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Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

theguardian.com

141–150 of 255 posts

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#141
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two years is nothing. It took the government 20 years to end the Madoff scam and for many of those years Markopolos was screaming about it at the top of his lungs. It wasn't until his family turned him in that the government acted in earnest - and only because he was about to close up shop and give whatever was left to his family a few days later. These things go on for a long time, often in plain sight, so if that's…

So why doesn't the NYAG charge them with the most obvious scam in history according to HN? If it's so clear from outside that Tether is not backed by actual dollars, how come the NYAG which has subpoena power and so one doesn't latch on such an easy and infamous case?

I'll give you a few minutes to read [1] and [2] before I reply earnestly. I know it takes more than 10 minutes to read them because, and this is true, I have read them. The answer to your questions is there. They did.

Why did they stop at a fine? I don't know. Maybe there were jurisdictional issues, maybe the Feds were/are looking at it. Heck maybe they thought it would be better if the thing fell in on itself so they weren't viewed as the entity that took down crypto. I dont work at DoJ so I can't tell you. Doesn't change anything though.

On the other hand I've given you plenty of night-time reading where you can find the answers to basically every question you've asked me.

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#142
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have always wondered why "x" and "conspiracy to commit x" are different counts.

The elements are different. Typically “conspiracy to commit X” requires some number of people agreeing to do X and then someone from the group doing at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement. So you can be guilty of “conspiracy to commit X” without ever getting even remotely close to doing X. So for example if two mates talk about that they are going to kill person Y, that is the agreement. And then one…

> So you can be guilty of “conspiracy to commit X” without ever getting even remotely close to doing X.

Probably most legal systems have something like that.

The interesting thing about US law - at least compared to German law (a Civil law country) - is the fact that even if you succeed with X, you can still be charged with conspiracy to commit X on top.

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are assuming way too much here. She's not the queen of anything, she's a fraudster that will spend a long time in jail and that has probably much less understanding of the mechanisms involved than you give her credit for. If she did she wouldn't be in the position she's in. The last thing we really need is for people to start lionizing her.

You’re reading this wrong. They love her because she didn’t have the credentials to do what she was doing and seemingly didn't le care. Honestly, all power to her for taking billions of dollars from investors that didn’t do basic due diligence because they were too greedy. You tell me where the deception/idiocy is happening: The most prestigious VCs going around talking about ‘vision’ in flip-flops sipping on kambuch…

Didn’t SBF take money from investors? She was the CEO of Alameda Research.

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#144

She’s the queen of wallstreetbets. I think she’ll hold the yolo record for a long time. I wish we knew what the fateful market play was that sunk her ship. She mentioned she’s not a fan of stop losses, so I wonder if she went to bed with an open market position and woke up to negative three billion. Also I wonder if the entity on the other side of that trade realized they were making someone insolvent. It’ll be inter…

I think you are assuming way too much here. She's not the queen of anything, she's a fraudster that will spend a long time in jail and that has probably much less understanding of the mechanisms involved than you give her credit for. If she did she wouldn't be in the position she's in. The last thing we really need is for people to start lionizing her.

> She's not the queen of anything

You are missing the point of subreddits like this.

The whole point is to laugh at the crazy, insane trades that people make.

And I'd say that this situation tops the charts for most wild, interesting, and funny failures of the financial world.

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#145
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are assuming way too much here. She's not the queen of anything, she's a fraudster that will spend a long time in jail and that has probably much less understanding of the mechanisms involved than you give her credit for. If she did she wouldn't be in the position she's in. The last thing we really need is for people to start lionizing her.

“Queen of wallstreetbets” is (presumably) not a compliment, it’s a reference to the idiots on the subreddit of that name, notorious for their irrational support of companies like Gamestop, and completely disconnected from any actual understanding of market behavior.

Who is connected to market behavior? Look at Tesla’s market cap a year ago. Doesn’t seem like the mainstream is either.

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#146
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She mentioned she’s not a fan of stop losses At the volume they were trading, stop losses are no longer practical. The market is not infinitely deep.

I've never understood how stop losses are supposed to help. Traders read heaps of news, do God knows what technical analysis yet simple "moves bit too much in wrong direction" is supposed to be an acceptable exit strategy.

Indeed, stop-loss orders are extremely dangerous and shouldn't be offered.

A stop-loss-limit is better in that it makes the potential consequence of a stop-loss more clear: You could set a stop loss limit order with a limit of $0 to create a standard stop loss-- making it explicit that you're willing to potentially sell the asset for $0/share: which is what a stop loss is willing to do. (+/- market circuit breakers, which generally don't exist in cryptocurrency markets.)

If it's not immediately apparent why stop losses are a hazard: When markets are volitile the supply of standing orders near the spread tends to thin out-- for some assets, like the worthless magic beans FTX and friends specialized in owning, the markets are never particularly thick. What a stop loss order will do is once the market ticks below your threshold it will dump into a market order. Market prices are not continuous. If someone sold at $100 that doesn't mean you can sell at $100-- a market sale might be at $80-- locking in a substantial loss that otherwise would have been a momentary blip and never impacted you. These orders essentially automate one of the worst practices of inexperienced investors that result in loss: panicking at every dip and selling at a loss when nothing fundamental has changed.

What joe-sixpack thinks a stop loss will do is guarantee him a floor price. It will not. Joe could buy put contracts to create a guaranteed floor price but they cost money-- that cost is a direct sign of how much stop loss orders do not work.

A stop-loss-limit at $100/$100 would do what was expected if it executes but it usually won't execute except when the price dips and then recovers-- the case where you would have preferred to have your stop loss not exist at all. Seldom do people want a "Sell my stuff at $100/share if the price gets under $100 but only when it recovers"-- that would probably only be justifiable to the extent that the drop showed your thesis about the investment was wrong. Fundamentally the guarantee people want here can only be had at a price, and paying that price is a reasonable part of risk management.

If you're trading very small amounts of very liquid items on highly surveilled and regulated markets then perhaps you can get away with using them without getting too greatly burned. But at the same time puts for the same assets are usually fairly inexpensive. In the cryptocurrency sphere it's just not that unlikely that 'exchanges' (particularly bucket shops like FTX where the exchange is substantially the counterparty in the activity) has some script that counts up all the users stop loss orders and figures out how much profit they could make causing a momentary blip in the trading price just to trigger them. There are plenty of people in the industry that don't believe it would be unlawful to do so, seeing as how the traded assets aren't securities.

(and IIRC long before FTX's collapse there was a lawsuit alleging that they engaged in that kind of manipulation)

So mocking the stop loss comment seems a bit misplaced, but it's worth noting that the question was really about risk management and she didn't give a useful answer to the intended question either-- especially since the rubbish they owned was hard to impossible to risk manage and for good reason.

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#147
post #21

It's interesting to see this play out because much of it was predictable. Personally, I was amused at the people complaining that the SBF case was taking too long. If however you know something about how Federal prosecutions work, you'd know (and I made many comments about this) that the case was moving incredibly quickly. As soon as SBF was indicted, it confirmed that the Feds had 1 or more cooperating witnesses and…

> This is an open and shut case.

Conveniently the entire part where SBF had an ex-CFTC commissioner lobby the SEC and CFTC to get pro-FTX bill passed in the US is not looked at: who cares about regulatory capture through corrupted officials right? (I mean: a few senator say this should be looked upon but so far it's not the case)

And the whole "FTX's top lawyer happens to be an ex-colleague of Bitfinex's top lawyer: they both worked in an online poker scam that defrauded players" is not looked at either.

Instead we go for: "SBF ordered Wang to put a backdoor in FTX so that Alameda's losses could be hidden" and case closed.

Justice.

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Elon threw his hat in the ring for "most wealth lost by and individual in a single year." And I agree, it is a really tough game to play. And now the table stakes are basically unreachable by most.

If “Money lost” means stock valuation decline or overpaying for another company, that he may be able to salvage. And not yolo on meme stonks and realize all the losses.

If you dramatically overpay for an asset you have lost money. It’s not just logically correct, it’s also gaap mark-to-market accounting.

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are assuming way too much here. She's not the queen of anything, she's a fraudster that will spend a long time in jail and that has probably much less understanding of the mechanisms involved than you give her credit for. If she did she wouldn't be in the position she's in. The last thing we really need is for people to start lionizing her.

But she’s highly regarded! It’s all just a little joke. Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets . Also https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jg85H26wyLk She certainly earned her sentence, and I have no sympathy for her. But isn’t it hard not to be at least a little impressed with the sheer scale of her losses? Getting in the record books for “most money lost by a single individual” is a hard thing to do in general.

She hasn't been sentenced yet. Lets hold off and see if its what she earned.

Re: Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is difficult to feel sorry for the chumps. If someone came up to me and said they were selling magic beans that would grow a vine up to the moon where riches await, I would politely decline. It doesn't matter if the seller substitutes the word "crypto" for "beans". What's even better are the "pros". In their pitch deck, only shown to whales, they promised "High Returns With No Risk". https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fh…

you could have been just holding usdc on FTX, and got fucked. Of course, not your keys, not your crypto always applies, but it's easier to feel sorry for folks like this.

> usdc on FTX

This is not money, not on a bank with FDIC, and not on a brokerage with SIPC. If you don't think so, I've got some usdb on realmoneyexchange.com to sell you.

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