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Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

nytimes.com

451–460 of 1001 posts

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#451

What was the exact moment the fraud began? What should he have done instead?

RE: What should he have done instead?

Here is what he should have done:

1. Sam Bankman-Fried SHOULD NOT HAVE STOLEN CUSTOMER MONEY.

2. Sam Bankman-Fried should have been honest.

3. FTX should have kept excellent records. FTX was notorious for its bad record keeping. Also, its poor record keeping meant it was not sure how much money it had and it was not sure which money it owned and which money its customers owned.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#452

This makes me very happy. I was honestly slightly worried that if I ever saw SBF in person, I would be unable to stop myself from kicking him in the nuts. Since I was a victim of the Winklevoss twins' GUSD unregistered security scam (Gemini Earn) [1], there has not been a day since ~November 2022 that I haven't wished something kind of bad happened to SBF. To be clear, I genuinely am not advocating for violence, but…

[deleted]

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#453

This makes me very happy. I was honestly slightly worried that if I ever saw SBF in person, I would be unable to stop myself from kicking him in the nuts. Since I was a victim of the Winklevoss twins' GUSD unregistered security scam (Gemini Earn) [1], there has not been a day since ~November 2022 that I haven't wished something kind of bad happened to SBF. To be clear, I genuinely am not advocating for violence, but…

Totally normal post

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking online I see reports that FTX owes its creditors $3B. If Anthropic has 6.5x then the initial $500 million is now worth $3.25B. Is it actually possible that all creditors will get their money back? Pretty crazy if so.

Someone has to buy and liquidate all that stock. Seems unlikely.

Seeing as Google and Amazon just closed billion dollar deals buying up Anthropic equity, it seems quite likely in my opinion.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#455
> These charges carry a maximum sentence of 110 years.

Didn't HN recently conclude that calculating the 'maximum sentence' as the sum of sentences of the individual convictions is journalistic malpractice? Do better, NYT (they won't).

Given that there were 7 charges and assuming all charges can be served in parallel that's a minimum sentence of ~15 years (why is left as an exercise to the reader).

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#457

I 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…

> Under the circumstances, SBF’s wisest course would have been to just say yes—or yep—to her questions.

Why did he take the stand at all?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#458

> These charges carry a maximum sentence of 110 years. Didn't HN recently conclude that calculating the 'maximum sentence' as the sum of sentences of the individual convictions is journalistic malpractice? Do better, NYT (they won't). Given that there were 7 charges and assuming all charges can be served in parallel that's a minimum sentence of ~15 years (why is left as an exercise to the reader).

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#459
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like 110-120

That's what's possible if sentencing guidelines weren't a thing. Jeff Skilling (Enron) was convicted on more counts and ended up serving 14 of a 24-year sentence. Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos got 11 years and 3 months.

Madoff got 150.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#460
post #453

This makes me very happy. I was honestly slightly worried that if I ever saw SBF in person, I would be unable to stop myself from kicking him in the nuts. Since I was a victim of the Winklevoss twins' GUSD unregistered security scam (Gemini Earn) [1], there has not been a day since ~November 2022 that I haven't wished something kind of bad happened to SBF. To be clear, I genuinely am not advocating for violence, but…

Totally normal post

Heh, I'll acknowledge it's a weird post.

Basically, the FTX stuff blew up at the very worst possible time for me personally. I had just been laid off (really fired) from my job in November 2022, and I had naively believed the kind of hand-waivey advertising about Gemini Earn and GUSD being safe, so a lot of my cash reserves were stored in GUSD, but the day that I need to use it to pay for my mortgage, I'm unable to withdraw it because apparently Genesis Holdings was in bed with Alameda Research, which in turn was in bed with FTX and thus SBF was throwing my money away.

Now, I'm one of the fortunate ones, because I didn't keep all (or even most) of my savings in GUSD and Earn; I keep most of my savings in the form of low-risk ETFs (VOO and VTI), so there was never a risk of me being homeless or anything, but I did have to sell a good chunk of them at a loss in order to pay for my mortgage and for my food, and that wasn't fun. The entire ordeal really depressed me, and I've been upset with SBF for the last year for exacerbating an already frustrating experience.

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