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"FTX/ Defi: If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck . . . "

2022-04-25 [vendor] Sam Bankman-Fried describes yield farming as a Ponzi scheme
Primary Source ↗

Incident Details

Sam Bankman-Fried, one of the most well-known crypto execs and the founder of the popular FTX crypto exchange, appeared for an interview on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast alongside finance journalist Matt Levine. When asked by Levine to explain yield farming, Bankman-Fried launched into an explanation in which he compared it to a box that “they probably dress up to look like [it’s] life-changing” but it “does literally nothing”. He explained how people put money into the box “because of, you know, the bullishness of people’s usage of the box”. “So they go and pour another $300 million in the box and you get a psych and then it goes to infinity. And then everyone makes money.“Levine responded, “I think of myself as like a fairly cynical person. And that was so much more cynical than how I would’ve described farming. You’re just like, well, I’m in the Ponzi business and it’s pretty good.”

Technical Details

Initial Attack Vector
Ponzi / pyramid scheme
Vendor / Product
Sam Bankman-Fried describes yield farming as a Ponzi scheme

Timeline

  1. 2022-04-25 Breach occurred
  2. 2022-04-25 Publicly disclosed