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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

#131

Post by vkou »

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…

> Having followed a lot of the SBF discussion since he keeps giving interviews,

The better question is, why is anyone still interviewing him? You're far better off interviewing a terrorist than a conman - as dangerous as the former may be, they aren't going to talk you to death... Whereas the raison d'etre for a confidence man talking to you is so he can sell you a self-serving line of bullshit.

There's literally nothing that SBF says that isn't aimed at the singular purpose of keeping him out of prison. Until he's testifying under oath in a court of law, there's nothing he could say that's worth listening to.

We are generally smart enough to not hand a killer a loaded gun, but can't seem to resist handing a fraud and liar a loudspeaker.

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

#132

Post by kevan »

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…

On #4, Coffeezilla got past the smokescreen and got SBF to admit there was "fungibility created during those withdrawals between assets" and that it had always operated this way.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o_jPzBZSIo (~15:30 in)

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

#133

Post by whimsicalism »

mattdesl wrote: post #22
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?

Decentralized exchanges can solve some of the problems now plaguing FTX investors, but there is still a big problem that the blockchain can’t solve: on and off ramps to fiat.

This is where the criminal underground can potentially thrive.

Black-market dollar markets already exist across the developing world, backing it with stablecoins allows these criminals to better operationalize illicit dollarization, rather than keeping massive amounts of risky cash on hand.

The on & off ramps in the West will have to be centralized due to political will and strong rule of law.

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

#134

Post by devmunchies »

bnt wrote: post #72
pclmulqdq wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be interesting to see if anything blows back on binance here. If politicians see CZ as having blown up the business of one of their big donors, they may be unhappy enough to do something really dumb.

Yea, like destroying 100s of thousands of small account owners on Binance. Because the guy looks “Chinese” (but he multiple times publicly stated he is not Chinese).

He wasn’t raised in China nor does he currently live there, but he was literally born in China and is ethnically Chinese. He doesn’t “look” Chinese, he “is” Chinese.

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

#135

Post by whimsicalism »

rubyist5eva wrote: post #82

The fact that this guy has not been arrested just goes to show how completely f*cked America is.

Dude literally paid a substantial proportion of Bahamas GDP to the Bahamas government, my guess is they got some sort of deal in exchange for this.

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

#136

Post by baremetal »

john-tells-all wrote: post #101
H8crilA wrote: post #48

This 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…

There's a theory that his "gee shucks I'm so cute and dumb" thing is an act. He's portraying a character. No one is dumb enough to talk so much to so many news outlets after losing so much money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_defense

"The idiot defense" is a satirical term for a legal strategy where a defendant claims innocence by virtue of having been ignorant of facts of which the defendant would normally be expected to be aware. Other terms used for this tactic include "dumb CEO defense", "dummy defense", "ostrich defense", "Ken Lay defense", and "Sergeant Schultz defense"

"Ostrich defense" makes me laugh every time.

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

#137

Post by mr90210 »

eastbound wrote: post #69
H8crilA wrote: post #48

This 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…

> But he's also very "cute" 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…

I am quite sure that Holmes was also “cute”.

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

#138

Post by zeven7 »

sushid wrote: post #114
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…

In a nutshell, he ran FTX like Mt. Gox. He did't know what he was doing but just on a bigger scale than ever.

Mark Karpeles got in over his head, criminally. He lied some, he defrauded some, but most of it seemed to be to try to cover up for previous mistakes, and I think he legitimately just had some bad things happen to him, got in over his head, and made a bunch of mistakes in an early time for Bitcoin. He deserved prison time, and he's paid his debt to society.

That's not what SBF did, not even close. All of the FTX executives are from top schools and have top credentials. They knew exactly what they were doing was fraudulent. They just thought they could get away with it.

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

#139

Post by STM32F030R8 »

ryanwhitney wrote: post #122
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

SBF: “I donated to both parties. I donated about the same amount to both parties,” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/30/ftx-billi...

Yea, I totally trust what he says.

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

#140

Post by creato »

TotoHorner wrote: post #108
stouset wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Tha…

> why he would take this approach as opposed to simply cashing out when things started to turn and disappearing Because he wasn't expected their balance sheet to get leaked. He had enough liquidity from FTX customer deposits to cover any Alameda margin calls from losses and Alameda wouldn't get margin called from FTX for any losses (due to their god mode). So, he could keep just keep holding levered losses and wait f…

> Him just disappearing would force his parents/siblings to also have to become fugitives

How is that? Are they involved somehow? I’ve been following this somewhat closely and the only time I’ve seen his family mentioned is that he should have known better given his parents’ expertise, but that doesn’t imply they were involved.

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