Thatch

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

HE HID A £20,000 MISTAKE THAT WAS NOT EVEN HIS, AND THREE YEARS LATER THAT HIDDEN NUMBER HAD SWALLOWED £827 MILLION AND A 233 YEAR OLD BANK THAT ENDED UP SELLING FOR ONE POUND

In July 1992 a 25 year old running a small trading desk in Singapore covered up somebody else's error. A junior had sold contracts she was supposed to buy. It cost about £20,000. He moved it into a dormant account nobody was looking at and said nothing to London.

His name is Nick Leeson. Four years before that he was a clerk from Watford who had failed his maths exam at school.

The account number was 88888.

The number never went away. Every attempt to trade his way back to zero needed a bigger position, and every bigger position needed more money from London, and London kept wiring it because on paper he was the best trader the firm had. By January 1995 the entire future of the bank was sitting on one bet that Japan would stay quiet. On 17 January an earthquake hit Kobe.

When someone finally opened account 88888 it held £827 million of losses, more than everything the bank was worth. Barings was 233 years old and had banked for the Queen. It was sold to a Dutch bank for one pound.

Ask how nobody noticed for three years and he answers it himself, on camera, smiling.

"I would go and do the work, be very very friendly, everybody would probably say that they thought they were my best friend."

Nobody loses £827 million in a day. He lost £20,000 and then spent three years refusing to say it out loud, and the silence did the rest.

Watch him describe how easy the people around him were to manage. Everyone watching is sure they would have been the one to notice.

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

IN 1998 SHE ASKED ONE QUESTION ABOUT A $27 TRILLION MARKET NOBODY COULD SEE, THE MOST POWERFUL MEN IN AMERICA SHUT HER DOWN INSIDE A YEAR, AND BY 2007 THAT MARKET HAD GROWN TO $595 TRILLION

She ran a small federal agency most people had never heard of. She was not trying to ban anything. She published a paper asking whether anyone at all should be allowed to see inside a market that was already worth $27 trillion and traded entirely in private, bank to bank, with no record anyone could check.

Her name is Brooksley Born. The first woman to run the Stanford Law Review, and at that point the chair of the commission that regulates futures trading.

The answer came fast.

The Treasury Secretary, the head of the stock market regulator and the chairman of the Federal Reserve put out a joint statement against her. One of her advisers walked into her office and found her white, just putting down the phone.

"He says, 'You're going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II,' that he has, my memory is, 13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop right away. No more."

Weeks after that call, a single fund blew a hole in the exact market she was asking about, and the Federal Reserve had to gather fourteen banks in one room to clean it up. Congress responded by passing a law that forbade her agency from touching the subject. She left the following year.

Nobody hid anything from her. She was told plainly, by the most respected men in the country, that looking was more dangerous than not looking.

Watch them explain on camera why a market nobody could see was safer left alone. Everyone watching is certain they would have taken her side.

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

@chalkxbt wow, firstly hear about the story

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

@0_x_Bender us factories are strugling of the expensive work power

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

@Rinataseyo i'm using agent while researching a very large info

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

@mireltrace the knowledge is free, and still no one is paying attention...

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

@shynkariukIllia 4.9 BILLIONS... i cannot imagine the amount of money even

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

@cryp_cryp Everyone does the “smart” thing at the same time and suddenly the smart thing becomes the dumbest outcome possible

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

IN 1998 SHE ASKED ONE QUESTION ABOUT A $27 TRILLION MARKET NOBODY COULD SEE, THE MOST POWERFUL MEN IN AMERICA SHUT HER DOWN INSIDE A YEAR, AND BY 2007 THAT MARKET HAD GROWN TO $595 TRILLION

She ran a small federal agency most people had never heard of. She was not trying to ban anything. She published a paper asking whether anyone at all should be allowed to see inside a market that was already worth $27 trillion and traded entirely in private, bank to bank, with no record anyone could check.

Her name is Brooksley Born. The first woman to run the Stanford Law Review, and at that point the chair of the commission that regulates futures trading.

The answer came fast.

The Treasury Secretary, the head of the stock market regulator and the chairman of the Federal Reserve put out a joint statement against her. One of her advisers walked into her office and found her white, just putting down the phone.

"He says, 'You're going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II,' that he has, my memory is, 13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop right away. No more."

Weeks after that call, a single fund blew a hole in the exact market she was asking about, and the Federal Reserve had to gather fourteen banks in one room to clean it up. Congress responded by passing a law that forbade her agency from touching the subject. She left the following year.

Nobody hid anything from her. She was told plainly, by the most respected men in the country, that looking was more dangerous than not looking.

Watch them explain on camera why a market nobody could see was safer left alone. Everyone watching is certain they would have taken her side.

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

HE HID A £20,000 MISTAKE THAT WAS NOT EVEN HIS, AND THREE YEARS LATER THAT HIDDEN NUMBER HAD SWALLOWED £827 MILLION AND A 233 YEAR OLD BANK THAT ENDED UP SELLING FOR ONE POUND

In July 1992 a 25 year old running a small trading desk in Singapore covered up somebody else's error. A junior had sold contracts she was supposed to buy. It cost about £20,000. He moved it into a dormant account nobody was looking at and said nothing to London.

His name is Nick Leeson. Four years before that he was a clerk from Watford who had failed his maths exam at school.

The account number was 88888.

The number never went away. Every attempt to trade his way back to zero needed a bigger position, and every bigger position needed more money from London, and London kept wiring it because on paper he was the best trader the firm had. By January 1995 the entire future of the bank was sitting on one bet that Japan would stay quiet. On 17 January an earthquake hit Kobe.

When someone finally opened account 88888 it held £827 million of losses, more than everything the bank was worth. Barings was 233 years old and had banked for the Queen. It was sold to a Dutch bank for one pound.

Ask how nobody noticed for three years and he answers it himself, on camera, smiling.

"I would go and do the work, be very very friendly, everybody would probably say that they thought they were my best friend."

Nobody loses £827 million in a day. He lost £20,000 and then spent three years refusing to say it out loud, and the silence did the rest.

Watch him describe how easy the people around him were to manage. Everyone watching is sure they would have been the one to notice.

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

@chalkxbt wow, the story worth some movie to be made

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

@0_x_Bender waitinf for the unitree ipo, i'm really wanna see how they are gonna compete with us markets

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

@chalkxbt reality is everything, as ronaldo once said "past doesn't matter, future is not here yet, present is a gift"

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

@brainrulax yeah, that's him

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

EVERYONE KNOWS HE PAID 10,000 BITCOIN FOR TWO PIZZAS, ALMOST NOBODY KNOWS HE SPENT TEN TIMES THAT, AND ON CAMERA HE EXPLAINED WHAT HE WAS ACTUALLY BUYING

On 22 May 2010 a programmer in Florida paid 10,000 bitcoin for two pizzas. The coins were worth about $41 that day. He posted the offer on a forum, a stranger took it, ordered the pizzas on a credit card, and a delivery kid carried them to the door.

His name is Laszlo Hanyecz. He mined those coins on his own machine, after writing the code that let ordinary graphics cards do the mining at all.

The pizzas are the famous part. They were not the expensive part.

He mined and spent around 100,000 bitcoin in total. More pizza, hardware, things nobody remembers. By the time a television crew reached his kitchen in 2019, that pile would have been worth about $800 million.

He was not being careless. He was running a test, and he says so himself.

"I honestly thought it would be really cool if I could say, hey, I just traded this, you know, open source internet money for a real world good."

Nobody had ever done it. Money is only money once a stranger accepts it for something you can eat, and somebody had to be the first to find out.

Watch a man describe the most expensive experiment in the history of food. Most people would not spend twenty dollars to test the thing they already believe in.

[Chalk @chalkxbt]

https://t.co/z1rm7pCOlt

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

@readswithravi but most of us don't have the same control of attention as elon

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

@swogx anonymity is everything with such money

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

HE BUILT A FORTUNE OF MORE THAN $8 BILLION, SPENT THIRTY YEARS SECRETLY GIVING AWAY EVERY DOLLAR OF IT, AND DIED IN A RENTED APARTMENT WITH ABOUT $2 MILLION TO HIS NAME

For fifteen years universities, hospitals and clinics on five continents kept receiving enormous cheques from a donor nobody could name. Some of them had to sign a paper agreeing never to say where the money came from, and never to go looking.

His name is Chuck Feeney. He co-founded the duty free shops you have walked past in every airport of your life.

In 1984, at 53, he quietly signed his entire stake in that business over to a foundation. He kept no house, no car, and told almost no one what he had done.

The world only found out in 1997, and only because the company was being sold and the paperwork went to court.

He flew in the back of the plane long after he could have bought the plane. No car, no house, one pair of shoes and a fifteen dollar watch. His children spent their summers waiting tables.

His own family found out the way everyone else eventually did, at a dinner where he stood up and said he had an announcement.

"I just want you to know that I've given everything away."

By the time the foundation closed itself down in 2020 it had handed out more than $8 billion, almost all of it while he was still alive to watch it land. He kept about $2 million to live on.

Money that moves after you are gone is a stranger's decision. He wanted to be in the room while it was being made.

Watch a man who had every reason to be famous explain why he paid to stay anonymous. Most people spend the money on being seen.

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

@chalkxbt this one saved

[Thatch @thatchgmi]

@chalkxbt absolutely agree, the story worth attention for sure