A bank which happens to be the centerpiece of the entire iFinex (tether/USDT + Bitfinex) thing (which may or may not be legit).
And SBF is not just a customer from that bank. He also bought another bank, in the US, which previously belonged to the owners of Deltec. And FTX's top lawyer happened to be a colleague of Bitfinex's top lawyer (they both worked for the same company which actively defrauded online poker players).
So there are ties that do go beyond: "customer of a bank".
It looks like it's a little circle of people who know very well each other.
To give an idea of the amounts involved: Tether emitted USDTs worth, so far, four times the entire GDP of the Bahamas.
Bahamas is so small (400 K people) that when the authorities stormed FTX's office and forced SBF to handle them the keys for various shitcoins, they froze an amount representing back then 5% of the Bahamas' GDP (now more like 1.5% because these shitcoins melted, but still).
The amounts in play are tiny and insignificant for a country like the US: QEs are in the trillions, bank bailouts in 2008 were done with $700 billions+, etc.
But for a tiny country like the Bahamas, we're talking about a lot of money.
I'm not saying that he's protected or that the authorities knew about his wrongdoings but you cannot rule that out (at which point many coincidences are not coincidences anymore?).
And SBF is not just a customer from that bank. He also bought another bank, in the US, which previously belonged to the owners of Deltec. And FTX's top lawyer happened to be a colleague of Bitfinex's top lawyer (they both worked for the same company which actively defrauded online poker players).
So there are ties that do go beyond: "customer of a bank".
It looks like it's a little circle of people who know very well each other.
To give an idea of the amounts involved: Tether emitted USDTs worth, so far, four times the entire GDP of the Bahamas.
Bahamas is so small (400 K people) that when the authorities stormed FTX's office and forced SBF to handle them the keys for various shitcoins, they froze an amount representing back then 5% of the Bahamas' GDP (now more like 1.5% because these shitcoins melted, but still).
The amounts in play are tiny and insignificant for a country like the US: QEs are in the trillions, bank bailouts in 2008 were done with $700 billions+, etc.
But for a tiny country like the Bahamas, we're talking about a lot of money.
I'm not saying that he's protected or that the authorities knew about his wrongdoings but you cannot rule that out (at which point many coincidences are not coincidences anymore?).