Foreign What's up Guys and welcome back to Wall Street Millennial On this channel, we cover everything related to socks and investing. Kevin O'leary is one of the most famous people in the world of business and investing. He has built a name for himself by co-hosting the hit TV show Shark Tank where he makes private investments in small businesses. He portrays himself as a highly sophisticated, no-nonsense investor who can see through the noise and identify Diamonds in the Rough He's built a massive social media presence with almost 1 million subscribers on his Twitter and YouTube pages each.

However, over the past few years O'leary's previously Stellar reputation has decreased substantially as a result of a series of disastrous Investments unprofessional Antics and inconsistencies in his public statements. About a year ago, we published this video about O'leary's massive Bitcoin flip-flop The link to the video is in the description below basically: O'leary started buying Bitcoin in 2017, but as late as 2019 he went on CNBC saying that it's a scam. When the price started increasing in 2020, he finally disclosed his crypto positions. Not only did he disclose his personal Bitcoin positions, he shifted his investment Focus to focus primarily on crypto.

He changed his Twitter profile picture to have blue laser eyes, which has become common practice amongst crypto enthusiasts. He also started wearing sweatpants and flip-flops during his television interviews, which was an attempt to appeal to the younger. Generations Everything from his Antics on Shark Tank to his Twitter profile art are carefully crafted to create the public image of a trustworthy and sophisticated investor. O'leary has milked his Public Image for tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars by using his social media platforms to promote his business ventures and becoming a paid Ambassador for Brands.

But over the past month, the reputation he had spent the past decade building up has been crushed and probably to an unreparable level. O'leary was paid 15 million dollars by FTX to become a paid spokesperson for the company. This alone is not terribly incriminating. Very few people were able to see through Sam Bankman Freed's lies until his House of Cards blew up this past.

November After FTX filed for bankruptcy, it quickly became clear that the entire company was a massive fraud, especially after SPF went on his sympathy tour where there were numerous and obvious factual inconsistencies in his public interviews. At this point, O'leary could have admitted he was wrong, apologized and donated his 15 million influencer fee to Fdx's victims, and promised to conduct more due diligence in the future. This could have saved what little of his reputation remained. However, instead of returning his 15 million dollars, he continued defending SPF and even said that he would consider investing with him in the future.

In this video, we'll take a deep dive into O'leary's relationship with FTX and why he is still defending its disgraced founder to this day. Quick pause from her sponsors over at Masterworks 2022 has not been a great year for the individual investor, with the S P 500 falling into a bear market and crypto almost completely imploding. That's why nearly 9 in 10 wealth advisors are diversifying into alternative assets. Things with a low correlation to stocks including Contemporary Art The numbers show that contemporary art has a negative .04 correlation to develop market equities and less than 0.3 correlation to other asset classes.

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And now back to the video. About two weeks ago, SPF gave an interview at the New York Times Deal Book Summit In the interview, he categorically denied intentionally stealing user funds. He blamed the 8 billion dollar hole in Ftx's balance sheet on poor internal controls and accounting glitches. If you believe his claims, I have a bridge to sell to you and it looks like we may have two willing buyers for a metaphorical Bridge Shortly after the interview, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman posted a tweet saying that he believed Spf's explanation Kevin O'leary Responded by saying that he agrees with Ackman's assessment.

if Kevin O'leary doesn't think that SPF stole the money, where does he think it went on December 15th O'leary Testified under oath at a U.S Senate Hearing Sam Bankman Freed was also invited but was unable to attend because he was arrested the day prior. So let's see what Mr Wonderful had to say. So let me ask you directly: You were an investor in FTX and I know you've spoken frequently with Sam Bank and Freed over over an extended period of time. Why do you believe FDX failed I Have an opinion I Don't have the records here it is.

Tell me the use of proceeds of the assets to your company, where did you spend it And then he told me about a transaction that occurred over the last 24 months, the repurchase of his shares from Finance His competitor I didn't know this at the time, but at some point CZ or Binance who runs Binance purchased 20 ownership in Sandbag Refried's firm for seed stock and then over time and I asked him what would compel you to spend 2 billion was the number he was giving me at that time. Later in a substant conversation about 24 hours later, he told me he could have been as much as three billion dollars to buy back the shares from. CZ I asked him what would compel you to do that? Apparently, according to Sam Bankman Freed CZ would not comply with the regulated requests in these different geographies different jurisdictions to provide the data that would clear them for a license. He withheld it.

According to Sambeck and Freed, the only option the management and Sandbank and Freed had was to buy him out at an extraordinary valuation of close to 32 billion unless apparently a 15 discount that stripped the balance sheet of assets. The first thing to note is that Kevin O'leary and Sam Bateman Freed appeared to have a very close relationship. O'leary had Spf's phone number and was able to call him, but there's something else that's even more interesting. Binance was one of the First Investors in FTX buying a 20 Equity ownership stake for 100 million dollars in 2019.

O'leary says I didn't know this at the time of making his investment in FTX or getting paid 15 million dollars as a spokesman, whether or not this was his intention. O'leary effectively admitted to doing almost zero due diligence when making an investment in a private company. One of the first things you should do is look at a list of the company's investors. This is a standard part of due diligence because you need to see if there are any potential conflicts of interest.

and if your biggest competitor owns 20 of your shares, this is a big red flag. Binance's investment in FTX was publicly disclosed and it only takes about five seconds to find out about this with a Google search. O'leary has been investing in private companies for at least the last 10 years on Shark Tank and it's very difficult to believe he could have been so incompetent. There are a couple more interesting things about this clip.

according to O'leary SPF stole user funds to buy back shares from Binance. Regardless of the motivation, what O'leary is describing is blatantly illegal. Imagine if JB Morgan wanted to buy back stock, but they didn't have the cash on hand so they stole the money from Chase savings accounts. Another interesting thing is that SPF can't get his numbers straight.

He first told O'leary that the buyback cost them two billion dollars the next day, he said it was three billion dollars. Given the importance of this alleged incident, the idea that SPF would be off by one billion dollars is incomprehensible. If O'leary actually believes any of this. That might make him the most gullible man in the world who asked me why it went bankrupt.

Go to the last week all of a sudden in social media CZ is asking for another 500 million dollars. He wants to do a block trade of Ftt or the for the the proprietary token of FTX Was it converted back to Fiat Why would you put that out there? You know it's going to push down the pressure. It's going to put push down the value of that coin dramatically. That's exactly what happened after selling its Equity stake in FTX Binance still owned about 500 million dollars worth of Fct tokens in early.

November Binance announced their intention to sell the entire Ftt position O'leary claims that CZ was asking for another 500 million dollars, but this is simply not true on November 6, 2022. CZ tweeted about Binance's intention to dump his entire stake on FTX but they never asked. FTX for 500 million dollars and FTX would have zero obligation to pay them if they did. Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison proactively offered to buy this position over the counter.

Given the stay of Alameda's balance sheet, it's unlikely that they could have made good on this promise unless they stole even more money from FDX depositors. CZ did not take Caroline Ellison up on the offer. In my view, my personal opinion, these two behemoths that own the unregulated market together and grow these incredible businesses. In terms of growth, we're at war with each other and one put the other out of business.

Intentionally, Binance sold their FDT tokens on the open market, which they had every right to do. Is it possible that Binance's sale contributed to Fcx's collapse? It is possible, but withdrawals from Fgx were already increasing. After Coindesk release an article exposing Alameda's suspiciously large Holdings of ftt. FTX was a house of Cards built on a foundation of lies and frauds.

All frauds collapsed under their own weight. Eventually, it's possible that Binance's Ftt dump expedited the collapse, but if this is the case, he was probably doing a favor to the investing public. The longer FDX could be allowed to operate, the larger it would grow. This would ultimately mean more investors being victimized.

Kevin O'leary appears to be Shifting the blame away from SPF and putting it on Binance instead. He possibly thinks that this would be better for his Public Image Given the Apparently close relationship that he had with the FTX founder, it's also possible that he actually believes what he's saying. He says that he believes Sam Binkmann freed and his perception about what happened appears to be mainly based on one phone call he had with the disgraced crypto founder. It does not appear that he did any due diligence on his own.

This would be like an Enron shareholder calling up Jeff Skilling to ask him about what happened and taking what he says at face value. The complete failure of O'leary to do even the most basic of due diligence on FTX puts his investing Acumen in serious doubt. This is a big problem for him because many of his business ventures rely on his Public Image and large social media following. O'leary's brand name was extremely valuable enough so that FTX was willing to pay him 15 million dollars to be a spokesman.

Thousands of investors and entrepreneurs actively follow him for business advice, but ever since he got involved in Crypto a few years ago, it has become obvious that he is not the sophisticated investor that he tries to come across as other than Fgx, one of the biggest Crypto Adventures A has been involved in is Wonderfi a Canadian Crypto company named after his Shark Tank Persona Mr Wonderful Wonderful ipo'd on the Toronto Stock Exchange this summer and has since lost 75 percent of its value. It is now comfortably in Penny Stock territory. With a share price of 16 cents and a market cap of 25 million Canadian dollars, the company is losing about 10 million dollars per quarter. With so many failures under his belt, it's hard to imagine that he could have any value as a paid spokesman anymore.

All right guys, that wraps it up for this video. What do you think about Kevin O'leary Will he ever be able to rebuild his reputation? Let us know in the comments section below. As always, thank you so much for watching and we'll see in the next one. Wall Street Millennial Signing out.