Sex, Drugs, and Crypto
Sex, Drugs, and Crypto seem to blend well. The millennial mooks behind the multibillion-dollar implosion of crypto hedge fund FTX lived a lavish life of pill-popping, bed-hopping and video games in their $40-million Bahamas penthouse.
A new report in the New York Post paints a colorful mosaic of a frat house run amok.
The cryptocurrency goliath had been worth a whopping $15 billion, but amid allegations of mismanagement and fraud, is now circling the drain. Among the Canadian losers in the scam was the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which dropped a cool $95 million.
For the spendthrift geeks, spaced out on sex, drugs, and crypto, their home and headquarters was a luxe $40-million home in Albany, Bahamas. At the peak of the pyramid was FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, 30, and called SBF by pals.
The Post said the HQ boasted “six bedrooms, two elevators, manicured grounds, a golf course and a boat basin packed with super yachts.” Inside, the millennial masters of the universe had all-night sex parties fuelled by amphetamines.
“The feeling was that they were treating Albany like a frat house,” a wealthy Bahamian told the Post, adding there were 10 people living high on the FTX hog.
“They would walk around in sweats and T-shirts. That was not the Albany lifestyle that residents there signed up for. The typical dress was Ralph Lauren sports jackets. Sam and his group did not seem to fit the part.”
The old money was not impressed by the nouveau riche antics of the FTX crew.
Bankman-Fried tweeted last year of the group’s secret sauce for success: “Stimulants when you wake up, sleeping pills if you need them when you sleep.”
One Twitter feed suggested that SBF was using a patch packed with a drug called EMSAM. The drug is a “methamphetamine derivative used on-label to treat symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and is known to increase energy.”
Crypto website Coindesk suggested that “Bankman-Fried was … possibly suffering side effects of EMSAM (which include compulsive gambling).”
Besides the pill-popping, bed-hopping among the geek brigade was a common feature at their palace.
Queen bee of the sexual antics was Caroline Ellison [pictured above], the nerdy Harry Potter-loving daughter of two university professors who was SBF’s on-again, off-again sexual playmate.
Ellison blogged and bragged about her penchant for polyamory and desire to be in a “Chinese harem.”
It was Ellison, who as CEO of Alameda Research, an arm of FTX founded by Bankman-Fried, allegedly lost billions in long-shot trades. Bankman-Fried then allegedly shifted billions from FTX over to his gal pal’s company to cover losses.
Previously, she laughed at people who didn’t take drugs: “Nothing like regular amphetamine use to make you appreciate how dumb a lot of normal, non-medicated experience is.”
A Miami high-flier was appalled by the FTX crew at a crypto conference in the Sunshine State.
“They were staying up all night, snorting Adderall, smelling like they hadn’t showered in a week,” the source told the Post.
CoinDesk said of the romantic entanglements among the roomies: “All 10 are, or used to be, paired up in romantic relationships with each other.” [In the polyamory world this type of arrangement is called a polycule.]
One source told the newspaper that the Albany penthouse was “luxurious.”
He said it was unclear how much work was actually accomplished, noting Bankman-Fried spent his days playing the video game League of Legends while holding Zoom meetings with millions of dollars on the table.
Reprinted from The Toronto Sun
