I think his point is that while it was bought with real money, it couldn't be sold for real money.
If I buy 50 RandoCoins for $1 today, tomorrow it shows that it's now valued at $2, and then the next day RandoCoin is hacked and all the coins are stolen, I didn't really lose $100, I only lost $50.
So he's wondering if the value of loss is being expressed as the money used the purchase the coins or the perceived value of the coins.
Yes, but how much real money is the question. I'm not doubting that real money was lost, just wondering if $16B of actual customer dollars ever flowed into the exchange.
Exactly, I always wondered what the real numbers looked like. It's so easy to mint 100 coins, get a friend to buy one at $100, and say you "have" $9,900.
I wouldn't be surprised if the number of actual dollars was less than $100 million.
It's easy to see how FTX's assets could be "worth" $16B in the absence of any real money coming into play, but I don't see how they could get to $16B in liabilities that way. The most obvious possibility would be if their liabilities were also denominated in thinly-traded shitcoins, but at this point it seems clear that that wasn't the case.
