Swift was 'the one person' who did her research
Taylor Swift realized FTX was trouble sooner than most given she was perhaps the only celebrity to question its legitimacy before the cryptocurrency exchange crashed last year.
According to news sources, the pop music superstar avoided being embroiled in a multibillion-dollar class action lawsuit against Sam Bankman-Fried's defunct crypto exchange FTX by asking the right question.
“In our discovery, Taylor Swift actually asked them, 'Can you tell me that these are not unregistered securities?’” Adam Moskowitz, the lawyer overseeing the lawsuit, said. Moskowitz told The Block's "The Scoop" podcast that Swift was "the one person" who did her homework.
Swift's smart move, according to billionaire Elon Musk, may have been influenced by her upbringing. “I’m not surprised. Taylor is smart and her father is a well-regarded investment banker,” he tweeted on Wednesday.
Swift was in discussions with the now-bankrupt exchange over a potential collaboration arrangement for $100 million, as The Financial Times had earlier reported, but the negotiations fell through, according to The Block.
On Wednesday, Moskowitz discussed his $5 million class action lawsuit against FTX and celebrity spokespeople including Shaquille O'Neal, Tom Brady, and "Seinfeld" creator Larry David during an appearance on the podcast. According to The Block, it took three months to find O'Neal and the case against FTX stalled as a result of difficulties serving O'Neal with a formal notice.
“The largest man on the planet, we can’t serve,” Moskowitz said, according to the web publication focused on digital assets. “In my 35 years of doing class action work, I’ve never had this issue before.”
Celebrities have come under regulatory investigation as a result of the recent turbulence in the cryptocurrency industry. The Securities and Exchange Commission has been cracking down on the cryptocurrency industry in recent years, and with FTX's collapse in November, they have intensified their enforcement efforts, beginning with fraud accusations against Bankman-Fried.
According to the regulator, unregistered securities, like those that FTX was found to be marketing, are not covered by the same rules and safeguards as those that are overseen by the SEC, leaving its investors open to financial fraud.
The SEC, meanwhile, indicated in February that it would pursue celebrities who had promoted digital assets as well, ordering former National Basketball Association player Paul Pierce to pay $1.4 million in response to claims that he had failed to disclose earning more than $244,000 in EMAX tokens, offered and sold by EthereumMax, on Twitter.
Along with Lindsay Lohan, professional boxer Jake Paul, pop singer Aliaune Damala Badara Akon Thiam (also known as Akon), rapper Miles McCollum (also known as Lil Yachty), singer Shaffer Smith, and actress and Internet personality Michelle Anne Mason (also known as Kendra Lust) were all fined by the SEC last month for their paid Twitter endorsements of the Tronix token.
