Martin Shkreli, also known as “Pharma Bro” (as he is nicknamed by insiders) is back from prison and comments on the current status of Do Kwon, co-founder of Terra Luna.
Shkreli is the shrewd former CEO of MSMB Capital Management, founder of Retropin and Turing Pharmaceuticals, who rose to prominence for profiting by speculating on the price of a life-saving drug after raising its price by 5,000 percent, which landed him a conviction.
The 39-year-old entrepreneur had purchased a license for a drug, Daraprim through a company named Turing.
As a result of this “Pharma Bro” transaction, in 2015 he raised the price of the drug from $13.50 to $750 per pill.
Found guilty of fraud, Shkreli was sentenced to 7 years in prison in 2018, and was released from prison after a short period of community confinement.
The conviction was not only for fraud but also stemmed from a multimillion-dollar stock fraud trial that began in 2017 and ended the following year in September.
Good behavior and some legal slips brought Shkreli back to freedom and as soon as he resumed his usual life he returned to business talk, expressing interest in cryptocurrencies and DeFi, a world that he says very soon will even “eat up” some international banks, a major test of the direction finance will take in the future.
“I don’t think he’s on the edge of where he can go. I think we will see more and more financial products that end up in DeFi… in the end we will see some crypto companies bigger than the banking giants.”
The topic of the highly followed UpOnly podcast that brought together crypto criminals Shkreli and Kwon on Tuesday was the FTX-Binance case.
The FTX case
FTTs held by Alameda Research did not go unnoticed by the watchful eye of Coindesk, which spotted something odd.
The founder of FTX, a US exchange platform and investment fund, is Sam Bankman-Fried also known to have strong ties to Alameda Research, the company mentioned above.
Alameda Research has $3.66 billion in FTT (FTX’s native token) on its balance sheet, and in and of itself having crypto of the company you contribute to build is not an anomaly but what is is an anomaly is the fact that there is $2.16 billion in collateral for it versus a market capitalization of FTT that is about $3 billion and its overall diluted valuation is around $7 billion.
The critique is on how a collateral can be made up of a lesser share of the risk (not hedge) that is moreover subject to market fluctuations.
The news also made the rounds thanks to a tweet by CZ, the CEO of Binance, who picked it up by emphasizing key points.
Zhao had previously been featured in an investment in cryptocurrency exchange FTX and had 2.1 billion in assets between BUSD and FTT when the deal closed.
As reported by Coindesk, the Asian entrepreneur liquidated the FTT in his belly by announcing it publicly, not failing to point out how the world of digital currencies had already been scarred by debacles such as that of Celsius and Three Arrows Capital or the collapse of Luna itself.
In Alameda’s defense, Caroline Ellison, the company’s CEO for only a few months, tried to defend the situation by declaring that she was prepared for the wave of sales that was later shown to be there as a result of these allegations by responding to Zhao that the company she is at the helm of would have no problem buying CZ’s FTT at $22 each by throwing water on a fire that had now broken out.
Martin Shkreli: Luna’s CEO takes risks, but not too many
“Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli to Do Kwon of LUNA:
“Prison is not so bad.”
That’s the reassuring message “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli gives to Luna’s Do Kwon during the spontaneous recording of the UpOnly podcast.
On Tuesday, “Pharma Bro” Shkreli joined Kwon and the hosts of the crypto podcast to talk about speculation that Binance is pursuing a takeover of the exchange company following rumors of FTX’s apparent insolvency.
After spending four years in prison, the former entrepreneur returned to freedom in May, and in the above podcast he was quick to reassure Kwon, who is being investigated in South Korea (where he is from) on a variety of charges including price manipulation of the stablecoin Terra, which subsequently collapsed.
“That prison sucks, but it’s not the worst thing ever.
Hey Do, I just want to let you know, prison isn’t that bad.
So don’t worry, I hope it doesn’t. If it happens … it’s not that bad.”
Then the redeemed businessman makes an interesting point, he points out that sentences if someone deserves them are sacrosanct but it is sad to see how many are given in this area.
“It was really reckless for FTX to do business in Aptos and Sui. There is a reason why the banks don’t.
It’s really funny that you can go from being the donor of the rescue to the recipient of the rescue in a matter of months.
There is a good time SBF devotes some time on this.
I hate to say it, I don’t want to see anyone go to jail because it sucks, but if people don’t get 100 cents here, SBF will probably pass some time.
If you’re basically the architect of an empire that took people’s money and didn’t give it back to them that’s all prosecutors need to know. He will find a law that applies to you… no one will look at Sam Bankman and say anything other than guilty.
It’s just sad to see how many crypto people will go to jail and go to jail. We’re just seeing the beginning: it will be a pretty big club.”
Later Shkreli also brought up former Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith and Bitfinex developer Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein.
“It’s easier to get out of a real prison than Twitter’s.”
This was the comment to the tweets of some detractors.
