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Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#351

Post by MrMan »

Tao3300 wrote: post #266
chrchang523 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is further evidence that he was thinking of this in terms of all-or-nothing coin flips. In case you haven't seen it: COWEN: Okay, but let’s say there’s a game: 51 percent, you double the Earth out somewhere else; 49 percent, it all disappears. Would you play that game? And would you keep on playing that, double or nothing? BANKMAN-FRIED: With one caveat. Let me give the caveat first, just to be a party pooper, w…

I feel like the next question is, "the tortoise lies there, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs, trying to turn itself over, but it cannot do so without your help. You are not helping. Why?"

SBF is a replicant

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#352

Post by MrMan »

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…

you are regurgitating crypto and libertarian propaganda meant to desensitize you to the corruption of what they are selling. the entire finance industry is not corrupt and this moral equivalence they try to construct to justify their crimes and antisocial behavior is false.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#353

Post by MrMan »

za3faran wrote: post #180
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.

except that is not true

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#355

Post by eternalban »

Bubble_Pop_22 wrote: post #144
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…

> what did he do? FTX loaned money to Alameda, the crypto hedge-fund made a series of bets and probably put some cash in illiquid assets too, but mostly irresponsible bets. Crypto market collapsed, bets that were worth billions with a decent liquidity now became worth millions with not so much liquidity. They turned to their most harsh competitor hoping for a bailout kinda like how Microsoft saved Apple in the 90s .…

> FTX loaned money to Alameda ... [it was a bad bet] ... That's about it

He took money from an exchange, client money, and without permission used their money ("t" "h" "e" "i" "r" " " "m" "o" "n" "e" "y" -- channeling the genius' tweets here) and put it in his own company, the "hedge fund" called Alameda.

So that is fraud and not a bad bet.

A 'good bet' is that an organization (which merely includes FSB) who due to circumstances was exposed red handed in fraud involving billions of dollars and famous people, which then benefits from "f" "r" "e" "e" PR by established media, starting with "The New York Times", is a protected outfit of some sort, and that the playful sociopaths in FTX/Almada know it full well.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#356

Post by PebblesRox »

sgammon wrote: post #340
superfrank wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. He absolutely could have caught this if he had cared to, but my guess is he was too caught up in the "move fast and break things" mindset to really give a shit and that's why I fully support him going to jail for this. I don't think he intentionally lost peoples' money, but I think he was intentionally reckless and for that reason he should be prosecuted.

> I don't think he intentionally lost peoples' money How do you suppose they took a directional bet, with customer funds, and lost, unintentionally?

> 'oh fuck it looks like people wired $8b to Alameda and oh god we basically forgot about the stub account that corresponded to that and so it was never delivered to FTX'

SBF's claim is that FTX customers sent money to Alameda and nobody remembered to categorize it as FTX client money.

This is about as believable as my 11yo saying he didn't realize he had to pay for the $50 worth of Pokemon cards he took from Wawa. (This was after he originally claimed the cards were a gift from a friend at camp -- a friend whom he could neither name nor describe to us.)

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#357

Post by origin_path »

SilasX wrote: post #220
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 2018, Vox launched Future Perfect, with the goal of covering the most critical issues of the day through the lens of effective altruism. In this talk, Kelsey Piper discusses how the project worked out, her experience as a Vox staff writer, and her thoughts on the key challenges of EA-focused journalism. I just commented in this thread about how this story magically keeps getting worse, and then it got worse...

Yeah when I saw it was Piper as the journalist, I was expecting to see a massive disclaimer/disclosure on the article. There still isn’t one. My own disclosure: I have many mutual friends with Piper and participate in the local EA group and contribute to EA causes.

There's a disclosure that SBF actually gave Vox money as part of a journalism grant. This business of billionaires buying journalists outright by calling payments philanthropic grants is way out of control. It's bad enough when Gates does it.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#358

Post by origin_path »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #326
zach_garwood wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is a helluva drug!

cheap money and low interest rates, to be precise

Yep. It's a spectrum. At one end you have normal companies, in the middle you have pseudo-companies like Uber or Lyft or perhaps even Twitter where they're just indirectly guzzling printed money for decades after it's laundered through several different intermediaries, and then at the end you have FTX which is a fully fraudulent non-business. Where does all the crazy money come from? Ultimately from the central banks.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#359

Post by api »

The overwhelming feeling I get from this interview is one of cynicism and nihilism. In his mind it's okay if he did shady things because everyone else does. Everything is broken, everyone is corrupt, everything is shit, so fuck it... basically.

He more or less admits that the effective altruism stuff was a sham.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#360

Post by UncleMeat »

molsongolden wrote: post #246
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most non-sociopaths would experience a huge amount of shame/stress from stealing billions of dollars from trusting people and losing it. SBF shows none of that.

He says in the DMs that the most important thing in his life now is making customers whole and returning their funds. "that's basically all that matters for the rest of my life"

I don't interpret it that way. I interpret this as "the most important thing is getting myself out of this jam - because otherwise I'm going to prison and my life is fucked."
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