> Swift avoided getting dragged in FTX’s collapse because the singer did her due diligence, and asked one important question: “Can you tell me that these are not unregistered securities?”, according to South Florida attorney Adam Moskowitz. Moskowitz, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit
I do not for a second believe that Taylor Swift herself asked this literal question. It is a summarization of the due diligence her team performed, as paraphrased by the attorney charging everyone else.
Take it with a grain of salt - this whole guy's legal case rides on the implication that all of the defendants knowingly had a duty to perform due diligence. And so proving that some celebrities like Taylor Swift backed out - not because of money or scheduling but because they understood that they were trading securities illegally - is important to his case.
Personally, I come down on the side of the defendants on this one. When Larry David was hired to do a superbowl commercial for FTX, how much was he really expected understand about securities law? Could we really argue he was in on the fraud? If he did a superbowl commercial for Chipotle we wouldn't expect him to perform his own health inspections.
It may have been her team... but it isn't unreasonable to believe that she is aware of the issues around promoting securities.
Someone on her team is financially savvy enough to know the questions to ask. It could have been a random member of her legal time, it could have been her father, it could have been her after a conversation with her father about it... or she may have been aware of those issues herself with a few decades of family conversations with a financial advisor.
Well I also think that people underrate how much staff someone at Swift's level employs. We really should think of them as CEOs of their name.
But I also think it's a bit of hindsight snobbery to assume anyone was seriously looking FTX as a securities fraud risk in 2020. Maybe normal fraud, or even just a general ponzi scheme. It was an SEC-approved platform ~~that traded on the stock market!~~
> Well I also think that people underrate how much staff someone at Swift's level employs. We really should think of them as CEOs of their name.
The Business Insider link can give hints to that. As a trader, her father is required to do certain disclosures.
4)BUSINESS OR ACTIVITY NAME: 13 MANAGEMENT LLC
FOR PROFIT OR NOT FOR PROFIT: FOR PROFIT
INVESTMENT RELATED: NO
ADDRESS OF BUSINESS: NASHVILLE, TN 37203
NATURE OF BUSINESS: COMPANY OWNS 18 TOURING BUSES
YOUR POSITION. TITLE. ASSOCIATION: MANAGES AND PAYS EMPLOYEES
Just being aware of Brandon Sanderson's company and "all" he does is write books and has a company of 50 people supporting that... a pop star can certainly have quite a bit larger company with a team of lawyers and support people and accountants and marketing dealing with the product that is the person who's name they're attached to. The more they do, the larger that supporting cast needs to be... and that's not even getting into the supporting entertainment cast.
I believe Taylor Swift could have asked the question. She's an incredibly intelligent, person, the daughter of a finance professional, and she's demonstrated her business acumen repeatedly over the course of her career.
When someone offers you $100 million out of the blue to endorse them, that should trigger red flag alerts, especially for someone like Swift who zealously protects her image. It's likely that someone on her legal team pointed out the securities issue to her during a briefing, and she brought it up during negotiations with FTX (Rolling Stone notes that multiple members of the FTX C-Suite personally attempted to recruit her, and lawyers don't generally get involved in contract negotiations until an agreement in principle has been worked out.)
Sure. I don't doubt for a second her intelligence, or even her seeing FTX as a fad or troubled. But the implications of an opaque SEC definition of security and its impact on her personal liability would be a bizarrely specific thing to be looking for.
Again, in pretty much every other celebrity endorsement deal, you are not personally on the hook if it turns out the company screwed up or defrauded people. It's just very unlucky for the defendants that the product turned out to be a security which is has special and arcane rules, instead of just made of asbestos by slave children, I guess.
Not really. I advised a very large name pop star when she was getting into investing in startups. She would sometimes meet with the CEO's and after a few months I was genuinely astonished how quickly she learned how to read a terms sheet, research a particular market, and ask extremely pointed and specific questions. She learned javascript for fun, just didn't want anyone to know because she thought it would diminish her image.
It's more than plausible that tons of people in Taylor's orbit tried to involve her in various crypto schemes, and either her dad someone on her team introduced her to the concept of unregulated securities (if she wasn't already aware - in interviews at the start of her career - when she was a teenager - she would say if music doesn't work out, she was going to go into finance).
A lot of entertainment industry celebrities are dumb as a bag of rocks. Others are terrifyingly smart. Ms. Swift strikes me as the latter
> She learned javascript for fun, just didn't want anyone to know because she thought it would diminish her image.
That's awful. Having a technical skill shouldn't be seen as a negative. Is this due to something specific to this pop star's audience, or does it apply more generally to celebrities outside of tech?
implications of an opaque SEC definition of security and its impact on her personal liability would be a bizarrely specific thing to be looking for
Given that the "opaque SEC definition of security" has been one of the most-commented on aspects of cryptocurrencies for several years, it seems like it would be a basic thing for a financially savvy businesswoman to ask about.
pretty much every other celebrity endorsement deal, you are not personally on the hook if it turns out the company screwed up or defrauded people.
??? They definitely can be. It's been part of American jurisprudence for decades. The FTC even has specific rules governing endorsements....
I was just thinking how his acting was so on point with his broader branding, the whole ad he's 'Curbing your enthusiam' of sorts.
The ad ending:
>Q: Would you say is FTX an easy and safe way to go into crypto?
Larry: Eeeaaaah I don't think so,
And I'm never wrong about this stuff, never.
The ad ends with a don't be like larry, which ironically if you where like me and interpreted all marketing or ads by default as the double speak likes they are, you would just read as -be just like larry, avoid FTX-
IANAL, but yeah that'd be a fun defense strategy to behold to be on a real trial, very comically appropiate for larry's trial if there's ever one
Why is it impossible for Talyor Swift to ask that question herself? Because she is a blonde singer?
It is very common for someone top of one's trade to command respectable knowledge and skill in another trade.
Einstein was a decent violin player. It wouldn't be a surprise if he asked some deep questions in musics in certain circumstances.
Talyor Swift has got to the top and sustained at the top of probably the most competitive business, and keeps her wealth growing. She has certainly financial knowledge and discipline. I am pretty sure she is capable of asking that question.
> It is very common for someone top of one's trade to command respectable knowledge and skill in another trade.
I don't think that's true. There are some popularized figures, especially ones who have become public figures through music, and then have had continued success, but those are just the pop stars. What about all the doctors or engineers who have found success in one area, and then think that automatically makes them experts in a different area, with disasterous results?
TSwift also doesn't need the ERAS Tour money, and yet, she's doing it.
She is a billionaire, and people don't become billionaires by deciding they don't need $100MM for free. She recognized that $100MM FTX deal wasn't free, she recognized it was a bad deal, and she turned it down. Simple as that.
> Why isn't the SEC going after the politicians that accepted donations from FTX?
Because that's not the SECs job. It may be FEC’s job to do something about that, and it may be current FTX management's job to do something about that, but its definitely not SEC’s job.
> Did those politicians ask any questions at all or just happily recieve the money
They weren’t from FTX (corporations can't donate to candidates) but from individuals, and often through cutouts specifically to conceal the actual responsible individual (SBF) to avoid the questions that would come, including from the recipients, about the pattern of donations.
But wait. The downfall of FTX had nothing to do with selling unregistered securities. It had all to do with placing the wrong bets and having weak/non-existent risk controls. Also quite likely, even outright embezzlement.
I wonder if Larry David's commercial was written in such a dismissive / negative joking way because it would be easier to avoid litigation? "I wasn't promoting it, I was on the ad saying I wasn't going to invest..."
> I mean, why would you possibly promote cryptocurrency if it may be an unregistered security?
I have no idea what that means one way or another. But if someone with backers like FTX at their height of their game came and asked me to promote them for a lot of money, I probably would assume they were legit.
Hijack, as a famous people resell your likeness for any kind of whacky fake scammy endorsements, but make a TOS that make you not responsible of any wrongdoing of using ur likeness
With AI tools this is doable already. If you're famous and need plausible denaibility to promote the next FTX just hit me up
Clickbait article misattributes this to Taylor herself, when in reality this was caught by her father, a financial advisor of 30 years at Merrill Lynch.
"Misattribute" does not feel like the right word here. Unless I'm missing something, the lawyer is attributing Swift to asking the question in the podcast quoted in article, which is what the article's headline and body text say. Of course, it is clickbait nonetheless.
Additionally, do you have a source for the claim that her father was the actual person that "caught" this? I did a small search and did not find. If it is just a presumption based on his career, a more charitable take along these lines might be that she could have learned about securities from her dad sometime over those 30 years and thus could have not needed to consult him to know the question to ask.
It's strange that commenters here think a 30-year-old entrepreneur worth $500M wouldn't know that there have been SEC questions around crypto offerings being unregistered securities for years.
It's not some obscure detail, it's one of the key risks of being involved in a new crypto offering as an investor, and I think most people posting here have read years of HN discussions about the relevant SEC positions. Ultra high net worth individuals - especially ones that have launched multiple business lines - are fairly likely to have heard about it. At least enough to play word association and ask someone to look into it for them.
I do not for a second believe that Taylor Swift herself asked this literal question. It is a summarization of the due diligence her team performed, as paraphrased by the attorney charging everyone else.
Take it with a grain of salt - this whole guy's legal case rides on the implication that all of the defendants knowingly had a duty to perform due diligence. And so proving that some celebrities like Taylor Swift backed out - not because of money or scheduling but because they understood that they were trading securities illegally - is important to his case.
Personally, I come down on the side of the defendants on this one. When Larry David was hired to do a superbowl commercial for FTX, how much was he really expected understand about securities law? Could we really argue he was in on the fraud? If he did a superbowl commercial for Chipotle we wouldn't expect him to perform his own health inspections.