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

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701–710 of 748 posts

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

#701
post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FTX on the other hand has very few KYC docs so the trustees are left with wallet addresses. FTX (US? International? Both?) required KYC during sign-up. Or what do you mean?

I was referring to FTX, not FTX.US

FTX had KYC as does any exchange with bank accounts. But that doesn’t prevent people from paying nominees for register accounts for them either.

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

#702
post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That would be a lot more work (because of the need to accept exceptional paper submissions, and get them into the required format) and cost for both the courts and every law office that might have need to file in federal court, for potentially very little benefit, since the processes filings support are human processes for the foreseeable future, independently of the data format.

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

#703
post #462

Here is SBF's full statement: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/12/13/exclus... Worth a read

Oh my god. Reading that leaves me with a single opinion: he is a broken, corrupt, manipulating fraud.

No post body was provided.

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

#705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. When Coindesk is bringing more nuanced news reporting than CNBC, you know things are whack.

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.

Or maybe it's better said that Coindesk readers are much more likely to have real skin in the game, and therefore highly penalize news outlets that give inaccurate information.

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

#706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A couple of days ago there was a consensus group of Republican commentators confidently asserting SBF’s Democratic donations and connections meant there would no investigation/prosecution at all. Perhaps now this have pivoted to saying they’ll go easy on him? It seems to me, all these assertions say nothing about the process of justice for SBF, and instead only illustrate that the people making them can’t conceive th…

Didn't he and his close associates donate to the Republican party members as well?

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

#707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised bitcoin is holding up as well as it is

I don't pretend to fully understand markets but movement on BTC, etc with all of these developments is just further proof to me there is no connection between any of these coins and reality. As another example, when Ethereum successfully moved to proof of stake without a hitch (an ultimately impressive and challenging development) the price actually went down. I don't understand anything in this space.

It's not clear to me that the collapse of corrupt crypto exchanges should make the price of bitcoin drop.

What is the mechanism exactly? It's not like FTX holds a shitload of bitcoin and now suddenly they have to sell it all, driving down the price.

Is the mechanism just some kind of psychological thing, where a centralized criminal enterprise is associated with "crypto", even though it was mostly esoteric shit like FTT and MobileCoin and not bitcoin, but since bitcoin is also "crypto" then people who hold it would sell it because FTX folded?

It's like saying the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers should somehow make US dollars worth less.

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

#708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't pretend to fully understand markets but movement on BTC, etc with all of these developments is just further proof to me there is no connection between any of these coins and reality. As another example, when Ethereum successfully moved to proof of stake without a hitch (an ultimately impressive and challenging development) the price actually went down. I don't understand anything in this space.

It's not clear to me that the collapse of corrupt crypto exchanges should make the price of bitcoin drop. What is the mechanism exactly? It's not like FTX holds a shitload of bitcoin and now suddenly they have to sell it all, driving down the price. Is the mechanism just some kind of psychological thing, where a centralized criminal enterprise is associated with "crypto", even though it was mostly esoteric shit like…

1) I would expect a fairly large portion of people are selling their cryptocurrencies on exchanges and wiring out in fiat instead of undertaking the relatively technically challenging process of moving them on chain to somewhere/something else. While we can see on chain activity acknowledged numbers citing "withdrawals" from exchanges don't provide specifics. I personally know several people who have just said "Yeah turns out the entire thing is a scam, I don't trust anything and I'll just cut my losses and be done with it all".

2) Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were not a total loss that resulted in the founder being arrested and charged with multiple counts of fraud within weeks with multiple reports from the guy who handled the failure of Enron (John J Ray) expressing public incredulity on just how crazy the whole thing was. Failed crypto institutions aren't receiving TARP loans or being absorbed by other institutions. I'm not saying what caused the 2008 financial crisis wasn't criminal but as we all know no one went to jail over it, which if nothing else highlights the differences in terms of public opinion and treatment by regulators.

3) Any comparison between crypto (individual coin or the entire ecosystem) and the world's reserve currency backed by the world's largest economy is dubious at best. The complete collapse of a couple of even the largest banks barely puts a dent in USD in terms of circulating supply, activity, etc. USD has this status because it's backed by what is considered to be the most financially stable institution in the world - the United States. In the minds of many if crypto is "backed" by anything it's people like SBF, the VCs this kid was able to hoodwink, etc.

4) The collapse of FTX has had an incredible ripple effect that has caused at least a dozen other entities (that I've tracked) within crypto to fail.

5) Over the past few weeks there has been increased focus and media attention on the shadiness of Binance, Tether, and virtually every other crypto exchange/institution up to and including Coinbase.

This is all reflected in a survey from a couple of weeks ago that indicates just 8% of Americans have a positive view of cryptocurrencies[0]. I'm sure if they ran that survey again now that number would be even lower.

So yeah, I would expect crypto prices to move downward significantly.

[0] - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/07/just-8percent-of-americans-h...

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

#709

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?

There was never "billions" of deposits in the first place. Someone mints a coin and pays FTX 5 million to list it. Then that person pays influencers and invests themselves to get the price of the coin to go up. Now on paper that coin is worth "100 million". But in reality only 8 million dollars has been spent.

This is often very ignored in analysis, most (if not all) those coins have prizes based on inflated valuations.

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

#710
post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This part's pretty incorrigible: "I have potentially pertinent information concerning future opportunities and financing for FTX and its creditors."

> This part's pretty incorrigible Sorry I don't understand. Can you elaborate?

He kept reaching out to the Chapter 11 exec with a fantastic (as in fantasy) notion that he knew a potential investor willing to sink billions of dollars into paying back users, then wondered why he wasn't getting a response. The exec had already told him, "There's nothing to save Sam". Can't imagine any sane investor throwing away $8B+ of their own money to dig FTX out of their hole.
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