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Comment by gamblor956 | Hacker News Reader

I believe Taylor Swift could have asked the question. She's an incredibly intelligent, person, the daughter of a finance professional, and she's demonstrated her business acumen repeatedly over the course of her career.

When someone offers you $100 million out of the blue to endorse them, that should trigger red flag alerts, especially for someone like Swift who zealously protects her image. It's likely that someone on her legal team pointed out the securities issue to her during a briefing, and she brought it up during negotiations with FTX (Rolling Stone notes that multiple members of the FTX C-Suite personally attempted to recruit her, and lawyers don't generally get involved in contract negotiations until an agreement in principle has been worked out.)

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Sure. I don't doubt for a second her intelligence, or even her seeing FTX as a fad or troubled. But the implications of an opaque SEC definition of security and its impact on her personal liability would be a bizarrely specific thing to be looking for.

Again, in pretty much every other celebrity endorsement deal, you are not personally on the hook if it turns out the company screwed up or defrauded people. It's just very unlucky for the defendants that the product turned out to be a security which is has special and arcane rules, instead of just made of asbestos by slave children, I guess.

Not really. I advised a very large name pop star when she was getting into investing in startups. She would sometimes meet with the CEO's and after a few months I was genuinely astonished how quickly she learned how to read a terms sheet, research a particular market, and ask extremely pointed and specific questions. She learned javascript for fun, just didn't want anyone to know because she thought it would diminish her image.

It's more than plausible that tons of people in Taylor's orbit tried to involve her in various crypto schemes, and either her dad someone on her team introduced her to the concept of unregulated securities (if she wasn't already aware - in interviews at the start of her career - when she was a teenager - she would say if music doesn't work out, she was going to go into finance).

A lot of entertainment industry celebrities are dumb as a bag of rocks. Others are terrifyingly smart. Ms. Swift strikes me as the latter

> She learned javascript for fun, just didn't want anyone to know because she thought it would diminish her image.

That's awful. Having a technical skill shouldn't be seen as a negative. Is this due to something specific to this pop star's audience, or does it apply more generally to celebrities outside of tech?

Maybe it's because javascript has a poor reputation?

If she'd learned a better language, maybe it would be seen as better? :)

it’s just not cool. it’s nerdy

implications of an opaque SEC definition of security and its impact on her personal liability would be a bizarrely specific thing to be looking for

Given that the "opaque SEC definition of security" has been one of the most-commented on aspects of cryptocurrencies for several years, it seems like it would be a basic thing for a financially savvy businesswoman to ask about.

pretty much every other celebrity endorsement deal, you are not personally on the hook if it turns out the company screwed up or defrauded people.

??? They definitely can be. It's been part of American jurisprudence for decades. The FTC even has specific rules governing endorsements....

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