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November 14, 2022

🥛Is Sam gonna make it to Dubai?

GM. This is the Milk Road. The daily newsletter making your brain snap, crackle, and pop with the latest crypto news.

Let's get into it:

  • What's new with Samuel and FTX

  • Is Crypto.com the next domino?

  • Milky Memes

WHAT'S NEW WITH SAMUEL AND FTX

After days of deafening silence, Samuel has finally spoken.

How could he say something so controversial yet so brave?

I expect this type of wisdom from Aristotle. Nietzche. Descartes.

If you are having trouble keeping up with the FTX drama, I don’t blame you. The story has more twists and turns than a Euphoria episode.

The Milk Man wants to make sure everyone is on the same page before today’s news. So, let's recap what we knew before the weekend:

  • FTX is bankrupt

  • FTX had $900m of assets and $9b+ of liabilities

  • Alameda and SBF had a “backdoor” so they could secretly access billions in FTX customer deposits

  • FTX and Alameda execs knew everything

  • Funds and exchanges like BlockFi (RIP), Galaxy, Jump, and more had hundreds of millions on FTX

The news just keeps coming. Here’s what we learned over the weekend:

#1 According to reports, Samuel and FTX executives are under “police supervision” in the Bahamas

It’s been a nice ride for Samuel. He raised hundreds of millions from VCs, hung out with Tom Brady, moved down to the Bahamas, and yolo’d billions of customer funds like a Wall Streets Bets trader.

But it looks like the lights turned on, the parents showed up, and the party is now over.

Or is it?

Word on the street is that FTX executives are trying to get to Dubai. And it’s not to ride sand dunes or get away from those brutal Bahamian winters.

Dubai is one of the few countries in the world that doesn’t have extradition treaties with the U.S. And Samuel was actually in town a few weeks ago.

He already has his disguise ready:

The "police supervision" can’t be too bad though. It looks like Samuel was able to squeeze in a few League of Legends games this weekend.

What is this daddy daycare?! And it’s probably because Samuel and the team have been bribing Bahamian government officials.

According to a former FTX employee, Samuel and co. donated to police, politicians, and banks. The least they can do is let him game during these oh-so-stressful times.

#2 What’s happening with FTX funds?

It wouldn’t be another day in the FTX chronicles without hundreds of millions of dollars going through the spin cycle.

On Saturday, someone moved the remaining supply of locked FTT tokens from the FTX deployer to a random wallet. The 195m of FTT (~$380m) was scheduled to be unlocked in batches over years.

First the $400m “hack”, now FTX's native tokens are suspiciously unlocked.

Hmm… I wonder how many people had access to the FTX deployer contract as well as customer deposits? Maybe one of their names rhymes with Ham Tankman-Deed?

You can’t dream up a better script. And, right on cue…

#3 Michael Lewis, the author of the Big Short, has been following Samuel for the last 6 months.

Michael Lewis is one of the best authors of our generation.

Moneyball, Liar’s Poker, Flash Boys, The Blind Side. This MF don’t miss.

An email from his CAA agent to potential buyers of the book leaked.

Our favorite line from the email: No words have been written but Lewis likens SBF and CZ to “Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader of crypto.”

Consider my interest piqued.

Is Samuel Luke or Vader? If CZ is Vader are we all doomed?

I’ll be waiting to read this classic like….

IS CRYPTO.COM IN TROUBLE?

There was always something off about Crypto.com.

The first time I heard about them was when they bought the naming rights to the Lakers arena for $700m. Crypto exchanges + NBA arenas = ☠️

It was weird, but I’m sure they crunched the numbers and decided it was worth it, right?

But then more and more things started to pop up:

  • They accidentally sent $10m to a woman in Australia 

  • Claimed 50m+ active users earlier this year. 50m?! The two largest exchanges, Binance and Coinbase, have 36m combined.

  • Just like FTX, they launched a token out of thin air called $CRO.

Our milky senses started tingling when we heard what they did this weekend:

  • Oct. 21st: Crypto.com sent 320k of ETH (~$400m) to Gate.io (another crypto exchange)

  • Oct. 28th: Gate sends the ETH back to Crypto.com

  • Nov. 11: 20% of Crypto.com’s reserves are in Shiba Inu

  • Nov. 12th: Crypto Twitter finds out what happened and tagged the Crypto.com CEO who said it was an accident

According to Crypto.com's website, 100% of customer deposits are held in offline cold storage. So, first you accidentally send $10m to a woman in Australia and then you accidentally send $400m or 80% of your cold storage ETH to another exchange?

And then their CEO just tweeted the kiss of death:

Remember, where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire, and this smells like a damn wildfire.

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MILKY MEMES TO WASH IT DOWN

The bad news won't stop. But neither will Milky Memes. Best ones we saw this weekend:

That's a wrap for today. Stay thirsty & see ya tomorrow!

If you want more, be sure to follow our Twitter (@MilkRoadDaily)

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.