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SEC Charges Samuel Bankman-Fried with Defrauding Investors in FTX [pdf]

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Re: SEC Charges Samuel Bankman-Fried with Defrauding Investors in FTX [pdf]

#111

Post by [deleted] »

mradek wrote: post #93
thepasswordis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>like Musk and SBF I‘m sorry, but what ? Just to give some perspective that I don’t think HN really gets: most of my friends have increased their twitter usage. If you aren’t aware, whatever the team did there a few days ago really has appeared to cut bots down to almost 0. SBF is an [alleged] criminal who has [allegedly] defrauded people of billions of dollars, and will likely be spending a substantial amount of tim…

Twitter use is up because everyone wants to see the sometimes insane tweets put their by their top leadership. I had never used twitter prior to Elon taking over, and I made an account to check it out for a week or two. Ultimately stopped using it because it isn’t really for me. I also don’t care enough for anyone’s opinion that much that I’m willing to scroll through insanity, bots, and a holes to find a nugget. But…

[deleted]

Re: SEC Charges Samuel Bankman-Fried with Defrauding Investors in FTX [pdf]

#113

Post by rax0m »

cs702 wrote: post #82

The most interest aspect in the FTX saga, for me, is that SBF was treated very gently by major news outlets (and maybe by government regulators too)... until regular individuals in social media started asking: Why is SBF being treated so kindly? Why would journalists (and regulators) assume that SBF meant well? A possible answer that no one ever mentions is that SBF possesses many qualities that are valued and admire…

Arthur Hayes has written extensively [0] on these points.

[0]: https://blog.bitmex.com/white-boy/

Re: SEC Charges Samuel Bankman-Fried with Defrauding Investors in FTX [pdf]

#114

Post by yonaguska »

cs702 wrote: post #90
rhaway84773 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SBF didn’t believe in his effective altruism slogan. He basically admitted in the texts to the reporter he thought would be private that the EA stuff was BS. Also, I’m not sure what you mean by “treated kindly”. If you’re talking about why he wasn’t arrested yet, it’s obvious because the SEC was building its case, and more so because he was voluntarily going on public forums and publicly admitting increasing levels o…

> SBF didn’t believe in his effective altruism slogan. That's not what I meant. What I meant is that before FTX's implosion, anything you would read, hear, or see about SBF would make it seem as if he actually believed in it!

Positive PR can be bought. SBF had tons of money. I'm not surprised.

Re: SEC Charges Samuel Bankman-Fried with Defrauding Investors in FTX [pdf]

#115

Post by jasonlotito »

misiti3780 wrote: post #87
rhaway84773 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SBF didn’t believe in his effective altruism slogan. He basically admitted in the texts to the reporter he thought would be private that the EA stuff was BS. Also, I’m not sure what you mean by “treated kindly”. If you’re talking about why he wasn’t arrested yet, it’s obvious because the SEC was building its case, and more so because he was voluntarily going on public forums and publicly admitting increasing levels o…

they are referring to this: https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/11/15/lets-talk-about-t...

> “Disgusting complicity on the part of the New York Times. He has ruined countless people's lives by theft and fraud, and NYT is now helping him to delay or evade justice by whitewashing him in their prestigious, influential newspaper. I doubt this is just a mistake on their part,” Zcash co-creator Zooko Wilcox said.

This is a dumb take. They did not help him delay or evade anything.

One could argue that the old way of journalism needs to be modernized for people who have challenges with context and understanding, like this quote demonstrates. Maybe expand on the concept of trigger warnings that detail things to consider while reading an article. Things that were common knowledge years ago, but seem to have been left in the dust.

Re: SEC Charges Samuel Bankman-Fried with Defrauding Investors in FTX [pdf]

#116

Post by CamelCaseName »

SilverBirch wrote: post #78
blululu wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: are low income users viable for an ad supported platform? As it is I think only North American online ads actually make decent money, though perhaps European and Asian ad markets also deliver value close to break even. It is all an investment in the future. The last 15 years have had a belief that more users means more money but this might be thinking that all users are the same when some are much mo…

Meta makes revenues of about $15Bn in US & Canada, $8Bn in the EU and $10Boutside of EU & US/Canada each year. So it's clearly not nothing, and it's not like Twitter can afford to be picky about where it makes money.

Meta is insanely deep in those countries outside the EU/US/CA though.

As in, they are "the" internet for users who get it for free on their mobile plans and everything else costs exorbitant amounts of money.

I don't quite think Elon could do that, unless Starlink really takes off I suppose.

Re: SEC Charges Samuel Bankman-Fried with Defrauding Investors in FTX [pdf]

#117

Post by arcticbull »

perihelions wrote: post #19

Note that the SEC's is merely a civil action. The federal criminal indictment hasn't been unsealed yet (but should be soon, today [0]). [0] https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-bahamas-unite... ( "We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time" )

I believe the federal criminal indictment is public now. [1]

- First count: Conspiracy to commit wire fraud to defraud customers.

- Second count: Wire fraud on customers.

- Third count: Conspiracy to commit wire fraud on lenders.

- Fourth count: Wire fraud on lenders. (again, specifically lenders to Alameda)

- Fifth count: Conspiracy to commit commodities fraud.

- Sixth count: Conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

I believe there's more, I quoted the above text from a thread by Frances Coppola [2].

[1] https://www.johnreedstark.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/180/2...

[2] https://twitter.com/Frances_Coppola/status/16026873331696025...

Re: SEC Charges Samuel Bankman-Fried with Defrauding Investors in FTX [pdf]

#118

Post by el_nahual »

boplicity wrote: post #51
pavlov wrote: post #6

It's sort of curious that this SEC action is to protect the venture capital investors like Sequoia who invested in FTX shares directly. If I were a retail investor who lost my savings in FTX, I might be feeling upset that the government is rushing to action in defense of billion-dollar funds whose own due diligence failed massively, while seemingly nothing is being done to help those who invested in crypto based on F…

Frankly, it seems to me that VCs should be liable for money FTX owes its customers. These are professional investors who didn't insist on very basic things, such as proper financial sheets from a finance company. Frankly, that's gross negligence. Professional investors should have legal responsibility to do at least some due diligence. In addition, they're becoming owners of a company. As owners, why shouldn't they b…

Often VCs will have a seat on the company's board--in which case they might be liable.

However, it doesn't seem that Sequoia et al had seats on the board, at least from this early 2022 press release [1].

Holding shareholders that are not directors accountable is extremely difficult. This is called "piercing the corporate veil" (worth a google) and is done only vary rarely and in cases of clear and outrageous misconduct attributable to the shareholders themselves—it's so rare because it's antithetical to the entire premise of the "limited" corporation.

[1] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ftx-us-derivatives-...

Re: SEC Charges Samuel Bankman-Fried with Defrauding Investors in FTX [pdf]

#119

Post by beefield »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #80
phphphphp wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting aside the arguments to be made for/against the idea, and focusing on the implementation instead: most investments are handled through some sort of limited liability vehicle and so even if the “investor” was held responsible it would not necessarily impact the human(s) that stood to gain.

I suppose we need some criminal law in that case.

At a minimum, tax code should be changed to discourage limited liability corporation forms. Personally I'd also like to see that limited liability as a concept would be forbidden in many/most industries/cases. In Brazil the management and owners of a bank may be held liable if bank fails even without wrongdoing. And I think there has not been many failing banks in Brazil...

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2013/05/04/b...

(Paywall, check google cache)

Re: SEC Charges Samuel Bankman-Fried with Defrauding Investors in FTX [pdf]

#120

Post by [deleted] »

cs702 wrote: post #82

The most interest aspect in the FTX saga, for me, is that SBF was treated very gently by major news outlets (and maybe by government regulators too)... until regular individuals in social media started asking: Why is SBF being treated so kindly? Why would journalists (and regulators) assume that SBF meant well? A possible answer that no one ever mentions is that SBF possesses many qualities that are valued and admire…

[deleted]
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