score:5, Insightful)
The plan for all cryptocurrencies isn't what you think it is. It's more sinister than the egalitarian image the crypto boys portray for it.
After the 2008 financial meltdown, cryptocurrencies were born out of it, declared to be the means by which people could be freed from banks/governments, and promised to avoid any such future meltdowns from happening ever again.
But the crypto boys watched closely the result of that meltdown, and formulated their plan: create a new form of currency, and for it a new financial system detached from traditional ones (those burdened by "governments and regulations") - they called it "DeFi" for "Decentralized Finance", but its dirty little secret is that it's really "Deregulated Finance".
Their plan is to make this new money be adopted by the masses, so they start it off with a low price, then gradually increase it, by virtue of them just pulling numbers out of thin air for its value, until it catches the attention of the masses - then it gets more and more "valuable" from the collective faith of its given value ("network effect"), until traditional institutions and the typical "1%" billionaires start to notice and, greedy as they are, want in on the action too.
So now those that got in at the ground floor have gained all this "value" out of thin air, and once they're ready, they'll pull out all pretty much at once - that it'll create a sell-off panic, and a new meltdown is born! And because of their "De[regulated]Fi" system, the bros have already shifted all the risks away from themselves onto others, so they'll make out like bandits, leaving everyone else to "hodl" the bag.
But the bros were really observant about that last meltdown - and noticed all the "bailouts" the big banks got - so as they were shifting the risks to others, they increased their investments into what would get the next bailouts - so in the end they'll make out like bandits twice: the first time from suckering everyone else into their pump-and-dump scam, and again once they benefit from the bailouts that'll get handed out.
And there you have it folks, the real master plan of crypto.
--
Those who fail to accept it will mod the truth down to -1. -Prof. Feynman
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If I had the mod points today, you'd get them all. This is exactly what big finance is all about. And in this case, it bolstered even more by an pre-regulated financial industry, fraught with absolutely every wild-west tactic that we've made illegal through regulation. We've seen stories all year about self-purchasing, and stuff that would get you jail-time if you were to do it with dollars.
But benefiting from artificial chaos is all about.
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Don't worry, he posts the same thing at least once on every bitcoin story. You'll probably get another chance or two today, and a few tomorrow.
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Ha! That's awesome. Well, he gets no respect from me, I can't respect someone unwilling to put their name to their words. But the words themselves, in this case at least, are in-line with my understanding of the financial world throughout history.
Truthfully, I'm tired of so oh-so-much crypto-in-the-news these days. It'll be fringe until it isn't, it'll be regulated once it's not, it'll be taxed once it's popular. By the time it becomes ubiquitous, it'll be identical to the financial structures that we
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It is disturbing when the anonymous copy-pastes-on-every-story troll on Slashdot sounds only a bit paranoid.
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Wouldn't it be simpler? (Score:1)
A 29-year-old CEO is Pushing Crypto..
Wouldn't it be simpler to just call him a Bitcoin Pusher? [urbandictionary.com]
Millions? (Score:2)
If bitcoin was really regarded as currency, rather than some sort of asset, wouldn't headlines like this say the amount of bitcoin being given away for promotional purpose?
If someone were giving out cash promotions in Euros, Yen, Pounds, Yuan or any other genuine currency, you'd expect to see the number started as the amount of that currency, maybe with a subtext about how it translates to US dollars.
pump and dump (Score:4, Insightful)
He's only a multibillionire if he can get enough liquidity into the game to cash out. Handing out a few "million" worth of crypto might bring in enough real currency that he can get a few tens of millions out of the game without crashing the market.
I have enjoyed "Folding Ideas" when he did videos about film editing, but this one is surprisingly engaging for a topic that seems pretty far off the film/literature path:
https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g [youtu.be]
Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs
Folding Ideas
4,706,004 views
What a mature market (Score:2)
Yes, i always like to see free money being given out by someone attempting to prove the maturity of a product / market. What's next, heroin?
Back in the 70s, banks used to give you a toaster if you opened an account. This just feels different.
Here are the full rules (Score:3)
Since the summary seems to link to a paywall and ain't nobody got time for that shit, here are the full rules for entry [help.ftx.us].
Basically the deal is sometime during the Super Bowl, FTX will put out a tweet and you have to retweet that to enter (just once, no multiple Twitter accounts). Then six winners will be chosen randomly to give some Bitcoin to. It's fairly clearly laid out what needs to happen at that link.
I think you may also have to have a free FTX account to drop the bitcoin into, but it doesn't seem like that's a condition of entering so you might be able to only do that if you win.
May the odds be ever in my favor if it comes down to the both of us!
Painting a healthy image of the industry (Score:2)
Solid plan there, bro. (Score:2)
What's not to trust? (Score:2)