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The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

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Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#621

Post by laluser »

HPMOR wrote: post #529
trident5000 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best years? More like all the years.

He should not go to prison for life. Nobody should ever go to prison for life, for wasting money. Money is literally made up. Sure, opportunity cost is real, but seriously nobody should ever lose their life for money.

Think about it this way. Money is people's time. SBF stole billions of hours of people's personal time. Effort, savings, sweat, tears all bundled in what we call money. Why shouldn't he repay them with his own time in jail?

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#622

Post by Scoundreller »

HWR_14 wrote: post #616
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even non-US customers? How?

The US has an excellent record of recovering stolen money from most places you would want to live (and reciprocally of helping other countries)

Maybe I wouldn’t, but at least a billion people live somewhere happily out of US extra-jurisdiction.

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#623

Post by topkai22 »

HWR_14 wrote: post #583
massysett wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is opportunity cost. People invested in Madoff to grow their money. So if I invest $100 in Madoff and ten years later they say “we recovered $90, congrats,” yeah that’s better than nothing. But if I had put that into a legitimate investment, maybe I’d have $180. Other folks got money out of Madoff during his scam years, and the trustee says “I’m taking that money back to pay back others.” So much of crypt…

While Tom Brady's endorsement has little economic value, it was money paid to him. I believe a bankruptcy court can undo past transactions, so that cash might be recoverable.

That’s a tough one as Brady wasn’t an investor or executive but a supplier. Will the media companies that FTX bought ads with also need to give back their fees?

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#624

Post by heartbeats »

tananaev wrote: post #592
panarky wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> burned through billions If Alameda lost the billions, then who won the billions? Who was on the other side of those trades?

A lot of it is probably stolen. A lot went into thousands of worthless altcoins and their devs got rich. Another big portion is probably advertising. They spent big on YouTube influencers. Basically a lot of people got rich and a lot more people got screwed.

Altcoin devs are not paid well; Bitcoin devs make entirely normal SWE salaries according to public information, and I can't imagine DogeCoin or whatever is any better. All the big money is in marketing, since that's what creates the value.

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#625

Post by chezelenkoooo »

HWR_14 wrote: post #615
l33t233372 wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can’t give Tom Brady his time back.

Of the people stolen from, Tom Brady losing a day filming commercials is pretty low on the list of things I care about. Like he got paid $X for his endorsement. I would prefer that money go to the people whose life savings were stolen.

Is it really Tom Brady's responsibility to vet each and every one of his commercial offers? That seems unsustainable. He would have needed some pretty intimate knowledge of the crypto world along with the inner workings of FTX to know that it was a fraud. To me it seems like placing too much responsibility on people who shouldn't bear that responsibility.

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#626

Post by heartbeats »

HPMOR wrote: post #608
richardwhiuk wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if they money was someone else's means to pay for their health care? Money is made up - that doesn't mean it doesn't have consequences.

I am of the mindset that non-violent offenders, should not suffer a life penalty regardless of their alleged crime. They played a game and lost, they should not lose their head as well.

A game with whose stakes?

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#627

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

pseingatl wrote: post #127

Can we discus recovery? The Madoff trustee was able to recover something like 90% of the Madoff Ponzi. Alameda and FTX's real estate purchases have value, as do their VC investments, purchases of bank stock, etc. In other words, it's not all gone. My understanding is that even some of the political contributions can be clawed back. FTX's purchases of IOU's (i.e., crypto) that declined in value are not likely to be re…

"How much was really lost?"

With respect to culpability for the wire fraud charges, arguably it does not matter. The crime is a devising scheme to defraud. The execution of the scheme does not have to be successful.

Even if every FTX customer gets a 100% refund of their deposits, SBF is still going to face prosecution. This is what makes his recent behaviour so childish, immature, juvenile and foolish. The transcript of his proposed testimony before Congress shows that SBF is anything but a "whiz kid". He is clueless. A pawn.1

1. https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rbgv1U_v...

"How much was really lost?"

How much what? Fiat money? According to the self-proclaimed crypto experts, the fiat monetary system is to be avoided.2 Why would crypto believers want fiat money.

According to a Google "engineer", the highly regulated, democratically-elected government that issues and guarantees fiat currency may seize it in the near future, referring the reader to "snopes.com" as an authoritative source. Not only that, according to the Google stooge, using fiat currency poses a risk of "total surveillance" and is undermining peoples' privacy.2 You cannot make this up. Employee of almost totally unregulated "tech" company, hoovering up the personal data and invading the privacy of hundreds of millions of people for profit, a company with nearly 140,000 employees and billions in the bank that does not even have a basic customer service line, is giving unsolicited advice about privacy.

2. https://apxhard.substack.com/p/why-bitcoin-is-different-from...

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#628

Post by woodpanel »

totalZero wrote: post #414
massysett wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is opportunity cost. People invested in Madoff to grow their money. So if I invest $100 in Madoff and ten years later they say “we recovered $90, congrats,” yeah that’s better than nothing. But if I had put that into a legitimate investment, maybe I’d have $180. Other folks got money out of Madoff during his scam years, and the trustee says “I’m taking that money back to pay back others.” So much of crypt…

Shkreli got hard time even though investors didn't lose money due to his fraud. There isn't a performance threshold beyond which fraud ceases to be criminal.

Shkreli is a good example of how well oiled justice runs if the defendant is politically indefensible. In the same vein the treatment that SBF got so far (eg getting invited as speaker on a NYT event that featured people such as Selenskyy) makes me fear it will be a much softer prosecution.

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#629

Post by chip-8 »

mattnewton wrote: post #411
indigodaddy wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure as hell wouldn’t laugh and put my fingers in my ears during a hearing. They are professional lawyers. Time to man up and not put your son at even more risk. Who knows how involved they’ve been in his shenanigans up til now, but it’s time to stop the madness..

This reads like a stress response to me. I don’t think realizing your child is probably going to live behind bars for the rest of your life and your family will never recover is something you “man up” through.

I agree. People act weird under extreme stress. Once when I arrived at work my boss was grinning. I asked him what was going on and he told me my co-worker tried to kill my supervisor. I laughed. Other co-workers were laughing and grinning too.

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#630

Post by dwheeler »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #627
pseingatl wrote: post #127

Can we discus recovery? The Madoff trustee was able to recover something like 90% of the Madoff Ponzi. Alameda and FTX's real estate purchases have value, as do their VC investments, purchases of bank stock, etc. In other words, it's not all gone. My understanding is that even some of the political contributions can be clawed back. FTX's purchases of IOU's (i.e., crypto) that declined in value are not likely to be re…

"How much was really lost?" With respect to culpability for the wire fraud charges, arguably it does not matter. The crime is a devising scheme to defraud. The execution of the scheme does not have to be successful. Even if every FTX customer gets a 100% refund of their deposits, SBF is still going to face prosecution. This is what makes his recent behaviour so childish, immature, juvenile and foolish. The transcript…

How much was really lost won't matter much in terms of prosecuting those who committed any crimes. And while it looks like a huge crime to me, they are still innocent until proven guilty.

It does matter to those who appear to have been defrauded. They won't be made whole. There will be opportunity costs, and I can't imagine it all being recovered. But if a significant portion is recovered, it would provide some help to the victims.

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