(Mr. Samuel Bankman-Fried, noted fraudster and current crypto celebrity. His image is used in low resolution for identification purposes only and not to violate extensive regulations on copyright infringement).

This is a strange morning. Or better said, it is ‘morning.’

We trickled into the Sunday AM staff meeting in an irregular fashion dependent on when (and where) we wandered to bed. Splash was early, and had found some old stories he thought might be applicable to this day on this morning. He made an announcement about it once Rocket, Melissa and Buck had their second cups of coffee in front of them:

“I did a detailed search for relevant topics. I called up the Google search box and entered the terms “04 December.” There was some great stuff that popped up from the Socotra archives. One of them was about a note we got regarding funerals from the Pentagon attack back on 9/11.”

“We don’t need to visit that awful time again.”

“True, but what happened later was pretty amazing. Take a look at this one from 2008.” He held up an image of an older gentleman with a small caption that identified him as someone named “Bernie Madoff.” Apparently, he was a crook. He had parlayed bogus investments into an impressive total of around $30 billion before it all disappeared. He died in prison, still working on his 150-year term.

“He was a record holder until a couple weeks ago. A new guy broke his record.”

“How did he do that?”

‘No one quite understands it. Apparently he had invented a new sort of money generated on computers and then sold it to a bunch of people. They say the total was more than Mr. Madoff could have imagined.”

“So, it was imaginary money sold for real bucks?”

“Something like that. This scandal is much more interesting than the old one, so they shouldn’t call Mr. Samuel Bankman-Fried a mini-anything. He was chief of the FTX cyber currency firm. And his bad trades are bigger than the original Maxi Madoff. But what is interesting is that he is still chilling in the Bahamas, sipping champagne and explaining he had no idea where all those billions he was managing got off to.”

“Isn’t the FBI and the SEC and all those sorts of people all over him?”

“We don’t really know. Apparently, he has more friends than Mr. Madoff did.”

“Why don’t we do a story on how people created a new currency that wasn’t worth much more than good wishes and sold it to each other for real money?”

“We don’t understand any of it. They have been complaining about the value of real dollars being destroyed by the wild government spending that caused the worst inflation since the Carter Administration. It seems they use a lot of electricity to run computers for a while to solve a complex algorithm. The product of that is supposed to be worth something.”

“Why would electricity already used have additional value for something else in the future?”

“It’s all crypto stuff. It’s like the internet. If you want it to be true, you can always Google it true.”

“Why don’t we do something creative online and make a couple billion before happy hour. Then we can use it to pay for dinner after drinks.”

“You may have solved all of our problems in one easy step. But at some point don’t you need friends in the Securities and Law Enforcement communities?”

“If we can manufacture our own money, we will have all the friends anyone could need. And then they will have to invent nick-names for us as colorful as the one they gave Sam Bankman-Fried?”

We spent a while on that, since it was too early for anything fun. The general custom here is that drinking before lunch can lead to all sorts of things: maxi, mini and sometimes just ‘crypto.’

Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com