An anonymous Twitter user has claimed without evidence that, working with whistleblowers within the FDIC, they have obtained audio recordings of private phone calls, agency telephone meetings, and Microsoft Team meetings.
https://x.com/FDIC_Exposed/status/1878135189253284280
Market resolves to true if the statements alleged in this tweet as being present in recordings are substantially present in recordings which are authenticated by either
a) a tier one news outlet (WSJ, Bloomberg, NYTimes, etc)
or
b) the U.S federal government (Congressional inquiry, official act of the FDIC itself, OIG investigation, criminal indictment, etc)
Neither of the above lists are exhaustive.
Disclosure of the recordings themselves is not necessary or sufficient for this market to resolve Yes; the market focuses on authentication by a source reasonably presumed to have access to the recordings and a presumption of probity.
Not all recordings need to be authenticated; Yes holders are buying "whistleblowers are clearly making lots of recordings and strategically leaking them to Twitter anons", No holders are buying "this is a shitpoast." I will resolve the market subjectively on this score, taking into account trading prices. Participants in this market may wish to note that I am broadly crypto-skeptical but considered honest.
The truth or falsity of claims made on the recordings is not the focus of this market. As a non-limiting example, authentication of a recording alleging a romantic relationship being used to punish a whistleblower will cause this market to resolve to Yes irrespective of whether any romantic relationship or scheme to punish happened.
I may trade in this market. A few years ago I would have been a zero; my opening bid, which I will make within 24 hours, is 2.
Market default resolves to No at EOY 2025.
Edit to add: As a courtesy to market participants, I have archived the tweet here:
https://media.kalzumeus.com/misc/fdic-exposed-tweet-archive.md
SHA512 hash of that file is 95bd7d26d1bda49db714574a7ff25e0ef704e9e85422866888dfe9cec219f5a9b95618b5267a9fb551cb491c113f2972e1616ab8d86847f64836ca49019608fa
1,000
3.00Having been in similar meetings myself, I would be surprised if #2 & #3 on that list didn't happen. Other stuff seems really far-fetched.
What we're trading on here is just whether a trustworthy source will report that they examined at least one recording and it appears genuine, but it's not inconceivable, if someone's going to go to all this trouble, that some are legit and some are voice-clone fakes. I think I'll wait for indications of whether the account has sufficient trade-craft to take a position.
I am very skeptical of some of the claims. For example, that an FDIC employee was bragging about making so much more money than one of their opponents seems to be bad theory of mind. Government bureaucrats do not talk like this. On the other hand, trying to manipulate FOIA seems more plausible.
So, I am 99% confident that some of the claims are made up, but less confident that there isn't some recording where some legal game to make documents non-FOIAable is openly discussed.
@LuisPedroCoelho Yep, agree on both points. One of the motivations for opening the market was that there was some specificity and vigor with respect to allegations, such that they either clearly exist on audio or they don't, versus a claim like "A staffer whose name will remain nameless contemplated some hijinks in a meeting", which is extremely subjective and might be post-hoc justifiable with a sourced report about almost any meeting ever.