The Biggest Money Laundering Scheme In History – Patrick McKenzie

Patrick McKenzie argues SBF’s most underreported crime was running a tens-of-billions money-laundering operation for Tether through Alameda Research.

• Alameda Research functioned as Tether’s de-facto banker, moving tens of billions through the financial system largely under legal cover.
• SBF was never under suspicion for the laundering operation itself — he was caught for other reasons.
• SBF publicly admitted on Bloomberg that his Japan-to-US Bitcoin arbitrage ‘looked like money laundering because it is money laundering.’
• Michael Lewis retells the same origin story but relocates it from Japan to South Korea — McKenzie flags this discrepancy as an unresolved thread.
• FTX’s inner circle obtained money transmission licenses in all 50 US states, showing sophisticated regulatory capture, not just financial engineering.
• Classic real-estate laundering works because shell corps + lawyers + legitimate tenants make dirty money structurally indistinguishable from normal transactions.
• McKenzie’s core thesis: laundering skill = general economic facility plus willingness to obscure criminal proceeds, not exotic financial wizardry.

2024-07-27 · Watch on YouTube