Tucker Carlson on FTX: It was clearly a Ponzi

Fox News host Tucker Carlson has slammed FTX as a scam, one that was “clearly a Ponzi”.

In the latest FTX-related cryptocurrency news, Carlson says that those charged with flagging it, and doing something about it, didn’t just ignore all the red flags, but went along because it benefitted them immensely.

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According to the Tucker Carlson Tonight host, what many in Washington and in the mainstream media industry lapped, is what could turn out to be a “history changing event.” The FTX crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy protection last week, alongside 130 affiliated companies. The FTX token has fallen nearly 94% in the past two weeks, and millions of people are likely to lose all their money.

The fallout, Carlson observed, could end up as the worst financial scandal in history, with the financial crisis it’s sparked cascading across the entire global economy. It could well be an irreparable blow to crypto.

Tucker Carlson says Sam Bankman-Fried was a ‘con’

FTX’s collapse, he pointed out, has impacted millions of people who could lose literally everything because of Sam Bankman-Fried. 

In his view, SBF is a fraud who should not have been allowed to get this far with his con game. Certainly, SBF was not the ‘Michael Jordan of crypto’ or ‘JP Morgan of crypto’ – as he was made to feel. 

Carlson also slammed Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison as somebody who was “obviously unqualified for the job she claimed to have.” Her lack of what it might have taken to handle the job she was entrusted is part of what led to what’s befallen FTX. 

FTX is the ‘story’ of utter corruption

In his opinion piece published early Friday, Tucker Carlson summed up FTX’s implosion as a result of corruption:

“It is the story of the complete and utter corruption of the people who run our country. The very people who should have been covering and regulating and reining in FTX and its 30-year-old founder, Sam Bankman-Fried were instead profiting from this scam, not just a few of them, nearly all of them.”

Among those “paid off” to enable this scam, according to the Fox News host, include major news media, the Democratic Party leadership, and US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler. Regulators and politicians, Tucker espoused, just loved SBF for the cash spigot that he was.

For example, SBF donated over $40 million towards the Democrats during the mid-terms, and had touted (although he about turned on it) a billion dollars for the 2024 elections. Saying that pointing this out now is not an attack on the Democratic Party, the Fox News host noted about the FTX links:

“It was clearly a Ponzi. Are we trying to attack the Democratic Party now? No, it’s actually justified. This guy was a major donor. Major donor! According to the head of Citadel, defeating Donald Trump was literally on the balance sheet of FTX.”

According to him, those that mattered knew everything about FTX and how it wasn’t a “real company.” If they supposedly didn’t know it, he posited, then just a little attention would have unearthed all the rot.

Certainly, one short seller named Marc Cohodes decoded SBF’s game in October during an appearance on Hedgeye TV. According to Cohodes, Bankman-Fried’s bailing out of failed crypto companies was a huge red flag.

“If that guy on a small audience investment channel could tell that Sam Bankman-Fried was a fraud, where was Gary Gensler of the SEC?”