Taylor Swift wasn’t a savvy crypto investor after all

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Photo: Taylor Hill/TAS23/Getty Images

In April, during the early days of her record-breaking Eras Tour, Taylor Swift got some good press from an unexpected place. Lawyer Adam Moskowitz, who is leading a class action lawsuit against FTX and its famous spokespersons for defrauding investors, claimed in a podcast that Swift was the only famous person to exercise due diligence when reviewing an endorsement deal with the allegedly fraudulent crypto exchange. . Moskowitz said unlike investors such as Tom Brady, Gisele Bndchen, Larry David and Shaquille ONeal, Swift did her homework. He quoted a specific question he claimed to have asked: Can you tell me that these are not unrecorded titles? His potential endorsement deal never happened.

But it turns out Swift never asked that nifty question. In a New York Times article on Thursday, which details the many celebrities who have egg on their faces for jumping too eagerly into the speculative world of cryptocurrencies, Adam Moskowitz modifies his commentary. He says he actually had no inside information about the negotiations between Swift and the bankrupt company of Sam Bankman-Frieds. In fact, according to sources familiar with the deal who spoke to The Times, Swift had committed to being an FTX sponsor after six months of talks. It was Bankman-Fried himself who decided to kill the case, and Swifts’ team were the disappointed party.

Negotiations likely fell through due to the high cost of signing Swift. Other celebrity spokespersons, like Brady and Bndchen, were paid $30 million and $18 million, respectively, in FTX stock that is now essentially worthless. But the Financial Times reports that Swift was looking for $100 million, which one employee accurately described as really, really high.

The news that Swift wasn’t particularly savvy comes as a blow to the subset of Americans who both know all the words to Anti-Hero and know Gary Gensler. But in hindsight, that shouldn’t be such a big surprise. In the big crypto hype cycle of 2021 and 2022, few celebrities didn’t want easy money.

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