[HN Gopher] FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during fund...
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       FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree
        
       Author : mfiguiere
       Score  : 149 points
       Date   : 2022-11-18 19:35 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
        
       | skizm wrote:
       | The amounts of money we're talking about here are sort of
       | staggering. I know they did a pretty good job of not keeping any
       | records of depositors, but do we have any sense of depositor
       | demographics, total number of depositors, or average account
       | size? _Any_ KYC at all? Like did retail "investors" really pump
       | close to $16B into this? Could the scam here be crypto whales
       | used this as an off ramp to turn their crypto into fiat, and then
       | burn the ramp and all evidence of who used it behind them?
        
         | DennisP wrote:
         | Apparently some hedge funds had money at FTX, which is why
         | there's talk about "contagion."
        
       | jliptzin wrote:
       | Dump your life savings into a crypto exchange based in the
       | Bahamas, sure. But god forbid you invest $20k in a startup
       | without being an "accredited investor"
        
         | acjohnson55 wrote:
         | I'm not sure what your point is. You can invest in whatever you
         | want in the Bahamas without being accredited (as far as I
         | know). If anything, the blowup of FTX seems to justify why
         | investments in unregistered securities in US-based companies
         | aren't allowed to be marketed to unaccredited investors.
         | 
         | Are you saying we should allow companies with the level of
         | oversight FTX had _more_ free reign to operate and market their
         | equity in the US?
        
       | sarahowen62 wrote:
        
       | leet_thow wrote:
       | How common was it for founders to cash out on common shares in
       | the Series C-E rounds the last decade?
        
         | Dwolb wrote:
         | It's common to sell secondary, but usually limited to something
         | like 10% of vested shares per person.
        
         | twelve40 wrote:
         | if the investors are willing to buy your shares from you, then
         | why not? I've done secondary sales as early as seed. Unless you
         | hide it from the board somehow, or you are explicitly
         | prohibited from doing this, it's just a business transaction.
        
           | leet_thow wrote:
           | Not an ethics question of why or why not, I'm just curious.
        
             | sarahowen62 wrote:
        
             | slap_shot wrote:
             | It was certainly much more common the last few years.
             | However, those transactions are more of "hey investor, let
             | me sell you some of my shares in this round" and not
             | whatever complex behavior is described in this article.
        
             | adrr wrote:
             | So execs don't bounce. I left a company because they didn't
             | offer a secondary and i was 3/4 vested with no exit in
             | sight. I had a job offer to another company that promised
             | an IPO in a year. If i would have been paid, i would have
             | stayed but its hard to turning down a "guaranteed" 7 figure
             | pay out. It's a numbers game, 1 out 10 startups will have
             | an exit that makes people money.
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | Pretty common. With startups waiting ten years to IPO, many
         | founders and employees would "take money off the table" along
         | the way.
        
         | NelsonMinar wrote:
         | The article: "Mr. Bankman-Fried's cashout was large by startup-
         | world standards, where such sales historically were taboo
         | because they allow founders to reap profits before investors."
        
         | Schnitz wrote:
         | Very. It's usually not this egregious though. Founders might
         | want stable finances for their family or the ability to buy a
         | reasonable home, but VCs want them to keep going, so VCs allow
         | founders to cash out some of their equity so that founders
         | don't go for an exit for the sake of their personal finances.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | leet_thow wrote:
           | Makes sense, thanks.
        
           | kkielhofner wrote:
           | Agreed but it's never this significant. In the world of "real
           | companies" investors, boards, teams, etc are not OK with
           | providing a founder with "F U money" (which this certainly
           | is) so that they can go on and do nothing, leave for another
           | venture, etc.
           | 
           | For the others involved from investors to employees it's
           | never good to be working with someone who could
           | (theoretically) stand up from a meeting and walk out to go on
           | and do whatever they want forever.
        
             | wmf wrote:
             | I'm reminded of the "Grouponzi" round from 2010.
             | https://venturebeat.com/entrepreneur/groupon-fundraising/
        
               | kkielhofner wrote:
               | Bingo. It could be argued the relative failure of Groupon
               | was largely driven by key stakeholders/insiders cashing
               | out way too big way too early.
        
               | dmitryminkovsky wrote:
               | Thanks for this. Love the end:
               | 
               | > And this stealth IPO has one more advantage: There's
               | nothing preventing Groupon from doing a real IPO in 2011.
               | If anything, the reassuring cash pile makes it a more
               | attractive investment.
        
       | engineer_22 wrote:
       | FBM is a loon, and everyone knew it, but as long as they were
       | making money they looked the other way.
       | 
       | The crypto bubble crash was directly driven by the COVID bailout.
       | People had pockets full of money from day trading on robin hood,
       | money flowing out of Blackrock like it was the big rock candy
       | mountain. Nobody should be shocked, and the professional pension
       | fund managers should be ashamed.
        
       | metadat wrote:
       | https://archive.today/eMyNR
        
       | slap_shot wrote:
       | > the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group
       | of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised
       | individuals.
       | 
       | The most fascinating part of this whole story to me is just how
       | few checks and balances there were in this company. Even without
       | a board, did major investors not get his quarterly financials? If
       | the leaked balance sheet was any indication of their level
       | financial engineering capabilities, it's hard to imagine there
       | weren't major red flags through most of 2021.
        
         | thr0wawayf00 wrote:
         | When the hype train is rolling and the valuation is
         | skyrocketing, nobody asks questions.
        
         | thesausageking wrote:
         | Part of my wonders if it was intentional on Sequoia's part to
         | not take a board seat or get too involved. If they had and
         | Alfred Lin were a director of FTX, he would've been pulled into
         | the bankruptcy and all of the lawsuits, as well as all of the
         | bad press.
         | 
         | By being a passive investor, they can write off their
         | investment and move on.
        
         | kevin_thibedeau wrote:
         | Zero interest rates make the rich desperate to find a new money
         | printer.
        
           | nipponese wrote:
           | This is the MOST underrated statement in all the threads on
           | this whole fiasco.
           | 
           | Government and Wall St. (but _especially_ government bare at
           | least some responsibility for letting the pot get too big.
        
             | chips_n_fries wrote:
             | These are the same group of people. Low interests are
             | working out just fine for them.
        
         | kjs3 wrote:
         | I thought that was the whole point: unregulated (or at least
         | extremely minimally regulated, preferably in a jurisdiction
         | that has a looooong history of looking the other way and in a
         | perfect world with no extradition treaties), decentralized,
         | anonymous financial systems. It doesn't surprise me _in the
         | least_ that these clowns were running across the high wire
         | without a net using other peoples money. The fascinating part
         | to me is that anyone _didn 't_ think this was the inevitable
         | outcome. But then I spent an hour this morning with some
         | banking industry blockchain folks spinning this as "well
         | _obviously_ this debacle is great because it finally will shake
         | out the bad actors and leave just us good-guys taking crusty
         | old banking into the glorious crypto future ". Just like
         | they've said about every debacle since Mt Gox.
        
           | DennisP wrote:
           | There was nothing decentralized about FTX. It was just a
           | centralized exchange in the Bahamas that happened to trade
           | crypto around.
           | 
           | The whole point of defi is to build systems where nobody can
           | do what FTX did. Uniswap for example doesn't even have admin
           | functions. Nobody can move your funds on Uniswap besides you.
        
           | anticrisis wrote:
           | The whole circus is a mass delusion. I would really like to
           | see some academic studies on the phenomenon.
        
             | belter wrote:
             | I give you the studies:
             | 
             | "In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties,
             | nations and epochs, it is the rule."
             | 
             | -- Friedrich Nietzsche
        
             | jeffskiling wrote:
        
           | jacoblambda wrote:
           | There's a weird split in the space in that regard. There's a
           | lot of right-libertarian-esque "no gods or kings, only man"
           | ethos in the cryptocurrency space but there's also been a lot
           | of work trying to build the guard rails that are common to
           | society into the systems.
           | 
           | People like to joke that cryptocurrency is just right-
           | libertarians speedrunning financial legislation history but
           | the reality is more that a lot of the tools that governments
           | use to make finance "safe" don't have well established
           | parallels that work on a decentralised platform. A lot of
           | that "speedrunning" is the people who are actually building
           | things trying to figure out how to still have reasonable
           | safety and stability without relying on a single government
           | or power to enforce policy.
           | 
           | Things like privacy preserving transactions/communication and
           | decentralised consensus are useful and valuable features but
           | it's taken years for game theorists and cryptographers to
           | work out schemes that are even close to being sustainable at
           | scale without compromising on priorities. Doubly so to build
           | those tools for stability that are essential for a well
           | functioning society such as the capacity for KYC, tax, and
           | regulatory compliance without compromising on the above
           | priorities.
           | 
           | So in a sense that argument that "this is good because it
           | shakes out the bad actors before they can do too much more
           | damage" is accurate but not in the sense that it allows the
           | "good guys" to continue in their glorious libertarian
           | fantasy. Rather it's a good thing because it minimizes the
           | potential damage that can be done until researchers and
           | engineers can develop the technology to a degree that the
           | average person could actually use it.
           | 
           | It's a race against a regulatory clock and when it strikes
           | midnight, unless there is a working example of a "good" and
           | "safe" cryptocurrency, regulators will absolutely go for the
           | throat. Unless the tech is sufficiently mature, they will
           | divide the space into one that is illegal & only used by
           | criminals and another which throws any semblance of
           | decentralisation or privacy preservation out the window. This
           | take is unfortunately fairly US- and Euro-centric but the
           | reality is that those two sets of governments and regulatory
           | bodies will be the ones to decide what form digital
           | currency/digital assets take going forward.
        
         | icedchai wrote:
         | How would that help? Anyone can lie on a spreadsheet or deck.
        
           | sarahowen62 wrote:
        
         | throwaway4good wrote:
         | I think those investors got all the paperwork they wanted and
         | it looked good.
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | Given what we know now, those financials were probably
         | completely wrong.
        
           | matt_s wrote:
           | Yeah I'd venture a guess based on what we're hearing that
           | they just wrote up whatever they wanted it to look like.
        
         | karmakurtisaani wrote:
         | I think the reason is that he was seen as a financial genius
         | boy wonder who just understood crypto better than anyone from
         | the "old guard". So he got away with wildly inappropriate
         | things.
         | 
         | More generally, we (as a society) seem to be worshiping those
         | who make a fortune, and forget that they too are just as faulty
         | as the rest of us. Initial innovative success gets projected to
         | mythical proportions, and once the investment streams are open
         | there is no limit to the wealth they accumulate. Looking at you
         | Elon and Zuck.
        
           | colechristensen wrote:
           | In other words, the investors were stupid and deserved what
           | they got.
           | 
           | Customers were owed better, but large scale investors who
           | don't do due diligence and end up losing their shirts deserve
           | every bit of it.
        
             | dsr_ wrote:
             | Are you familiar with the term "accredited investor"? It's
             | a formal term that the SEC uses to differentiate Joe Upper-
             | Middle who has put 200K in a retirement program, from
             | Josefina Nouveau, who has either:
             | 
             | earned income exceeding $200,000, or $300,000 when combined
             | with a spouse, during each of the previous two full
             | calendar years, and a reasonable expectation of the same
             | for the current year
             | 
             | or
             | 
             | a net worth greater than $1 million (either by yourself or
             | combined with a spouse), excluding your primary residence.
             | 
             | and is therefore expected, rightly or wrongly, to be able
             | to judge the riskiness of a potential investment and absorb
             | the loss without being crippled.
        
             | notch656a wrote:
             | I think it's more likely that the more sophisticated
             | investors knew there was a lot of handwaving going on and
             | they thought they'd get through the exits with
             | principal+profit before they became clogged. Sometimes
             | people are known to just not ask if they think the details
             | are odious and they want to maintain plausible deniability
             | about knowledge of source of the profits.
        
             | amanj41 wrote:
             | I have to agree with this. While I don't like to victim
             | blame usually, the VCs are too much in a position of power
             | to truly be victims here. They absolutely could have pushed
             | for more transparency or a board and likely would have
             | smelled smoke when there was none
        
               | preommr wrote:
               | > VCs are too much in a position of power to truly be
               | victims here
               | 
               | Sam playing league of legends during his pitch meeting
               | with squioa capital gets memed a lot but it truly is
               | absolutely staggering that so little common sense was
               | applied here.
        
           | loceng wrote:
           | Elon and Zuck aren't comparable - other than earning billions
           | from scalable enterprise.
        
             | gilleain wrote:
             | Ha, I'm genuinely unsure which one you think is
             | better/worse than the other.
             | 
             | It's like working out which return value from a comparison
             | operator is the right one - +1 or -1?
        
         | woeirua wrote:
         | It was fraud all the way down.
        
       | kieselguhr_kid wrote:
       | I don't know if it will happen, but a potentially good outcome
       | here would be some regulation on the business practices of
       | sufficiently large private companies in order to ensure they meet
       | some basic level of corporate governance. Maybe they don't need
       | the same level of scrutiny publicly traded companies have, but
       | establishing minimum standards of conduct would help avert crises
       | like this that can spread across entire sectors.
        
         | oldgradstudent wrote:
         | Fraud ands theft are already illegal.
        
           | sarahowen62 wrote:
        
           | bombcar wrote:
           | And it's becoming more and more apparent that the "investors"
           | had no desire to look closely at their golden baby.
        
           | kieselguhr_kid wrote:
           | Yes, but the total lack of corporate governance that
           | contributed to it is totally legal, and could have possibly
           | prevented the fraud and theft.
        
             | luckylion wrote:
             | Not investing into companies that are obviously either
             | frauds or extremely incompetent is the investor's job. We
             | don't need a lot of new regulation to make it harder for
             | you to buy bridges from people you meet on the subway.
        
               | kieselguhr_kid wrote:
               | The idea behind the lack of regulation is that the impact
               | is contained to the investors. It's obvious that in
               | sufficiently large cases, that's not true. If these
               | actors are able to do damage to entire sectors, they
               | should have to do some minimum stuff: keep track of their
               | money, have board meetings, submit to audits, etc.
        
               | luckylion wrote:
               | And they will ... it's just that they'll provide false
               | numbers to audits, their board will be them and their
               | friends, and they'll keep track of their money as it
               | makes its way into their pockets.
               | 
               | I guess we need more blockchain! But what business will
               | have 100% of their relationships, contracts and
               | transactions publicly visible?
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | vngzs wrote:
         | In Europe there are rules that work out to: if you have 50
         | employees or assets over EUR ~5 million, you must disclose
         | audited financial statements publicly (this is not _strictly_
         | true, but it is true to a first order approximation).
         | 
         | It wouldn't be crazy sounding to require that companies worth
         | over $10 billion USD disclose financial statements audited by
         | reputable firms.
        
           | kieselguhr_kid wrote:
           | Some version of this would make sense to me.
        
       | tppiotrowski wrote:
       | SBF sold a portion of his shares in the company for $300M instead
       | of selling other outstanding shares. This meant he got to cash
       | out before investors which is frowned upon because it signals
       | that SBF believed that a $300M investment in another place was
       | more valuable than keeping his $300M invested in FTX.
        
         | AustinDev wrote:
         | I wouldn't say it's frowned upon. I think that determination
         | depends on the context.
        
       | yieldcrv wrote:
       | For people looking for prosecution like embezzlement or something
       | else, these things usually rely on a violation of company policy
       | then enabling a violation of a criminal law
       | 
       | FTX/Alameda had no company policies and in this case disclosed
       | what they were going to do to investors. "Buyout binance's
       | stake".
       | 
       | There is only so much the governments do to prevent you from
       | wiring money to a sketchy opaque shadow bank in the Bahamas.
        
         | kieselguhr_kid wrote:
         | There are likely other charges that they could face. I don't
         | think this rises to the level of embezzlement (although IANAL),
         | but the missing customer deposits, lack of strict segregation
         | between Alameda and FTX, and the use of company assets for
         | personal loans and purchases will probably lead to indictments.
        
           | yieldcrv wrote:
           | that I agree on, just commenting on this specific article
        
             | sarahowen62 wrote:
        
             | trompetenaccoun wrote:
             | It goes much deeper. They clearly stole a lot of customer
             | money and SBF is supposed to have had a "backdoor" he could
             | use to move funds between the exchange and Alameda to avoid
             | detection by auditors. It doesn't get much more criminal
             | than that in finance.
             | 
             | https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/exclusive-
             | least-1...
             | 
             | Of course, with the way he and his family are connected, it
             | wouldn't surprise me if he eventually walks free.
        
       | thepasswordis wrote:
       | Just a general statement on people commenting on this saga: Sam
       | wasn't doing effective altruism. He was lying about doing
       | effective altruism.
       | 
       | It's weird to me that people talk about this as an indictment of
       | EA...but this rings similar to me as claiming that this is an
       | indictment of DeFi or cryptocurrency generally. Sam/Caroline
       | weren't doing DeFi, and neither were they really doing anything
       | related to cryptocurrency. This was _just_ a pretty
       | staightforward scam.
        
         | vrc wrote:
         | Just the capitalized term EA to me reads like a scam. It's a
         | new term created to explain some behavior that is simply
         | injurious to the broader population, claiming that its for
         | their benefit. I'm just not sure I buy it.
        
           | rglover wrote:
           | Especially when the definition of what is "effective" is
           | totally subjective and up to the adherents belief system(s).
           | Which sadly appears to have been funneling "donations" to bog
           | standard NGO/political nonsense, not impactful things like
           | making sure kids can eat or caring for veterans who've been
           | disposed of.
        
             | Tenoke wrote:
             | That's not really an accurate characterization. The most
             | promoted cause by EA has been the Against Malaria
             | Foundation because it saves the most money per $ spent. If
             | you donate to GiveWell (a basic recommended way to donate
             | in EA) they mostly donate to Malaria and similar causes.
             | Obviously, some members do a lot more but Political causes
             | aren't the standard, that stuff is.
        
               | rglover wrote:
               | Most-promoted, but is it the most funded? For example,
               | their landing page just links to the AMF's donors list
               | page while claiming EA provided "significant support"
               | with the only mentions of EA being people they've
               | inspired to donate in relatively small amounts (relative
               | to the billions moving through FTX). I'd imagine they're
               | buried in there somewhere but if they're a major
               | supporter I'd assume they'd be plastering that number all
               | over the place.
               | 
               | Sorry, but this whole FTX thing isn't just an "oopsie."
               | They knew exactly what they were doing and tried to
               | justify it with a few targeted donations. The landing
               | page alone only showcases 6 initiatives, 50% of which are
               | exactly what I described above.
        
           | gruez wrote:
           | >some behavior that is simply injurious to the broader
           | population, claiming that its for their benefit
           | 
           | what "behavior" are you talking about? The second paragraph
           | of the wikipedia article on EA says:
           | 
           | >Common practices of effective altruists include choosing
           | careers based on the amount of good that the career achieves,
           | donating to charities based on maximising impact, and earning
           | to give. Popular cause priorities within EA include global
           | health and development, animal welfare, and risks to the
           | survival of humanity over the long-term future.
           | 
           | I'm not sure how any of those causes can be considered
           | "simply injurious to the broader population".
        
         | brindlejim wrote:
         | Kind of.
         | 
         | Sam was not doing what EAism says you should do.
         | 
         | But he was embedded in the EA movement, close to many of its
         | other members, and abetted by people like Will.
         | 
         | So if you look at EA descriptively, Sam was very much doing EA.
         | 
         | He was lying about his business. But he wasn't lying about
         | giving the money away. That was very real, and a big part of
         | what "doing effective altruism" is.
         | 
         | Sam/Caroline were also doing crypto.
         | 
         | The two movements -- EA and crypto -- clearly want to
         | excommunicate them. But both those movements were happy to work
         | with them when they appeared to be successful, non-fraudulent
         | billionaires.
         | 
         | Nobody knows you when you're down and out.
        
         | shapefrog wrote:
         | He said "I'm doing EA" - the EA community said "He is amazing
         | he is doing the best EA"
         | 
         | What makes you think that he wasn't doing effective altruism
        
         | slibhb wrote:
         | It's an indictment of EA because many prominent EA people were
         | associated with FTX/Sam. That shows poor judgement and, on some
         | level, EA is about smart people making judgements about long-
         | term good. How can we trust them to make those judgements when
         | they decide to hitch their wagon to FTX?
        
           | gruez wrote:
           | >That shows poor judgement and, on some level, EA is about
           | smart people making judgements about long-term good. How can
           | we trust them to make those judgements when they decide to
           | hitch their wagon to FTX?
           | 
           | Charities in general aren't exactly known for conducting
           | thorough due diligence on their donors. Sure, it might make
           | sense to make sure the person you're getting money from isn't
           | some sort of ruthless dictator or embroiled in some scandal,
           | but "runs crypto trading firm" is a pretty plausible story.
        
             | slibhb wrote:
             | I wasn't talking about charities specifically, I was
             | referring to stuff like this: https://forum.effectivealtrui
             | sm.org/posts/xafpj3on76uRDoBja/...
             | 
             | At least one of the people involved (MacAskill) is a big
             | name in EA circles.
        
         | hcurtiss wrote:
         | Nobody has tried actual communism.
        
         | Tenoke wrote:
         | How was he not doing EA? He was lying AND donating to causes.
         | I'm very pro-EA but that's a weird claim.
        
           | hackerlight wrote:
           | Because EA is about overall impact. (At least that's one
           | strand of thought in EA, for those that lean more towards
           | utilitarianism.) He hurt so many people and caused so much
           | distrust that his overall impact is negative. It is therefore
           | against the principles of EA. That's not the No True Scotsman
           | fallacy.
        
             | gilleain wrote:
             | That's convenient. So when EA has a positive impact, it's
             | EA.
             | 
             | When it has a negative impact it's definitely NOT EA. Do I
             | have that right?
        
           | wmf wrote:
           | Prominent EAers like McAskill have said (before this scandal)
           | that EA is only valid if the money is earned honestly. They
           | say that they never intended EA to be "steal to give".
        
             | ohashi wrote:
             | Sounds nice in theory, but when the outcome is people
             | behaving like this and using it as a justification it rings
             | hollow. The idea seems centered around making the most
             | money possible as a core tenet. That alone is a pretty
             | corrupting thing to build your whole ideology on judging
             | from how we've seen humanity behave for thousands of years.
        
               | chrchang523 wrote:
               | Yeah. I see a fork in the road here:
               | 
               | 1. They can band together to save the EA brand by
               | demonstrating an unusually high commitment to
               | accountability. The simplest way I see to do this is to
               | contribute 2x what they received from FTX (as a group,
               | it's impractical for them to do this on the individual
               | level) to making the financial fraud victims whole.
               | 
               | 2. They could "declare bankruptcy", switching to less
               | ambitious but epistemically safer approaches to
               | philanthropy. I wouldn't blame them for doing this, (1)
               | is a big ask.
        
             | spywaregorilla wrote:
             | Those concepts seem obviously separate to me.
        
           | KptMarchewa wrote:
           | Definition of altruism requires selflessness. He was anything
           | but.
        
           | balozi wrote:
           | Doesn't altruism literary mean selflessness-ism? Can you be
           | selfless with stolen property?
        
             | kingTug wrote:
             | Yeah, that was the theme of Robinhood. Of course sbf is no
             | robinhood.
        
         | bradgessler wrote:
         | Yeah, everything I've read about the corporate governance of
         | Sam's enterprises seems like it should have been turned up
         | pretty quickly under the most basic diligence.
         | 
         | I can see how "Main Street" investors got completely screwed
         | over, but what I don't understand is how any sort of
         | institutional money flowed into FTX and propped it to the
         | massive scale it achieved. That deserves closer examination.
        
         | wahnfrieden wrote:
         | be careful about portraying any time an EA practitioner shows
         | up negatively as "well they weren't actually doing EA" /
         | adopting that line of defense from the EA community. obviously
         | that community now wants to distance themselves from bad press
        
         | knorker wrote:
         | It wouldn't be an indictment of DeFi/cryptocurrencies if it
         | weren't for... you know... this being basically the main
         | pattern used in all of DeFi/cryptocurrencies.
         | 
         | https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
        
           | p0pcult wrote:
           | You're conflating coin count with their relative size.
           | 
           | This is not the main pattern in either BTC or ETH.
        
         | c7b wrote:
         | The justifications in EA's long-termism are very similar to
         | SBF's 'expected-value-reasoning', and the idea of buying out
         | politicians to promote your cause is straight out of the EA
         | playbook, fully justified by the philosophy. Just saying 'don't
         | break laws while getting rich' is a band-aid, the problems
         | exposed here run deeper.
        
           | gruez wrote:
           | >the idea of buying out politicians to promote your cause is
           | straight out of the EA playbook, fully justified by the
           | philosophy
           | 
           | By "buying out", do you mean literal bribery, or just
           | lobbying? If it's the latter, are you also against other
           | organizations (eg. unions, environmental groups, activists)
           | that try to fund raise/lobby for their preferred candidates?
        
       | doesnotexist wrote:
       | > The amount raised contained numerical references to marijuana
       | and oral sex: $420.69 million raised from 69 investors. An
       | article published by one of FTX's investors, Sequoia, called that
       | fundraising a "meme round," referring to the embedded jokes.
       | 
       | Is Sequoia going to need to rebrand itself after this? Sure does
       | raise some questions about their judgement and professionalism.
       | Hey Investors, we're raising a round of almost half a billion
       | dollars and the theme is...
        
         | jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
         | That freakin novel of a fawning profile of SBF on their website
         | sure hasn't aged well.
        
       | jaspertheghost wrote:
       | hmm is this effective altruism, seems like they used it to cover
       | massive fraud.
        
       | sillysaurusx wrote:
       | > Three months earlier, in July 2021, Mr. Bankman-Fried bought
       | out the roughly 15% stake owned by Binance, FTX's first outside
       | investor. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted this month that the
       | amount totaled $2.1 billion, paid in a combination of FTT, FTX's
       | in-house cryptocurrency, and BUSD, Binance's stablecoin, whose
       | value is pegged to the U.S. dollar.
       | 
       | Hmm. Binance triggered FTX's downfall by dumping FTT, causing the
       | domino effect.
       | 
       | Does this mean that Sam was the one who sold Binance the FTT
       | which Binance subsequently used to cause FTT to collapse? I just
       | assumed Binance bought a bunch of tokens themselves for some
       | reason.
       | 
       | That's quite the turn of events!
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | _Does this mean that Sam was the one who sold Binance the FTT
         | which Binance subsequently used to cause FTT to collapse?_
         | 
         | Yes exactly.
         | 
         |  _Binance triggered FTX 's downfall by dumping FTT_
         | 
         | I don't know if they actually dumped; they just announced it.
         | It doesn't matter now.
        
           | sillysaurusx wrote:
           | It matters! Because that'd be hilarious. Is that really true
           | that an _announcement_ of a pending large sale (but no actual
           | sale) was enough delta to topple the house of cards?
           | 
           | Fascinating.
        
             | kjs3 wrote:
             | Well, of course it's true. How could it be otherwise. If
             | you see an 'announcement' and you wait for consummation,
             | you've already missed any market move you could have taken
             | advantage of.
        
             | KptMarchewa wrote:
             | AFAIK they weren't able to sell everything before FTX
             | collapsed, leaving them at a loss.
        
             | wmf wrote:
             | CZ announced that he was going to sell a certain amount of
             | FTT and people could see that there wasn't that much
             | liquidity on all the markets combined which implied that
             | the price was going to near zero eventually, so other
             | people completely rationally started selling FTT before CZ.
        
       | [deleted]
        
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