What Happened at Alameda Research • Hacker News Board

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#251

Post by coffeebeqn » Tue, Nov 15, 2022, 1:53 PM UTC

benjaminwootton wrote: post #234

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…

Strangely, I am not hearing many stories from retail of big losses. There were tons of people coming out of the woodwork on Reddit and Twitter after the LUNA collapse. Not sure what that’s all about.

Their s*tokens were mainly held by Alameda - serum and ftt. So probably not a ton of exposure among real users. Now when people won’t get to withdraw their money/tokens from FTX.. ever? That’ll become a huge problem. Sounds like all the money is just gone on stupid gambles

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#252

Post by Lapsa » Tue, Nov 15, 2022, 1:54 PM UTC

remoroid wrote: post #109

Lapsa wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it is actually shocking that SBF was unable to rank higher than the Bronze or Silver league after years of regular play" ouch... author certainly does not play league of legends. ladder is broken, you are always at the mercy of riot's matchmaking. there was a reddit post appropriately criticizing it and received around 8k upvotes - mods deleted it. even if you completely MinMax everything to climb (which gets quite…

Sounds like you are mad about being in Bronze where you belong

yeah, suck a d*ck kys or whatever you expect me to say. I've been in plat too multiple times but then it gets really really boring

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#253

Post by eternalban » Tue, Nov 15, 2022, 1:55 PM UTC

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…

Unless there is some sort of event horizon in financial systems, it is wrong to use the word "lost" as if it is impossible to find out who got these kingly sums. Billions of dollars were "blown" and the question we should be asking, very forcefully, is who got that money.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#254

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 15, 2022, 1:58 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#255

Post by thehappypm » Tue, Nov 15, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

jasmer wrote: post #212

hoffs wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because actual journalists have standards to abide

? Stealing $10B is fraud. So when $10B goes missing, due to what we know is 'bad behaviour' at minimum, and all the other 'smoke' around this story - we should use that word in proper context. This is literally one of the biggest fraud cases in history. By their own 'standards' they are compelled to use the word in proper context.

I don’t think it’s up to their standard yet. Of course the whole world believes it’s a big case of fraud but they may need to wait until there is more clarity on that.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#256

Post by pinkwinds » Tue, Nov 15, 2022, 2:00 PM UTC

alainchabat wrote: post #250

wbl wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just PhD. World famous economists with Nobel prizes.

I can't find which Nobel prize were in, do you have any names? Robert C. Merton got the nobel prize, but it seems 3 years later (ironic)

Myron Scholes and Robert Merton, Economics 1997.

LTCM imploded in 1998.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#257

Post by coffeebeqn » Tue, Nov 15, 2022, 2:00 PM UTC

bboygravity wrote: post #183

belter wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only these calls for regulation from the two persons in this interview, could have been heard on time. Most interestingly, and as it's obvious from the interview, regulators were watching these children playing and only poking gently. At correct time: https://youtu.be/2ozjiX1E7ZA?t=25

May have something to do with FTX having paid off both US political sides and having close ties to SEC's chair.

They were trying to push through a legislation that would make most of their competitors illegal

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#258

Post by ajross » Tue, Nov 15, 2022, 2:03 PM UTC

wikfwikf wrote: post #74

SilverBirch wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter might provide more information than the NYT, but there's a reason NYT doesn't publish it - because the NYT wants to be reliable. They want their claims to actually stand up to scrutiny and be an accurate portrayal of the events we know happened. Whereas big chunks of this article are just pure speculation. The whole section about how Alameda might have had a rogue algo are just made up out of whole cloth. Is…

The NYT article is headlined "How Sam Bankman-Friedʼs Crypto Empire Collapsed". The parts of the article which actually answer this question are, in their totality, as follows: > Alameda had accumulated a large “margin position” on FTX, essentially meaning it had borrowed funds from the exchange, Par 6. Common knowledge, finance-splained and followed by equivocation and hand-waving from SBF. > On Nov. 6, Mr. Zhao ann…

> This isn't news reporting, it's a form of entertainment journalism

I don't see where you're justifying that. I read this article and it gave me a good overview of the situation. You're right, I guess, that it's not "new" investigative journalism and that if I'd been paying better attention I could have found the same info elsewhere and earlier.

I don't see how a correctly-reported review piece becomes "entertainment journalism" though. Do you make the same article about wikipedia?

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#259

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Nov 15, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC

eternalban wrote: post #253

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…

Unless there is some sort of event horizon in financial systems, it is wrong to use the word "lost" as if it is impossible to find out who got these kingly sums. Billions of dollars were "blown" and the question we should be asking, very forcefully, is who got that money.

It's crypto! Once it's transferred off the exchange, it's in a pseudonymous wallet.

Just to confuse matters, it appears that both the exchange was hacked and an insider was draining funds just before it shut down. But before that, there was a lot of "money" that went out the door in legitimate trading losses.

Re: What Happened at Alameda Research

#260

Post by matthewdgreen » Tue, Nov 15, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

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 wonder how much of those $16B in customer deposits were actually lightly-traded altcoins that could never have been liquidated at anything close to that value? There is no doubt they defrauded people of a lot of (real!) money, but my guess is a huge chunk of that $16B top-line figure is fantasyland dog-coin nonsense. Whereas the LTCM and Enron investors at least started with real cash.