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What Happened at Alameda Research

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Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#121

Post by Semaphor »

xiphias2 wrote: post #93
Semaphor wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What fraud does Binance do besides evading U.S. regulations? note: This is an actual question.

I'm sure they are doing (or at least were doing) fractional reserve banking as well. They have their own token just like FTX, wihch is a bad sign. Maybe right now they are working on fixing it. Kraken is one of the few exchanges that provide proof of reserves, which is basically just a Merkel tree of all user assets which users can use to check that the exchange holds their money. This is not just trivial to implemen…

This is pretty cool [0] is the Kraken page, at [1] someone collected both background information, links, and PoR entities, and finally a 2014 post of Kraken’s first PoR audit [2].

[0] https://www.kraken.com/proof-of-reserves

[1] https://niccarter.info/proof-of-reserves/

[2] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=528432.0

Edit: And here is CZ of Binance claiming they’ll do it soon as well: https://nitter.kavin.rocks/cz_binance/status/159005581941633...

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#122

Post by anonymoushn »

SnowHill9902 wrote: post #117
lordnacho wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTP put in something like that in the fund I was at. Yes it's small for them but it's still serious, the guy in charge wants to move on to bigger things. Oh and I totally forgot to comment on the math. Kelly criterion, I don't get how the guy could have studied physics at MIT and not understood it. It's simply a result that tells you how much to bet of your stash if you are presented with some repeated betting opport…

Kelly criterion is not the best strategy for one. It’s the best strategy for an ensemble of ones in many universes but you can only live in one universe. It’s a nerd trap because it seems so elegant and reasonable.

This isn't true? If you aggregate utility across universes using addition and have utility linear in wealth then you maximize your aggregate utility by going all-in on every favorable bet.

Kelly turns out to be equivalent to maximizing expected log-wealth, if one stays within a single universe, or to maximizing the probability that one will eventually have more wealth than any agent in the same universe that employs any other strategy on the same sequence of opportunities.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#123

Post by wil421 »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #70
lawrenceyan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person who wrote this post is pretty well known in the crypto space. Not saying that what was written here is guaranteed to be accurate, but it's likely to be much closer to reality than what the New York Times put out. To be clear, I enjoyed Levine's commentary on the situation so it's not just because I dislike mainstream publications.

Never heard of them, I've been in the crypto space for many years. Their social media looks like it's run by a teenager and I'm not not being facetious, it literally reads like a 14 year old boy runs the account. The person also writes so many tweets they'd hardly have time for serious work. Over 90% are jokes, memes and rumors. https://nitter.cz/0xfbifemboy Not sure how this stuff makes it to the top on HN.

Yikes he posted a screenshot of your comment on Twitter. I agree with you about the tone and despise reading meme filled articles or tweets.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#124

Post by Laaas »

KVFinn wrote: post #73

The extensive use of stimulants is alarming, though heavily speculative. What does the league of legends article say? That part seemed crazy speculative. I'm bottom quartile at FPS and fighting games but I enjoy them and play a lot. Dota 2 as well. And I've been top 1 percent at other games. Even higher for a bit in Auto Chess. I hope this isn't evidence of brain damage...

Depends on what you mean by a lot. Thousands of hours? You might want that checked out.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#125

Post by anonymoushn »

Semaphor wrote: post #52
SkyMarshal wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well FTX's competitors are not necessarily not fraudulent, especially their primary competitor Binance.

What fraud does Binance do besides evading U.S. regulations? note: This is an actual question.

Binance regularly closes deposits or delays deposits by hours in an apparent attempt to allocate arb opportunities to their internal trading desk instead of customers. For example, in May, we sent some LUNA to Binance whole the chain was working perfectly, then waited several hours whole chatting "VIP support" about the delay while they told some implausible lies about multi-hour internal network latency (????).

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#126

Post by bondarchuk »

largepeepee wrote: post #72
SkyMarshal wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well FTX's competitors are not necessarily not fraudulent, especially their primary competitor Binance.

Ironically Binance's low trust makes their users especially diligent about on and off boarding their funds. Their model is closer to DeFi than their competitors who are CeFi Besides what makes FTX especially trendy to cover was how he targeted mostly American, supposedly sophisticated SV VC types. He got funded by dozens of billionaires. Funny enough SBF openly described his cynical scam months ago, explaining both h…

>* Their model is closer to DeFi than their competitors who are CeFi*

CeFi is CeFi, Binance is CeFi.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#127

Post by jjallen »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #120

> Most news accounts seem to portray the scale of the bankruptcy as relatively small. This is a key point. They lost $16B in customer deposits. LTCM lost $4.6B in investor funds. Enron lost $11B in shareholder capital. Interestingly, while Madoff is widely quoted as having lost $65B, that was almost all fabricated paper wealth, actual losses were around $18B and $14.4B of that was recovered and returned. All of these…

This is a great point. I guess I am skeptical that everything will be lost, but even if it's only half it will still be an absolutely enormous bankruptcy and loss.

If all of the actual cash, the real liquid assets were withdrawn leaving only illiquid, relatively valueless crypto tokens, and those tokens are sold down over the coming months then the percentage losses as a percentage of the max or total value they managed will be very high indeed. Sorry for the run-on sentence.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#128

Post by anonymoushn »

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.

The piece is well informed and aggregates a variety of sources only a few of which are not completely credible. the NYT literally refuses to use the word "fraud" or hint at criminality after Sam stole ten billion dollars from customers.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#129

Post by 55555 »

martynr wrote: post #108
KVFinn wrote: post #73

The extensive use of stimulants is alarming, though heavily speculative. What does the league of legends article say? That part seemed crazy speculative. I'm bottom quartile at FPS and fighting games but I enjoy them and play a lot. Dota 2 as well. And I've been top 1 percent at other games. Even higher for a bit in Auto Chess. I hope this isn't evidence of brain damage...

FWIW: as a bona fide user of various anti-parkinsonian medications for their intended purpose, I can say with a degree of confidence that the speculation on cognitive impact (and impairment) is very plausible - and that the article is factually correct on the side effects in a Parkinson’s context. God knows what they would do to a brain with a “normal” dopamine level. It’s also worth noting (and quite frankly pretty…

There was a VERY interesting article on HN recently about the risk-taking/compulsive side effects of dopamine drugs.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#130

Post by gadders »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #120

> Most news accounts seem to portray the scale of the bankruptcy as relatively small. This is a key point. They lost $16B in customer deposits. LTCM lost $4.6B in investor funds. Enron lost $11B in shareholder capital. Interestingly, while Madoff is widely quoted as having lost $65B, that was almost all fabricated paper wealth, actual losses were around $18B and $14.4B of that was recovered and returned. All of these…

I can't think of any possible reason.

https://fortune.com/2022/11/10/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-joe-bid...

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