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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]

#711

Post by panarky »

kkielhofner wrote: post #708
panarky wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Okay, then to summarize, you're saying there's lots of shady stuff with centralized exchanges, and more of them could go bankrupt, and people with fiat and shitcoins and bitcoin on deposit there could lose it.

There's a run on the bank, people want out, and the easiest way to get out is to sell your shitcoins and your bitcoin, and wire transfer dollars to your bank account.

With all the selling of bitcoin to raise cash, the price of bitcoin must drop.

And yet the bitcoin price is up six percent in the last seven days, so there must be some other mechanism at work.

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

#712

Post by kkielhofner »

panarky wrote: post #711
kkielhofner wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Okay, then to summarize, you're saying there's lots of shady stuff with centralized exchanges, and more of them could go bankrupt, and people with fiat and shitcoins and bitcoin on deposit there could lose it. There's a run on the bank, people want out, and the easiest way to get out is to sell your shitcoins and your bitcoin, and wire transfer dollars to your bank account. With all the selling of bitcoin to raise ca…

More or less - exactly but like I said in my original post, almost nothing in this space makes sense to me. I'm trying to decide if there's something I'm missing (happens a lot) or like Theranos, mortgages and real estate in 2006, WeWork, etc (which I always knew were off) it's all being propped up by who/what knows what and it's just a matter of time before it crashes and burns.

I moved to Florida in 2006 and have distinct memories of meeting sleazy and disgusting mortgage brokers from Countrywide, real estate agents, etc flaunting their fast cash while thinking all along "this doesn't seem right". I basically watched "The Big Short" in realtime... Same goes for Theranos (it's been 10 years, where is your product?) and WeWork (wait aren't you just leasing out office space?).

Crypto is 14 years in and absent a few extremely rare use cases like fleeing a dictatorship, dealing with currency destabilization in developing nations, etc no one uses it for anything other than trading on exchanges, which at this point seems like Russian roulette.

It's as though the last remaining "widespread" use case for crypto has now almost been effectively wiped out.

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

#713

Post by totalZero »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #706
nayroclade wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

SBF said so but there is no public evidence of it, so far as I can tell. The federal government brought a charge against SBF due to his campaign contributions, so it can perhaps be expected that we will learn more about those contributions as this saga plays out.

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

#714

Post by kragen »

bawolff wrote: post #467
andirk wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never made sense how any software would consider the year value as _two characters_ when an integer works far better. There's even a 0 epoch date for crying out loud.

I was under the impression it was a quirk in cobol.

no

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

#715

Post by areoform »

totalZero wrote: post #713
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

SBF said so but there is no public evidence of it, so far as I can tell. The federal government brought a charge against SBF due to his campaign contributions, so it can perhaps be expected that we will learn more about those contributions as this saga plays out.

> But Ryan Salame, another executive, gave almost $24 million to Republican and conservative causes, somewhat counterbalancing the giving to the left. Overall, according to Open Secrets, FTX donations to candidates were very slightly GOP-leaning, although contributions to individual politicians were only a small slice of the $70 million.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/sam-bankma...

As Jon Stewart pointed out, they went with the classic formula of having “a guy for each camp.”

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

#716

Post by lmm »

panarky wrote: post #707
kkielhofner wrote: post #671

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…

The collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers did make US dollars worth less, quite rightly.

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

#717

Post by HWR_14 »

topkai22 wrote: post #623
HWR_14 wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Quite possibly. Even without fraud, transactions within 90 days to a year of filing can be reversed by a bankruptcy court. Brady's transactions are more likely to be reversed because of his ongoing relationship with FTX than the media companies's transactions.

With fraud, they timeline gets a lot longer.

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

#718

Post by dcow »

HWR_14 wrote: post #619
dcow wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How?

Bankruptcy law allows for the clawback of preferential transfers. Any transfers within 90 days of bankruptcy are assumed to be preferential. Or transfers for a longer time to insiders. And that's without fraud. With fraud they can go back farther. Like, Madoff's investors who got out in time had to turn over a lot of cash.

But this is nothing like the Madoff situation. So you're saying if I withdraw my rightful funds 80 days before a company goes bankrupt, and I use those funds to pay for consumable goods, and consume those goods, that those funds can be clawed back and I am now in debt? That doesn't sound right at all.

I also just looked and a preferential transfer would be when the company that goes bankrupt deliberately pays off some debs but not others, hence giving some creditors preference. The notion does not seem to extend to individuals otherwise regularly conducting business with the company. That can't be resolved the way you suggested. Customers who ran FTX will not be required to return their funds so that someone can distribute some of their money to FTX's creditors, or even so that things can be "fairly" distributed across all customers...

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

#719

Post by Slava_Propanei »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #706
nayroclade wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No post body was provided.

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

#720

Post by Slava_Propanei »

kkielhofner wrote: post #669
woodpanel wrote: post #628

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.

I don't think we'll ever see another defendant in these kinds of cases as universally hated by the public as Martin Shkreli. The transcripts from his jury selection made the news[0]. Some highlights: "he disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan" (big problem in NYC, of course) "he kind of looks like a dick" "I would honestly, like, seriously like to go over there -" [0] - https://www.spin.com/2017/08/martin-shkreli-jury-selecti…

No post body was provided.
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