Reported by Pete Syme

Taylor Swift avoided signing a $100 million sponsorship deal with FTX because she was the only celebrity to question the crypto exchange, according to the lawyer handling a class-action lawsuit against several FTX promoters.

Adam Moskowitz appeared on “The Scoop” podcast to discuss the lawsuit, and said that the plaintiffs are seeking over $5 billion from FTX’s celebrity endorsers, including Shaquille O’Neal, Tom Brady, and Larry David.

The lawyer alleged that celebrities didn’t do their due diligence to check whether FTX was breaking the law. “The one person I found that did that was Taylor Swift,” Moskowitz told The Scoop’s Frank Chaparro, adding that Swift pulled out of the deal and never promoted the now-bankrupt exchange

The singer – whose father used to work for Merrill Lynch – began discussing the $100 million-tour sponsorship with FTX in the fall of 2021, per the Financial Times.

The terms included selling tickets as NFTs, although FTX marketing staff told the Times that “no one really liked the deal” and they thought it was “too expensive from the beginning.”

“In our discovery, Taylor Swift actually asked them: ‘Can you tell me that these are not unregistered securities?'” Moskowitz said.

A security is a tradeable asset that holds value, like a stock or a bond. All securities that are offered and sold in the US must be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In a complaint against FTX executives last December, the SEC said the company’s cryptocurrency, FTT, is classified as a security because it was sold as an investment contract. It was not appropriately registered, however.

Read full report: https://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-swift-avoided-100-million-ftx-deal-with-securities-question-2023-4?amp