[HN Gopher] Alameda Research's borrowing limit from FTX was $65,...
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Alameda Research's borrowing limit from FTX was $65,355,999,994
Author : aorist
Score : 45 points
Date : 2023-01-21 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (restructuring.ra.kroll.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (restructuring.ra.kroll.com)
| hgsgm wrote:
| Where is that number? I only see $65B
| xyst wrote:
| look at page 18 on the pdf, it shows a screenshot of
| configuration which states the "borrow" property is set to
| "65355999994"
| kccqzy wrote:
| The eighteenth page of the PDF.
| jzymbaluk wrote:
| 65 billion? That feels like an absurdly high number. The scale of
| these companies are mind-boggling
| [deleted]
| kasey_junk wrote:
| That's just a limit in their risk system not a judgement of any
| real scale. Better to read it as "infinity" because the point
| of the setting was to remove any real limit.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| [PDF]
| Centigonal wrote:
| hahahaha holy shit
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34373113
| Kranar wrote:
| The author of that comment was incorrect though. Page 18 of the
| PDF shows that it was an arbitrarily hardcoded number encoded
| in a BigDecimal, has nothing to do with 16 bit integers.
| Furthermore the limit was 65*3*55... whereas the max 16-bit
| unsigned integer is 65*5*35, so the digits don't even match up.
|
| It's a cool hypothesis, and perhaps the person who hardcoded
| that number was even inspired by 2^16 - 1 in some way, but as
| the replies point out it doesn't really make much sense beyond
| an odd curiosity.
| Centigonal wrote:
| I didn't catch the 65355 vs. 65535 thing. That just raises
| more questions...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Bet he wishes he'd stuck with 32-bit unsigned integers
| mr90210 wrote:
| When your programmer is also a thief.
|
| const FTX_LIMIT = Infinity;
| jvans wrote:
| Someone find the memo from sbf demanding a switch to 128 bit
| longs
| chedoku wrote:
| He said sorry.
| chedoku wrote:
| Is it a screenshot from a smart contract? Why $65,355,999,994?
| golem14 wrote:
| maybe related to 2^16?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| C'mon, this is serious money; you're off by a couple orders
| of magnitude: 2^36 = 68,719,476,736
|
| Which doesn't explain it. Maybe the subtracted $3 billion in
| other debts? Got to watch every penny, you know.
| epgui wrote:
| That's actually the exact same order of magnitude, FYI.
| mkl wrote:
| 2^16 = 65536.
| mrbungie wrote:
| You're asumming the final number id managed by a sole
| number. Maybe there a "size" value and a "quantity" value.
|
| An example would be a float representing the final
| magnitude over the base magnitude (i.e. thousands of
| dollars), and the base quantity of thosands of dollars an
| unsinged 16bit integer.
|
| It would be a commonly considered weird approach (you
| could/should use Decimal types for money), but hey, the
| final number is strangely near to be such a typical number
| (2^16).
|
| PS: Like a sibling suggested, other hypothesis is that
| maybe it was something akin to a bare napkin
| calculation/decision made by humans (with human errors)
| eventually digitalized.
| Retric wrote:
| It's really close to 2^16 * 1 million - 6$.
|
| 65,535,999,994 vs $65,355,999,994
|
| No idea where the -6$ comes from or if the 535 vs 355 was
| intended.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| It is suspiciously close to 65536*1e6. Can't explain why it
| is $6 short though
| tromp wrote:
| No; it's close to 65356e6, not 65536e6 (3rd decimal is 3
| not 5). Could be misreporting though...
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| "If we are going down, lets nerd snipe while we do!"
| dgrin91 wrote:
| Does anyone know what the AWS environment mentioned here is? It
| doesn't really make sense for it to be Amazon AWS, or am I just
| overthinking it?
| rockemsockem wrote:
| Amazon AWS, the new ATM machine :)
| fragmede wrote:
| You're overthinking it and in fact AWS has a bunch of security
| stuff (HSM, secure enclave, etc) that makes it extra
| attractive. For reference, Stripe (which isn't FTX but it's
| Fintech and handles large amounts of money) uses AWS for their
| environment. If you're asking if there's some secret hidden AWS
| region FTX was using, why would they bother? The known special
| region, GovCloud, is a couple years behind the other regions in
| features. Also from what's been publicly revealed, FTX isn't
| exactly the shining example of the finest possible engineering.
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/stripe/
| thinkingkong wrote:
| I suspect that this limit was just the Max value of whatever
| number format they were using was. The chances of it not really
| being 65536 are fairly low. Its just too coincidental.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Except it's not 65536 -- it's 65356. (I just verified in the
| PDF.)
|
| Which actually makes me wonder if somebody fat-fingered it and
| _meant_ to type 65536 by hand and _got it wrong_. Which given
| everything we 've found out about the sloppiness there, would
| seem quite apropos.
|
| Normally I wouldn't think so, but the trailing "999994" also
| just seems so strangely floating point-derived... but who even
| knows.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| 65536 requires 17-bits. So maybe they tried the one-too-large
| number, failed, and assumed they transposed something.
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(page generated 2023-01-21 23:02 UTC)