As SBF needed to quickly divert public scrutiny from various crypto fallouts that likely would have implicated him, he hired Nuseir Yassin, a well-known Arab–Israeli vlogger, to help paint himself as a selfless and generous philanthropist whose main focus was to redistribute wealth to those who need it most.   Nusier’s base of followers fell for the bait as his video made SBF the posterchild of “effective altruism,” hiring homeless actors to take hundred dollar bills handed out by Sam himself, along with other stage props in an attempt to win over anyone in doubt about his motives.  

Without question, Sam wanted to manipulate and control every aspect of his financial empire.  He was well protected by wealthy individuals and government officials who gleefully profited from his FTX and Almeda outfits as he attained media darling status.  That was until, of course, his fortune was found to be built on a house of cards.

A Most Timely Acquisition

Many months before the fall of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried, Alameda Research helped position FTX so that it could acquire Voyager Digital in bankruptcy court.  Voyager Digital lent Alameda $380 million in cryptocurrencies.  Alameda, in turn, would buy shares of Voyager Digital with some of that money to make Voyager Digital’s stock look more attractive.   Steve Ehrlich, CEO of Voyager Digital, likely entrusted the advice of Sam Bankman-Fried to lend more than $600 million in cryptocurrencies to Three Arrows Capital.  But SBF had ulterior motives.  Using his own customer funds to trade against Three Arrows Capital, we suspect him to be the likely culprit behind the Terra Luna destabilization and collapse.  While SBF realized he would take a hit on his rapid sale of pegged Luna (UST), he likely earned a significant portion, if not all, of it back by assuming significant short positions in the LUNA token that would force the now defunct hedge fund to liquidate.

What makes this story even more dreadful, SBF had his eyes on acquiring Voyager Digital well before its bankruptcy.  Knowing that a significant portion of Voyager Digital’s book was held with Three Arrows Capital, SBF knew the outcome for Voyager Digital would ultimately put him in a position to acquire its customers and assets at a steep discount.  SBF was envious of Voyager Digital’s large and diverse client base, and saw its acquisition as the best way to position FTX in direct competition with Coinbase.

After Voyager Digital announced that it was having problems recalling loans from Three Arrows Capital, SBF pretended that he was interested in saving the company by loaning Voyager Digital money.  But that was just a front akin to his “effective altruism” since SBF’s Alameda Research already owed hundreds of millions of dollars to Voyager Digital.  What makes matters worse, to the chagrin of those who saw a major conflict of interest, SBF and FTX ultimately won the bidding war for Voyager Digital’s assets in bankruptcy court without an interjection from any government agency or regulation authority including the SEC.  Of course, months later, revelations were made that FTX was insolvent as well, making its bankruptcy acquisition meaningless.   But this points to a bigger problem.  Who was SBF working for, or who was working for SBF, if organizations like the SEC were willing to look the other way on obvious conflicts of interest?

The Death of Voyager Digital

Voyager Digital’s downfall is likely tied to Sam Bankman-Fried in more ways than one, but the company’s egregious management certainly bears major responsibility. No one pointed a gun at anyone’s head when decisions were made to loan customer assets to a hedge fund.  Moreover, the company repeatedly made false claims and statements about Voyager Digital customers’ funds being FDIC insured including on its website.  It turns out that only in the case of third-party failure (i.e., the actual bank) were customers’ funds insured. But they were not insured on the platform! It wasn’t until after being insolvent did the FDIC issue a Cease-and-Desist Letter, making it abundantly clear that this government agency failed to do its job despite this information being publicly available for a long time. In fact, it’s almost inconceivable that a company could create a false narrative of security to help it grow to more than 3.5 million platform users.

Voyager Digital also falsely claimed that it did not engage in risky behavior and that customer assets were safe. The CEO, Steve Ehrlich, made such claims in a press release and via his personal Twitter account. But only weeks after one of his latest Twitter posts, investors learned that the company lent approximately half of its customers’ book to a highly leveraged, risk-taking venture by the name of Three Arrows Capital.  Three Arrows was an offshore operation comprised of two individuals, Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, two Andover graduates who simply got in over their heads by being overly confident and overleveraged.

The worst part of all is that Voyager Digital claimed to be a crypto broker. A broker, by definition, holds and trades assets on behalf of the customer, with such assets always belonging to the customer. Voyager Digital went on a marketing blitz with its “Crypto For All” campaign, utilizing a false narrative that crypto does not discriminate on things like gender, race and religion (neither does money or other inanimate objects, for that matter). But in bankruptcy court, Voyager Digital claimed that all crypto assets did not belong to customers, which basically should have been construed as an admission by the company in that it merely sold air to customers. This would be an even greater crime because that means the company was directly baiting and switching customers since it started operations. No one with an ounce of sanity would ever give someone else money for nothing. Essentially, this was Voyager Digital’s argument.  What makes this even more interesting is that its “Crypto for All” campaign was really a “Crypto for No One but Voyager” campaign.

It was clear that Voyager Digital used deceitful tactics to get customers to join its platform. It made false statements so that investors nor customers would take appropriate action to protect their funds. Bankruptcy is unlikely to leave much, if anything, for shareholders. But it does save the creditors and perhaps, the company and its employees, as it makes every attempt to re-emerge with some of its operations intact. But the potential for bankruptcy to save unethical people who committed blatant crimes sends a terrible message to the public.  How could laws have been created to put minorities in jail for petty theft while much larger enterprises and management tied to apparent white-collar crime simply be overlooked by government authorities?

SEC and Politicians Purposely Enabled Crypto Fraud

What now appears to be the case of a narcissistic charlatan that was put on a pedestal for being a questionably introverted genius can be likened to moving an entry level college graduate to the helm of a multi-billion-dollar corporation before he or she had the experience necessary to understand all its moving parts.  While SBF was no idiot, his communication skills might have made him seem more of an innocent “Rain Man” who could rise to the occasion than a business executive that could steer an organization on a limitless growth trajectory based on his or her acquired knowledge and experience.

The SEC and US Government have a penchant for focusing on anything that threatens the status quo.  That’s why it’s exceptionally difficult to accept any view that paints the SEC and US policymakers as innocent parties seemingly looking the other way when it came to SBF.  Instead, they focused on outfits that were not politically aligned with outcomes that would further strengthen an agenda of centralization and government control.   SBF did not earn the right to manage billions of dollars of capital based on his ability to trade or manage a business; it was bestowed upon him because he had the perfect balance of greed and ignorance that would help entertain a world of cryptocurrency investors to fall into the trap of believing all of it was real.   SBF’s dirty undermining of Terra Luna, Three Arrows, Voyager Digital, Celsius and many others was not done alone, but the strategic planning that helped him accomplish his goals at FTX and Alameda was ironically planned to take him out as well.  Now, for the time being, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and a powerful army of billionaires in the world proved capable enough to undo SBF as he did their dirty bidding.  But this was aided and abetted by what may be one of the most corrupt agencies in the United States, an organization that was formed to protect the interests of billionaires and corporate agendas aligned with US interests, better known as the SEC.

On December 12, 2022, SBF was arrested at his home in the Bahamas.  The next day, the SEC announced it had charged Sam Bankman-Fried with fraud in connection to misleading FTX investors and customers.  “We allege that Sam Bankman-Fried built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto,” stated Gary Gensler, head of the SEC.  The SEC further elaborated in its civil complaint that SBF had been a fraud since day one and had been “orchestrating a massive, years long fraud, diverting billions of dollars of the trading platform’s customer funds for his own personal benefit and to help grow his crypto empire.”  Despite its desires to bring SBF and his partners at FTX to justice, how could the SEC, in all of its intricate and far-reaching investigations of other crypto firms that it pursued charges against (including Ripple Labs), not know SBF was running an illegitimate crypto empire?

 

Our goals include setting high community standards that reflect our values. Revolt Voyager will allow all of us to express our anger in a peaceful, entertaining way. The psychological benefits of a glass of wine, exercise and squeezing a stress ball might be excellent orthodox methods for relieving emotions, but they won’t heal the resentment we feel from investing and losing our hard-earned money. We believe we can help solve this problem through our unorthodox approach to defeating parody-based, fictional doppelgängers whose counterparts left us feeling anxious, stressed and burdened by debts and a lack of financial resources.

Every single NFT community member can actively participate in many ways to carry out our mission.

We stand together:

1.  To revolt against FTX, Voyager Digital and other crypto companies that have demonstrated a lack of transparency, unethical behavior, gross negligence and incompetence with regard to managing other people’s assets
2. To offset corporate malfeasance with a campaign that brings back truth and justice for all those individuals whose lives and financial conditions were negatively impacted by these companies.
3.  To expose egregious behavior in a meaningful way so people could really understand the impact these companies and thoughtless leaders had on people’s lives.
4.  To restore faith and confidence in a cryptocurrency ecosystem system that has been decremented by the actions and activities of unscrupulous individuals and organizations.
5.  To raise awareness and create opportunities for causes that are greater than our own community.

We realize there is no crime in protest and no way to stop a powerful movement aimed at making white collar crime a terrible choice for those want to participate in it.  It does not matter to us when government agencies look the other way or take ineffective measures to stop fraud and abuse. The SEC and big government always come around when people make money in ways they don’t agree with, but where is this agency and are supposed government friends after we lose our money? It gives the impression that they are taking comfort every time something goes bad in the crypto industry. They seem overly concerned about the possibility of crypto enriching individuals at the expense of diluting the wealth of those who remain stuck on the traditional banking system – one which has been completely biased towards those who are less privileged (min balance maintenance fees, ATM fees, etc.). It is more than apparent that the interests of government are only best served by protecting the almighty dollar for which it runs, creating unfair enterprise and embracing disillusionment for anyone who isn’t grandfathered into their agenda.

While we cannot effectively change this present situation, we can and will make our voices heard. Freedom to express our values and beliefs is well within our democratic rights. “Together We Stand, United We Fall” may sound cliché, but if we believe in that ideology, we are going to establish one of the most successful campaigns against corporate fraud and greed by empowering those impacted by it.

Throughout this website, you can learn about the Revolt Voyager NFT Collection and Gaming Franchise. Our focus on utilizing the Revolt Voyager Platform to benefit various parties goes well beyond internal stakeholders and owners of the NFT Collection. In fact, all of us are really benefactors who have the interests of various beneficiaries are heart.

The irony of Revolt Voyager is that the classless acts of individuals and organizations that severely and negatively impacted the lives of others will be used to return what was lost to many of the same individuals and beyond.

Together we can all help Satoshi on his quest is to become the next champion.  Does the NFT community have the Eye of the Tiger?  Could Revolt Voyager be the next Rocky Saga?  Or even something bigger …