Taylor Swift, a pop icon and 12-time Grammy Award winner, reportedly turned down a $100 million sponsorship offer from the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX due to concerns about unregistered securities. A number of FTX celebrity endorsers are currently facing a class action lawsuit, including Shaquille O’Neal (Shaq), Tom Brady, and Larry David.
How Taylor Swift Avoided Partnering With FTX
Taylor Swift, a famous singer-songwriter who has won 12 Grammy Awards from 46 nominations, reportedly did due diligence on now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX and turned down a sponsorship proposal from former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November of last year.
Adam Moskowitz, one of the attorneys leading a $5 million class-action lawsuit against 16 celebrity endorsers of FTX revealed during an episode of the Block’s Scoop podcast that Swift took the step of consulting with her lawyer when approached by SBF, in contrast to other celebrities who invested in FTX.
“The one person I found that [talked to their lawyers] was Taylor Swift,” Moskowitz shared, adding:
In our discovery, Taylor Swift actually asked them: ‘Can you tell me that these are not unregistered securities?’
Bankman-Fried, who is facing multiple fraud charges in the U.S., reportedly lobbied aggressively for a partnership with Swift. The partnership would have cost the bankrupt crypto company more than $100 million over three years.
Describing FTX as a “pyramid scheme,” Moskowitz, along with former Weinstein lawyer David Boies, filed a class-action lawsuit in Florida alleging that the crypto exchange’s celebrity endorsers promoted a “Ponzi scheme,” which impacted “thousands, if not millions, of consumers nationwide.” Shaquille O’Neal (also known as Shaq), Tom Brady, and Larry David are among the FTX celebrity promoters who are facing a class-action lawsuit filed by Moskowitz for endorsing sales of unregistered securities.
Commenting on how Swift avoided involvement with FTX, Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who also turned down an offer from Bankman-Fried when the former FTX executive wanted to invest in Twitter, tweeted Wednesday:
I’m not surprised. Taylor is smart and her father is a well-regarded investment banker.
Scott Kingsley Swift, Taylor’s father, founded the Swift Group, a wealth management and financial advisory group that is part of Merrill Lynch, a Bank of America company. Taylor has expressed her admiration for her father’s passion for his work on several occasions. Even at the young age of eight, when her peers aspired to become astronauts or ballerinas, Taylor wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a financial adviser.
What do you think about pop icon Taylor Swift being concerned about unregistered securities when approached by the disgraced FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried? Let us know in the comments section below.
