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Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

mollywhite.net

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Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#51

Post by lolinder »

detrites wrote: post #46
wpietri wrote: post #8

I am truly grateful for people like Molly White, David Gerard, and Amy Castor. As the crypto grift circus expanded and expanded, I just got worn out. There was so much to pay attention to as it metastasized. All those writers have been diligently following it for years with a critical eye, and all of them have taken a lot of heat for it. As the wheels come off, it's great to have their detailed insights.

There needs to be a differentiation between good and bad actors in this drama as opposed to the lazy and inaccurate idea of "the crypto grift". These recent billion-dollar grifts plaguing crypto have primarily been enabled by actors working steadfastly against all of crypto's core principles: decentralisation, secure your own money, no middle-man. These players are employing all of the same tactics enabled by the tra…

It's hard at this point for me to not blame crypto-the-technology and crypto-the-culture for the repeated and spectacular failures of crypto-the-industry. It's not like FTX was an isolated incident. It's becoming sort of a scapegoat for crypto enthusiasts because it was such a big deal, but practically everything that has come out of the crypto space since Bitcoin and Ethereum has been a grift to some degree or another.

Something about crypto quickly and irreparably drew the get-rich-quick crowd, and I don't think there's any coming back from that. Where that kind of person gathers, scams abound.

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#52

Post by Yizahi »

detrites wrote: post #46
wpietri wrote: post #8

I am truly grateful for people like Molly White, David Gerard, and Amy Castor. As the crypto grift circus expanded and expanded, I just got worn out. There was so much to pay attention to as it metastasized. All those writers have been diligently following it for years with a critical eye, and all of them have taken a lot of heat for it. As the wheels come off, it's great to have their detailed insights.

There needs to be a differentiation between good and bad actors in this drama as opposed to the lazy and inaccurate idea of "the crypto grift". These recent billion-dollar grifts plaguing crypto have primarily been enabled by actors working steadfastly against all of crypto's core principles: decentralisation, secure your own money, no middle-man. These players are employing all of the same tactics enabled by the tra…

The only problem that even "good" actors in the tokenbro space usually take these principles: decentralisation, secure your own money, no middle-man, and then assign to them positive values from the: centralisation, entrust someone else to secure your money, employ a middle-man.

When confronted on the any viability of any of the "good" principles, they inevitably mix and match "good" and "bad" principles and values as they see fit, just to keep up their narrative. E.g. take a mostly decentralised network which is easily clogged to a standstill and then claim it's a great virtual currency medium. When asked why, they inevitably describe mostly or completely centralised "improvement" to the said network. Decentralised rent seeking, which is not so enticing even in the theoretical description inevitably gets to the point where centralised gatekeepers can can control and ban bad actors and anyone really when they see fit. And so on.

tl;dr the so called "good" actors are mostly two types of people - first type are committed anachists and libertarians who sincerely want to use what they promote and sell. And another type are disingenious liars, who promote libertarian systems to the commoners all the while promising that nothing really would change when commoners would adopt said systems, and would get only incredible benefits. I consider this second type the same as "bad" actors really.

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#53

Post by wpietri »

detrites wrote: post #46
wpietri wrote: post #8

I am truly grateful for people like Molly White, David Gerard, and Amy Castor. As the crypto grift circus expanded and expanded, I just got worn out. There was so much to pay attention to as it metastasized. All those writers have been diligently following it for years with a critical eye, and all of them have taken a lot of heat for it. As the wheels come off, it's great to have their detailed insights.

There needs to be a differentiation between good and bad actors in this drama as opposed to the lazy and inaccurate idea of "the crypto grift". These recent billion-dollar grifts plaguing crypto have primarily been enabled by actors working steadfastly against all of crypto's core principles: decentralisation, secure your own money, no middle-man. These players are employing all of the same tactics enabled by the tra…

I think there are a very small number of people who were interested in crypto from the get-go for what I'd consider good, socially positive reasons. To the extent that those people didn't cash in and are mad about how it turned out, I respect their pain. It's always hard to watch the beautiful dream get corrupted. It would have been a very interesting alternate timeline if those few pure souls were left to innovate quietly on their own for a couple of decades.

But as far as I can tell, the rest of it is at best, IGMFY [1], and at worst just scams. And that's the great, great bulk of it. I get why crypto adherents are going through a there-must-be-a-pony-in-there-somewhere [2] stage. But I would like to suggest that there is in fact no pony. That 99+% of the "crypto community" is composed of suckers, people in on the grift, and people who are simultaneously both.

And I'd also like to suggest that things like FTX are not outliers. They are the absolutely predictable outcome of people saying, "What if we make an end-run around the financial regulatory apparatus and ignore all of the history that drove its creation?" I understand that the anarchocapitalist fantasy is that if we just end government we'll all live in Shangri-La. But the reality of is the sort of warlord despotism you seen in failed states. (Which, as an aside, has given us another meaning for "techincal". [3])

Similarly, the real-world version of financial anarchocapitalism is bubbles, fraud, crime, and grift driving out actual development and investment. That's why every successful marketplace in the world above the size of a street market has significant regulation, be it internal or external. I used to write financial trading software. The people who I worked for were dispositionally cowboys. But every one of them knew that you did not fuck with the exchange and the clearing firm. And maybe the national regulator, but that was a distant concern compared with the people who were running the marketplace and would happily clip your wings if you looked at all like you were pulling something.

[1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=IGMFY

[2] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/12/13/pony-somewhere/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_(vehicle)

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#54

Post by lolinder »

ur-whale wrote: post #39
wpietri wrote: post #8

I am truly grateful for people like Molly White, David Gerard, and Amy Castor. As the crypto grift circus expanded and expanded, I just got worn out. There was so much to pay attention to as it metastasized. All those writers have been diligently following it for years with a critical eye, and all of them have taken a lot of heat for it. As the wheels come off, it's great to have their detailed insights.

> As the crypto grift circus expanded crypto != FTX

The crypto grift isn't limited to FTX, it's nearly everywhere in crypto. My great-uncle (who's constantly trying to find the one big break that'll make him rich) was working on starting a crypto token before everything collapsed. He is in his seventies and knows nothing about tech or finance, but he knew crypto was the place for people who want to make quick cash.

The whole industry has become a haven for grifters. That there are a few sincere projects doesn't change that.

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#55

Post by wpietri »

ur-whale wrote: post #39
wpietri wrote: post #8

I am truly grateful for people like Molly White, David Gerard, and Amy Castor. As the crypto grift circus expanded and expanded, I just got worn out. There was so much to pay attention to as it metastasized. All those writers have been diligently following it for years with a critical eye, and all of them have taken a lot of heat for it. As the wheels come off, it's great to have their detailed insights.

> As the crypto grift circus expanded crypto != FTX

Oh? You're saying that FTX was the only bad thing to happen in the crypto space?

This sort of tedious, disingenuous quibbling is exactly why I'm grateful to the people I mentioned. Because instead of having to laboriously find all the failures, I can just tell you that all of this is documented in David's books, Amy's blog, and Molly's projects like https://web3isgoinggreat.com/

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#56

Post by fckgw »

breck wrote: post #49
rrdharan wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the crypto market is … so important Citation desperately needed.

Crypto is a 24/7 global, resilient payments network. It increases the velocity and transparency of money, which will have a huge impact on global economy. Also, if you think customers losing a $8B to FTX is bad, wait until you read about retail banks in the USA taking $30B a year from their customers: https://breckyunits.com/the-great-bank-robbery.html

When? It's been 13 years.

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#57

Post by wpietri »

lolinder wrote: post #51
detrites wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There needs to be a differentiation between good and bad actors in this drama as opposed to the lazy and inaccurate idea of "the crypto grift". These recent billion-dollar grifts plaguing crypto have primarily been enabled by actors working steadfastly against all of crypto's core principles: decentralisation, secure your own money, no middle-man. These players are employing all of the same tactics enabled by the tra…

It's hard at this point for me to not blame crypto-the-technology and crypto-the-culture for the repeated and spectacular failures of crypto-the-industry. It's not like FTX was an isolated incident. It's becoming sort of a scapegoat for crypto enthusiasts because it was such a big deal, but practically everything that has come out of the crypto space since Bitcoin and Ethereum has been a grift to some degree or anoth…

Exactly. I think there was a tipping point. The only question for me is how many times you can shear the same sheep. There have been so many bubbles here and somehow people kept coming back for every shiny new idea. DAO, ICO, NFT, etc. But given the way NFTs never really took off plus the ongoing domino-fall of major crypto names, maybe the brand value of crypto has finally gone so far negative that the space is done. Fingers crossed, anyhow.

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#58

Post by bmitc »

pavlov wrote: post #9
bmitc wrote: post #5

Sam Bankman-Fried is something else. He seems to be incapable of stopping talking, both before and after this saga. He also seems just purely delusional. He's co-conspirators have readily plead guilty. He has a tough hill to climb. Regarding Sam Trabucco, why do we not hear anything about him in these proceedings? How is it possible that he wasn't involved given he just up and left in just August 2022? Why hasn't he…

Maybe Trabucco is a voluntary witness for the prosecution and they don't want to dilute what he's going to say at the trial?

But why isn't he charged as well? His timing on leaving is quite suspicious, and there seems to be no way in which he wasn't both aware and a participant of what was going on. Plus, his personal purchases seem quite suspect, if the claims in the article are true.

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#59

Post by wpietri »

doogerdog wrote: post #47
wpietri wrote: post #8

I am truly grateful for people like Molly White, David Gerard, and Amy Castor. As the crypto grift circus expanded and expanded, I just got worn out. There was so much to pay attention to as it metastasized. All those writers have been diligently following it for years with a critical eye, and all of them have taken a lot of heat for it. As the wheels come off, it's great to have their detailed insights.

I also use Molly White's write-ups to loosely follow the everlasting crypto train wreck. This particular one is amazingly concise and easy to read. I hope she keeps it up. There is no way I would have the energy to look up all of this on my own.

Agreed! And I should mention that Molly has a Substack: https://substack.com/profile/6775195-molly-white

I pay her money because I am glad to have her pushing back against the tide of cash funding crypto promotion.

The other two have Patreons that I also support:

https://www.patreon.com/davidgerard/

https://www.patreon.com/amycastor/

Re: Annotated: Sam Bankman-Fried's “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview”

#60

Post by notch656c »

lolinder wrote: post #54
ur-whale wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As the crypto grift circus expanded crypto != FTX

The crypto grift isn't limited to FTX, it's nearly everywhere in crypto. My great-uncle (who's constantly trying to find the one big break that'll make him rich) was working on starting a crypto token before everything collapsed. He is in his seventies and knows nothing about tech or finance, but he knew crypto was the place for people who want to make quick cash. The whole industry has become a haven for grifters. T…

The government made this thing called "accredited investor" which is just code for not one of the poors.

I wish it wasn't necessary for the poors to use crypto to moonshot on various grifts.

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