So the conclusive evidence was found with git blame?
for dfb6f1f9 you are sentenced to 3 years in prison
Would a git push -f master add a destroying evidence charge?
A software change allowed FTX to use client money
61–70 of 402 posts
Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money
#62> Only Singh, Bankman-Fried and a few other top FTX and Alameda executives knew about the exemption in the code, according to three former executives briefed on the matter. A digital dashboard used by staff to track FTX customer assets and liabilities was programmed so it would not take into account that Alameda had withdrawn the client funds, according to two of the people and a screenshot of the portal that Reuters…
Really? I feel like intent would be really hard to prove. "Hey, due to the way our accounting works I need you to subtract X from our dashboard." "Ok boss." Are programmers expected to know finance law? If I build a program for a dairy farmer am I supposed to know the laws of the interstate dairy trade? I can't believe that would be the case.
Developers should know to ask questions when a weird request is made.
Developers presumably know how to think and have a vague idea of what the business does to know that a ask to futz with internal financials programmatically is fucking wierd.
Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money
#63Brings up a question: what is the chance of blaming some of this on an "innocent" coding error? Can you get jail for not writing unit tests, swallowing an exception, a type conversion you did not expect?
Interesting. The perfect crime would be to add a natural looking bug in the code that can be exploited by someone else, and then we split the money!
Genius, but it has to be a bug that you haven't knowingly prevented before, otherwise it'd be suspicious.
Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Money is money. Debt is money from the future. Seems you don't understand.
there is no money, it is all debt, he is right. Unless you carry around golden coins.
Even if you carry around golden coins. They have little value, especially in coin shape. They are just unforgeable, fungible markers for debt.
Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been at many startups during a fundraising round, and I don't think I've ever seen or heard of an investor auditing the codebase.
Neither have I but read some stuff about Tesla devs checking out the Twitter codebase or something? It’s ridiculous but that’s the only data point known to me
That wasn't due diligence (which he'd waived) but a census of what he'd bought after the fact. They weren't validating the purchase, but helping him plan what to do with it.
Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money
#66And this is what really ruins crypto to me. With no actual legal protection, no trust, "code is law", am I expected to keep up with every pull request? And of course these exchanges are completely opaque on top of that.
Both criminal law and code are vast enough that the fraction I understand of either is closer to zero than the entirety.
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Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? I feel like intent would be really hard to prove. "Hey, due to the way our accounting works I need you to subtract X from our dashboard." "Ok boss." Are programmers expected to know finance law? If I build a program for a dairy farmer am I supposed to know the laws of the interstate dairy trade? I can't believe that would be the case.
Developers need to know the business better than the business people. Always. Otherwise you can't implement the software very well.
Isn't it completely unscalable? I work for a big automaker, there's literally people whose only job is to be compliant and inform the necessary leads about it. There's hundreds of countries, each with very specific things. If I study everything, I can't code.
When knowledge arrives at my team, is already condensed to the point of: "in X country, you must tell the prices of a call if you show a phone number for assistance"
Why should I explore every loophole of law to be compliant? That's the companies job, not mine.
Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money
#68> Bankman-Fried had directed subordinates to update the software in mid-2020 to enable Alameda to maintain a negative balance on its account, the SEC complaint said. And thus do we have another piece of evidence for why morals and ethics matter, even for software developers. I doubt they'll end up with liability, but I do hope they at least recognize and think about how their actions enabled this whole mess.
> doubt they'll end up with liability They're each going to run up five, maybe six, figure legal bills.
My guess is you haven't hired a lawyer recently. All of the top principals at FTX are looking at millions in legal fees.
Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
People need to understand that money is debt. That is the source of all currency (yes, even gold and other 'hard' currency). If people cannot freely create it, then it's useless. The key is that you ought to be able to gauge the money creator on their trustworthiness, which hopefully you know as a member of a small community. Or, if you are creating money on the open market to large numbers of people, often it's usef…
Money is money. Debt is money from the future. Seems you don't understand.
And yet debt has monetary value today and can be sold for cash today. It can also be sold for goods which makes it more money like than Bitcoin.
If you don't understand currency basics, I advise to stay away from crypto
Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money
#70And this is what really ruins crypto to me. With no actual legal protection, no trust, "code is law", am I expected to keep up with every pull request? And of course these exchanges are completely opaque on top of that.
There's many reasons to hate smart contracts, but this isn't one of them. The article is talking about changes to a codebase that's closed source and deployed with little scrutiny. None of this is applicable to reputable smart contract projects, which are open source and require some sort of consensus and/or vote for code changes. Using this as an argument against smart contracts makes as much sense as using the elec…
Aren't they Russian elections though?
A bad actor can steal the voting tokens, and decide the vote. Even without that, I can't assume that the voters are aligned to my interests