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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

#91

Post by stouset »

zeven7 wrote: post #86
stouset wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It wasn't very complex, he made a bunch of basic mistakes that nobody with even a passing familiarity with finance should have made, and to say that he should have done better is an understatement of almost comical proportions. I just also think that these things were (at least initially) due to absurd levels of hubris and incompetence rather than outright malicious intent. The guy thought his shit didn't st…

It is complex, but that doesn't mean it's not malicious. Let's use a simpler example. Sam runs a horse racing operation and allows you to place bets on horses. Before the race begins, Sam collects $1,000,000 from various people placing bets on the race. During the race, Sam runs across the street to the casino and puts the $1,000,000 he's holding on black at the roulette table. If he wins the bet, Sam plans to take t…

Sure. This is a reasonable analogy.

I simply think that he started from an a priori belief that a) he is brilliant, and therefore b) ideas he comes up with are similarly brilliant, thus c) this idea is brilliant.

It wasn't.

That said, I don't think it should matter whether or not he came into this plan with an intent to defraud or if he mistakenly thought this was a foolproof investment strategy. The man is guilty as all hell and ought to face consequences for the outcome regardless of intent. I just think it's amazing to watch him continually try and explain how brilliant and complicated this idea was and how a few small mistakes brought him down while it's actually pretty simple to understand at a high level what happened and this outcome was virtually guaranteed from the start.

Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse

#92

Post by outside1234 »

swellguy wrote: post #6

Does anyone else find it extremely ironical that FTX happened in crypto? Wasn't FTX one of the things crypto was meant to solve?

The only think crypto solves is "shady money" in some form or another (money laundering, drug sales, bribing and corruption, pump and dump schemes).

So yes, in this sense, FTX is the perfect poster child.

Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse

#93

Post by guardiangod »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #84
throwthere wrote: post #50

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…

> - There was a bug in the dashboard. I made a boneheaded mistake. Oopsies. Will this hold up in court? Can you go to jail for bugs in dashboards?

The difference is negligence and intentional fraud. SBF is obviously arguing for the former. The law is more lenient to oopsies than Enron.

Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse

#95

Post by rPlayer6554 »

zeven7 wrote: post #76
stouset wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having also followed this unfolding drama, I can say this is sadly a reasonably accurate take. 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…

> 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. Don't let him sell the story that it was all very complex and he made a bunch of mistakes and he should have done better. They used Snapchat for company messaging so there wound't be records. This wasn't a mistake d…

Woah source needed on the Snapchat for company messaging. I gotta see this.

Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse

#96

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

VLM wrote: post #79
sroussey wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress should demand in-person testimony

He was a political donor, not going to happen LOL

He made donations to Democrats and clearly favored them. It seems FTX made donations to Republicans when they thought they could buy regulatory influence.

So while I'd rather see him questioned under the upcoming house, not the current one, nothing would happen either way.

Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse

#97

Post by LarryMullins »

TotoHorner wrote: post #88
stouset wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could be right. But if this interview spree is a calculated move to avoid jail time, he's doing a truly awful job of it. But this wouldn't be the first time he did an awful job of something due to misjudging his own competence.

> But if this interview spree is a calculated move to avoid jail time, he's doing a truly awful job of it. But this wouldn't be the first time he did an awful job of something due to misjudging his own competence. Yep, I think that's exactly it. In his mind, it's either - do not do any interviews. The outcome is a 90% probability of life in prision - do the interviews and try to shift public opinion to it being an ac…

He seems like an addicted gambler who thinks he just needs one more bet to dig himself out of the hole.

> "Disgraced crypto boss Sam Bankman-Fried says he hopes to start a new business to make enough money to pay back victims of the FTX collapse."

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63911363

Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse

#98

Post by stouset »

TotoHorner wrote: post #88
stouset wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could be right. But if this interview spree is a calculated move to avoid jail time, he's doing a truly awful job of it. But this wouldn't be the first time he did an awful job of something due to misjudging his own competence.

> But if this interview spree is a calculated move to avoid jail time, he's doing a truly awful job of it. But this wouldn't be the first time he did an awful job of something due to misjudging his own competence. Yep, I think that's exactly it. In his mind, it's either - do not do any interviews. The outcome is a 90% probability of life in prision - do the interviews and try to shift public opinion to it being an ac…

If all this was done maliciously from the get-go, I don't understand why he would take this approach as opposed to simply cashing out when things started to turn and disappearing. If you've got enough money, it's not hard to make yourself scarce.

So why stay visible and continue to do these interviews and testify before the US House when all he's managed to do so far is convince everyone that he's guilty as hell?

That's what I can't put together about this strategy. It only makes sense to me if he genuinely, truly doesn't believe he did anything wrong. Which is frankly amazing if true given everything we know.

Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse

#99

Post by Pepe1vo »

stouset wrote: post #87
TotoHorner wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Yeah, I strongly disagree here. He's just a pathological liar and he's currently on an interview spree where he's lying out of his mouth to try and avoi…

You could be right. But if this interview spree is a calculated move to avoid jail time, he's doing a truly awful job of it. But this wouldn't be the first time he did an awful job of something due to misjudging his own competence.

"Everything Sam Bankman-Fried is doing is in singular pursuit of not going to jail" -- https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/everything-sam-bankman-f...

Re: SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse

#100

Post by est31 »

stouset wrote: post #17
ESTheComposer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not even remotely. FTX is a centralized exchange, and is the opposite of what crypto’s original philosophy is

Kind of like how git made tools for decentralized development widespread, so nobody uses centralized intermediaries to host their repositories any more. /s

One could spin it like: thanks to git reducing the requirement for servers for more of the development experience, it has reduced the reason for companies to self-host repository servers.
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