Billy Markus is known as a co-founder of popular meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin – he created it in 2013 in collaboration with Jackson Palmer and launched it as a parody of the flagship digital currency Bitcoin.
Now, Markus is an active Twitter/X user and a pen pal of Elon Musk on the same social media platform, unlike Palmer, who tweets very seldom and is a critic of the Tesla CEO. Markus has taken to Twitter to share a curious and perhaps (shocking to some) fact about the founder of FTX, the bankrupt crypto exchange created by Sam Bankman-Fried. SBF planned to buy an island, survive an apocalypse and enhance mankind genetically on a “sensible” scale.
SBF looked to buy Nauru Island to build survival bunker
Before his brainchild FTX exchange collapsed, young crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried planned to acquire Nauru Island with a whole nation living on it. He did it out of security concerns since, apparently, SBF expected human civilization to collapse in the near future. He was unable to predict the collapse of FTX, though.
Therefore, the acquisition of the island was his survival plan for FTX and his trading firm Alameda Research and their staffers, according to court filings in a federal bankruptcy court in Delaware in late July.
The memo made by FTX mentioned in the CNBC article mentions a possible plan to acquire Nauru Island and build a “bunker/shelter” in case an event happens that will destroy a significant part of the population (e.g., a massive fire or flood). Among those for whom that bunker was planned were members of the effective altruism movement.
In that bunker, the survivors led by SBF wanted to potentially create a lab and establish “sensible regulation around human genetic enhancement.”
Here’s comes intriguing part as to why SBF chose Nauru Island
Nauru is the smallest island state in the world, with money laundering known to be conducted there several times in its history. Thus, this particular choice of location for SBF’s “bunker” adds a flavor of intrigue to this story.
According to the court filings, Bankman-Fried himself was accused to defrauding FTX customers of roughly $8 billion in cryptocurrencies they held in the platform’s wallets.
Thus, the actions of SBF do not seem to match the concept of effective altruism, which implies that a group of people accumulates wealth to help those who are underprivileged. His survival plan also raises ethical concerns, as well as questions regarding whether he indeed wanted to accumulate large wealth to help the less fortunate.
However, CNBC states that "a representative for Nauru confirmed the island nation was not and has never been for sale."
SBF knew how to save FTX, John Deaton claims
Founder of Crypto-Law.US and vocal Ripple/XRP advocate John Deaton is a harsh SBF critic. In a recent tweet, he stated that now “crypto is back in full swing again.”
Deaton stated that if Bankman-Friend had not filed for FTX’s bankruptcy and managed to raise enough money (or provide his own funds) to “stop the bleeding” of the FTX platform, he would have managed to save his business and himself from prison.
Godfrey Benjamin
Tomiwabold Olajide
