[olingern]

This is a really interesting legal area. I wonder what the legal implications for social media influencers would be if FTX had used them for a PR push? I know of at least one YouTube video[1] pushing a positive sentiment for SBF but I don't think this form of modern "celebrity" was exploited as much as the traditional idea of celebrity was, i.e. Shaq and Tom Brady.

This brings up a really interesting question. If a person or business builds a brand, and another person or company fraudulently uses that brand as a form of promotion and trust building by proxy, is the brand liable for the fraudulent companies behaviors?

This is such a nuanced problem because there's plenty of "snake oil"[2] pushed by celebrities and influencers (Dr. Oz[3] comes to mind), just not at the scale that FTX did. If the court sides with the plantiff, it will set a very interesting precedent where anyone promoting a company will somehow have to do their due diligence. In the case of FTX, I don't know how you would do that research and it seems you would be signing up for accepting liability in the case that the company is fraudulent.

1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPM6rf0-e6M

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil

3 - https://www.cnn.com/2014/06/17/health/senate-grills-dr-oz

[dottrap]

This already happened. FTX was paying out lots of money to YouTube finance influencers for promotion. There is some public push back on some of the bigger influencers right now for their role in encouraging people to sign up with FTX, Graham Stephan, Meet Kevin, Andrei Jikh, Jeremy Financial Education are among 4 of the biggest names in this space.

Nobody knows what FTX compensation was, but there are rumors suggesting Graham Stephan was making 5 figures per month from FTX alone.

But, as the article states, legal liability will only apply to things deemed a security. FTX was a company, not a security.