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FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

wsj.com

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Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#91

Post by gruez »

slibhb wrote: post #73
thepasswordis wrote: post #42

Just a general statement on people commenting on this saga: Sam wasn't doing effective altruism. He was lying about doing effective altruism. It's weird to me that people talk about this as an indictment of EA...but this rings similar to me as claiming that this is an indictment of DeFi or cryptocurrency generally. Sam/Caroline weren't doing DeFi, and neither were they really doing anything related to cryptocurrency.…

It's an indictment of EA because many prominent EA people were associated with FTX/Sam. That shows poor judgement and, on some level, EA is about smart people making judgements about long-term good. How can we trust them to make those judgements when they decide to hitch their wagon to FTX?

>That shows poor judgement and, on some level, EA is about smart people making judgements about long-term good. How can we trust them to make those judgements when they decide to hitch their wagon to FTX?

Charities in general aren't exactly known for conducting thorough due diligence on their donors. Sure, it might make sense to make sure the person you're getting money from isn't some sort of ruthless dictator or embroiled in some scandal, but "runs crypto trading firm" is a pretty plausible story.

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#92

Post by bradgessler »

thepasswordis wrote: post #42

Just a general statement on people commenting on this saga: Sam wasn't doing effective altruism. He was lying about doing effective altruism. It's weird to me that people talk about this as an indictment of EA...but this rings similar to me as claiming that this is an indictment of DeFi or cryptocurrency generally. Sam/Caroline weren't doing DeFi, and neither were they really doing anything related to cryptocurrency.…

Yeah, everything I've read about the corporate governance of Sam's enterprises seems like it should have been turned up pretty quickly under the most basic diligence.

I can see how "Main Street" investors got completely screwed over, but what I don't understand is how any sort of institutional money flowed into FTX and propped it to the massive scale it achieved. That deserves closer examination.

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#93

Post by kingTug »

balozi wrote: post #84
Tenoke wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was he not doing EA? He was lying AND donating to causes. I'm very pro-EA but that's a weird claim.

Doesn't altruism literary mean selflessness-ism? Can you be selfless with stolen property?

Yeah, that was the theme of Robinhood. Of course sbf is no robinhood.

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#94

Post by KptMarchewa »

Tenoke wrote: post #43
thepasswordis wrote: post #42

Just a general statement on people commenting on this saga: Sam wasn't doing effective altruism. He was lying about doing effective altruism. It's weird to me that people talk about this as an indictment of EA...but this rings similar to me as claiming that this is an indictment of DeFi or cryptocurrency generally. Sam/Caroline weren't doing DeFi, and neither were they really doing anything related to cryptocurrency.…

How was he not doing EA? He was lying AND donating to causes. I'm very pro-EA but that's a weird claim.

Definition of altruism requires selflessness. He was anything but.

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#95

Post by chrchang523 »

ohashi wrote: post #70
wmf wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prominent EAers like McAskill have said (before this scandal) that EA is only valid if the money is earned honestly. They say that they never intended EA to be "steal to give".

Sounds nice in theory, but when the outcome is people behaving like this and using it as a justification it rings hollow. The idea seems centered around making the most money possible as a core tenet. That alone is a pretty corrupting thing to build your whole ideology on judging from how we've seen humanity behave for thousands of years.

Yeah. I see a fork in the road here:

1. They can band together to save the EA brand by demonstrating an unusually high commitment to accountability. The simplest way I see to do this is to contribute 2x what they received from FTX (as a group, it's impractical for them to do this on the individual level) to making the financial fraud victims whole.

2. They could "declare bankruptcy", switching to less ambitious but epistemically safer approaches to philanthropy. I wouldn't blame them for doing this, (1) is a big ask.

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#96

Post by chips_n_fries »

rib3ye wrote: post #51
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero interest rates make the rich desperate to find a new money printer.

This is the MOST underrated statement in all the threads on this whole fiasco. Government and Wall St. (but _especially_ government bare at least some responsibility for letting the pot get too big.

These are the same group of people. Low interests are working out just fine for them.

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#97

Post by gruez »

vrc wrote: post #80
thepasswordis wrote: post #42

Just a general statement on people commenting on this saga: Sam wasn't doing effective altruism. He was lying about doing effective altruism. It's weird to me that people talk about this as an indictment of EA...but this rings similar to me as claiming that this is an indictment of DeFi or cryptocurrency generally. Sam/Caroline weren't doing DeFi, and neither were they really doing anything related to cryptocurrency.…

Just the capitalized term EA to me reads like a scam. It’s a new term created to explain some behavior that is simply injurious to the broader population, claiming that its for their benefit. I’m just not sure I buy it.

>some behavior that is simply injurious to the broader population, claiming that its for their benefit

what "behavior" are you talking about? The second paragraph of the wikipedia article on EA says:

>Common practices of effective altruists include choosing careers based on the amount of good that the career achieves, donating to charities based on maximising impact, and earning to give. Popular cause priorities within EA include global health and development, animal welfare, and risks to the survival of humanity over the long-term future.

I'm not sure how any of those causes can be considered "simply injurious to the broader population".

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#98

Post by acjohnson55 »

jliptzin wrote: post #86

Dump your life savings into a crypto exchange based in the Bahamas, sure. But god forbid you invest $20k in a startup without being an “accredited investor”

I'm not sure what your point is. You can invest in whatever you want in the Bahamas without being accredited (as far as I know). If anything, the blowup of FTX seems to justify why investments in unregistered securities in US-based companies aren't allowed to be marketed to unaccredited investors.

Are you saying we should allow companies with the level of oversight FTX had more free reign to operate and market their equity in the US?

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#99

Post by gilleain »

loceng wrote: post #71
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reason is that he was seen as a financial genius boy wonder who just understood crypto better than anyone from the "old guard". So he got away with wildly inappropriate things. More generally, we (as a society) seem to be worshiping those who make a fortune, and forget that they too are just as faulty as the rest of us. Initial innovative success gets projected to mythical proportions, and once the invest…

Elon and Zuck aren't comparable - other than earning billions from scalable enterprise.

Ha, I'm genuinely unsure which one you think is better/worse than the other.

It's like working out which return value from a comparison operator is the right one - +1 or -1?

Re: FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried cashed out $300M during funding spree

#100

Post by gruez »

c7b wrote: post #79
thepasswordis wrote: post #42

Just a general statement on people commenting on this saga: Sam wasn't doing effective altruism. He was lying about doing effective altruism. It's weird to me that people talk about this as an indictment of EA...but this rings similar to me as claiming that this is an indictment of DeFi or cryptocurrency generally. Sam/Caroline weren't doing DeFi, and neither were they really doing anything related to cryptocurrency.…

The justifications in EA's long-termism are very similar to SBF's 'expected-value-reasoning', and the idea of buying out politicians to promote your cause is straight out of the EA playbook, fully justified by the philosophy. Just saying 'don't break laws while getting rich' is a band-aid, the problems exposed here run deeper.

>the idea of buying out politicians to promote your cause is straight out of the EA playbook, fully justified by the philosophy

By "buying out", do you mean literal bribery, or just lobbying? If it's the latter, are you also against other organizations (eg. unions, environmental groups, activists) that try to fund raise/lobby for their preferred candidates?

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