And yes, it was Twitter that drove the government to act. How do we know? Because the entire case was broken on crypto Twitter, from beginning to end!
- It was Ian Allison revealing that SBF had no money, not Dan Primack asking whether SBF could cure world hunger
- It was Erik Voorhees playing hardball with SBF on Bankless, not Joe Weisenthal throwing him softballs on Odd Lots
- It was David Z. Morris calling FTX a crime, not David Yaffe-Bellany claiming SBF was a philanthropist
- It was Crypto Twitter proving SBF was a fraud, not NYT Dealbook clapping for that fraud
- And it was Twitter posting about SBF’s donations to Democrat politicians, even as those same politicians were welcoming him to Congress
NYT, Congress, Bloomberg, Axios — all these establishment organs failed where Coindesk, Bankless, and Crypto Twitter succeeded. Not a single corporate journalist, politician, regulator, or policeman thought to investigate SBF until Erik Voorhees smelled a rat and Ian Allison found the rat. In fact, even the least self-aware corporate journalist in modern history admittedthat citizen journalists “outshine traditional media on coverage of FTX implosion.”
So: yes, the only reason SBF was even exposed, let alone convicted was because of people posting on Twitter. Twitter is important! That’s why the regime didn’t want Trump to post on there, doesn’t want you to post on there, and doesn’t want Elon to let you post on there. As far back as the Arab Spring, it was clear that Twitter could topple regimes. And in this case, it toppled the regime’s #2 donor, “one of the people who is among the most responsible for [Biden] being in office.” Needless to say, this was not an outcome any establishment figure sought before the events of Nov 2022.
Ok. With that out of the way, let’s do the long version, just to make sure the actual history of this wretched episode is properly recorded somewhere.