<story><title>BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/28/blockfi-files-for-bankruptcy-as-ftx-fallout-spreads.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fdgsdfogijq</author><text>I talked to an employee that left last spring. She said they had literally no idea what they were doing. The founders are just ivy educated 30 year olds. So they decided to just start hiring everyone they could from paypal, to move into &amp;quot;blockchain payments&amp;quot;. They paid huge sums. The directors there had no experience ever managing huge teams of people. It was a giant mess of unqualified people funded by cheap capital.&lt;p&gt;She also said the money movements on the blockchain facilitated by BlockFi were done manually by blockfi employees. The software was a facade and wasnt trusted for large sums of money</text></item><item><author>propter_hoc</author><text>Somehow these guys peaked at about 900 employees, according to linkedin (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.linkedin.com&amp;#x2F;company&amp;#x2F;blockfi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.linkedin.com&amp;#x2F;company&amp;#x2F;blockfi&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ve raised about a billion dollars of VC - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.crunchbase.com&amp;#x2F;organization&amp;#x2F;blockfi-inc&amp;#x2F;investor_financials&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.crunchbase.com&amp;#x2F;organization&amp;#x2F;blockfi-inc&amp;#x2F;investor...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;(note, CB lists $1.4b, of which 400M is debt from FTX, which I imagine they never got)&lt;p&gt;Unbelievable the amount of destruction of value here... it&amp;#x27;s just total carnage.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mring33621</author><text>Here is the model, as I currently understand it:&lt;p&gt;1) some people are rich and want to get richer&lt;p&gt;2) Ivy educated VCs invest money for group (1) in start-up companies, while paying themselves handsomely with that same pool of money&lt;p&gt;3) Ivy educated kids start companies using money from group (2), while paying themselves handsomely with that same pool of money&lt;p&gt;4) sometimes, through a combo of hard work, skill and luck, things work out and everyone makes more money than was spent&lt;p&gt;5) sometimes, because they are mostly, actually a bunch of yahoos and&amp;#x2F;or scammers, things don&amp;#x27;t work out and group (1) loses their money&lt;p&gt;There are some oversimplifications here, but in general, this seems to be the way.</text></comment>
<story><title>BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/28/blockfi-files-for-bankruptcy-as-ftx-fallout-spreads.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fdgsdfogijq</author><text>I talked to an employee that left last spring. She said they had literally no idea what they were doing. The founders are just ivy educated 30 year olds. So they decided to just start hiring everyone they could from paypal, to move into &amp;quot;blockchain payments&amp;quot;. They paid huge sums. The directors there had no experience ever managing huge teams of people. It was a giant mess of unqualified people funded by cheap capital.&lt;p&gt;She also said the money movements on the blockchain facilitated by BlockFi were done manually by blockfi employees. The software was a facade and wasnt trusted for large sums of money</text></item><item><author>propter_hoc</author><text>Somehow these guys peaked at about 900 employees, according to linkedin (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.linkedin.com&amp;#x2F;company&amp;#x2F;blockfi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.linkedin.com&amp;#x2F;company&amp;#x2F;blockfi&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ve raised about a billion dollars of VC - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.crunchbase.com&amp;#x2F;organization&amp;#x2F;blockfi-inc&amp;#x2F;investor_financials&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.crunchbase.com&amp;#x2F;organization&amp;#x2F;blockfi-inc&amp;#x2F;investor...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;(note, CB lists $1.4b, of which 400M is debt from FTX, which I imagine they never got)&lt;p&gt;Unbelievable the amount of destruction of value here... it&amp;#x27;s just total carnage.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Melting_Harps</author><text>&amp;gt; They&amp;#x27;ve raised about a billion dollars of VC - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.crunchbase.com&amp;#x2F;organization&amp;#x2F;blockfi-inc&amp;#x2F;investor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.crunchbase.com&amp;#x2F;organization&amp;#x2F;blockfi-inc&amp;#x2F;investor&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  talked to an employee that left last spring. She said they had literally no idea what they were doing. The founders are just ivy educated 30 year olds&lt;p&gt;So was SBF (MIT) and raised from Sequoia and Blackrok and his GF was a Stanford&amp;#x27;ite with a Math degree and is responsible for the largest loss of funds from that cluster**.&lt;p&gt;Can we finally admit the biggest scammers in this space are those from Ivy League, and connections with SV insiders traditional VC&amp;#x2F;Banking&amp;#x2F;Finance without out a clue of what they are doing or how this tech actually works; as a fintech boot strapped founder with over a decade in the Bitcoin community its been fairly obvious for at least 7 years since Blythe Masters and all her cronies from traditional finance got involved this was the case.&lt;p&gt;Maybe now the rest of you vocal sideliners can finally see that  is the case and that most of you are part of the problem more than most of us who have built startuprs using this tech without any of those things and did it the hard way outside of the VC&amp;#x2F;SV Ivy League World.</text></comment>