Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

Jesus Christ…does this guy not know that you should keep quiet when you’re the subject of a criminal investigation from multiple government agencies?

This is one of the most amazing things I've ever read. Also, I feel so bad for his lawyers.

> I was trying to make sense of what, behind the PR and the charitable donations and the lobbying, Bankman-Fried actually believes about what’s right and what’s wrong — and especially the ethics of what he did and the industry he worked in.

This seems like a weird thing to worry about right now, I imagine my question would be "hey, where'd all the deposits go?" Like, I'm sure it's all interesting in a psychological and sociological way, but "what does SBF really believe" feels like it should take a back seat to what did he do. That's much more interesting! It's easy for someone like SBF to just say stuff about what's going on in his head, whether it's true or not. But, we're talking about real (and, okay, a lot of fake) money here.

There's this weird assumption in a lot of reporting that a rich person must have interesting things to say, or beliefs that are worth getting to the bottom of. Sometimes that's true, but sometimes they're just not very interesting people. Which is fine! Lots of people aren't very interesting, but really rich people get to be treated as interesting even if they're actually boring.

Given the money at stake, I'd be suspicious of trusting an interview only over Twitter chat. But he very well could be totally stupid too.