311–320 of 401 posts
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People obviously want to hear what he has to say. Are you saying that an ethical media would refuse to interview him? Why?
No not at all, this is completely unlike the bizarro NYT piece.
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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?
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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 rea…
> but you don't store your savings on a crypto exchange... No one reasonable has their savings in crypto exchanges. Many, many, many people have absolutely bought into the crypto dream, put their savings on an exchange and absolutely ended up entirely destitute. There are swathes of evidence of exactly this.
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
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Sorry but the "wildest conspiracy theory" is that Democrats sent money to Ukraine, Ukraine deposited the money at FTX, and SBF donated the money to Democratic congressional campaigns. Nothing about what we know today lends any credence to that theory. That some guy with access to a lot of cash tried to buy influence is not a "conspiracy theory" because it is unilateral. And, if that's what he was trying to do, it see…
> Nothing about what we know today lends any credence to that theory. I'm personally much more interested in the billions or the tens of billions that disappeared (in the bank account of tether/Deltec?) than in the petty amount that went to the democrats but... It's a fact that media were posting articles explaining how crypto was helping Ukraine (and there was a government ran website in Ukraine accepting crypto don…
Well there's a sense of contrition there, so that's good. However there's no reasonable excuse. You can't be like "aw man, I wish we'd been more organized". A big piece of this is on the investors. All those depositors would have been saying "Hey Sequoia and OTPP are in there, they must have checked things are sound". Was that foolish of them, to assume reputable investors had done their due diligence? You're between…
Fascinated to read that you thought he came across as contrite. My reading was the opposite - that he was nihilistic, narcissistic and utterly devoid of contrition. Specifically: there seems almost no recognition of his own agency - it’s all just bad stuff that happened to him.
>Bankman-Fried says his No. 1 priority now is to try to raise $8 billion to make account holders whole. So, basically start up a new Ponzi. Because that's exactly what raising money from new investors to pay off existing investors is. Note he did NOT say "generate $8B in profit". At this point he needs to STFU, stop posting on social media, stop giving interviews in the media, and do whatever his lawyers tell him to.
This part is "if I firesale all the crypto, can I get enough fiat to pay back my customers so that there's no case for me going to jail because no one lost money, just got stressed out."
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This and the NYT interview are not puff pieces. They are handing SBF the rope to hang himself with, putting his confession on the record. Not sure what what the people pushing this narrative aren’t understanding. If they wanted to protect him they would refuse to interview him and try to convince him not to speak to anyone but counsel about this.
> Not sure what what the people pushing this narrative aren’t understanding. From the other day, it seems, they're angry that the NYT isn't saying, in exact words, "SBF is a massive criminal who committed massive fraud". And when you respond and say "That's because their lawyers understand the concept of defamation", they say "well, then they just need to talk to people and have them say it so everyone knows he's a c…
The obvious conclusion here is that SBF is just a cynical but skilled manipulator. But then why send these DMs at all - surely a skilled manipulator would know better, or could at least present himself in a positive light? Maybe all those stimulants have taken their toll. Or he's totally given up.
Why would skilled manipulator effective altruist SBF do this? He made a big gamble using customer funds to try and keep his business running. This is kind of like his coinflip thought experiment where he would risk the world to gain a second world. His gamble blows up and he loses everything. What's the most effective thing he can do now? Fall on his own sword, discredit himself as an evil charlatan, in an attempt to try and save face for the philosophy he actually believes in.
"No, I'm not really an effective altruist. I'm actually just evil and dumb. Hehe."
I would assign very low probability to this - but it is an explanation that explains, to some extent, his actions here.