Inside the Deltec Files

A Cursory Prehistory of a Crypto Bank

I soon hope to have out there a long-form history on the tangled history of Deltec—the elusive, Bahamian off-shore bank that features heavily in the story of the ongoing FTX affair. It’s actually a piece that I’ve had on the backburner for over a year now; as I’m sure most people who work on these kind of subjects can attest, sometimes you get a project that infinitely defers itself into future. Part of what slows things down are the obligations of life and work. That is definitely true here, but I’ve also found the Deltec story basically impossible to write. It is so knotted and tangled, with each step of the bank’s history requiring digression upon digression to build the context vital for the narrative. CIA subterfuge in South America, the Castle Bank scene, the looting (and collapse) of Penn Central, eurodollar markets, the flow of arms from Brazil to Iraq during the height of the Iran-Iraq War, a surprise appearance by Saudi intelligence chief Turki al-Faisal—all these things flicker in and out the Deltec story long before cryptocurrency arrived on the scene.