[HN Gopher] Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself
___________________________________________________________________
Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself
Author : Hippocrates
Score : 219 points
Date : 2022-11-16 20:36 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vox.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vox.com)
| SilverBirch wrote:
| This is just classic. "OH I'm a crook? Well everyone's a crook!".
| No Sam. You're a crook, and we're not really intersted in taking
| moral lessons.It just reads like the lowest effort teenage coping
| mechanisms. And you know what? Andreesen will fund his next
| venture. Because it's about class, not returns.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Anyone with a couple weeks of legal education, never mind the
| caliber lawyers this guy should be able to afford, would
| immediately tell him to s t o p t a l k i n g.
|
| On a related note: https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| OMG. "The dog ate my homework" would have been a better excuse.
|
| > like, "oh FTX doesn't have a bank account, I guess people can
| wire to Alameda's to get money on FTX"
|
| > ....3 years later...
|
| > 'oh fuck it looks like people wired $8b to Alameda and oh god
| we basically forgot about the stub account that corresponded to
| that and so it was never delivered to FTX'
|
| So they "basically" forgot about $8B not transferred to FTX.
|
| But somehow FTX customers saw the funds deposited in their
| accounts, otherwise they would have complained.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Since more than one thing can be true at the same time, why not
| a combination of a) total lack of internal controls,
| understanding of basic accounting and book keeoing, b) total
| lack of competence when it comes to manage these amounts of
| money and c) actively defrauding customers by stealing their
| deposits?
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| All of the above.
|
| Alameda Research was clearly in the top of the worst hedge
| funds ever, and clearly they had terrible controls and
| accounting.
|
| However, without (c) you don't get this epic disaster. From
| SBF's tweets it is clear that they were aware they had to
| keep customer funds segregated.
|
| Remember the time they tried to pretend that USD is protected
| by the FDIC?
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/19/crypto-firm-ftx-receives-
| cea...
|
| Well, actually it was protected by the FDIC, but not from
| FTX.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| that's one of the wildest things I've ever read. So the guy faces
| criminal investigations and may owe people billions and he DMs a
| reporter and tells her literally, "yeah most of the ethics stuff
| I did was PR"..?
|
| I don't pride myself on having a lot of criminal energy or
| anthing but I don't understand how he even got to this point. Is
| this his last act of effective altruism for whoever sues him in a
| court?
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| >Bankman-Fried says his No. 1 priority now is to try to raise $8
| billion to make account holders whole.
|
| So, basically start up a new Ponzi. Because that's exactly what
| raising money from new investors to pay off existing investors
| is. Note he did NOT say "generate $8B in profit".
|
| At this point he needs to STFU, stop posting on social media,
| stop giving interviews in the media, and do whatever his lawyers
| tell him to.
| rosywoozlechan wrote:
| I don't think this is an earnest attempt to help his victims.
| He must know how ridiculous it is to ask for someone to repay
| his victims losses with nothing to offer in return. Feels like
| a legal strategy to mitigate criminal and civil consequences.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| To pay off creditors, not investors. The people he owes $8bn
| did not buy an investment product, they bought claims on
| dollars for dollars.
| expazl wrote:
| Well you see, he wants to take those $8B and put them in a box,
| then start printing box-tokens that he can lend to his trading
| arm, then he can build a market for those box tokens giving
| them intrinsic value, while he siphons the 8B$ off to ... wait,
| how he's going to make his users whole? Well you see he just
| needs to raise 16B$ and put them in a box...
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| > I feel bad for those who get fucked by it
|
| > by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the
| right shiboleths and so everyone likes us
|
| Woke washing pays off, that is why everyone does it.
|
| But luckily BTC is there to take the blame.
| dclusin wrote:
| His lawyers should take away his electronic devices from him.
| floatinglotus wrote:
| What an asshole. Dude has the nerve to badmouth regulators? What
| does he think he just did?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| How does this story keep getting worse!? Every time something new
| comes out.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| The guy's lawyers need to get him to shut up.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Seems like he's chosen the path of a real "poster". Trying to
| "post through it" until things improve or someone finally takes
| away his phone/computer.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Nothing but respect for that position. Never stop posting.
| fisherjeff wrote:
| Oh my god, I upvoted you before reading the DMs. I... wow,
| yeah, they need duct tape.
|
| EDIT: Okay I just cannot get over this, obviously I'm
| exaggerating but it's pretty much "I didn't want to do bad
| stuff because that would be bad, and then after I had
| personally done all of the bad things, I realized that I had,
| in fact, done something very bad."
| memish wrote:
| What's even more remarkable is that his dad is a lawyer and
| reportedly with him...
| harry8 wrote:
| "You're only making things worse for yourself!"
|
| Matthias: "Worse?! How could it get any worse?"
|
| --Monty Python's Life of Brian
|
| https://montypython.gifglobe.com/scene/?id=2ZrhmRltHUEk
| [deleted]
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| Jesus Christ...does this guy not know that you should keep quiet
| when you're the subject of a criminal investigation from multiple
| government agencies?
| [deleted]
| curiousgal wrote:
| I am 30 years old and I am laughing at anyone who has trusted
| these kids with anything. His balance sheet shows just how
| childish and out of depth he and his possie of "execs" are.
| nabogh wrote:
| Just looked it up. SBF is 30?
| twicetwice wrote:
| Yup, he founded Alameda Research in 2017 at age 25 and FTX
| in 2019 at 27.
| chrchang523 wrote:
| This is further evidence that he was thinking of this in terms
| of all-or-nothing coin flips. In case you haven't seen it:
|
| COWEN: Okay, but let's say there's a game: 51 percent, you
| double the Earth out somewhere else; 49 percent, it all
| disappears. Would you play that game? And would you keep on
| playing that, double or nothing?
|
| BANKMAN-FRIED: With one caveat. Let me give the caveat first,
| just to be a party pooper, which is, I'm assuming these are
| noninteracting universes. Is that right? Because to the extent
| they're in the same universe, then maybe duplicating doesn't
| actually double the value because maybe they would have
| colonized the other one anyway, eventually.
|
| COWEN: But holding all that constant, you're actually getting
| two Earths, but you're risking a 49 percent chance of it all
| disappearing.
|
| BANKMAN-FRIED: Again, I feel compelled to say caveats here,
| like, "How do you really know that's what's happening?" Blah,
| blah, blah, whatever. But that aside, take the pure
| hypothetical.
|
| COWEN: Then you keep on playing the game. So, what's the chance
| we're left with anything? Don't I just St. Petersburg paradox
| you into nonexistence?
|
| BANKMAN-FRIED: Well, not necessarily. Maybe you St. Petersburg
| paradox into an enormously valuable existence. That's the other
| option.
|
| https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/sam-bankman-frie...
|
| (See the first paragraph of
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BZ6XaCwN4QGgH9CxF/the-kelly-...
| for the outline of an explanation of why his reasoning was not
| applicable to most real-life scenarios. This is pretty subtle;
| >95% of the explanations on the Internet I've seen over the
| past week as to why SBF is "obviously wrong" don't actually
| work.)
|
| Maybe I'm speaking too soon, but he does seem ready to accept
| that he lost this flip. It would obviously be insane to trust
| with him anything big at this point, but I'm optimistic that he
| won't fight to the bitter end.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| SBF talks about money like a prop trader who thinks that
| blowing your account is just a thing that happens to everyone
| in their lifetime, crossed with an extreme Rationalist (of
| the self-described "Rationalist" community) who thinks
| everything can be reduced to choosing between Column A and
| Column B based on which column has more _utils_.
| ben_w wrote:
| Quite a lot of Rationalists aren't Utilitarians, for
| various reasons.
|
| Most of the ones I hang out with seem to agree with my
| characterisation of Utilitarianism as what happens when
| philosophers discovered basic arithmetic and then just
| stopped there. Most recently:
|
| """I remember in secondary school, with nobody to teach me
| more than basic trigonometry and algebra, I spent 6 months
| figuring out what I later learned were the two ways 3D
| rendering can be done: ray tracing, and turning points in
| 3D space into points in 2D (screen) space and drawing those
| as 2D primitives.
|
| Utilitarianism feels like even less than that, to me. It's
| the foundation of algebra upon which more can be built,
| saying that utility is a thing that can be combined, but it
| doesn't _really_ say how to combine utility, and all the
| weird things that happen in extreme hypotheticals are
| because it 's naively summing the potential utility of
| unbounded agents."""
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Is he wrong? I suspect that even if he does jail time for
| fraud etc. then he will come out of it famous, and with
| plenty of deep-pocketed investors lined up to ride another
| wave. What are the actual consequences to the big guys?
| alexb_ wrote:
| >COWEN: Then you keep on playing the game. So, what's the
| chance we're left with anything? Don't I just St. Petersburg
| paradox you into nonexistence?
|
| >BANKMAN-FRIED: Well, not necessarily. Maybe you St.
| Petersburg paradox into an enormously valuable existence.
| That's the other option.
|
| This logic is literally "You either win the lotto or you
| don't, 50/50 chance"
| ben_w wrote:
| Not quite. The question is defined in a way that the EV of
| bet is positive, even though repeatedly doing it gets you
| an arbitrarily high chance of (moral) bankruptcy.
|
| The original thing being referenced is St. Petersburg
| lottery, and each round of that _is_ 50 /50:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_paradox
| alexb_ wrote:
| I'm more talking about "well it could work out" reasoning
| as to why ignoring the St Petersburg Paradox is somehow
| justified.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| The whole point of the paradox is that if you keep playing
| it's impossible to end with anything but nothing. Sam laid
| out no exit point, not sure how he comes to the conclusion
| that he can end with an enormously valuable existence.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| Ah, a true genious mind...of a gambler.
| bboylen wrote:
| I've mistrusted SBF since this interview.
|
| I was quite frankly shocked that I didn't see more people
| questioning his judgement/ethics after this and other strange
| statements
| jaywalk wrote:
| But stealing and then losing customer deposits "was never the
| intention"
|
| You know, "Sometimes life creeps up on you" and then the
| customer deposits you stole are gone!
|
| He's clearly innocent, so he has nothing to worry about.
| pram wrote:
| We've all been there!
| NwtnsMthd wrote:
| > ... by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all
| the right shiboleths and so everyone likes us
|
| Sums up much of the world we live in :/
| teg4n_ wrote:
| Not really. That's an incredibly cynical take.
| Imnimo wrote:
| The obvious conclusion here is that SBF is just a cynical but
| skilled manipulator. But then why send these DMs at all - surely
| a skilled manipulator would know better, or could at least
| present himself in a positive light?
|
| Maybe all those stimulants have taken their toll. Or he's totally
| given up.
| memish wrote:
| I don't know how reliable this is, but it's from an Alameda
| partner:
|
| - Someone was dumping our coin
|
| - We found out it was Alameda
|
| - We asked them to stop market making, yet they continued
| dumping, all on Liquid
|
| - We have a lot of proof showing the above
|
| - We've known about the FTX scam months and months ago &
| contacted the SEC
|
| - Media did not listen to us
|
| - No one was listening because no one wanted to believe FTX & SBF
| was a scammer, even some of the biggest VC firm
|
| - I sent everything to the FTC multiple times, MONTHS AGO, & they
| didn't even reply
|
| - I won't comment on whether Gary Gensler was involved
|
| - Many exchanges & entities are likely wash trading like FTX.
| This issue is systematic
|
| https://twitter.com/marionawfal/status/1592947918146654208
| anonymoushn wrote:
| This Mario person is a charlatan who recently deleted the
| entire contents of his web site because it was publicly
| advertising that his career is the sale of fake engagement to
| pump shitcoins
| memish wrote:
| Mario is just the messenger here, not the speaker.
| nathias wrote:
| effective altruism is really effective until you get caught
| kranke155 wrote:
| SBF, his foundation and his family are well connected
| politically. NYT already did a bizarro puff piece on him, now Vox
| does this (which apparently directly received FTX foundation
| money).
|
| It's absurd as he is essentially a well connected criminal.
|
| _edit_ I do want to correct one thing - this is not a puff piece
| like the NYT one, actually it implicates him.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I wouldn't exactly call this a puff piece, unlike the NYT one.
| guelo wrote:
| People obviously want to hear what he has to say. Are you
| saying that an ethical media would refuse to interview him?
| Why?
| kranke155 wrote:
| No not at all, this is completely unlike the bizarro NYT
| piece.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| How is this a puff piece? Just posting these chat transcripts
| is damaging to his reputation and probably his chances in
| court. He does not come off looking good here.
| kranke155 wrote:
| His father is a lawyer so I'm confused about his behaviour.
| Does he think this will help him somehow, to appear like he's
| terribly sorry about what happened ? Surely his behaviour is
| criminal?
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| His parents are law professors specializing in philosophy,
| economics, and business.
|
| He would have done better with a street smart criminal
| lawyer.
| jmull wrote:
| This and the NYT interview are not puff pieces. They are
| handing SBF the rope to hang himself with, putting his
| confession on the record.
|
| Not sure what what the people pushing this narrative aren't
| understanding.
|
| If they wanted to protect him they would refuse to interview
| him and try to convince him not to speak to anyone but counsel
| about this.
| [deleted]
| ninth_ant wrote:
| > Not sure what what the people pushing this narrative aren't
| understanding
|
| They are clouded by anger and frustration, I'd wager, many
| folks lost money in this fraud. Some maybe caught up in the
| mob mentality and excitement around taking SBF down.
|
| Anything short of absolute demonization is not good enough
| when you're mad, I suppose.
| kranke155 wrote:
| I didn't lose anything, maybe I had 10$ in dust on FTX. But
| yeah I'm pretty mad and I'm even more mad because I believe
| CZ/Binance are also a super shady time bomb.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Maybe you're right. Actually wrote this before reading the
| article (typical!) and the article is not friendly to him at
| all, weirdly he seems to confess his activity. This is super
| weird because my impression is his father is a lawyer, so is
| it possible he actually doesn't think / knows he won't be
| convicted of anything?
| vkou wrote:
| Having two professors as parents isn't exactly 'well connected
| politically'[1]. Two senators, or two billionaires would be.
|
| [1] I can't say I've ever felt that I was well-connected
| politically...
| [deleted]
| kgwgk wrote:
| Did your father work with legislators to try to pass laws?
|
| "When I went to California to try to fight into it, I
| thought, 'Well, there's only 120 legislators. I'll talk to
| them all one on one,'" Bankman said. "I found that in order
| to do it, I had to hire a lobbyist because I just couldn't
| handle the details or get the meetings. In Congress, when I
| went there, now there's 500 plus, and what I found everywhere
| I went is that Intuit had already preceded me. They'd already
| met every representative I was going to meet."
|
| Did your mother create a political fundraising organization?
|
| "In 2018, the secretive Stanford-connected Democratic
| fundraising group Mind the Gap (MTG) funneled over $20
| million toward competitive U.S. House of Representative
| elections and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) organizations. In 2020,
| MTG wants to increase that number to $140 million.
|
| "MTG is led by Barbara Fried, the William W. and Gertrude H.
| Saunders Professor of Law; Paul Brest, an emeritus professor
| of law and director of the Law and Policy Lab; and Graham
| Gottlieb, a Stanford research affiliate. Of the three,
| Gottlieb has the most direct policy experience, having
| formerly served in junior roles in former President Barack
| Obama's 2012 reelection campaign and in Obama's White House."
| Quinner wrote:
| I'm not sure how you'd read this as a puff piece. The reporter
| described his reaction to the interview as "appalled".
| kranke155 wrote:
| I've edited to clarify. I actually posted before I read the
| article (typical!).
| harry8 wrote:
| SBF has used at least one cpu attached to a network on the
| critical path of his actions. Will this be enough to cause people
| to be stupid enough to let his powerful and connected family and
| friends get him off light? People in positions of power seem to
| get awfully stupid when there's a cpu attached to the network on
| the critical path.
|
| Madoff, no cpu on the network on the critical path. All
| understandable and could have been done the same with paper and a
| filing cabinet.
|
| SBF - so the code actually does (brain shuts down).
|
| Interesting to see if this is so extreme people will keep
| thinking through the part where they want to stop because
| "computer"
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Author: "so the ethics stuff - mostly a front?"
|
| SBF: "yeah"
|
| Absolutely gobsmacked.
|
| I saw these screenshots on Twitter and I thought they were fake
| until I read the article. The rest of the messages from him are
| pretty terrible as well.
|
| I thought he just fucked up, but no. He was wilfully unethical
| and maintains he did nothing wrong: "Sometimes life creeps up on
| you".
|
| And the thing he regrets most is filing for Chapter 11
| bankruptcy...
|
| What a cruel fucking joke for all the people who invested with/in
| FTX.
| smsm42 wrote:
| The guy is likely a psychopath. I mean just compare:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorde...
| and see how many boxes he checks. When a high-skilled evil
| psychopath gets going, he (or she) usually leaves a trail of
| people asking themselves "how could we not see it for so
| long?!".
| lovehashbrowns wrote:
| The ethics discussion along with the FTX/Alameda discussion is
| such a fascinating juxtaposition for me. It makes the article
| so much more interesting in my view.
|
| On the one hand, you've got this ethics discussion, which in
| context happened previously, about the ethics of running an
| immoral business to do good things. Then an ethical discussion
| about how that answer was BS and all that really matters is
| perception, and how perception doesn't mirror reality.
|
| And here I'm trying to reflect on these topics. How do I feel
| about these things, how would I answer?
|
| Then the next part begins soon after with "messy accounting."
|
| I view it the way I'd view Michelangelo's David if it were
| displayed at a local county fair.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| I'm wondering if there is some kind of mass insanity occurring
| in the world right now with this and the behaviour of numerous
| influential figures.
| w1nst0nsm1th wrote:
| Something to do with neo-nicotinoid.
|
| It would explain a lot.
| hahaxdxd123 wrote:
| Somewhat unrelated to this article, but could someone clear up a
| point of confusion for me?
|
| There are people blaming the CTFC and Congress and the Democrats
| that SBF donated to for not regulating this.
|
| But was FTX (the Bahamian entity) even under their purview?
|
| AFAIK, you weren't even allowed to access FTX from a USA IP
| address, you had to use a VPN. You could access FTX US which was
| a different thing and offered a much smaller subset of the
| products FTX did (and that business seems solvent?)
|
| Like what jurisdiction does the USA have over a crypto exchange
| elsewhere? I know anything that touches a US dollar can be tried
| in a Manhattan court and maybe he gets convicted of a crime and
| extradited here. But like Japanese banks touch US dollars as
| well, but the USA doesn't get to regulate them, right?
| SilasX wrote:
| FTX US failed too though.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Even though it was supposed to be a completely separate
| entity (or so we were told). -\_(tsu)_/-
| [deleted]
| kragen wrote:
| tfw you forget the old friend you're dming on twitter about your
| life problems is now working as a reporter for vox and is going
| to post your whole dm thread as an article
| pr337h4m wrote:
| It's surprising that SBF sounds so libertarian suddenly - he was
| lobbying for government control of crypto just one month ago
| (which rightfully made him super-unpopular among the OG crypto
| crowd) https://www.moneyandstate.com/blog/response-to-sbf
|
| He does sound sincere here - no idea what to make of this.
| pr337h4m wrote:
| > there are people who know what's that like, and who want to
| do for someone else what nobody did for them
|
| He probably hopes for a bailout from either BitMEX or Bitfinex-
| Tether and is simply trying to appease them by walking back his
| pro-government views
| jdm2212 wrote:
| This is one of the most amazing things I've ever read. Also, I
| feel so bad for his lawyers.
| gizajob wrote:
| "Fuck regulators (and their gung ho attitude to stopping me
| defrauding billions from everyone around me whilst high on off-
| label smart-drugs)"
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| roywiggins wrote:
| > I was trying to make sense of what, behind the PR and the
| charitable donations and the lobbying, Bankman-Fried actually
| believes about what's right and what's wrong -- and especially
| the ethics of what he did and the industry he worked in.
|
| This seems like a weird thing to worry about right now, I imagine
| my question would be "hey, where'd all the deposits go?" Like,
| I'm sure it's all interesting in a psychological and sociological
| way, but "what does SBF really believe" feels like it should take
| a back seat to _what did he do_. That 's much more interesting!
| It's easy for someone like SBF to just say stuff about what's
| going on in his head, whether it's true or not. But, we're
| talking about real (and, okay, a lot of fake) money here.
|
| There's this weird assumption in a lot of reporting that a rich
| person must have interesting things to say, or beliefs that are
| worth getting to the bottom of. Sometimes that's true, but
| sometimes they're just not very interesting people. Which is
| fine! Lots of people aren't very interesting, but really rich
| people get to be treated as interesting even if they're actually
| boring.
| Hippocrates wrote:
| We have a lot of info on where the money went: A stadium name
| deal, F1 sponsorship, penthouse in a Bahamas resort, political
| donations, several DeFi ponzis that fell apart, acquisitions of
| BS companies, and similarly, bailing out numerous failed crypto
| projects over several years.
|
| With such a large sum gone, the tougher question is "where
| didn't he piss the money away?"
|
| We haven't seen as much commentary from him post-incident to
| reconcile who he appeared to be before the collapse, with who
| he apparently is. I think that angle is actually pretty
| interesting, but ultimately he sounds like just another
| deranged sociopath. No surprise there. Still interesting.
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| > what did he do?
|
| FTX loaned money to Alameda, the crypto hedge-fund made a
| series of bets and probably put some cash in illiquid assets
| too, but mostly irresponsible bets. Crypto market collapsed,
| bets that were worth billions with a decent liquidity now
| became worth millions with not so much liquidity.
|
| They turned to their most harsh competitor hoping for a bailout
| kinda like how Microsoft saved Apple in the 90s . All that
| didn't happen, it was the the straw that broke the camel's
| back.
|
| That's about it, when you are leveraged adverse market events
| can literally put any company out of business, no matter how
| giant it is. Chapter 11 is not the end of the world for old
| companies making real stuff that people will always want (say
| General Motors or Hertz), but in crypto where everything is
| about reputation there is no way FTX will ever be heard of ever
| again.
|
| In the case of the crypto market adverse events of massive
| proportions repeat themselves every 5 years or so. It happened
| this year , together with inflation. It was due, at some point
| the chickens had to come home to roost.....whatever the fuck
| that means lol.
| sesuximo wrote:
| Technically he's probably one of the poorest people in the
| world
| SilverBirch wrote:
| I think this is... journalism.
|
| You can't text a fraudster in the bahamas and say "Hey, why are
| you so shit". You have to text "Hey, you're a precious flower
| with a special story" and _then_ they tell you why they 're
| shit. There's very clearly a level where SBF feels safe to talk
| honestly, in a self-incriminating way to a friend, where that
| friend is actually a reporter working for Vox.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Oh absolutely, it's just weird when that tone leaks into the
| text of the article. A sort of winking style that expects the
| reader to read between the lines, which is fine as far as it
| goes! But imagine beginning an article about Bernie Madoff in
| the weeks after his Ponzi's collapse pretending that you just
| wanted to learn more about his ethical principles.
| wging wrote:
| It makes a lot of sense given the nature of SBF's charitable
| donations and the purported rationale(s) behind them. Kelsey
| Piper is pretty deeply associated with the EA movement, which
| is heavily interested in picking the right ways to deploy money
| to solve the world's problems, and much of SBF's charitable
| giving was too.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > In 2018, Vox launched Future Perfect, with the goal of
| covering the most critical issues of the day through the lens
| of effective altruism. In this talk, Kelsey Piper discusses
| how the project worked out, her experience as a Vox staff
| writer, and her thoughts on the key challenges of EA-focused
| journalism.
|
| I just commented in this thread about how this story
| magically keeps getting worse, and then it got worse...
| twoodfin wrote:
| It does seem like the (some now erstwhile) EA billionaires
| supposed that buying professional, high-tier take-
| havers/explanatory-journalists was going to be an effective
| way to mainline their ideology. SBF had his eye on Matt
| Yglesias, for example.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > I imagine my question would be "hey, where'd all the deposits
| go?"
|
| But we know where they went. To Alameda Research. Then Alameda
| Research sent them somewhere else. The money isn't coming back,
| and Alameda Research's collateral of FTT tokens is worthless.
| So that's that, its done.
|
| Its actually quite a simple story here. FTX lent the money to
| someone else (even if Alameda Research is also owned by SBF),
| and that other group lost the money.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > FTX lent the money to someone else (even if Alameda
| Research is also owned by SBF), and that other group lost the
| money
|
| One minor clarification: "lent" should be "stole". If I can't
| pay my mortgage, I'm not allowed to go break in to my
| neighbor's house to steal some cash that I'll "borrow" in the
| hopes of paying back later.
|
| FTX's Ts&Cs we're very clear - customer deposits were not
| FTX's to lend.
|
| This is a simple, straightforward case of fraud and theft. No
| additional "crypto-specific regulations" are needed to reach
| that conclusion.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| As I said yesterday, there's a guy (Irving Picard, AFAICR)
| who's clawed back most of the money that Bernie Madoff stole
| from his clients. In that case, Bernie took one person's
| deposits and gave the money to the previous sucker, so Irving
| unwound all that.
|
| In this case, apparently some people's money was fraudulently
| given to charities, so do _they_ have to give it back? And
| what if they can 't?
|
| There's a job almost no one would want to undertake.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| Alameda got long on crypto, crypto crash, billions lost. Funds
| from FTX was covering Alameda's losses. My guess there, was
| never a distinct point in which money was moved from FTX to
| Almeda. I felt they always ran both as two hands belonging to
| the same body.
| Mandatum wrote:
| I think he doesn't care. He knows he's not going to do much
| prison time, and he 1000% has fiat stashed given where he
| incorporated.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| You never know. He doesn't seem like a planner based on how the
| collapse of FTX went down and how he's talking to journalists
| instead of his lawyer.
| alexb_ wrote:
| SBF is monumentally stupid for sending these messages. Straight
| up admitting that any "ethics" was for reputation only. And not
| only that, but saying that the mistake was not doubling down
| again.
| [deleted]
| thundergolfer wrote:
| Yeah after the NYT interview I'm a bit shocked at how bad these
| messages look. He looks stupid, brazen, delusional, and lacking
| in compassion.
|
| If his texts are normally similar to this, how did anyone
| serious think this guy was brilliant?
| s_dev wrote:
| Maybe I'm out of the loop but I'd never heard of him til the
| FTX implosion.
| marmakoide wrote:
| I saw parts of an interview where he openly states,in
| substance, that a Ponzi scheme is a valid investment, the
| new way of doing things. I was puzzled and took a mental
| note to check on how he fares I once in a while.
|
| I had no idea the sums involved were this big, and the
| operation this much amateurish.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| I had, once, in a HN comment a couple of months ago. It
| said that he was lobbying on some political race, which is
| something he was doing because he believed in "Effective
| Altruism". This was presented as a good thing, as though
| billionaires giving money to politicians was a novel idea.
| I guess this is the type of person who found him worthy of
| mention.
| fnimick wrote:
| > how did anyone serious think this guy was brilliant?
|
| He made a lot of money by bucking norms. Hacker news of all
| places should recognize that people are drawn to those who
| project an appearance of improbable success through skill
| despite a lack of underlying competence (see also: Elon Musk)
| [deleted]
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| I wonder if it's an attempt to disassociate himself with EA.
| The general consensus on EA forums is anger and shame at how
| generally good ideas like treating charitable donations as an
| investment based on impact have been essentially hijacked and
| longtermism pushed front and center too.
| ritonlajoie wrote:
| what is 'EA forums' ?
| pr337h4m wrote:
| https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/
|
| There's a few, like less wrong, but this is the main one to
| many
| gedy wrote:
| Given the money at stake, I'd be suspicious of trusting an
| interview only over Twitter chat. But he very well could be
| totally stupid too.
| shaldengeki wrote:
| As noted in the article, the reporter confirmed out-of-band
| via email the day afterwards.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Well there's a sense of contrition there, so that's good.
|
| However there's no reasonable excuse. You can't be like "aw man,
| I wish we'd been more organized". A big piece of this is on the
| investors. All those depositors would have been saying "Hey
| Sequoia and OTPP are in there, they must have checked things are
| sound". Was that foolish of them, to assume reputable investors
| had done their due diligence? You're between a rock and a hard
| place when you answer this. Either they should have all done
| their own DD, basically not invested because who can do DD as a
| little guy, or large investors are not responsible for what
| everyone else thinks they did, which is a rather major indictment
| of how our financial system works.
|
| But back to SBF's explanation. It's just juvenile, basically the
| same as "mommy, you didn't make me clean my room and now I
| slipped and hurt myself". Whatever the laws are, when someone
| trusts you with their money, you are responsible for certain
| basic things like knowing where that money is. All the money in
| the world and they didn't think to hire an accountant and a risk
| manager. Or perhaps they did and those people quietly left, we'll
| never know.
|
| About the regulators, it's quite the about-turn. He goes from
| saying it's a good thing (which was why CZ got pissed at him?) to
| saying it was just PR, and that regs basically don't work
| anywhere. I think this is also a juvenile view. You can make the
| case that it often leads to unintended consequences, and that it
| often causes problems, but you can't sweep all regulations in all
| sectors into the bin, there's just too much evidence that it
| sometimes does work. In fact you could say that the very
| reinvention of finance as crypto ought to motivate participants
| to look at what problems were found in the financial world that
| were addressed by regulation. Glass-Steagal, deposit insurance,
| central banking, there's a lot to read about.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| > Well there's a sense of contrition there, so that's good.
|
| Sigh. So this is how confidence men and politicians and
| scammers can make good livings.
|
| He _just_ said that all the good-sounding things he said in the
| past about ethics and doing the right thing was "this dumb
| game we woke westerners play where we say all the right
| shiboleths and so everyone likes us".
| darkteflon wrote:
| Fascinated to read that you thought he came across as contrite.
| My reading was the opposite - that he was nihilistic,
| narcissistic and utterly devoid of contrition. Specifically:
| there seems almost no recognition of his own agency - it's all
| just bad stuff that happened to him.
| expazl wrote:
| It this real? Is he really THAT stupid? His defense against "you
| took user deposits and gambled the money" is "No, I took user
| deposits, loaned them to myself and then gambled the money".
|
| I mean this is like nested layers of stupidity. You'd be stupid
| to do this, you'd be stupid to think it's not a major crime,
| you'd be stupid to think that this was in any way acts as a
| defense of your crime and you'd be stupid to actually tell people
| that this is what you did thinking that it's a defense for the
| crime you committed.
|
| Guy literally though that Ponzi schemes would be legal if only
| the perpetrators on the way to court wrote on a document "I
| hereby lend myself all the money I misappropriated"?
| 323 wrote:
| Maybe he's going for the insanity defense.
|
| Could be legit, he's literally digging, admitting to blatant
| criminal behaviour like it's normal stuff.
| burkaman wrote:
| For FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried, incompetence could be a legal
| strategy - https://www.axios.com/2022/11/16/ftx-sam-bankman-
| fried-incom...
|
| > Lawyers tell Axios the main criminal risk Bankman-Fried faces
| is an indictment on charges of fraud -- one of the more common
| charges in white-collar prosecutions. But to convict,
| prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone
| had knowledge or intent to commit fraud, which can be tricky,
| they say.
|
| > That's why the defense against such charges typically centers
| on something like, "It wasn't fraud, I was just really bad at
| my job."
|
| > "Typically, in a fraud case, the person at the top argues
| that he was inattentive, delegated to others, and wasn't
| focused on the details," Mariotti tells Axios. "The point is to
| argue that he was sloppy or inattentive, not a fraudster."
| Invictus0 wrote:
| The notion that someone that made it through MIT physics,
| worked for several years at Jane Street, and actively
| cultivated the persona of a genius can't understand that
| making a million tokens, selling one of them to yourself for
| a dollar, and then calling yourself a millionaire is
| nonsense, is frankly preposterous.
| bb88 wrote:
| There's a segment of smart people who go through a lot of
| hoops to make themselves look stupid. Because for one
| reason or another being stupid is advantageous. Here,
| apparently, it's a defense against fraud.
| curiousgal wrote:
| I am a genuine believer that environment plays a big role
| in all of those "achievements".
| smsm42 wrote:
| And then there's also the question of actual deposits,
| which would still have to be sent to somewhere -
| intentionally - and given as those were represented, afaik,
| as deposits and not buying shares in a high-risk hedge
| fund, that alone constitutes separate fraud, regardless of
| how he tried to cover it up afterwards. If I tell you "if
| you give me $1000 I'll keep them safe and return them to
| you anytime you want" and then I take these money and go
| gambling to Vegas, I can't say "I was just not paying
| attention, sorry". I knew I promised to keep them for you
| and gambled with them instead.
| ModernMech wrote:
| You're right, it is preposterous, which is why this is
| narcissism and not stupidity. The first rule of any
| fraudster is to never admit the fraud, no matter how
| obvious. Never apologize for anything, never admit
| wrongdoing of any kind, and try to deflect and diffuse
| blame diffuse blame to as many people as possible.
| headsoup wrote:
| I think I might go rob a bank and use the excuse "I wasn't
| robbing it, I'm just really bad at withdrawals!"
| ALittleLight wrote:
| "I'm sorry, I think I got a label mixed up, you mean this
| isn't MY account?"
| moralestapia wrote:
| Judges won't side with him, like, at all.
|
| >The point is to argue that he was sloppy or inattentive, not
| a fraudster.
|
| If that's going to be his strategy there's still a lot of
| laughs to have at his expense.
|
| If only it were that easy, "oh I didn't knew I was crossing
| the border with a hundred pounds of cocaine in my car", like,
| how come they never thought of THAT? LOL
| notch656a wrote:
| Is that not a valid defense? It's my understanding it's not
| uncommon for criminals to plant stuff on a marks car and
| then secretly grab it after it crosses the border.
| Possession of something should require your intent to
| control/keep it or at least knowledge it exists.
| bin_bash wrote:
| It is iff you can convince a jury that's the case.
| bb88 wrote:
| So you're saying is that a defense for fraud is stupidity? Oh
| dear god, it can't be that simple can it?
| [deleted]
| quirk wrote:
| I think he probably declared it. "I declare bankruptcy".
| reducesuffering wrote:
| He has to still be on methamphetamine-precursors. (Was confirmed
| in an image on his desk[0]; selegiline)
|
| [0] https://milkyeggs.com/?p=175
| perardi wrote:
| Sigh. No.
|
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-psychopharmacology...
|
| Selegiline metabolizes to the inactive isomer of meth:
| l-methamphetamine. Which is very much not trucker crank--it's
| an over-the-counter decongestant.
|
| Was he on good ol' non-meth-amphetamine, in the form of
| Adderall? Sure. But rather a lot of people are on Adderall, and
| most of them haven't created a market-shattering boondoggle.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification!
| throw7 wrote:
| _cringe_ who is 'liking' and 'crying' bankman's messages?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Apparently someone who is great at buttering him up to say more
| and more stupid stuff.
| Hippocrates wrote:
| Exactly.. that is some excellent social engineering/reporting
| skill.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| A programmer who helped create Tornado Cash rots in a Dutch jail
| cell (not charged, might I add) while SBF, Do Kwan, Elizabeth
| Holmes, and Trevor Milton still remain free. SBF is actually in a
| $30 million penthouse playing League of Legends. Clown world
| delusional wrote:
| I'd rather have an FTX scandal than Tornado Cash. I'd rather
| someone does some fraud than actual funneling of money to
| terrorists, druglords, gangs, and other problematic
| organizations.
| nailer wrote:
| Tornado Cash is private banking. The writer of the code did
| nothing wrong by writing it.
| leesalminen wrote:
| Open source code should be considered protected speech. The
| fact that it's not should scare the daylights out of any
| OSS contributor.
|
| Also, privacy should be a human right.
|
| If you disagree with the above, you might be a fascist.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's protected speech. What you do _with_ it can be
| criminal.
|
| Code for an Arduino that moves a robotic arm is legal.
| Using it to pull a trigger and kill someone isn't.
| leesalminen wrote:
| Of course. Was the tornado cash person arrested for using
| the code in an illegal way or just for publishing the
| code?
| Beltalowda wrote:
| He wasn't arrested for "writing the code", but for direct
| involvements (and making large sums of profit) for money
| laundering. Whether he is guilty of that: we'll see what
| comes up in the trail, but he certainly wasn't arrested
| "for writing code".
| nailer wrote:
| I have heard that too but it's hard to know (either way)
| what he was arrested for as _he hasn't been charged_
| after three months detention.
|
| The police statement is https://www.fiod.nl/arrest-of-
| suspected-developer-of-tornado... - it seems to say he
| facilitated money laundering. Which could mean simply
| writing code or could mean doing more.
|
| More info on https://www.notion.so/FreeAlex-
| campaign-1f8db0a2fdfc48b3b86a... which is a horrible
| notion site with a strange and awful UI.
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| So can we expect also arrest of people from Binance, who were
| helping to bypass sanctions for Iran?
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/exclusive-crypto-
| ex...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Whenever they stray into US or an ally's jurisdiction, I'd
| imagine.
|
| I suspect they're smart enough not to.
| Guthur wrote:
| Wasn't FTX supporting war?
| jacoblambda wrote:
| > I'd rather someone does some fraud than actual funneling of
| money to terrorists, druglords, gangs, and other problematic
| organizations.
|
| Considering that Tornado Cash implemented OFAC compliance and
| they were still banned would suggest to me that this isn't a
| fair take. Tornado Cash had long since blacklisted known
| accounts from sanctioned organisations and tried to be
| overwhelmingly transparent about the fact that the project
| was focused on providing privacy for normal people and
| complying with regulations and sanctions to the best of their
| ability.
|
| One of the major issues with the US in particular is that
| regulatory and enforcement agencies refuse to establish well
| defined guidelines that are compatible with digital ledger
| tech. You can have privacy preservation and regulatory
| compliance all at once via zero knowledge proofs (as an
| example solution) however regulatory agencies insist that
| organisations operate within a system that provides
| significantly weaker compliance guarantees while also
| eliminating any means for privacy. Tornado Cash tried to
| operate within that weaker system to the best of their
| ability and repeatedly reached out to officials in good faith
| to properly implement compliance. Despite that they were
| still sanctioned.
| adynaton wrote:
| Username checks out (I'm sorry)
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Encrypted messaging also helps terrorists, child sex abusers,
| arms dealers, and all manner of crime. It would be 100% safer
| if all messages were funneled through government servers for
| scanning.
|
| However, as a society a choice we made was to enable
| individuals to message secretly with each other over
| encrypted communications, even if there are significant and
| documented harms to society.
|
| Tornado Cash did not rob from 1 million retail customers,
| while FTX did. I think your argument is far too simple.
| data_maan wrote:
| > It would be 100% safer if all messages were funneled
| through government servers for scanning.
|
| Uh... what?!
|
| You do know that if you break encryption for gov't you
| break it for the bad guys as well?...
|
| You do know that there are all kinds of nations that will
| throw you in prison if you hold the "wrong" opinions, which
| those opinions become known when they are funneled through
| the gov't servers?...
| jacoblambda wrote:
| You might want to re-read that. The comment was comparing
| privacy preserving transactions against privacy
| preserving messages to illustrate the point that both are
| essential technologies for society.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Holmes is getting sentenced this week. It took years to get
| there. This isn't going to happen overnight.
| tester756 wrote:
| Interesting
| marricks wrote:
| > This isn't going to happen overnight
|
| What isn't going to happen overnight, justice? A fairer
| world?
|
| I don't think a fairer world is on its way, I wish it was but
| the powerful won't be held accountable because people simply
| don't have the power to hold them accountable. We simply
| don't live in a just world.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Yeah, life isn't fair. I have a wfh job software
| engineering in my PJs while some people need to spend their
| lives doing hard labor in the sun.
|
| Holmes is probably going to prison. Idk what's going to
| happen with SBF, but to prosecute you need evidence and
| there's a process.
| mcgannon2007 wrote:
| Overnight "justice" precludes due-process which is
| necessary for a fairer world.
| [deleted]
| xur17 wrote:
| Why did it happen overnight for the programmer that helped
| create Tornado cash then?
| wollsmoth wrote:
| different legal system. Also check the other reply to you.
| loeg wrote:
| It would be helpful to get the facts straight:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33630936
| ravenstine wrote:
| One person is a threat to multinational regal order and the
| other benefits it. That's the difference. Not clown world so
| much as the world isn't what the 20th century told us it was.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| Agreed, and I am a fan of your user name.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| The crypto community begged the regulators to stay out of it
| and now they're crying about getting scammed.
|
| I am lucky enough to live in New York, so even when tempted, I
| couldn't partake in this charade without trying to find a bunch
| of shady loopholes.
|
| But as for the others, I guess you just can't win.
| mcast wrote:
| It helps to have rich and connected parents, it also helps even
| more to donate millions to politician's campaigns.
| arcticbull wrote:
| They should all be in prison bud and they'll get their turn -
| the wheels of justice grind slow but they grind exceedingly
| fine. To avoid bringing them in without a charge yet, which is
| one of your main objections, the authorities are preparing
| their cases before arrest. And coordinating with many different
| parties, governments and police forces can take a long time.
|
| There's no one "international police" and each nation has to
| coordinate - and acts at its own cadence.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| They grind at different speeds depending on who you are. Have
| the wrong skin color at the wrong time and the wheels of
| justice will sentence you to execution you on the spot, no
| evidence, case, or trial necessary.
| peterpost2 wrote:
| About the programmer in a dutch cell: that is not true, he is
| in "voorarrest" which is in an arrest house not in a jail cell.
| Maximum time for that is a 110 days(depending on the complexity
| of the case).
|
| And yes he is not charged but he has seen a judge who has heard
| both sides and decided there was a strong enough case to hold
| him there( which is quite rare i might add and generally only
| happens for severe cases).
| [deleted]
| loeg wrote:
| The wheels of justice grind slowly.
|
| Holmes will see real prison soon.
|
| Do Kwan is on the lam. When he's caught, he will do time.
|
| SBF will almost certainly do time. FTX only imploded this week.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| On the bright side, Holmes and Milton have been convicted and
| will be sentenced...Holmes' sentencing is barely two days away.
| ratg13 wrote:
| While most of the important points have been commented on, I
| would be really interested in more info about the hack.
|
| It seems like everyone, (even these characters), don't even care
| because it's "only a few hundred million"
|
| And it does seem like whoever this was might get away with it
| because everyone is focused on the larger issue. Which is
| understandable.
| SevenNation wrote:
| > Bankman-Fried has maintained that FTX has never invested the
| deposits of crypto account holders on the exchange. I pressed him
| on that point via Twitter, and while he continued to insist that
| FTX did not directly use account money in this way, he said that
| Alameda -- which he also owns -- had borrowed far more money from
| FTX's balance sheet for investments than he had realized, which
| ultimately left FTX vulnerable to the crypto equivalent of a bank
| run.
|
| > Why didn't Bankman-Fried realize what was happening until it
| was too late? "Sometimes life creeps up on you," he said.
|
| This is the central issue of the case. There aren't many paths
| for an exchange to experience a run unless it's acting like a
| fractional reserve bank.
|
| So here's an admission that Alameda borrowed from the FTX balance
| sheet. There's also a denial that FTX invested deposits. There's
| no way for both statements to be true.
| jaywalk wrote:
| FTX _loaned_ the deposits to Alameda, and _Alameda_ invested
| them. It 's totally different from FTX making the investments
| themselves!
|
| /s
| sailplease wrote:
| A loan is an investment.
| tsol wrote:
| The "lament about how corrupt the system is and that we are
| forced to partake in it" excuse has been popular in recent years,
| not surprised he's going for it. Let's see how that plays out
| r721 wrote:
| >Disclosure: This August, Bankman-Fried's philanthropic family
| foundation, Building a Stronger Future, awarded Vox's Future
| Perfect a grant for a 2023 reporting project. That project is now
| on pause.
| baxtr wrote:
| Unlike many here, I think he has a point. The entire finance
| industry is corrupt. People have been trying to make more money
| by being over leveraged for some time now. Anyone remember 2008?
| Regulation helps, but not most obviously people find ways to get
| around that.
|
| It doesn't, by any means, excuse what he has done. Yet the
| conversation delivers a very authentic insight into how people at
| the top of financial institutions with the goal to earn
| unreasonable amounts of money the get rich people richer actually
| think and act. For that it's a great piece.
| za3faran wrote:
| If you speak to people on the inside, you'd find that they
| understand it's a big ponzi scheme, but they continue to work
| in it while making bank.
| dibt wrote:
| Did Bernie Madoff make it this easy? Or is this an elaborate plan
| he's already designed with game theory?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Has anyone check on this guy's lawyers? Are they safe?
| cliftonk wrote:
| to be clear:
|
| - he lent his own hedge fund $8b collateralized by tokens he
| controlled issuance of (FTT, SRM, MAPS, OXY). At full size, the
| liquidation price of these tokens was 0 (he also purchased
| billions worth of FTT off the market when he could print them
| himself for free?).
|
| - Sensing alameda was insolvent and customer funds were
| misappropriated, customers withdrew until they ran out of
| liquidity.
|
| - Withdrawals were suspended
|
| - Citing Bahamian authorities requests to unfreeze assets of
| bahamian residents, withdrawals were opened back up for bahamian
| residents. Hundreds of millions were withdrawn. Bahamian
| authorities have since made statements that no such requests were
| made (so this was just insiders stealing even more).
|
| - Approx $500m of assets were drained from FTX wallets at the
| same time as FTX databse records were cleared (obviously not a
| hack, just insiders stealing even more).
|
| - SBF goes on twitter to make new one-letter tweets while
| simultaneously deleting incriminating tweets so as to not trigger
| deletion bots picking up that he deleted said tweets.
|
| Ongoing theft and destruction of evidence out in the open after
| stealing 10 billion dollars from over 1 million depositors. SBF
| has still not been arrested. This all but confirms the wildest of
| conspiracy theories.
| jeffbee wrote:
| You kind of went off the rails there in the final sentence. Are
| you saying that any of this adds credence to the silly idea
| that Democrats are beholden to SBF campaign money?
| soco wrote:
| Democrats have received exactly double the SBF money received
| by Republicans. All exits were oiled here, just in different
| amounts.
| leesalminen wrote:
| It's a silly idea that being the second largest donor to a
| political party in the US buys you special favors? Why else
| would anyone give that kind of money to politicians without
| expecting something in return?
| vkou wrote:
| I'd expect that the something in return buys you a king's
| seat at the regulatory table, not quite a get-out-of-jail-
| scott-free-for-stealing-billions card.
|
| I'm sure that in a few years, once the courts get
| _everything_ sorted out, we 'll learn which of our
| prejudices is closer to reality. As of today, though, we're
| both just speculating.
| leesalminen wrote:
| Fair enough. You are correct it is all speculation. We'll
| see.
| awinder wrote:
| Bingo, and the line from electoral politics -> regulation
| is straight, legal, and requires one step. While
| filtering political donations through judicial +
| investigative bodies with egads of separate oversight &
| career employees & little to no electoral influence would
| be impossible to manage. Not for 28 million, you would
| have to buy a loooooot of people off and get extremely
| lucky. That's why it doesn't happen. The get out of jail
| free card, that is.
| [deleted]
| RobLach wrote:
| Sure but FTX was throwing money to both parties
| https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/04/11/ftx-co-ceo-
| donate...
| leesalminen wrote:
| It's unclear to me how that affects anything? If anything
| it lends credence to the idea that he was making these
| donations solely for special favors and not for
| altruistic reasons.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Sorry but the "wildest conspiracy theory" is that Democrats
| sent money to Ukraine, Ukraine deposited the money at FTX,
| and SBF donated the money to Democratic congressional
| campaigns. Nothing about what we know today lends any
| credence to that theory.
|
| That some guy with access to a lot of cash tried to buy
| influence is not a "conspiracy theory" because it is
| unilateral. And, if that's what he was trying to do, it
| seems like a really poor strategy since you cannot really
| buy influence over law enforcement that way.
| cliftonk wrote:
| I've heard a lot of wild conspiracy theories, but that
| one is new to me. To be fair, I do not believe the
| conspiracy theories, just that the inaction we're seeing
| is feeding credibility to the people peddling them.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| > Why else would anyone give that kind of money to
| politicians without expecting something in return?
|
| Because they think the candidates they support will make
| the world better either personally for you or in a more
| general sense? Oil companies give money to manchin because
| they know he agrees with them and if he wins will fight for
| their legislation, whether they funded him or not.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Oil companies give money to manchin because they know
| he agrees with them and if he wins will fight for their
| legislation, whether they funded him or not.
|
| Neither they or you know that. And nobody but you assumes
| that Manchin fights for his beliefs, rather than for what
| benefits him personally. And no, I'm not assuming the
| opposite. I instead choose not to fantasize about his
| internal states, or speculate about what he would do if
| an industry that has always supported him ceased to
| support him.
| zopa wrote:
| Donations buy you access, not specific outcomes. Just the
| ability to get a hearing for whatever kinda-reasonable-ish
| parts of the stuff you want there might be is really,
| really valuable.
|
| And yes, both are corrupt, but one is business as usual and
| the other is a serious federal crime that prudent members
| of congress avoid.
| harry8 wrote:
| >Why else would anyone give that kind of money to
| politicians without expecting something in return?
|
| There's a polite theory it is done for altruistic reasons
| to make the country a better place for all and that it is
| the exercise of free speech and you are also free to give
| Trump, Biden, Pelosi & McConnell vast amounts of cash.
|
| But yes we're all adults here.
| cliftonk wrote:
| Not just the democrats. Republicans, Bahamian officials,
| members of the media, regulators, etc. The most recent New
| York Times piece did not mention fraud or criminality a
| single time, painting SBF as someone who simply got in over
| his head.
| someguy212 wrote:
| Is the conspiracy about the outsized influence of the rich?
| Because I don't think that is a conspiracy, just hard to get
| mass media to report on.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > - SBF goes on twitter to make new one-letter tweets while
| simultaneously deleting incriminating tweets so as to not
| trigger deletion bots picking up that he deleted said tweets.
|
| This part seems to have been mostly speculation. He deleted 118
| tweets & retweets, so his one letter tweets did little to cover
| his tracks[1]. I have no idea why he did the one-letter thing.
| Maybe to get attention?
|
| [1] https://www.cryptonews.net/news/other/16170687/
| Animats wrote:
| > still not been arrested
|
| "Under supervision".[1] Rumors that he planned to escape to
| Dubai. But Dubai signed an extradition treaty with the US a few
| months back.
|
| Extradition to the US may be pending.[2]
|
| This is the sort of situation where, if there is an arrest, the
| perp gets held as a flight risk.
|
| [1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/sam-bankman-fried-is-under-
| su...
|
| [2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11433541/FBI-
| planni...
| majormajor wrote:
| Just to be clear, where do you think he is and who do you think
| would be arresting him if not avoiding it for what reasons?
| alecbz wrote:
| I'm super surprised at how open and off-the-cuff he's being here.
| Did he not put together that the DMs might get published? Is this
| just the power of good rapport? Is he trying to be strategic here
| in some way?
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| Yes, the game is rigged from the start.
|
| But that does not mean you can play innocent when you lose it.
| bboylen wrote:
| Not seeing much remorse here, but what can you expect from a guy
| that gambled with billions of dollars worth of people's savings.
| Don't buy that he didn't realize what they were doing until it
| was too late. He admits in this interview to lying about previous
| public positions, so wouldn't trust anything he says here either.
|
| I just hope crypto learns from this and normalizes Proof of
| Reserves
| SilverBirch wrote:
| I'm very critical of SBF and what went on here, but let's not
| over sentimentalise this, they gambled billions of dollars of
| peoples deposits, not savings. Which clearly is a crime, but
| you don't store your savings on a crypto exchange, BTC arguably
| the most reliable of the crypto-currencies is down 70% in the
| last year. Moves that happen once in a lifetime in real markets
| happened multiple times in crypto. No one reasonable has their
| savings in crypto exchanges.
| lottin wrote:
| Proof of reserves only proves (for the sake of the argument
| let's assume it's an actual proof) the exchange has some amount
| of reserves, which is mostly meaningless. The quantity of
| interest is the share of deposits that are backed with
| reserves, not the absolute amount of reserves.
| bogomipz wrote:
| Interesting, is this intentional then? Or is there some other
| reason why showing the absolute amount of reserves would not
| be feasible?
| lottin wrote:
| I don't know, it looks like a half-baked idea, like
| everything surrounding crypto-currencies. Someone probably
| came up with this proof of reserves idea, and everybody
| else said yeah let's do this, because it sounded like it
| does what they wanted to do, except it doesn't.
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