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Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
351–360 of 1001 posts
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#352I liked the article detailing how poorly he did on the stand: https://www.thefp.com/p/humiliating-cross-examination-sam-ba... “Did you say in private, ‘Fuck regulators?’ ” “Did you call some customers ‘dumb motherfuckers?’ ” “Did you fly to the Super Bowl in a private plane?” “Most FTX customers did not have a line of credit, correct?” “Do you deny that Alameda had a $65 billion line of credit?” And on, and on, and o…
I'm no lawyer, but I think that the defense has to be presented with all the evidence that will be used in the prosecution's case, before the trial starts.
In that case, it's even funnier because the defense knew the prosecution had all of those things before he was even asked those questions.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#353Remember: this is not a cryptocurrency problem, it's a banking problem. This guy created a literal bank. People deposited funds in it. Instead of simply being a custodian, he took the money and "invested" it. And lost it all. I wish this sort of thing would happen every time bankers screwed things up. Instead the government bails them out.
Sam didn't create a bank. If he did, this wouldn't have been fraud and he wouldn't be going to jail.
All documentation, marketing, interviews, statements, tweets, general understanding, and government licensing had FTX implemented as a full custodial trust.
FTX promised to hold any funds you deposit in safe, low-interest bank accounts or secured cryptocurrency wallets, ready to withdraw at any time. They explicitly promised to never invest them.
And then Sam broke that promise, stole customer funds and invested them. And it's not like he was planning to pay those customers interest fees if the investments paid off.
That's fraud.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#354I'm curious about the political donations aspect of the story. Can a court force politicians who got money from FTX/SBF to give back to creditors?
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#355Interestingly, FTX made a $500 million USD investment in Anthropic; supposedly, this was made while Anthropic was valued at $4.6 billion (unconfirmed). Now, Anthropic is nearing $30 billion. Anyone know the latest on this? Is FTX going to sell that stake off to pay back the debts? [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-bankman-frieds-anthropic...
It's being debated in the bankruptcy court. Some creditors want to sell it off and others want to let it ride. Because this is crypto, some people want to issue a crypto token that represents claims on the estate.
i dont get why the shares in the investment isn't just divvied up to each individual investor, and let them make a choice to sell or not. And if there's transaction costs involved in selling small amounts, it could be aggregated before divving up, and those who wants to sell can collectively sell and save on costs.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#356Like many of his strategies at FTX, his high risk approach to this trial for a high value payout (taking no plea deal and getting out with no charges) hasn’t worked out. I wonder if he himself is accepting of the outcome and isn’t already scheming or relying on another all-in gamble.
He was very likely not offered a plea deal.
He still has, I think, the option of cooperating with prosecution to achieve a 3-level reduction in his sentence, which will involve him pleading guilty. That could take his sentence down from infinity to infinity-15 months or so.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#357Is this the actual article? It looks like some live twitter-style thread with a bunch a random updates.
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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#358So what's his term in jail?
We don't know yet, sentencing is separate from the trial that determines innocence or guilt. Now there will be another hearing in March during which the judge will consider all of the evidence (even that which wasn't allowed in the original trial) to determine what his punishment should be. The judge will have to abide by the federal sentencing guidelines which specify the punishments and severity they can apply but…
The judge will not in fact have to abide by the guidelines, which are advisory, and are especially advisory in sui generis trials like this where the damages and victim counts blow out the guideline charts.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#359For anyone curious, Ken White has a good and entertaining article breaking down maximum sentences in print (here, 110 years) and what people actually serve. It's worth a read: https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc... A takeaway: "1. Maximum sentences have very little relation to actual sentences in federal law. When the government quotes the maximum sentence, they are trying to scare you. When…
Yeah, I’ve heard that a bunch - about the press being uninformed or lazy. I’d offer that they are neither, but if they are restricting themselves to reporting facts and not prognostications and opinions, the statutory maximum is a reasonable thing to report.
I think this is likely the case. It's the only number they could have that doesn't involve a judgement call. Also, usually when I see things like that reported, they mention that most people don't get the maximum.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's being debated in the bankruptcy court. Some creditors want to sell it off and others want to let it ride. Because this is crypto, some people want to issue a crypto token that represents claims on the estate.
i dont get why the shares in the investment isn't just divvied up to each individual investor, and let them make a choice to sell or not. And if there's transaction costs involved in selling small amounts, it could be aggregated before divving up, and those who wants to sell can collectively sell and save on costs.
Anthropic isn't publicly traded yet so it can't have too many investors.