Having followed a lot of the SBF discussion since he keeps giving interviews, here's the FAQ-- 1) How did you lose $5ish billion of customer deposits? - They were deposited to Alameda, a totally independent hedge fund run by an unrelated party (my ex-girlfriend who lives with me). We credited Alameda without properly debiting Alameda on FTX. 2) Why didn't you track them? - There was a bug in the dashboard. I made a b…
SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse
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Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, not even remotely. FTX is a centralized exchange, and is the opposite of what crypto’s original philosophy is
Crypto had a philosophy? Yikes
Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse
#63*remotely testify. https://www.reuters.com/legal/ftxs-sam-bankman-fried-says-he...
As the saying goes... If you forget to hire an accountant, make sure you listen to your lawyer.
It worked until the funds ran out.
In a sense this is worse than a pyramid scheme because in a pyramid scheme at least a good portion of the "profits" is actually paid out. Here the funds went partially to fuck-knows-who, partially were lost in trading.
Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse
#64*remotely testify. https://www.reuters.com/legal/ftxs-sam-bankman-fried-says-he...
Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. "It's easier to fool a man than to convince him he's been fooled." Precision of language is important here. Where's the easiest place to defraud people? Directly adjacent to the place where it is mathematically impossible to be defrauded. Uninformed people stored their assets on FTX. Had they stored their funds on the blockchain, instead of entrusting them with SBF, it would have been impossible for SBF to abscon…
As I understand it, most people using FTX were not buy-and-hold investors who wanted FTX to "store their assets." It was a place where people loaned out their crypto, among other things. It doesn't seem like there are ways to loan out crypto without risk. However, there are methods to mathematically guarantee that you will at least end up holding collateral that's worth much less than you thought it would after somet…
Many non-US engineers were paid salaries in stables or fiat on FTX. These people gained exposure to US stocks and crypto, or just held onto their USD on FTX.
I personally know people who lost their life savings on FTX, even though the majority of their holdings was fiat.
Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse
#66I met someone who claimed they lost money in FTX when I was taking four figures in winnings from boomers at the poker room yesterday. (Could have been just table talk -- you can't trust anything you here in that context, just like you should take psudoanonymous internet comments from some guy named "Greg" with a grain of salt.) I didn't have a ton of sympathy for him or her, since this is the flip side of engaging in…
> Could have been just table talk -- you can't trust anything you here in that context
I was expecting something more noteworthy. Many people lost money.
Does anyone know if FTX.us users are completely made whole?
Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse
#67Does anyone else find it extremely ironical that FTX happened in crypto? Wasn't FTX one of the things crypto was meant to solve?
If you expected this to happen it isn't ironic, just business as usual.
Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
As the saying goes... If you forget to hire an accountant, make sure you listen to your lawyer.
They did not "forget to hire an accountant". They took customer funds and did whatever they wanted with it. Just look at that hilarious "balance sheet" that was leaked, it's not even on the same planet as a balance sheet of an exchange. It worked until the funds ran out. In a sense this is worse than a pyramid scheme because in a pyramid scheme at least a good portion of the "profits" is actually paid out. Here the f…
Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse
#69This guy is something else. He's one of the largest scammers in history, if not the largest, by the amount of appropriated funds. But he's also very "cute", I mean he cannot open his mouth without incriminating himself. This is going to be a good show. On a more serious note I do hope for some serious sentences on the back of it (counted in decades, maybe a few life sentences if possible), because it's too much of a…
You’re unvoluntarily making another good point here: He’s young and, yes, cute in the form of having smooth skin, and young. Such things affect the imaginary of people: Old guys are often seen as bad guys in movies. Jurys are heavily influenced by looks. 30 years old and good-looking is an upside in affairs.
I wonder whether the average age of scammers is getting smaller, due to being able to penetrate large finance much quicker in life. Madoff had to be 50-60 to setup such a large scheme. SBF is 30. Will the next AI-wizz be 2 years above legal age?
Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse
#70Having followed a lot of the SBF discussion since he keeps giving interviews, here's the FAQ-- 1) How did you lose $5ish billion of customer deposits? - They were deposited to Alameda, a totally independent hedge fund run by an unrelated party (my ex-girlfriend who lives with me). We credited Alameda without properly debiting Alameda on FTX. 2) Why didn't you track them? - There was a bug in the dashboard. I made a b…
I'll add my own opinion which is that he seems to—at least on some level—legitimately believe that all of this is extremely complicated and impossible to understand unless you're someone of his intellectual caliber. It's so complicated, in fact, that even he struggles to keep it all in his head at once. I say this because I otherwise can't come up with any reason why he would continue to give multiple interviews except that the man actually thinks that his ideas were brilliant and sound, but he just made some understandable mistakes and that if people could understand where he's coming from they'd see that he's a sympathetic victim here and not some idiot that was very obviously going to lose everyone's money from the get-go.
Of course the reality is that he's some idiot that was very obviously going to lose everyone's money from the get-go. None of this is very complicated to anyone who's ever worked in finance (admittedly not me). And absolutely fundamental basic controls were never put into place. These controls were skipped because SBF was convinced he was doing something extremely novel and complicated and such old-school concepts would only hinder his ability to execute on his brilliant ideas. Except these ideas weren't all that brilliant, they just involved doing things the likes of which you wouldn't even imagine attempting in traditional finance because… gestures wildly at the ongoing FTX debacle.