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Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#391

Post by fieryskiff11 »

azylman wrote: post #245
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…

There's an important nuance there which is that they don't have to prove that the person knew the actions they were taking were illegal, just that they intended to take those actions. As an example: Knowingly driving a car someone else stole is illegal, even if you don't actually know it's a crime to drive a car someone else stole (after all you didn't steal it, maybe you bought it from the person). Driving a car tha…

No post body was provided.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#392

Post by peterpost2 »

_dain_ wrote: post #271
peterpost2 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the programmer in a dutch cell: that is not true, he is in "voorarrest" which is in an arrest house not in a jail cell. Maximum time for that is a 110 days(depending on the complexity of the case). And yes he is not charged but he has seen a judge who has heard both sides and decided there was a strong enough case to hold him there( which is quite rare i might add and generally only happens for severe cases).

we would laugh at this kind of dissembling gobbledegook if it came from a nonwestern country. the dutch need to charge him with something or release him. 110 days is preposterous.

110 days is very long yes. Note though that its still less than plenty of other European countries.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#393

Post by puglr »

zopa wrote: post #176
leesalminen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Getting a hearing" and "not getting a hearing" are specific outcomes.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#394

Post by _dain_ »

rippercushions wrote: post #343
harry8 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, what is your point? What are you trying to contribute?

> SBF has used at least one cpu attached to a network on the critical path of his actions. I've read that sentence of yours at least 5 times now and it still makes no sense to me. Would you care to elucidate?

OP was using "cpu attached to a network" to mean "computer" and "critical path of his actions" as something like "business model".

he's saying that politicians, journalists, regulators, etc, got bamboozled by what was at root a very ordinary fraud, because it was enabled by fancy technology.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#395

Post by brindlejim »

brindlejim wrote: post #373
SilasX wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Piper's journalistic duty was to disclose her ties to EA much more fully in that piece, or recuse herself from writing it. I'm curious about the ties that she and other prominent Bay Area EAs have to SBF as well. Everyone is in a rush to distance themselves from they guy who bankrolled them.

And to be clear, Piper and Ellison go way way back. I think there is a very good chance that SBF did not know that that chat was on the record. So Piper may have failed to disclose in two directions, to both her source and her audience.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#396

Post by engineer_22 »

yeet_yeet_yeet wrote: post #389
fisherjeff wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my god, I upvoted you before reading the DMs. I... wow, yeah, they need duct tape. EDIT: Okay I just cannot get over this, obviously I'm exaggerating but it's pretty much "I didn't want to do bad stuff because that would be bad, and then after I had personally done all of the bad things, I realized that I had, in fact, done something very bad."

Pretty sure he's given up at this point. Nobody would do something this dumb otherwise. And then confirm it the next morning.

You don't think he's going to permanently resign from the game?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#397

Post by bmitc »

c7DJTLrn wrote: post #173
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.

You might be interested in Adam Curtis' documentaries. Check them out.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#398

Post by zopa »

puglr wrote: post #393
zopa wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Getting a hearing" and "not getting a hearing" are specific outcomes.

"This tax credit gets extended" is an outcome. "30 minutes with the Member and their chief of staff to discuss the vital importance of this tax credit to industry X" is not an outcome. You can problematize and subvert any scheme of categorization if you like, so go wild if it makes you happy, but honestly who has the time?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#399

Post by Breza »

smsm42 wrote: post #166
Invictus0 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And then there's also the question of actual deposits, which would still have to be sent to somewhere - intentionally - and given as those were represented, afaik, as deposits and not buying shares in a high-risk hedge fund, that alone constitutes separate fraud, regardless of how he tried to cover it up afterwards. If I tell you "if you give me $1000 I'll keep them safe and return them to you anytime you want" and t…

Exactly. People keep referring to FTX as a Ponzi. It's even worse than that.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself

#400

Post by europeanguy »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #337
europeanguy wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you think he "just fucked up", and not unethical? He was selling magic beans. He was going "this thing I just made up, I declare it with billions".

I understand what you're getting at (Though this is not really about printing FTT in particular). What I'm trying to verbalize is that before, I gave him the benefit of the doubt in regards to intention. He mentions that he didn't mean to do sketchy things, but he was definitely more than willing to engage in unethical behaviour. Previously, I did not think he was being brazenly unethical. Now, I have the impression…

> he was definitely more than willing to engage in unethical behaviour

> Now, I have the impression he will do anything it takes to "win".

Not sure what's the distinction you're making here.

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