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

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

#181

Post by gruez »

slibhb wrote: post #171
gruez wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Why should you trust Newton's works (eg. theory of gravity or calculus) when he isn't smart enough to avoid landmines like the south sea bubble[1]? 2. My previous comment asserts that SBF/FTX was reasonably clean prior to the collapse. If someone seemed reasonably clean, but then it turned out that he was a Bad Person or whatever, should everyone associated with that person be chastised for not being "smart enough…

Simpler? A premise of EA is that people can make choices that maximize the good in the long run. Events like this should make us doubt that premise. The proponents of EA can't do it. Who can? I would say: no one, and serious moral philosophies should take that into account.

1. I don't think it's a premise of EA that you can predict outcomes 100% of the time. Thus the fact that SBF failed to predict something isn't some sort of fatal blow you think it is

2. Even if we accept your conclusion, what does that mean in practice? Wikipedia describes effective altruism as:

>a philosophical and social movement that advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis".

Should we not use evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible? Should we revert back to donating based on whatever makes us feel fuzzy? It's easy to dunk on something because it supposedly failed, but what's your proposed alternative?

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

#182

Post by KennyBlanken »

0xy wrote: post #153
threeseed wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sequoia was also backing Musk's takeover of Twitter. Not sure if they ended up investing. If they did then their record is looking pretty poor right now.

Twitter is at peak MAUs and according to previous financial statements should be cash flow positive after personnel changes. Seems like they invested in a business which was almost immediately switched into a profitable enterprise on an upward trajectory. What am I missing? Or are you making a prediction that is the opposite of available evidence?

> What am I missing?

The fact that a massive number of high-profile advertisers have announced they've stopped buying ads?

> > Audi of America, United Airlines, General Mills, General Motors, Volkswagen, Modelez International (which makes popular products like Oreos), and Omnicon (which manages advertising for brands like McDonalds and Apple)

So two of the world's largest automakers, the world's richest computer company, one of the largest food companies in the US, the largest fast food chain in the world....yeah, I'm sure they'll keep right on with that "upward trajectory" with revenue falling like a lead balloon.

...and not just because of a risk of hate speech and other not-brand-safe stuff happening, but because they rightly feel that the company losing half its staff (the half too stupid to leave) has serious implications for almost every aspect of Twitter's operations, including minor little things like cybersecurity. Who's going to be doing pentesting? Who's going to be patching exploits in the mobile clients and website? Who's monitoring for things like bot networks registering fake accounts (remember when Elon was concerned about that?) and pushing tweets full of political, economic, or social misinformation? Dollars to donuts twitter starts having problems with shit like tiktok's endlessly destructive "challenges."

Hell, advertisers are probably wondering whether they'll even get a bill or know where to send a check.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/11/twitter-mayhem-s...

That it's not "personnel changes" but thousands of their best employees leaving? (It's not the worst people that leave.)

That it took barely 48 hours for Musk to cause a major outage, accidentally killing the services that handled 2FA because he thought "bah, all these silly microservices"

That Tesla stock was at ~$380 this year and is now at half that? In less than a month it's gone from $230 to $180.2

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

#183

Post by KennyBlanken »

LeafItAlone wrote: post #179
0xy wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter is at peak MAUs and according to previous financial statements should be cash flow positive after personnel changes. Seems like they invested in a business which was almost immediately switched into a profitable enterprise on an upward trajectory. What am I missing? Or are you making a prediction that is the opposite of available evidence?

Peak MAU means nothing if they can’t keep investors or get those people to pay (to make up for the advertisers they may be losing). It is likely at peak MAU because a lot of people want to be “in” during what they _think_ is the crash (think of crypto a year ago when it was a peak, but now it’s way down). Current MAU may or may not be reflective of MAU in a month or two since the reason is so weird. The old financial…

Advertisers the "may" be losing? They're canceling their spending in droves if you google the subject...

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

#184

Post by hackerlight »

gilleain wrote: post #90
hackerlight wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because EA is about overall impact. (At least that's one strand of thought in EA, for those that lean more towards utilitarianism.) He hurt so many people and caused so much distrust that his overall impact is negative. It is therefore against the principles of EA. That's not the No True Scotsman fallacy.

That's convenient. So when EA has a positive impact, it's EA. When it has a negative impact it's definitely NOT EA. Do I have that right?

Yeah, I guess. EA by definition is doing good.

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

#185

Post by LeafItAlone »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #183
LeafItAlone wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peak MAU means nothing if they can’t keep investors or get those people to pay (to make up for the advertisers they may be losing). It is likely at peak MAU because a lot of people want to be “in” during what they _think_ is the crash (think of crypto a year ago when it was a peak, but now it’s way down). Current MAU may or may not be reflective of MAU in a month or two since the reason is so weird. The old financial…

Advertisers the "may" be losing? They're canceling their spending in droves if you google the subject...

They are pausing them. Advertisers have paused spending many times on various platforms and more often than not, return. Time will tell what happens here.

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

#186

Post by LeafItAlone »

0xy wrote: post #180
LeafItAlone wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peak MAU means nothing if they can’t keep investors or get those people to pay (to make up for the advertisers they may be losing). It is likely at peak MAU because a lot of people want to be “in” during what they _think_ is the crash (think of crypto a year ago when it was a peak, but now it’s way down). Current MAU may or may not be reflective of MAU in a month or two since the reason is so weird. The old financial…

Isn't your metric of "some advertisers pulled out" meaningless? There's actually zero evidence revenue declined at all. Ads still seem to be running, and they have more eyeballs than ever. Someone's paying. If salary expenses are halved, the company is cash flow positive next year. I guess what I'm saying is, I'd rather trust financial statements than CNN articles about how Twitter is supposedly burning to the ground…

You’re right, it is. I am also just basing my “metrics” off rumors and company statements. Which is really all we have at this point.

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

#187

Post by p0pcult »

knorker wrote: post #175
p0pcult wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating coin count with their relative size. This is not the main pattern in either BTC or ETH.

I think it is fair to BTC and ETH, just by saying MtGox and DAO split. The former was, what, 4% of all BTC that will ever be, and the latter was socialism for those close to the developers, capitalism for everyone else. Those were really big deals. It's just that they happened when it was less mainstream. Doesn't make it not a pattern.

Nor does one data point for each make a pattern.

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

#188

Post by hderms »

wslh wrote: post #131
slibhb wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I will tell three stories: A friend of mine is part of a Mensa (top 2% IQ people) local chapter. He did that mainly for fun and no pedantic reasons. He always tells me story of the problems they have organizing basic activities and governance for the chapter... Even when all participants have a very high IQ. Beyond the validity of IQ, people do crazy things when trusted people, or in power positions give recommendati…

Well replace "intelligent" with "competent" and what do you get? Should we not expect the people telling us all to give them money because we couldn't hope to make more efficient use of it to be able to exercise the critical judgement necessary to not get scammed by a blatant scam?

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

#189

Post by dehrmann »

0xy wrote: post #153
threeseed wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sequoia was also backing Musk's takeover of Twitter. Not sure if they ended up investing. If they did then their record is looking pretty poor right now.

Twitter is at peak MAUs and according to previous financial statements should be cash flow positive after personnel changes. Seems like they invested in a business which was almost immediately switched into a profitable enterprise on an upward trajectory. What am I missing? Or are you making a prediction that is the opposite of available evidence?

Some advertisers have pulled out, and running a break-even business sitting on a war chest is different than running a business that has lots of loans in a high interest rate environment.

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

#190

Post by dehrmann »

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”

Any idiot over 21 can also put their life savings on black, but yes, the accredited investor thing is a bit weird. Maybe it's that a lot of those investments are risky, but not obviously risky in the same way as roulette or crypto.
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