Taylor Swift doesn’t just write songs that people like, she also knows how to do work. When the now-defunct crypto exchange FTX offered her a $100 million sponsorship deal in 2021, the pop star asked, “Can you tell me that these are not unregistered securities?” This is according to the lawyer who is leading a class action case against FTX promoters.
In an appearance for the podcast The Scoop, that lawyer, Adam Moskowitz, said that Swift was the only famous person to question the exchange. Before, her father worked at Merrill Lynch.
Swift’s possible partnership with FTX could have included NFT tickets and would have been one of the biggest deals for the crypto exchange. However, anonymous FTX workers told the Financial Times last year, “No one really liked the deal. It was too expensive from the beginning.”
Check out some other new content related to Taylor Swift we recently published:
- Taylor Swift Spotted in NYC After Joe Alwyn Breakup News
- Taylor Swift Batman Music Video: A Pop Culture Crossover Event
At the height of its popularity, FTX spent a lot of money on promotion, including partnerships with Major League Baseball, a Formula 1 team, and an e-sports team. It also paid to have its name put on the building where the Miami Heat play.
Securities, which must be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, are governed by the Supreme Court’s Howey Test. Investment contracts are securities, which are defined as “when money is invested in a common enterprise with a reasonable expectation of profits from the efforts of others.”
In a lawsuit filed in December, the SEC said that FTX’s native token, called FTT, was a security. In the class action lawsuit that Moskowitz filed in November, he said that celebrities like Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Steph Curry, Shaquille O’Neill, MLB players David Ortiz and Shohei Ohtani, and the Golden State Warriors broke Florida securities and consumer protection laws, and took part in an illegal civil conspiracy. Moskowitz and the well-known lawyer David Boies are trying to get money back for investors who lost money with FTX.
Last year, FTX went out of business because it didn’t have enough money to pay its bills. Sam Bankman-Fried, the company’s former CEO and founder, was charged with eight counts, including wire fraud because he reportedly mishandled customer funds. In February, a new charge was brought against the discredited crypto founder and two other people who were not named.
