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FTX to file for U.S. bankruptcy, CEO resigns

reuters.com

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Re: FTX to file for U.S. bankruptcy, CEO resigns

#601

Post by nullc »

shorthistory wrote: post #423

Can anyone speculate what Bankman-Fried's exit plan was? Was this a fraud that got out of control, or premeditated? If it was premeditated, what was the exit plan? Did he expect to be able to gamble with customer funds indefinitely? Were the Effective Altruism intimations genuine? Why, if Alameda was a market maker, and they therefore presumably have some form of insight into the markets, did they then decide to take…

> Were the Effective Altruism intimations genuine?

SBF was just following the EA maxim: "take advantage of strategies other people are biased against using"

Re: FTX to file for U.S. bankruptcy, CEO resigns

#602

Post by throwaway0asd »

gonehome wrote: post #582
boshalfoshal wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know why you are getting downvoted. Yes, I believe that using customer funds to punt shitcoins at a supposed "quant market making firm" is really dumb, but people here really think the people in this operation are random idiots/got there via underhanded means. I think they just believed that the gravy train would last longer than they thought. Several Alameda employees worked at JS, which is by far one of the m…

The median HN user isn’t that bright and this topic in particular is one where the noise is such that the comments here are atypically bad. The outliers are great and make this site worth it, but on some topics (of which crypto is one) they’re hard to find.

There are valid reasons why discussions of crypto turn out so very bad: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33117833

Re: FTX to file for U.S. bankruptcy, CEO resigns

#603

Post by codegeek »

Julesman wrote: post #463

I'm not a luddite (on hacker news lol) and I can clearly see the revolutionary potential of blockchain. But, for the love of God, can we STOP the blind short-term speculation on the promise of extreme wealth. Moderate investment can support development without the kind of hype that ruins lives and sullies public perception of the technology.

"> can we STOP the blind short-term speculation on the promise of extreme wealth"

Then there is nothing left to do.

"I can clearly see the revolutionary potential of blockchain."

Started in 2009. 13 years now. How much longer do we need to see the revolutionary potential ? Isn't it obvious that there is no real practical usage ?

Re: FTX to file for U.S. bankruptcy, CEO resigns

#604

Post by rfrey »

randiantech wrote: post #548
twblalock wrote: post #528

This has been a wonderful social experiment, enabling people who didn’t live in the 19th century to see what happens when banking and investing is treated like the wild west. Maybe something could have been different this time? In the end it wasn’t, and it proves the necessity of regulation and institutions. There aren’t very many other aspects of our society where we get to have that kind of experiment and find out…

19th century, or 2008. It’d be same.

In 2008 depositors got their money back. In the 19th century they lost it.

Re: FTX to file for U.S. bankruptcy, CEO resigns

#605

Post by thinkcontext »

randiantech wrote: post #548
twblalock wrote: post #528

This has been a wonderful social experiment, enabling people who didn’t live in the 19th century to see what happens when banking and investing is treated like the wild west. Maybe something could have been different this time? In the end it wasn’t, and it proves the necessity of regulation and institutions. There aren’t very many other aspects of our society where we get to have that kind of experiment and find out…

19th century, or 2008. It’d be same.

2008 had a lot of things the 1800s didn't, like the Fed and FDIC, both of which were very busy.

Re: FTX to file for U.S. bankruptcy, CEO resigns

#606

Post by bwestergard »

everfree wrote: post #597
twblalock wrote: post #528

This has been a wonderful social experiment, enabling people who didn’t live in the 19th century to see what happens when banking and investing is treated like the wild west. Maybe something could have been different this time? In the end it wasn’t, and it proves the necessity of regulation and institutions. There aren’t very many other aspects of our society where we get to have that kind of experiment and find out…

I don't see why crypto is incompatible with regulation and institutions. Crypto is a unit of account, not some magical lawless thing that's doomed to never have a regulation written about it. In fact, places like New York already have pretty strict regulations requiring specific licenses for crypto-related businesses. Crypto crises like these are in general due to regulation not having caught up yet, not because comp…

Why bother with proof of work or proof of stake mechanisms if you want political regulation? In that case, you might as well empower a state's central bank to develop a payment mechanism, and task them with ensuring fairness and enforcing laws around taxes, illegal activity, etc.

Re: FTX to file for U.S. bankruptcy, CEO resigns

#607

Post by everfree »

tasubotadas wrote: post #555
twblalock wrote: post #528

This has been a wonderful social experiment, enabling people who didn’t live in the 19th century to see what happens when banking and investing is treated like the wild west. Maybe something could have been different this time? In the end it wasn’t, and it proves the necessity of regulation and institutions. There aren’t very many other aspects of our society where we get to have that kind of experiment and find out…

Why does this need to be regulated? We already have banks for that. And it's not like regulation saved them from being able to become insolvent.

> it's not like regulation saved them from being able to become insolvent.

It may have, in a way.

It's too early to tell, but it's possible that FTX's USA-based corporation ("FTX US") is still solvent. I believe it's the Bahamas-based entity that's in bankruptcy - the one that's in an offshore haven not subject to US regulations.

Edit: Looks like FTX US is bankrupt too, but still it may or may not be solvent.

Re: FTX to file for U.S. bankruptcy, CEO resigns

#608

Post by Auracle »

sz4kerto wrote: post #309
OptoContrarian wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scoopy in the Alchemix discord had this to say: "If you are on any CEX or CeFi app or earn product, get out RIGHT NOW. Rumors are swirling and it is possible that none of them are solvent. I am not kidding, really, get out now. I care too much for our community to not have said anything to warn you." Not sure what that all entails.

Even Coinbase?

I feel perfectly fine having my crypto stored on Coinbase’s end. As far as I know their business model makes perfect sense and they don’t take the weirdly big risks all of these falling dominoes have.

Also, if Coinbase goes bankrupt and takes everyone’s crypto with them I feel everything will crash to essentially 0.

Re: FTX to file for U.S. bankruptcy, CEO resigns

#609

Post by codegeek »

luckylion wrote: post #580
chx wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and I can clearly see the revolutionary potential of blockchain. I can not. It's been 13 years and there's still nothing. It was never anything else but a scam and can not be anything else but a scam for all crypto"currencies" with a transaction fee are negative sum games .

Fast, cheap money transfer (theoretically) not requiring trust in any middle man, cutting out bank's control, i.e. "digital cash". I don't know if it's revolutionary, but it has a lot of potential and is great when it works.

"not requiring trust in any middle man"

And yet, we have these middlemen like Coinbase and what not. IN theory, decentralized currency is awesome. In practice, almost impossible. Novel idea for sure but it is time we admit that it cannot be implemented without middlemen.

Re: FTX to file for U.S. bankruptcy, CEO resigns

#610

Post by thwayunion »

krrrh wrote: post #568
nannal wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't trust you, you don't trust me, neither of us trust the guy who owns the git server but I need to give you something without anyone being able to stop us.

You really shouldn't be doing a significant amount of your business with people who don't trust you and who you don't trust. Blockchain advocates really underestimate how much of functioning economies simply work because of trust (with lawyers and courts as a backup), and how small the potential "I don't trust you" market is.

It is okay to do business with people you don't trust, but the crux is that pow/pos doesn't actually solve most of the substantive trust problems.

Eg: all of the weird supply chain nonsense around blockchain. You can keep a ledger and so on, but if there's corruption/theft in the physical warehouse then the ledger is worth only and exactly the disk space to which it's written. No amount of distributed consensus will change anything about the fact that Joe's cousin's friend heard about the shipment and stole 10% of the bulk good and replaced it with dirt to make the weights match.

The problem of doing business with people who you don't completely trust is very real. However, blockchain offers no solution (except and unless the thing you are trading is something that literally be placed on a blockchain, ie nothing physical and nothing that depends on a legal system to enforce).

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