[HN Gopher] While crypto bro scammed clients, reporters scammed ...
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While crypto bro scammed clients, reporters scammed readers
Author : marban
Score : 177 points
Date : 2022-11-20 17:25 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fair.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (fair.org)
| nailer wrote:
| The statements regarding the media treatment are correct, but SBF
| was the opposite of a 'bro'. He was committed to a virtual
| signalling movement ('effective altruism') lived in a polycule,
| was the second largest Democratic donor, and had poor diet and
| exercise habits. This is the stereotype of someone with low
| testosterone rather than a masculine man.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > He was committed to a virtual signalling movement
|
| He more or less admitted that that was all bullshitting for PR
| purposes.
| voldacar wrote:
| Where did he admit this
| dahdum wrote:
| In the Vox interview.
|
| https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23462333/sam-bankman-
| frie...
|
| The polycule/testosterone stuff is just speculation. It's
| known a number of stimulants were used by him and his top
| people, unknown if they were abusing them.
| uxp100 wrote:
| I think this take is a misunderstanding of the
| conversation. What they were discussing was the "Phillip
| Morris" question that he was asked earlier this year.
| Like if it's so cheap to save peoples lives in poor areas
| with endemic malaria (which has some issues but I think
| most likely is close to true, donating to the AMF is
| probably one of the least weird and most likely to hold
| up EA ideas, better than all x-risk stuff) then why not
| kill 100 westerners (with tobacco, or whatever) to save
| 10,000 people elsewhere? And in interviews he was like,
| well you can't do that heh heh heh, but uh, if he was
| raised a utilitarian, uh, well, why not? You've got some
| additional framework? And later interview was him saying,
| no, not actually, kill the westerners.
|
| Which is a take you could hear from utilitarians, an-
| prims, and the tiny but not non-existent eco-fascists.
| It's definitely one of those I am enlightened/logically
| superior takes that often reveals more about the person
| saying it than they think.
| twic wrote:
| EA has become quite a broad church. At one end, it's
| still just nerds doing spreadsheets to find which is the
| best charity, but at the other end, it's the state
| religion of the capital-R Rationalist cult. I don't know
| to what extent SBF really cared about helping people, and
| to what extent he just needed to demonstrate his
| righteousness to people in his social sphere.
| dahdum wrote:
| EA is a mishmash of ideas and philosophy that's been
| changing over the past decade through endless
| pontificating debate, book sales, and billionaire
| largesse. Sam and his core team were all EAs since the
| beginning, I don't think it's all that important to
| ascertain which rationalizations they were using.
|
| Ultimately Sam was admitting that his personal ethics,
| whatever they may ultimately be, are _not_ what he was
| espousing. The others involved in the fraud have shown
| the same.
|
| I don't doubt the sincerity of many in the EA movement,
| but ultimately it's dependent on and co-opted by a few
| extremely wealthy individuals. FTX has shown the public
| that a significant portion of those with power are
| neither trustworthy nor sincere, and the philosopher-
| kings of the movement itself are not able or willing to
| see through the charade.
| manholio wrote:
| You may be confusing bros with jocks. SBF was the
| quintessential cryto bro, checking all the boxes of the startup
| / tech bro stereotype: young white man with a elite education,
| or a dropout of such, liberal values wants to change the world,
| quirky but a genius, filthy rich as a result of his own,
| totally self made business.
| nailer wrote:
| Bros were supposed to be masculine tech people that weren't
| fat pimply nerds. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brogrammer
|
| Jocks are masculine men that only care for sports.
| codehalo wrote:
| He wasn't. He knew what people like you perceived a crypto
| bro to be and filled it while simultaneously filling the Wall
| Street trader wunderkind like Christian Bale played in the
| Big Short. He's as crypto bro as the "pimple faced white kid
| in his mothers basement" that people like you call all
| hackers.
|
| Edit: upon reflection, maybe he is indeed a crypto bro -
| nothing in your definition is untrue. Using my analogy above,
| Crypto Bros are the Script Kiddies of crypto. Apologies.
| crazygringo wrote:
| No, reporters didn't "scam" readers.
|
| I'm sick of people trying to twist words to mean things they
| don't.
|
| Scamming someone requires obtaining something like money in the
| process (fraudulently). SBF ran a scam because he took people's
| money and used it fraudulently.
|
| Reporters just ran puff pieces. But they didn't defraud anybody.
| The reporters weren't investors in Alameda. They didn't obtain
| anything except the normal salary they get for any story.
|
| So no, reporters did NOT "scam" readers. They just engaged in
| run-of-the-mill journalism. You can critique that all you want,
| but it still falls under the category of "journalism", NOT the
| category of "scam".
| nathias wrote:
| the CEO of FTX stole his customers funds, nothing to do with
| crypto, nothing to do with reporters
| code_runner wrote:
| The most reputable spokesman the crypto space has managed to
| cough up was a fraud and a thief. Maybe has something to say
| about crypto.
| nathias wrote:
| how is he most reputable? because he paid a lot for ads?
| pessimizer wrote:
| I would say because of the dozens of articles with
| "journalists" waxing poetically about his reputation as a
| big-thinking successfully-entrepreneurial self-made
| financial-wizard philanthropist. A regular Jeffrey Epstein.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > he received little scrutiny in the media. On the contrary, he
| was celebrated.
|
| It's not just this issue that the media plays follow the
| narrative. Not only that, they're all in on the ruse. That is,
| none are willing to call out the others for constantly half-
| assing it.
|
| It might not be a corporate monopoly, but it's a monopoly of the
| mind.
| autotune wrote:
| It's easy to look back and say "it should have been obvious," but
| besides those who had general disdain for crypto like Buffett
| aside, were there any MSM outlets that actually saw through SBF
| for what he was at the onset and wrote an actual article about it
| before this all occurred? Because I can't seem to find any, and
| this just makes me want to avoid reading the news altogether at
| this point.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| This is just excuse making for journalists.
|
| They promoted him because they're as unscrupulous and devoid of
| ethics as he is, by and large. He didn't win them over with some
| con man charm, he won them over with money, or the allure of
| money, or even probably some politicking.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I'm less surprised by the media coverage of the entire fiasco
| because when on earth have they ever not written sympathetically
| about your average millenial do-gooder cause driven entrepreneur,
| what I ask myself is, how have the _investors_ not seen this
| coming, who are after all the people who open their own wallets
| for this and are professionals.
|
| And not just this case but any of the recent crypto-company
| explosions that lost customer funds to the tunes of hundreds of
| millions. There are experienced funders behind this who tout
| themselves on being able to differentiate BS from reality.
|
| People love to drag the NYT but I don't really expect them to
| have really deep insight into these firms, on the other hand
| people are way too uncritical of the whole Sequoia/al6z/etc
| alternate media machinery around this.
| notahacker wrote:
| And let's be honest, the media are mainly writing the articles
| because the _top tier investment professionals_ have spent
| millions of dollars giving the Bahamas crypto guy their seal of
| approval.
|
| They're not giving the same amount of positive spin to any old
| crypto guy who says he wants to save the world.
| zetazzed wrote:
| These are all critiques of reporting on a quirky celebrity CEO.
| Serious question - was there a lot of coverage that said
| something like "FTX is safe" or "FTX is a good place to park your
| money"? I agree that there is a long tradition of uncritical puff
| pieces in CEOs. But this seems like a different position from
| "<insert your hated publication here> misled sheep to the crypto
| slaughter."
| nullc wrote:
| An article that omits any whiff of risk while heaping on the
| praise is implying that it's safe, or at least implying that
| there weren't any obvious red flags.
| gruez wrote:
| >or at least implying that there weren't any obvious red
| flags.
|
| Well? Were there any _credible_ red flags? Aside from the
| standard "all crypto is a scam" rhetoric, SBF/FTX looked
| pretty clean before the collapse.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| a 28 year old billionaire running his exchange out of the
| bahamas was enough of a red flag for me
| gruez wrote:
| That sounds more along the lines of "all crypto is a
| scam" than something that you can write a news story
| about. I'm not going to deny it isn't shady (I don't use
| them for that reason), but at best the only thing you can
| write for this is something like
|
| "the exchange has drawn criticism for being domiciled in
| the Bahamas and not being audited"
|
| but that might be tough. To my knowledge there wasn't
| significant criticism around before the crash (unlike
| with Tether, for instance). People seemed to be largely
| okay with the state of affairs, or the people who weren't
| okay and went to Coinbase/Gemini/Kraken.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> not being audited_
|
| Except FTX did (somehow!?) pass a GAAP audit:
| https://blockworks.co/news/ftx-joins-coinbase-kraken-
| with-us...
| sigstoat wrote:
| he had some twitter thread two years ago where he was
| talking about betting five times [what the gambler's
| formulation of the kelly criterion would suggest], which is
| bug fuck insane and would've had me shorting him
| immediately if i'd been aware of it and could've figured
| out how to short him. he was 100% going to zero and it
| wasn't even going to take long.
|
| might've even happened at that point and he was just
| stealing customer money to cover it up.
|
| not that i'd expect journalists to have been able to work
| it out; anybody who can understand kelly's paper is making
| more money some place else.
| whatshisface wrote:
| You don't even have to understand the derivation to apply
| the Kelly criterion.
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| Only after the collapse a friend pointed out that thread,
| where he's arguing 10x Kelly makes sense because when you
| win such a crazy long shot bet you'll have enough money
| to change the world and money doesn't actually have a
| diminishing utility ever.
|
| Regardless of his other arguments, it never makes sense
| to bet more than Kelly, because you move into
| _diminishing_ expected value... while also taking on more
| risk! You can do less than Kelly if you want to diminish
| your expected value, but at least that also comes with
| less risk.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > he's arguing 10x Kelly makes sense because when you win
| such a crazy long shot bet you'll have enough money to
| change the world and money doesn't actually have a
| diminishing utility ever.
|
| right he also had a thing in there where i think he was
| conflating the log utility in kelly with human's tendency
| to have a logarithmic view of the utility of money.
|
| they're not actually connected, they're just both the
| words "log utility".
| notahacker wrote:
| yeah, pretty much every one of the [not particularly
| large number of] positive pieces I read on him screamed
| "compulsive gambler", including the VC hagiography that
| talked in depth about his interpretations of
| utilitarianism and devoted a paragraph to wondering if
| there was anything in life he actually enjoyed.
|
| not to mention the Matt Levine interview where Matt tells
| him he's basically describing yield farming as a Ponzi
| scheme and he concedes that's valid and doesn't even try
| to construct a counterargument for where the value comes
| from...
| twic wrote:
| I think that thread is being widely misinterpreted. Kelly
| betting applies to repeated bets. At the start of the
| thread he makes it clear he's talking about a one-off. In
| that situation, EV really does scale linearly with bet
| size, so if you have any edge you should just go big.
|
| You can argue that there is no such thing as a one-off
| bet, because there will always be more bets on other
| things for someone who isn't ruined, but that's the
| explicit assumption for that thread.
| vkou wrote:
| Running an exchange out of the Bahamas that has never been
| audited is a major one.
|
| Of course, neither have 90% of their competitors.
|
| 8% yield for customer deposits is another one.
| gruez wrote:
| >8% yield for customer deposits is another one.
|
| AFAIK that was limited to the first $10k in deposits, so
| it seemed plausible as a some sort of customer
| acquisition cost. Also, 8% was around the going rate for
| decentralized lending protocols, so it only seemed high
| in comparison to FDIC protected savings accounts.
| vkou wrote:
| Yes, 8% only seems high in comparison to companies that
| are ran by adults that don't evaporate with your money
| every few years.
|
| No financial company in the world _that isn 't a fraud_
| is going to pay me a $800/year for parking $10,000 in
| their bank account, once all risks are taken into
| account.
| nullc wrote:
| > AFAIK that was limited to the first $10k in deposits,
| so it seemed plausible as a some sort of customer
| acquisition cost
|
| $800 per year per customer? Ehh. Also, above $10k and up
| to $10m it was 5%/yr... which I think breaks that
| explanation as no one is going to argue that a half
| million dollars a year is a reasonable customer
| acquisition cost! :)
|
| > going rate for decentralized lending protocols,
|
| Don't use euphemisms here, the term is ponzi schemes.
| These yield programs were across the board ponzi schemes
| with no substantial source of income other than the
| deposits of other users.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> never been audited_
|
| They did pass a GAAP audit, unbelievably in retrospect:
| https://blockworks.co/news/ftx-joins-coinbase-kraken-
| with-us...
| nullc wrote:
| Sure, including ones that should have been apparent without
| any sophisticated analysis:
|
| For example, FTX was giving people 8%/yr 'yield' just for
| funds deposited there in spite claiming to not invest
| customer funds.
|
| The claim that his fund earned >$10/billion over two years
| on a trivial arb with Korean exchange was also an obvious
| red flag (and asking people with relevant experience would
| have got an answer that this not a credible claim).
|
| The heavy involvement with and promotion of extremely
| illiquid and self-made tokens was also pretty suspect, but
| not unique to FTX. Looking at my messages, I see that I
| specifically highlighted 'the ftx website lists something
| called a "3x leveraged shitcoin index token"'
|
| ... or the fact that they offered 100x leverage.
|
| Who knows what more would have been found if any
| investigation or critical questions were applied.
|
| These specific red flags were clear enough for me-- and
| other people I know, to yank most of their funds from
| LedgerX when SBF acquired it.
|
| Any journalist writing about SBF/FTX would have had access
| to much more information that I did. E.g. I didn't see the
| videos of him obviously tweaking in interviews, nor the
| easily visible tweets by Ellison about how boring life is
| when off amphetamines. But someone spending a half hour
| googling the involved parties would easily have found these
| additional red-flags.
| gruez wrote:
| >The claim that his fund earned >$10/billion over two
| years on a trivial arb with Korean exchange was also an
| obvious red flag (and asking people with relevant
| experience would have got an answer that this not a
| credible claim).
|
| Source? The numbers seems suspiciously high when you
| consider that the net worth of SBF (who owned most of SBF
| and FTX) was only $10.5 billion prior to the collapse.
| Maybe you got this confused with this?
|
| Wikipedia: "In January 2018, Bankman-Fried organized an
| arbitrage trade, moving up to $25 million per day, to
| take advantage of the higher price of bitcoin in Japan
| compared to the price in America.[9][10][2] The company
| earned about $20 million from the arbitrage
| opportunity.[11]"
|
| >The heavy involvement with and promotion of extremely
| illiquid and self-made tokens was also pretty suspect,
| but not unique to FTX. Looking at my messages, I see that
| I specifically highlighted 'the ftx website lists
| something called a "3x leveraged shitcoin index token"'
|
| >... or the fact that they offered 100x leverage.
|
| Are you making these claims from a "it's impossible to
| offer this product without being a scam" point of view,
| or "this product is gambling and shouldn't be allowed"?
|
| >I didn't see the videos of him obviously tweaking in
| interviews
|
| This seems like the prototypical example of stuff that
| you only notice after the fact because hindsight is
| 20/20. Can you imagine writing an article that's like
| "SBF is pretty sus, look at how much he's tweaking in
| this video"? Or telling your editor you want to
| investigate SBF/FTX because he looks like he's tweaking?
|
| >nor the easily visible tweets by Ellison about how
| boring life is when off amphetamines.
|
| If you read the whole tweet in its entirety, you'd
| realize that
|
| 1. she was talking about prescription amphetamines aka
| Adderall. it's not like she was smoking meth.
|
| 2. she was emphatically not talking about being bored,
| she was talking about how hard it was to get
| energy/motivation to do any sort of activity, all of
| which were symptoms of ADHD (see point 1)
|
| Sure, it's fun to dunk on her and the rest of the
| FTX/Alameda staff now that the whole thing crashed and
| burned, but if you wrote a piece on this pre-crash you'd
| end up getting canceled for doubting/making fun of
| people's mental disorders.
| nullc wrote:
| He changed the explanation that they were given--
| originally he was telling people Korean exchanges, later
| the claim changed to Japan. The replacement wasn't
| particularly credible either (at least not the scale).
| You can easily find examples of the earlier story on
| google using the word kimchi:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=SBF+kimchi
|
| Of course, newly available disclosures show that they
| hadn't earned anything from the korean trade at all.
|
| If you look at WP history, you'll see that entire article
| was recently written ( https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.p
| hp?title=Alameda_Research&...) and the WP article for SBF
| himself only goes back to April 2021. The red flag
| examples I gave were actually quoted from my contemporary
| correspondence (warning other people off), so I know none
| of it is tainted by hindsight. Tainted by cynicism,
| perhaps, but I think cynicism is well justified in this
| space.
|
| In later correspondence I see did cite the SBF wikipedia
| article on Dec 9 2021 (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sam_Bankman-
| Fried... ) in a message to someone, "can't say that
| finding his wikipedia page has made me feel any safer
| about having funds in ledgerx" and noted that
| participation in forbes 30 under 30 is a "minor red flag
| (it's almost excursively paid promotion)", and I noted
| the text '"sleeps four hours per night" at the age of 29
| is almost certainly something LARPing as a superman' and
| I compared it to other cryptocurrency fantasists like
| Craig Wright claiming to read 2500 books a year.
|
| > Are you making these claims from a "it's impossible to
| offer this product without being a scam" point of view
|
| Impossible to offer without having an extraordinary
| implosion risk, at least, if not being an outright scam.
| There was no disclosure around the risks or how it would
| be contained. Scamcoin casino competitors have had high
| profile "insurance funds" with somewhat transparent
| management as an explicit mechanism to address the
| extreme risk of these levered products. (I think they are
| also obviously too risky to do business with, and these
| are risks that should have been covered in any article
| discussing FTX!).
|
| There are ways to create leverage without any implosion
| risk-- e.g. physically delivered options. But that's a
| different set of products, and one that sells less well
| to unsophisticated users in part because the investment
| risk isn't hidden, because the trades need counterparties
| instead of being against the house, etc.
|
| > This seems like the prototypical example of stuff that
| you only notice after the fact because hindsight is
| 20/20.
|
| I specifically set apart the elements that I didn't know
| about at the time.
|
| My records show that prior to 2022 on at least a dozen
| occasions I told people that I communicated with that I
| thought FTX was fraudulent and that I thought SBF was
| likely a scammer. Quite explicitly, in fact, in 2021 I
| wrote: "I don't believe SBF money exists. I think he's a
| scammer. I'd take a non-trivial bet on it. His claimed
| origins of his money are more obviously false than
| madoffs'. maybe he's just a front for iran or something,
| but whatever the case is he didn't make his money the way
| he said he did." and "I mean SBF is super redflaggy to
| begin with. I think he's a scammer, not sure exactly the
| nature of the scam, but his story of where his sudden
| wealth came from just doesn't compute."
|
| (I would have been more outspoken in public under my name
| about these concerns, but dealing with one multi-billion
| dollar lawsuit from a scammer at a time is enough for me!
| (and, in fact, said as much to friends in private))
|
| So you don't get to chalk my perspective to hindsight,
| though it's certainly emboldened now by hindsight. :)
|
| Now-- could I have gone to press with an expose on that?
| No. But it's enough that someone could refrain from
| gushing on support, or could have investigated more
| carefully. (Or as I did, pulling funds away from
| potentially exposed entities!)
|
| > she was talking about prescription amphetamines aka
| Adderall.
|
| If you've been around people on Adderall and don't
| recognize that it can easily compromise judgement and
| result in mania, then I dunno what to say other than
| congrats on your good fortune. Cryptocurrency is rife
| with stimulant abusers, however, many of which are on
| prescriptions yet engage in obviously unwise, reckless,
| or at least irritating behavior as a result.
|
| That kind of message from executive staff is a serious
| red flag, if not directly showing abuse, and least
| demonstrating a significant lapse in judgement in
| choosing to make public such an obviously concerning
| message. Could you imagine how the public would respond
| to an equivalent tweet being put out by the CEO of
| Fidelity?
|
| > but if you wrote a piece on this pre-crash
|
| There aren't just two options "write a critical piece on
| thin indications" or "write a gushing promotion piece".
| The obvious thing to do when there are weak indications
| of concern is to just say nothing, or to do serious
| critical research-- had any been done they would most
| likely have turned up even more reportable information,
| or at least more negative indication that supported
| keeping distance. ... or to at least find some random
| naysayer to quote saying it's suspicious and they're
| uncomfortable with it.
| psychlops wrote:
| > The red flags were clear enough for me-- and other
| people I know...
|
| This seems glaringly obvious to me as well. A basic
| scrutiny of how the money is made reveals deep flaws. It
| should be clear to anyone who has money to invest that
| there is a reason why one investment vehicle pays 8%
| versus another which pays 2% (CD's).
|
| I don't believe they should lose their money without
| recourse, but people shouldn't have zero responsibility
| for their financial decisions. Some risk and educational
| foundation must be assumed by the individual. It would be
| nice if regulators and journalists gave a clear picture,
| but everyone should remember, they likely have no
| financial stake on their findings.
| nullc wrote:
| It's a hard situation: the relative safety of standard
| investments contributes to bad judgement when people end
| up in a red in tooth and claw unregulated market. Similar
| people used to theme parks going to a national park and
| falling to their death in a waterfall or being gored by
| buffalo.
|
| Not that I think the safety rails are bad... if you had
| to be maximally cynical you'd never even bother taking an
| investment with only 2% yield, it just wouldn't be worth
| the meta-risk (the risk you misunderstood the risk!).
|
| Probably one of the worst things about the FTX press
| puffery is the implication that FTX was more regulated or
| pro-regulation, ... probably causing people to think it
| was a part of the relatively safe major markets where the
| risks are usually reasonable and the asset returns tends
| to be fair relative to the risk.
|
| I filed complaints with the government over the Gemini
| earn program because they were heavily marketing to
| retail users with comparisons to savings accounts while,
| AFAICT, actually consisting of effectively unsecured
| investments in ponzi schemes ('yield programs') whos
| risks weren't meaningfully disclosed. Never heard back,
| now that it's imploded perhaps I should try FOIA-ing any
| communication resulting from my complaints.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Worse he gave "grants" through one of his foundations to news
| outlets like Vox, Intercept, ProPublica, and others. Vox did
| not even put a disclaimer about them having taken money from
| him in the fluff pieces they put out. They have only started
| doing so after the implosion of FTX, probably to ward off
| potential controversy.
| strix_varius wrote:
| *potential lawsuits:
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/larry-
| davi...
| cma wrote:
| The journalist/author Sequoia hired wrote:
|
| > Something of the sort must happen eventually, as the current
| system, with its layers upon layers of intermediaries, is
| antiquated and prone to crashing--the global financial crisis
| of 2008 was just the latest in a long line of failures that
| occurred because banks didn't actually know what was on their
| balance sheets. Crypto is money that can audit itself, no
| accountant or bookkeeper needed, and thus a financial system
| with the blockchain built in can, in theory, cut out most of
| the financial middlemen, to the advantage of all. Of course,
| that's the pitch of every crypto company out there. The FTX
| competitive advantage? Ethical behavior. SBF is a Peter Singer-
| inspired utilitarian in a sea of Robert Nozick-inspired
| libertarians. He's an ethical maximalist in an industry that's
| overwhelmingly populated with ethical minimalists. I'm a Nozick
| man myself, but I know who I'd rather trust my money with: SBF,
| hands-down. And if he does end up saving the world as a side
| effect of being my banker, all the better.
| [deleted]
| eduction wrote:
| Has anyone archived a copy of this somewhere online? And who
| wrote this?
| notahacker wrote:
| The internet never forgets https://archive.ph/GQkCp
|
| (It's very long, but it's one of the funniest things you'll
| read all year)
| notahacker wrote:
| Sure, but Sequoia's hilarious hagiography wasn't mainstream
| journalism, it was a PR piece posted by a company that didnt
| exactly hide how deeply invested in his success they were.
| (Also probably too long and too weird to tempt many people
| into using his exchange. My favourite paragraph was the one
| that speculated at length whether SBF was incapable of
| feeling pleasure. You don't get that in Forbes puff pieces!)
| derbOac wrote:
| This makes a critical point, one that needs to be taken to heart
| societally at large, but I feels like it undercuts itself by
| burying its main arguments. The problem isn't just crypto, or
| business, but rather something about modern society at large --
| academics, politics, the workplace, and so forth and so on,
| celebrity or not. There's a sort of naive head in the sand
| acceptance or embracing of hype that pervades everything, without
| enough critical caution or skepticism. SBF/FTX is a good example
| but by framing the article so strongly around it the broader
| message is diminished somewhat.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > There's a sort of naive head in the sand acceptance or
| embracing of hype that pervades everything,
|
| I don't think this is true. I think that people who are selling
| things generate hype for those things that they're selling, and
| our media not only depends on those sellers to pay for ads, but
| additionally is owned by people who are also invested in those
| things that are being sold.
|
| I think this can easily be misinterpreted as _everything_ being
| hyped up, rather than everything being designed to trick you
| into supporting things that benefit people who sell, whether
| they 're politicians or toilet-brush sellers. This is happening
| because our politicians, toilet-brush sellers, and media are
| owned by the same people. They rely on you buying in, or at
| least not being able to organize or sustain an opposition.
| We've allowed the world to consolidate so much that separating
| sales and news is impossible. They're operating from the same
| address.
|
| Main point: not everything is being hyped. Scams that benefit
| the people who own the media that hype spreads through are
| being hyped.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I mean, you need some reason to get out of bed in the morning,
| and naive optimism sounds a lot better than my dread of the
| consequences if I don't.
| itronitron wrote:
| Depends, I don't use them myself (yet) so I usually get out
| of bed in the morning to use the toilet.
| jl6 wrote:
| Same vibe in medicine. Doctors and medical researchers carry a
| great weight of authority. Some medical treatments can be
| mainstream for years, before research finally self-corrects.
| Lobotomy, opioids, and more.
|
| "It's a perfectly safe and normal procedure".
| itronitron wrote:
| Regarding opioids, I recall that in the mid `90's when I
| listened to about 4 hours of NPR during work every day the
| host (Dianne Ream?) had reps from Purdue Pharma (or one of
| the other opioid purveyors) in which the pharma reps were
| basically saying that doctors weren't prescribing enough pain
| medication for their patients. I recall the host really
| challenging them on each of the points they were trying to
| make, which was out of character for her and stuck in my
| mind.
|
| Point being, I expect that at least some of the guests are
| arranged without much input from the hosts. There must be
| heavy politicking involved to get bandwidth in mass media,
| and the people actually doing the work (running interviews or
| writing articles) can only push back to the degree that they
| have some degree of control over the network or channel.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| If you want a striking example of this, look at the
| interview Ben Shapiro gave to the BBC a few years back.
| Whatever you think of Shapiro, he has a masterful
| understanding of how American media works (I believe his
| Daily Wire is among the top shared sites on Facebook for
| instance), but he is clearly off-balance in a British
| interview. The interviewer repeatedly asks questions and
| doesn't allow Shapiro to dodge them which eventually
| results in Shapiro becoming too agitated to finish. It was
| really illuminating on a few levels.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VixqvOcK8E
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| And it was a famous British conservative doing the
| interview, no less.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Ignorance of aerosol transmission of respiratory viruses was
| a good one. Even contact transmission of respiratory viruses
| is hanging on a thread.
|
| Not sure what these people were thinking I was doing with
| whatever I touched day-to-day.
|
| Going through similar things with avian flu. "Experts" think
| I inhale raw chicken and that birds don't really care about
| borders. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/windsor-cfia-
| poultry-...
|
| Or the assurances that the new food guide is no longer
| tainted by food/farming industries.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| Exactly. It also doesn't help that >90% of "journalists" have
| no clue what they're talking about. But it doesn't matter for
| revenue because 99% of their readers know even less.
| walrus01 wrote:
| 90% of "tech journalists" wouldn't be worthy of the title.
|
| When I look at the writing and output from any particular
| text media journalist, particularly on the subject of many
| things related to global geopolitical issues, I ask myself,
| "is this something that would be seen as neutral and
| impartial, ethical journalism by Steve Coll?" [1]. Often the
| answer is no.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Coll
| rpgbr wrote:
| Journalist's job isn't to master a field they cover (although
| this can help a lot), but to know what questions to ask to
| whom. Lack of skepticism and fact checking is, indeed, sins
| of the profession, but that's it.
| enkid wrote:
| Hype wasn't called that, but there was plenty of "hysterias"
| and "manias" previously in history. Look at the Ditch Tulip
| Bubble or the reporting that led to the Spanish American War.
| Not saying it's not a problem, but it is not about modern
| society, it's about han nature.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| I think social media is directly responsible for that.
|
| I was just listening to some Christopher Hitchens videos
| yesterday and was reminded of just how articulate and elegant
| his arguments were.
|
| Compare that to modern "intellectuals" like Jordan Peterson.
| Complete rabble rousers.
|
| Social media has allowed cowardly arguments to be made
| mainstream and that has weakened our total global human B.S.
| detector by a ton.
|
| Imagine crypto had to be popular without social media. It would
| have been ripped apart just like Marc Andreessen was ripped
| apart on that podcast for his intellectually vapid ideas.
|
| It is really a shame how much harm social media has done to our
| species.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Um, modern society?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| This is a bit of a tangent (and a response to only the title,
| which I admit is bad form) but what's with the prevalence of
| adding "bro" at the end of random words? Can a woman be a crypto
| bro or a tech bro?
|
| It reminds me of when everyone was talking about "brogrammers" a
| while ago, and it had a pretty clear connotation of "programmer
| who loves keg stands, hitting the gym, and making misogynistic
| comments". I think "crypto bro" and "tech bro" don't have that
| connotation at all, or at least that's never how I perceived SBF.
| twic wrote:
| While the bro meme emerged to describe the kegs and kettlebells
| thing, i think it's shifted to mean something like "someone
| massively overconfident who gets ahead through bullshit,
| backscratching, and reality distortion, rather than through
| actual talent".
|
| Under this definition, women absolutely can be bros. And
| neither men nor women, nor anyone else, are usually bros, it's
| a rare thing.
| comex wrote:
| > It reminds me of when everyone was talking about
| "brogrammers" a while ago, and it had a pretty clear
| connotation of "programmer who loves keg stands, hitting the
| gym, and making misogynistic comments". I think "crypto bro"
| and "tech bro" don't have that connotation at all, or at least
| that's never how I perceived SBF.
|
| I'd say they have _related_ connotations. Less about explicit
| invocations of masculinity like beer and the gym, more about
| being egotistical or solipsistic or "highly confident in
| oneself while actually being wrong". Not quite the same thing
| as the traits you mentioned, but associated with them, for
| better or worse.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| I hope that one day we will live in a world where half of all
| crypto scammers are female. But today most of them are young
| men
| wmf wrote:
| The "crypto bro" stereotype came from real people who combined
| a love of crypto with bro behaviors like aggressive rhetoric,
| shameless self-promotion, and flaunting their wealth (e.g.
| talking about lambos all the time).
| onetimeusename wrote:
| Women do that stuff too. I have seen women promote crypto
| scams as well. It is subtly misandrist to use these terms I
| think. But no one will stop using it because that is part of
| the society wide perception of men being viewed as less moral
| than women.
| zztop44 wrote:
| So maybe women can be bros too? Just like men can be karens
| and huns. But just as complaining in an of itself doesn't
| make you a Karen, shilling a scam coin in and of itself
| doesn't make you a crypto bro.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| And when FTX folded, the same press was still writing puff pieces
| about SBF trying to make excuses for his behavior, painting that
| "genius" as just an incompetent but well intentioned man when he
| was always a crook running a Ponzi scheme and selling securities
| illegally, because that press could not admit their own
| responsibility in building a false profile of SBF thus their own
| utter corruption and lack of critical thinking or just doing
| their job, investigate and search for the truth...
| onetimeusename wrote:
| I am just surprised no one questioned the partnership between
| Alameda and FTX. The equivalent would be something like if a
| large HFT firm like Citadel, Virtu, or one of the others had the
| same ownership with a brokerage like Robinhood or Charles Schwab
| or even formed a partnership. I think the financial media would
| be questioning the incentives.
|
| I read in the WSJ today that Alameda had indeed done price
| arbitrage trades on the FTX exchange. The closeness of these two
| firms should have raised questions I think. I really don't know a
| lot about it because I was never involved in either FTX or
| Binance. But I think most financial journalists are trained to
| spot disincentives and corruption that come with marrying trading
| firms and exchanges. So I am surprised that did not happen
| leaving aside other questionable items.
| lumb63 wrote:
| Doesn't Robinhood sell order flow to Citadel?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Not just Robinhood selling order flow. Robinhood was just the
| first to say "we can make enough money with order flow, so
| let's cancel trading commissions".
|
| Other brokers really hated that.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| yes. It was widely reported on and criticized though and I
| believe the SEC decided not to ban it. This article[1] has
| some details but it seems like the SEC may not be able to.
| However, none other than Gary Gensler criticized the
| practice. That's my point is how different the reporting was
| on RH versus FTX over a similar practice.
|
| edit: FWIW this is not even the biggest issue. Alameda making
| bets with FTX customer money seems to be the biggest problem.
| I am bringing this up because closeness between a trading
| firm and an exchange might have been an early clue to
| financial journalists that the relationship should be
| scrutinized.
|
| [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/22/robinhood-jumps-after-
| report...
| wmf wrote:
| Many people saw it as a positive that FTX had a "built-in"
| market maker. People also thought that Alameda were geniuses.
|
| It's considered a cost of doing business that all offshore
| crypto exchanges are trading against their own customers.
| itronitron wrote:
| >> The equivalent would be something like if a large HFT firm
| like Citadel, Virtu, or one of the others had the same
| ownership with a brokerage like Robinhood...
|
| Yeah.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Doug Henwood, host of KPFA's Behind the News and the author of
| Wall Street: How It Works and for Whom, told FAIR:
|
| The business press is rarely skeptical about the speculative
| heroes of the moment. There are exceptions; if you read
| carefully, you can get a good critique. But the general culture
| is boosterish. Just a few months ago, SBF was a genius. Elon
| Musk, too, though his antics at Twitter are making that cult
| harder to sustain. Before that it was Elizabeth Holmes and her
| magical blood-testing machine. Go back a couple of decades and it
| was Ken Lay and Enron (celebrated by none other than [New York
| Times columnist] Paul Krugman, who'd also been paid a consulting
| fee by the company).
|
| There are a lot of reasons for this. Many business journalists
| identify with the titans they cover-some even aspire to join
| them, as did former New York Times reporter Steven Rattner, who
| became an investment banker."
|
| Another example from the so-called "dot-com boom" who went to
| work at Prudential and later Merrill Lynch.1
|
| 1.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/business/yourmoney/18shel...
|
| After he was banned from working on Wall Street for life he
| returned to journalism and co-founded "businessinsider.com".
|
| These folks have sullied the value of journalism.
|
| We do not need an "Internet of Things" (computer hype), nor an
| Internet of Opinions (social media). An Internet of Entertainment
| is not enough.
|
| We need an "Internet of Facts".2 Journalists, please just give us
| the facts.
|
| 2. "Tech" companies use the internet to collect facts, e.g.,
| metadata about internet users, and proceed to serve internet
| users with garbage, e.g., opinions and hype. Propagate more viral
| garbage to get more mindless eyeballs.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> How could no one have seen this coming?_
|
| I always hear this, after one of these Jurassic-scale meltdowns.
|
| The hard truth is, is that _lots_ of people saw it coming, but
| everyone was making money, and they were all hoping that they 'd
| "get theirs," before things went pear-shaped.
|
| Greed does strange things to the human mind...
|
| _" It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when
| his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
|
| -Upton Sinclair
|
| "There's no free lunch in this world unless you're willing to run
| around to different dumpsters to get it."
|
| -Stay SaaSy_
| rini17 wrote:
| The question is, who is going to pay for critical business
| reporting? The readers - wannabe CEOs - won't, and the businesses
| in question won't buy advertising either.
| lupire wrote:
| WSJ and FT readers will, because good information is
| profitable.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| WSJ is an absolute rag. FT is very good and worth the money
| gruez wrote:
| Ironically the initial story was broken by coindesk, not WSJ,
| FT, or Bloomberg.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Coindesk owned by DCG which also owns Genesis. Adversarial
| reporting more like
| eduction wrote:
| The WSJ wrote one of the listed puff pieces. In fact, it was
| written by their global tech editor (a Q&A without much
| pushback on the optimistic claims SBF was making). Perhaps
| the most egregious examples was from NYT, which also charges
| for its content and is highly profitable.
| 323 wrote:
| If you are into profitable information you buy a Bloomberg
| Terminal and also subscribe to Reuters news.
|
| Finance types don't read WSJ/FT/Economist, this is the
| "popular" financial press.
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