The Crypto Kid wasn't a friend of Berkeley

Monday, November 14, 2022

Remember the song, The Cisco Kid Was a Friend of Mine?* He might have seemed to be a friend, but the Crypto Kid, Sam Bankman-Fried - the scammer who ran the nowbankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange, turns out to be less of a friend of UC-Berkeley than might have been thought. (He seems to be currently hanging out in the Bahamas, far away from lots of angry investors.) As we have been discussing in prior posts, the Regents later this week will be taking up UCLA's move to the Big 10, and one of the issues is the negative financial impact on UC-Berkeley whose athletics program, like UCLA's, has had money problems. From SFist:

You may have not been following the spectacular flame-out of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which just filed for bankruptcy Friday morning. But if you’re a Cal Bears football fan, or if you have any interest in the financial health of UC Berkeley, you will have some interest in this stunning-to-some, completely predictable to the rest of us, crypto downfall. Just 14 months ago, this very crypto company called FTX bought the naming rights to Cal Memorial Stadium for $17.5 million. So… what the heck happens to Cal's stadium now?

..."If there's no company, the branding goes away," Columbia University professor of sports management Joe Favorito tells Business Insider. "The bigger concern is if you sold rights and you're anticipating revenue coming in that has not come in, then you run into a problem." ...

Full story at https://sfist.com/2022/11/11/crypto-giant-ftxs-massive-implosion-likelymeans-curtains-for-cals-17-5-million-stadium-naming-rights-deal/.

To hear the text above, click on the link below:

https://ia601402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/crypto%20berkeley.mp3

*If you're somehow not familiar with the song, here it is:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YllP22mVZQg.