Report: Taylor Swift Was the Only Celebrity Savvy Enough to Call Bullshit on FTX's Grift Right to Their Crooked Faces

MARIO DUNCANSON. Getty Images.

By now, the list of famous persons to get completely fleeced by Sam Bankman-Fried and the rest of his creepy polyamorous cult nerds:

… should be familiar to anyone who's been following this incredible story. Highly intelligent people who have been wildly successful in many fields of endeavor allowed themselves to be financially pants by a gang of socially awkward twerps who look like they never survived the first volley of a gym class Dodgeball game. Tom Brady and Gisele. Larry David. Shaquille O'Neal. Even Kevin O'Leary, who presumably has made wise investing his entire life's work:

… fell right into this scam like tourists buying $20 Rolexes off a blanket on the sidewalk. 

But not every famous person was so taken in. We've suspected for while now that Taylor Swift was approached as well, but was onto SBF and his band of Slytherins and Hufflepuffs:

But now, thanks to a lawyer who is handling the lawsuit against FTX, we're beginning to learn the full extent of her business sense on this one:

Source - When approached about an endorsement deal, Swift asked FTX brass “‘Can you tell me that these are not unregistered securities?” attorney Adam Moskowitz said on the Block’s The Scoop podcast.

FTX and Swift discussed a $100 million sponsorship of her ongoing tour before negotiations broke down last spring, sources told the Financial Times, with FTX’s then-billionaire CEO Bankman-Fried intimately involved in the talks.

Swift was the “only person” who consulted her legal team and did proper due diligence on FTX before agreeing to a deal, Moskowitz claimed. …

Swift is worth $570 million, Forbes estimated last June, and raked in some $92 million last year.

Before we go on, let me make a vow to you. I appreciate you reading my work. And I respect our audience, the privilege it is to work here, and Taylor Swift as an artist, too much to do that gimmicky Boomer thing where I work her lyrics into anything I'm about to say. Unlike for example, our elected officials, who just couldn't help themselves because their staff thought it would make them seem cool and relatable. And instead just gave the nation a full-body cringe:

That promise is the Old Balls Difference. You're welcome.

Given the quote from Swift in that first paragraph, is it any wonder the numbers in the last line are what they are? It's one thing to have a mind capable of conceptualizing, composing, performing, and producing music well enough to make you an internationally recognized superstar. It's another thing to display that level of business acumen. That requires two separate and distinct hemispheres of the brain that perform very different functions. History is littered with great artists who died broke because they lacked the ability to make money off their creative expression or to manage the money they did make. The fact Swift is capable of doing both simultaneously might make her unique among all the entertainers we have. 

My only regret is that we don't have video of the meeting. Hollywood loves to produce stories of Girl Bosses who walk into a board room full of rich men in suits and tell them what's what. From Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada to Lucy Liu cutting a mob boss' head off in Kill Bill to She-Hulk in She-Hulk, it's one of our most popular tropes. And here Taylor Swift did it for real, when athletes, super models, comedy giants and professional investors couldn't be bothered to do their homework and lost tens of millions in the process. 

At this rate, she's going to own the whole world. Without losing a dime of it in a ridiculous crypto Ponzi scheme. And I for one will gladly bow before our Queen. With Her Majesty Taylor Swift, we'll be in good hands.