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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]

#641

Post by mcv »

ccn0p wrote: post #612
ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They both make money by selling ad space and attracting eyeballs to that space, but the audience of Coindesk is going to be much more interested in the financial details, whereas the more general audience of CNBC is going to be less interested in getting the details of the story right, and more likely to read a story that is lightly sensationalized.

"less interested in getting the details of the story right" is exactly what is "whack" about media today.

Some media seem more interested in getting the details of a story wrong.

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

#642

Post by twixfel »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #578
vkou wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would be beyond furious if I was expected to help make someone else whole. Such are the wages of being a beneficiary of a ponzi scheme. It would be a good incentive to do better research.

Madoff operated for close to twenty years before being exposed. He was regularly lauded for being the best by well informed people. What is an amateur supposed to do? If the argument is, “Nobody is that good, you should know better”, does that mean Buffet’s scheme will start crumbling any day now?

Well yeah that's why Ponzi schemes suck. Why should it be acceptable to profit from a Ponzi scheme? It's not your money at that point, whether you realise it or not.

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

#643

Post by mcv »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #545
HPMOR wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

As warning, not as victim blaming, I'd like to point out that you should never ever risk money that you can't afford to lose on high-risk investments. Especially not extremely high risk stuff like cryptocurrencies, NFTs and similar scams.

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

#644

Post by oblio »

chezelenkoooo wrote: post #625
HWR_14 wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your sibling comment says this:

> Didn't exactly that happen, didn't Tom Brady put his life savings in FTX? :/

Which makes your comment seem funny or sad, depending on how you look at things.

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

#645

Post by oblio »

ericbarrett wrote: post #549
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?

Matt Levine has speculated that a bunch of the money was lost via market-making with insufficient controls (margin enforcement etc.). For example, as reported by the Financial Times (via Levine's Dec. 5 newsletter, "Crypto had a Credit Bubble"): [begin quote] In April 2021, a crypto token called MobileCoin — used for payments in the privacy-focused messaging app Signal — suddenly spiked in price from about $6 to almo…

Seeing this:

> The wild moves came after a trader on FTX had built an unusually large position in the little-known token. Two people familiar with the matter said that when the price rose, the trader used the position to borrow against it on FTX, potentially a scheme to extract dollars from the exchange.

Makes calling regular currency "fiat" super ironic:

> offshore fiat accounts

It looks like at the end of the day, cryptocurrency is something people "fiat" out of thin air, "fair" algorithms and computers and systems be damned.

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

#646

Post by oblio »

heartbeats wrote: post #624
tananaev wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By devs he probably doesn't mean software devs, but coin creators.

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

#647

Post by oblio »

Scoundreller wrote: post #622
HWR_14 wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have a list with those places? Google isn't helping much.

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

#648

Post by rkagerer »

jasonhansel wrote: post #119

The SEC's complaint in its civil case provides more information about the details of the accusations against him: https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2022/comp-pr2022-2...

Does this strike anyone else as way too dramatic a narrative for a court document? Like it's written with a deep personal beef rather than sticking to the facts. Is that normal for civil complaints of this type?

To be clear I'm not defending the guy, I just feel after reading the first few pages like I'm flipping through a cheap tabloid.

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

#649

Post by favflam »

trillic wrote: post #24

Interesting wording. I am not a Lawyer but have had a lot of interest in this case and others like it. "SAMUEL BANKMAN-FRIED" a/k/a "SBF," the defendant, and others known and unknown did combine, conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to commit wire fraud". Does this indicate that they intend to charge more people in the organization under RICO laws? Or is that just standard legalese for any wi…

The line after that contains "conspirators known and unknown". So, the US SDNY has already decided to charge some people. And the US SDNY is going to charge some other people, but they are not aware of their identity.

RICO is for using underlings to charge the boss. In this case, the boss is being charged. Conspiracy charges here imply co-conspirators.

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

#650

Post by KptMarchewa »

tjohns wrote: post #362
SilasX wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you didn’t feel the need to mention that in your reply to the parent comment, that introduced this assumption that I was building off of?

Electronic submission still involves uploading a PDF, which has to follow the court's rules for layout of printed pages. It just means it the file gets directly added into the case's docket, rather than having to be manually scanned in by the clerks' office.

You'd think by using electronic submission they'd go with machine readable format.
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