Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 255 posts

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

#201

Post by enkid »

chank wrote: post #197

Is this just a big deal because crypto or purely because of the amount of money defrauded? This whole thing is sort of bizarre to me. It just seems to me a lot of people are blaming crypto as part of this problem when it was basically a couple of people who let the popularity/success of what they created get to their head and began to cover up mistakes of mismanagement and poor decision making. Now they face the full…

Crypto is like snake oil. The seller makes all kinds of claims about what it can do, and the layman has no idea whether it's true or not, they just want it because it has the promise of solving their problems.

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

#202

Post by resource0x »

enkid wrote: post #201
chank wrote: post #197

Is this just a big deal because crypto or purely because of the amount of money defrauded? This whole thing is sort of bizarre to me. It just seems to me a lot of people are blaming crypto as part of this problem when it was basically a couple of people who let the popularity/success of what they created get to their head and began to cover up mistakes of mismanagement and poor decision making. Now they face the full…

Crypto is like snake oil. The seller makes all kinds of claims about what it can do, and the layman has no idea whether it's true or not, they just want it because it has the promise of solving their problems.

Solving what problems exactly? Even if that "problem" is money laundering, I'm not quite sure it solves it. Looks more like a honey pot to me.

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

#203

Post by 55555 »

the__alchemist wrote: post #181
sillysaurusx wrote: post #16

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…

Tangent: How did people hear about FTX? I've been interested in/holding crypto for a few years, and the big player was (and I assumed still is until recently) Coinbase, or Coinbase pro if you wanted better rates. There was bitcoin, Etherium, and some smaller coins like Bitcoin Cash, XRP, and Litecoin. I had a mix of coins, then rebased in ~2019 to a 50/50 Eth/Bitcoin split. As an alternative to Coinbase, you could us…

No, Coinbase is not the big player for actual crypto to crypto trading pairs. That’s Binance. FTX was #2 on that list. Coinbase is the USA’s #1 fiat on-ramp. Fiat on-ramps are a different category.

You are an investor. The people using Binance and FTX are traders. Traders are looking for exotic pairs, more leverage, more derivatives, and lower fees. Whether or not Coinbase is even a tenable business long-term is actually a legitimate question given that there’s no big profits to be made as a fiat on-ramp —- everyone assumes they’ll profit like a major trading platform but they are hindered by being legal.

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

#204

Post by 55555 »

remote_phone wrote: post #195
sillysaurusx wrote: post #16

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…

Her comment on stop losses are right on the money. Anyone who trades large amounts of money never enters actual stop losses into the system, they have mental stop losses. Stop losses are actively hunted by algorithms and a quick way to make money by blowing through stop losses and then buying back at the bottom. Having mental stop losses is the real way to trade, as well as the discipline to sell when your mental sto…

You don’t know if she had the second part? Lol. I think you do know.

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

#205

Post by hooverd »

jjulius wrote: post #169
smegger001 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you go investing in new unregulated chaotic markets without doing due diligence to at least research what your investing in you are at least somewhat culpable for your own losses. Don't invest in thing you don't understand.

I don't disagree, but to laugh at ignorance?

After hearing enough of "have fun staying poor" and "NGMI" from crypto investors it starts to feel like willful ignorance.

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

#206

Post by 55555 »

ummonk wrote: post #67
klipt wrote: post #3

I wonder if something similar will eventually happen to the Tether people? To my understanding they're printing money (USDT) which they claim is backed 1:1 by USD but really isn't. These USDTs can then be spent to pump up various other crypto assets. Seems a very shady business.

My conspiracy theory is that USDT is actually well backed, but the Tether people intentionally make it look shady so they can buy the dip and arbitrage against panic selling. Some volatility would actually increase their ability to profit.

They normally make hundreds of millions to 1+ billion a year in profit. But if tether depegs and they buy a billion worth for 98 cents and redeem the backing from themselves they make an extra 20 million USD. OTOH this would result in outflows and they’d likely lose more than 20 million in interest on AUM over the following period. I like the theory but idk. Likewise they could redeem them at spot value in order to gradually plug their hole —- but again the interest on the AUM should gradually plug the hole anyway.

Now, a big depeg is indeed an opportunity for them to make billions within minutes.

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

#207

Post by 55555 »

roland35 wrote: post #75
ummonk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My conspiracy theory is that USDT is actually well backed, but the Tether people intentionally make it look shady so they can buy the dip and arbitrage against panic selling. Some volatility would actually increase their ability to profit.

That's crazy. I'm thinking Hanlon's razor applies here, there is absolutely no evidence that tether is legit.

The NYAG seems to think they kinda are.

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

#208

Post by KMag »

EMM_386 wrote: post #192
gnicholas wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was referring to the hubris that is presumably required to even attempt a fraud on this scale. Were the uniquely able to get away with this because of their bona fides, or were they uniquely predisposed to attempt this, due to the circumstances of their upbringing?

They did both get hired by Jane Street, which is not so easy to do to. So they did have the "smarts", it just depends on if this started out as, or became, a massive fraud.

Just a wild guess, but my guess is that they intended to run everything legitimately, but bought into their own hype, and then got trapped by their egos into not admitting defeat. Once honestly admitting defeat was off the table, I'm not sure there were any non-fraudulent options left.

I'm not saying the fraud is excusable, but it's entirely understandable how they may have been trapped by their own egos.

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

#209

Post by KMag »

dragonwriter wrote: post #196
nradov wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop loss orders can work reasonably well for retail investors trading small positions in liquid securities, but they aren't completely reliable. Sometimes prices make a sudden discontinuous drop on bad news and blow past the limit order before it can be executed. Or if trading is halted they become useless. And for institutional investors trading large positions in less liquid markets, stop loss orders barely work a…

Sure, and a helmet and bulletproof vest with trauma plates doesn’t stop you from getting killed by shot in the face. But the lack of complete protection is a pretty bad argument against using the available protection. (There's some things a stop-limit is better for than a regular stop loss, but I'm not convinced that they are generally superior except in the technical sense that any stop loss can be issued as a stop-…

Minor nit pick: some products, such as exchange-traded calendar spreads, have prices that can go negative and in fact don't have a lower limit on price.

When I was writing trading systems, it was a big headache to modify a system original designed only for equities to handle other asset types, especially those that could have negative prices.

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

#210

Post by qbasic_forever »

dclusin wrote: post #153
howinteresting wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think she'll probably do 36 months or so. Not nothing but also not life-destroying.

Also the thing to consider as well is that any management level trust position in a white collar setting is off limits to her for many years after that as well. On account of people being slow to entrust ex-cons with responsibility.

She'll make way, way, way more money selling her tv/movie rights to Apple or whoever makes the definitive documentary-drama on the matter. Like 'F you, never work again' money.
Post reply on HN