You would have to live under a rock to have not heard about the epic collapse of crypto investing platform FTX, but just in case you missed it, here’s what happened.
The crypto based investing platform filed for bankruptcy back in November after many of their customers began to request withdrawals following a concern with the company’s liquidity.
At the time, FTX, headed by con man Sam Bankman-Fried was the third largest crypto exchange and lost everything (including most of their customer’s money) in a matter of a few days.
One of the biggest storylines surrounding FTX was the various celebrity endorsements that the company acquired. All of those celebrities are now, of course, being sued for their involvement.
The lawsuit against many of the high profile names is seeking over $5 Billion dollars from figures like Tom Brady, Larry David (remember those Super Bowl commercials?), Stephen Curry, and Shaquille O’Neal.
A recent interview on “The Scoop” podcast with Adam Moskowitz, the lawyer that is handling the class-action lawsuit against the celebrity endorsers, revealed that of all the celebrity promoters that the now failed FTX had deals with, there was only one that said no to the $100 million dollar sponsorship deal.
Taylor Swift.
Moskowitz explains in the episode that he felt the celebrities blindly accepted the lucrative sponsorship and none of them bothered to look into the “lawfulness” of the deal. That is except for the 12 time Grammy-winning Taylor Swift.
Moskowitz said in the interview:
“The one person I found that did that (ask questions) was Taylor Swift.
In our discovery, Taylor Swift actually asked FTX: ‘Can you tell me that these are not unregistered securities?'”
The question was very fair one, because turns out, the securities offered by FTX were not registered with the Security and Exchange Commission (which is not good).
It was okay for the crypto exchange platform to offer the deals as securities because they were technically investment contracts, but what Swift noticed and was concerned about was the fact the contracts were not appropriately registered with the SEC.
Taylor Swift, known primarily for her songwriting and music stardom, might just also be an incredibly savvy, educated investor. If the reports from Moskowitz are true, she not only outsmarted the other celebrity endorsers, but more importantly outmaneuvered the fraudulent CEO of FTX Sam Bankman-Fried.
Side note: one of my favorite parts of the whole FTX fiasco was the fact that they paid for the naming rights for Miami Heat’s arena.
After they filed for bankruptcy, the NBA team inexplicably kept the name on the outside of the arena and on the court floor while everyone was asking “so, how is that logo still associated with the building?”
There are even rumors that, even though they are once again going through a name change for the arena, the FTX on the top of the stadium is still there because it’s too much of a hassle to get rid of (and was meant to be there for the next 19 years).
