Poker legend Tom Dwan has admitted he knew about the impending disaster at FTX crypto exchange, but claims it wasn’t his place to out the “corruption” that seems to have caused its collapse.
Sam had used his ftt token raise to plug a hole in alameda’s balance sheet.
I found this out at some point in I think 2021.
From a few places. Some were nice people who weren’t involved.
I know about a lot of corruption in the world, and sometimes it’s not my business to out
— Tom Dwan (@TomDwan) November 14, 2022
The emerging FTX scandal, in which the second-largest crypto exchange in the world collapsed with $billions wiped from its value, has links to the poker world due to Daniel Friedberg, FTX’s regulatory compliance officer.
Friedberg’s involvement in such a prominent role shocked the poker community as he was one of the main players in the Ultimate Bet (UB) and Absolute Poker (AP) scandals of the noughties.
As a UB/AP lawyer, Friedberg was responsible for trying to limit the amount of funds repaid to players screwed over by the God-mode cheating of Russ Hamilton.
Dwan, himself financially hit by the UB scandal that cheated $50million from players, seemed shocked that none of his FTX friends told him about Friedberg’s new incarnation in crypto
And the whole ftx group that played poker… no one thought to tell me this??
Wtf. A lot of their crew played poker. Bunch of them met me at least once or twice. Wtf wtf wtf https://t.co/Iy5BWjimxC
— Tom Dwan (@TomDwan) November 10, 2022
How Friedberg managed to realise such an important position in FTX given his shady background is something the authorities will doubtless be looking at, but Tom Dwan’s involvement with the FTX crew seems to have been more than just passing.
Last year he discussed crypto and poker with FTX founder, Sam Bankman-Fried (pictured above) with a look at what the future holds for crypto.
That future looks considerably less rosy after the collapse of FTX, and Dwan even hinted that he might offer up some juicy info about what went on after the involvement of the Chairperson of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler.
“I dunno if it was intentional or not by @GaryGensler, but it looks bad. I hope he answers some questions soon. If he doesn’t, I guess I’ll feed some info to whatever ppl on the hill want it…”
But Dwan’s own part in disseminating what he knew about FTX seems questionable as well, tweeting that he “basically knew they were insolvent” well ahead of the game…
I basically knew they were insolvent when ftt was still at 22. I hoped it was just in treasuries etc, and a mild misappropriation of funds.
I got a bunch of flack in groups n public for suggesting ppl be careful, and withdraw at least some.
And so many rushing to defend him. https://t.co/5eFoL29uBJ
— Tom Dwan (@TomDwan) November 14, 2022
Dwan, of course, isn’t even close to being the guilty party in the FTX collapse, but there are definite parallels between the current FTX crypto situation – a $1billion hole of missing assets is under investigation – and the Full Tilt debacle (Dwan was an FTP pro at the time) that saw $440million of player funds go missing.
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