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Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#171

Post by lottin »

bogomipz wrote: post #147
lottin wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof of reserves only proves (for the sake of the argument let's assume it's an actual proof) the exchange has some amount of reserves, which is mostly meaningless. The quantity of interest is the share of deposits that are backed with reserves, not the absolute amount of reserves.

Interesting, is this intentional then? Or is there some other reason why showing the absolute amount of reserves would not be feasible?

I don't know, it looks like a half-baked idea, like everything surrounding crypto-currencies. Someone probably came up with this proof of reserves idea, and everybody else said yeah let's do this, because it sounded like it does what they wanted to do, except it doesn't.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#172

Post by baxtr »

Unlike many here, I think he has a point. The entire finance industry is corrupt. People have been trying to make more money by being over leveraged for some time now. Anyone remember 2008? Regulation helps, but not most obviously people find ways to get around that.

It doesn’t, by any means, excuse what he has done. Yet the conversation delivers a very authentic insight into how people at the top of financial institutions with the goal to earn unreasonable amounts of money the get rich people richer actually think and act. For that it’s a great piece.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#173

Post by c7DJTLrn »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #148

Author: "so the ethics stuff - mostly a front?" SBF: "yeah" Absolutely gobsmacked. I saw these screenshots on Twitter and I thought they were fake until I read the article. The rest of the messages from him are pretty terrible as well. I thought he just fucked up, but no. He was wilfully unethical and maintains he did nothing wrong: "Sometimes life creeps up on you". And the thing he regrets most is filing for Chapte…

I'm wondering if there is some kind of mass insanity occurring in the world right now with this and the behaviour of numerous influential figures.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#174

Post by Cupertino95014 »

dragontamer wrote: post #130
roywiggins wrote: post #15

> 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 a…

> I imagine my question would be "hey, where'd all the deposits go?" But we know where they went. To Alameda Research. Then Alameda Research sent them somewhere else. The money isn't coming back, and Alameda Research's collateral of FTT tokens is worthless. So that's that, its done. Its actually quite a simple story here. FTX lent the money to someone else (even if Alameda Research is also owned by SBF), and that oth…

As I said yesterday, there's a guy (Irving Picard, AFAICR) who's clawed back most of the money that Bernie Madoff stole from his clients. In that case, Bernie took one person's deposits and gave the money to the previous sucker, so Irving unwound all that.

In this case, apparently some people's money was fraudulently given to charities, so do they have to give it back? And what if they can't?

There's a job almost no one would want to undertake.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#176

Post by zopa »

leesalminen wrote: post #63
jeffbee wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kind of went off the rails there in the final sentence. Are you saying that any of this adds credence to the silly idea that Democrats are beholden to SBF campaign money?

It’s a silly idea that being the second largest donor to a political party in the US buys you special favors? Why else would anyone give that kind of money to politicians without expecting something in return?

Donations buy you access, not specific outcomes. Just the ability to get a hearing for whatever kinda-reasonable-ish parts of the stuff you want there might be is really, really valuable.

And yes, both are corrupt, but one is business as usual and the other is a serious federal crime that prudent members of congress avoid.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#177

Post by pr337h4m »

pr337h4m wrote: post #119

It's surprising that SBF sounds so libertarian suddenly - he was lobbying for government control of crypto just one month ago (which rightfully made him super-unpopular among the OG crypto crowd) https://www.moneyandstate.com/blog/response-to-sbf He does sound sincere here - no idea what to make of this.

> there are people who know what's that like, and who want to do for someone else what nobody did for them

He probably hopes for a bailout from either BitMEX or Bitfinex-Tether and is simply trying to appease them by walking back his pro-government views

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#178

Post by SilverBirch »

bboylen wrote: post #91

Not seeing much remorse here, but what can you expect from a guy that gambled with billions of dollars worth of people's savings. Don't buy that he didn't realize what they were doing until it was too late. He admits in this interview to lying about previous public positions, so wouldn't trust anything he says here either. I just hope crypto learns from this and normalizes Proof of Reserves

I'm very critical of SBF and what went on here, but let's not over sentimentalise this, they gambled billions of dollars of peoples deposits, not savings. Which clearly is a crime, but you don't store your savings on a crypto exchange, BTC arguably the most reliable of the crypto-currencies is down 70% in the last year. Moves that happen once in a lifetime in real markets happened multiple times in crypto. No one reasonable has their savings in crypto exchanges.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#179

Post by bb88 »

Invictus0 wrote: post #159
burkaman wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried, incompetence could be a legal strategy - https://www.axios.com/2022/11/16/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-incom... > Lawyers tell Axios the main criminal risk Bankman-Fried faces is an indictment on charges of fraud — one of the more common charges in white-collar prosecutions. But to convict, prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone had knowledge or intent to commit fraud, whi…

The notion that someone that made it through MIT physics, worked for several years at Jane Street, and actively cultivated the persona of a genius can't understand that making a million tokens, selling one of them to yourself for a dollar, and then calling yourself a millionaire is nonsense, is frankly preposterous.

There's a segment of smart people who go through a lot of hoops to make themselves look stupid. Because for one reason or another being stupid is advantageous. Here, apparently, it's a defense against fraud.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#180

Post by za3faran »

baxtr wrote: post #172

Unlike many here, I think he has a point. The entire finance industry is corrupt. People have been trying to make more money by being over leveraged for some time now. Anyone remember 2008? Regulation helps, but not most obviously people find ways to get around that. It doesn’t, by any means, excuse what he has done. Yet the conversation delivers a very authentic insight into how people at the top of financial instit…

If you speak to people on the inside, you'd find that they understand it's a big ponzi scheme, but they continue to work in it while making bank.
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