Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Happened at Alameda Research

milkyeggs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 437 posts

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#81

Post by williamcotton »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #65
rkagerer wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's so much rampant speculation in this article... for me it lost a degree of credibility around the point he fixated on the drug aspect. Despite all the disclaimers. Yes, it paints one picture of how the losses could have added up, but I'm looking forward to more exhaustively investigated reports grounded in more than heresay and gossip.

Completely unrealistic. You'll never find rampant drug abuse in the financial industry. Certainly not on Wall St.

Is it more fun to read and talk about the story if it covers existing tropes about rampant drug abuse in the financial industry or more fun to read and talk the story without those tropes?

Is it more fun if the shared story has a clear villain or more fun if the shared story has a diffusive, complex relationship between good and bad between not only the characters but also the readers?

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#82

Post by blitzar »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #31

I liked the chapter in Nate Sivers' Signal and the Noise when he talks about how hard it is to know if you're a good professional poker player. Been a while since I read it but feel like even after a couple of years of winning games and tracking his own performance, he had enough stats knowledge to realise that he didn't actually know if he was good or just lucky. The noise swamped the signal. This feels relevant to…

In crypto as in wall street bets. If your sample is "a bull market when every single week the price is higher than the previous" - then the signal and the noise confirm; if you lose money on monday buy the dip with your client funds - because you cant possibly lose.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#83

Post by wikfwikf »

SilverBirch wrote: post #59

This article spends quite a bit of time talking about SBF's risk appetite and how it might be drug related. I think that's missing a fairly obvious piece of logic. In order to decide to go into crypto trading you need to have an extremely high tolerance for risk. The crypto industry is self-selected for risk in the first place, you don't need complex explanations of why they use lots of leverage on highly volatile as…

I think there's a huge difference with someone who has a huge appetite for risk, and someone who is taking risks, essentially without oversight, while on dopamine-replacing drugs. Many people who work in conventional finance are well aware of how brain chemistry changes (caused by illness, medication, illicit drugs, or emotional and life changes) can push someone from being in control while pursuing risky but profitable strategies to being a degenerate gambling addict.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#84

Post by Dunedan »

choeger wrote: post #29

A $3M monthly AWS bill. that's a nugget here. What that means is that amazon, Microsoft, and google are essentially selling shovels during a gold rush. On a subscription basis. In a form that makes it tedious and costly to actually figure out how many shovels your business has, what they do and who uses them regularly. Essentially, when there's a digital market hype, the big cloud providers collect their share on the…

Google not so much, as they still accumulate losses with GCP. [1]

[1]: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252523200/Google-results...

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#85

Post by bigbacaloa »

gillesjacobs wrote: post #3

I like how OP opens smugly by calling the NYT article a fluff piece, then proceeds to immediately cite anonymous Twitter anecdotes as better sources. He's right about the specific NYT article not including much pertinent information, but they're a serious journalistic publication and have verification standards for sources.

Agreed. I'm sure that the NYT checks that its twitter sources have the little blue check mark before publication.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#86

Post by andromeduck »

wikfwikf wrote: post #53
lordnacho wrote: post #30

Makes some sense. When stuff is messy, you can do financially stupid things. I've sat on desks that lost money from not realizing some very simple things like having options with upcoming dividends. If SBF really was on drugs and playing League of Legends badly, perhaps he also didn't know what was happening in his shop. But... you have all this money. Hire an adult? Almost anyone who's had a trading desk job would t…

The Ontario Teachers' investment is outrageous. They are charging middle-class people (by definition) good money from their retirement savings to make reasonable investing decisions and do due diligence.

They have 220B AUM.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#87

Post by thinkingemote »

remoroid wrote: post #54

For even more context of how bad SBF was at League of Legends, a large part of their player-base is children and teens. You would not expect a normal functioning 30 year old man to lose to 12 year olds after years of playing with the frequency he did.

From what I understand (only seen a game, not played it), League of Legends is more similar to Starcraft where it's about strategy, knowledge and timing than the necessary very fast reaction times of teenagers found in a first player shooter.

You would expect even retired people to be good at the game if they played enough.

Regardless, playing video games, doing drugs, looking dishevelled and being over weight are all visible signs of some kind of internal disorder. Most people don't wear their disorder visibly, they either learn to hide it or it doesn't reveal itself physically. In this episode it's like the signs are treated as a good sign - of creativity.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#88

Post by wikfwikf »

thablackbull wrote: post #71
wikfwikf wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ontario Teachers' investment is outrageous. They are charging middle-class people (by definition) good money from their retirement savings to make reasonable investing decisions and do due diligence.

OTPP has quite a solid reputation and this particular investment was a miniscule speculative bet. You can see the performance over time here [1]. [1] https://www.otpp.com/en-ca/investments/our-advantage/our-per...

It's not about performance or risk management, it's about due diligence. They should not be giving any amount of money to an organization with such poor internal checks of their finances.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#89

Post by nicpottier »

choeger wrote: post #29

A $3M monthly AWS bill. that's a nugget here. What that means is that amazon, Microsoft, and google are essentially selling shovels during a gold rush. On a subscription basis. In a form that makes it tedious and costly to actually figure out how many shovels your business has, what they do and who uses them regularly. Essentially, when there's a digital market hype, the big cloud providers collect their share on the…

Yearly, not monthly.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#90

Post by andromeduck »

rkagerer wrote: post #26
wikfwikf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the author makes it very clear in the second par "our claims only remain tentative at best". Isn't it much more useful to write something which actually tries to answer the question of what happened, albeit with appropriate caveats, than something which doesn't advance the understanding of the reader at all?

There's so much rampant speculation in this article... for me it lost a degree of credibility around the point he fixated on the drug aspect. Despite all the disclaimers. Yes, it paints one picture of how the losses could have added up, but I'm looking forward to more exhaustively investigated reports grounded in more than heresay and gossip.

We have photographic evidence. What more do you need?

This isn't a criminal court.

Post reply on HN