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A software change allowed FTX to use client money

reuters.com

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Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money

#331

Post by DonsDiscountGas »

jwmoz wrote: post #251
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #23

> 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by staff to track FTX customer assets and liabilities was programmed so it would not take into account that Alameda had withdrawn the client funds, according to two of the people and a screenshot of the portal that Reuters…

My claim to fame is that I dealt with SBF and Nishad to get some Python code for their api client merged in, the first non-FTX committer. I coded up a lot of the api functionalities that were missing. They never gave me a tip. A couple years later when I pitched for investment they declined it as they "were looking for more volume".

You probably dodged a bullet

Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money

#332

Post by fatnoah »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #23

> 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by staff to track FTX customer assets and liabilities was programmed so it would not take into account that Alameda had withdrawn the client funds, according to two of the people and a screenshot of the portal that Reuters…

> If you want to see what you should never do as a software engineer if you like not being in jail, this is it.

Not quite the same level, but in my early days working on a payment system, a request from the product team was to create a summary screen where customer service reps could see payment histories AND THE CC INFORMATION USED FOR THE PAYMENTS. In my mind, there was no way that would end well, so I strenuously objected and had to endure some very heated conversations over the course of a month or two. Eventually product team agreed to last 4 digits + expiration.

Nowadays it wouldn't even be a conversation, but in the early 2000's, it was a different world.

Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money

#334

Post by sirsinsalot »

I'm not sure Singh should be held accountable. He is a programmer. He coded what his boss told him to.

This isn't like coding a bomb to kill people, where the programmer clearly has an ethical choice.

Singh was an employee, whose bosses had the job of ensuring what they asked him to do was legal, and he was not obliged to consider the ethics or legality with full view of the "big picture" nor even know or take the "big picture" into account.

That's the bosses job, that's why they're paid more, that's why they take more risk, that's why they may end up in prison.

Even where Singh knew something was up, it wasn't his place to be a financial expert. That's what the company's senior staff are supposed to be. Even where Singh had a partial knowledge or view of the entire company/companies or the legal framework they operated in, in his role as a programmer he was not obliged to have a full view (nor could he have).

This partial view of what's going on means his decisions can not be in full consideration. It's the bosses job to make the consideration. They failed.

To judge Singh in hindsight as if he knew everything we know now, or that the courts will come to know, is bizarre.

Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money

#335

Post by IWillForgetThis »

fatnoah wrote: post #332
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #23

> 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…

> If you want to see what you should never do as a software engineer if you like not being in jail, this is it. Not quite the same level, but in my early days working on a payment system, a request from the product team was to create a summary screen where customer service reps could see payment histories AND THE CC INFORMATION USED FOR THE PAYMENTS. In my mind, there was no way that would end well, so I strenuously…

My first job out of college (2007) involved a lot of removal of early 2000s one-off custom payment processing code. Access DBs full of years worth of credit card numbers, code that just emailed the credit card details to the site owner without keeping a record, etc. It was definitely a different world. Most of them, I just switched to PayPal shopping cart and checkout. In retrospect, I didn't know wtf I was doing and probably shouldn't have been working on it.

Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money

#336

Post by Maxburn »

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #321
Maxburn wrote: post #299

Side note but I do not like that font Reuters uses, it feels like it is mixed case with the different sized characters even when it isn't mixed case. It's messaging me like comic sans.

This is a TTF hinting problem that shows up on Windows (and possibly Linux), but not on the Retina MacBooks the designers built and checked their sites on.

That is crazy they would have a website that looks messed up to ~87% [0] of their potential audience.

[0]https://www.statista.com/statistics/576473/united-states-qua...

Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money

#337

Post by SilasX »

nullc wrote: post #57
gcr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your very post says it -- "reputable." In this field, no matter the technology, reputation and trust are everything amidst fears of rug pulls and scams, and smart contracts don't replace the need for social trust. It's hard to name any crypto organization that was seen as more reputable than FTX before this happened. If we can't even trust someone with SBF's track record, what's left?

thats so wtf to me-- from my perspective it was obviously squirrly from the start. The guy showed up out of nowhere... suddenly being promoted by throwaway reddit accounts, claiming to have made more than ten billion on trades where claiming a million dollar payoff would have been surprising and dubious. Their exchange specialized in offering almost anonymous retail traders access to leveraged trading on the most dub…

You mean LedgerX as the derivatives clearinghouse? That one was (somehow) insulated from the bankruptcy and commingling of funds.

Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money

#338

Post by silasdavis »

neomantra wrote: post #300
silasdavis wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is information on order books non public? Usually crypto order books are public APIs.

Some examples of hidden information that doesn't generally get disseminated in exchange orderbook APIs: * Attribution: who's making the order? * Short labelling... are they selling or shorting? * Non-display or iceberg orders (not common in crypto?) * Immediate-or-cancel orders... the executions hit the feed, but not the original order details. Also whiffs (order but no fill) don't get disseminated in any way. * Cert…

Thanks, yeah attribution is an interesting one. You usually have the cryptographic address of the maker but not any link to FTX account that might be responsible, and as you say the ability to correlate an order with other positions

> Certain order types that may rest on the exchanges order book but either don't have a specific price or display doesn't make sense.

I suppose orders than are designed to only be consumed by a matching engine don't need to be made public unless they are matched.

Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money

#339

Post by morelisp »

roenxi wrote: post #305
morelisp wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Engineers are of course partly responsible for the things they implement. > That is outrageous. And this is why software engineering is a joke.

Engineers are responsible for strictly technical failures. When a piece of software does what a representative of company management asks for it hasn't failed. Software engineers are not lawyers and they are bad at interpreting laws.

> Software engineers are not lawyers and they are bad at interpreting laws.

Right, so if something seems sketchy ("please ignore these specific deductions when calculating our holdings") , get a lawyer - or CEO or CFO or whatever - to say in writing that it's fine.

And if something seems actually illegal ("just run the blood test results out-of-spec and report them anyway") just don't do it. Nothing absolves you of some things.

Re: A software change allowed FTX to use client money

#340

Post by arealaccount »

fatnoah wrote: post #332
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #23

> 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…

> If you want to see what you should never do as a software engineer if you like not being in jail, this is it. Not quite the same level, but in my early days working on a payment system, a request from the product team was to create a summary screen where customer service reps could see payment histories AND THE CC INFORMATION USED FOR THE PAYMENTS. In my mind, there was no way that would end well, so I strenuously…

Do you mean not a conversation in the sense that we wouldn’t think of doing it, or in the sense that we wouldn’t think of questioning it?
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