521–530 of 1001 posts
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's been my impression of SBF since FTX collapsed. Quite book smart, but zero experience in building a major service that custodies billions in other peoples' money. Raw intelligence is not enough in that context. Ideally you want to have apprenticed for at least a few years at a real exchange or custodial service. Somewhere you learn all the engineering details about how to architect it with proper financial cont…
It had nothing to do with engineering issues / risk. He was a scammer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Molly White had excellent writeups for the entire trial. She even did excellent multi-hour livestreams going over her notes for the portion of the trial where she was physically present at the courtroom. https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/s/the-ftx-files
Molly has done a poor job covering the cryptocurrency industry in general.
(Seriously, if you're going to claim that Molly White of all people did a bad job covering cryptocurrency you're going to need to bring receipts.)
> You’d think this MIT graduate would wise up, but he never did. The MIT campus has a major public road running through the middle of it, one of the busiest surface streets in the area. You don't have to stand there very long to see a crowd of students almost get hit by a car because they didn't look before they crossed the street. Point is, the old cliche is true, there really is such a thing as a person with a lot…
that "almost hit by car" anecdote is complete nonsense. There is plentiful jay-walking in Boston/Cambridge (just as there is in New York City, and has been recently legalized in California). To an outsider, perhaps it looks like people are dangerously walking into traffic? But how many MIT students actually get hit by cars? the number would be unusually high if the number of close calls were unusually high, but witho…
The end result looks like a lot of people have death wishes, but the pedestrian injury rate isn't actually unusually high.
The Spidey senses tell me there’s more to this we’re seeing.
Whether you believe Elon or not, FTX was greasing the DNC wheels with a lot. FTX also had a lot of celebrities on board. They had the Miami Heat arena with their name on it.
Now it’s all wrapped up, guilty as charged, and now what?
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…
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> You’d think this MIT graduate would wise up, but he never did. The MIT campus has a major public road running through the middle of it, one of the busiest surface streets in the area. You don't have to stand there very long to see a crowd of students almost get hit by a car because they didn't look before they crossed the street. Point is, the old cliche is true, there really is such a thing as a person with a lot…
Anyone else have a weird vibe on how fast this went? I don’t remember how long Bernie Madoff’s trial was, but this one flew by really fast. The Spidey senses tell me there’s more to this we’re seeing. Whether you believe Elon or not, FTX was greasing the DNC wheels with a lot. FTX also had a lot of celebrities on board. They had the Miami Heat arena with their name on it. Now it’s all wrapped up, guilty as charged, a…
Impressively fast response. Would Travis Kalanick be found guilty for Greyballing and more had Uber had a "run on the bank"? Would Adam Neumann be found guilty for fraud if WeWork's current Chapter 11 was more than just a real estate lease re-negotiation? If the FTX recovery rate gets up to 80-90%, SBF's net fraud might be reduced in scale. In which case, why aren't others like TK going to jail?
No. Both Uber and WeWork were "gambling" investor money, which is totally allowed and it's what those investors were expecting the companies to do with that money. There was never a chance of a "run on the bank" because investors aren't really allowed to demand their money back, short of a shareholder vote to liquidate. (Though, Newmann potentially committed fraud with some of the ways that investor money left WeWork…
Moreover, Uber has effectively made employees out of many drivers while they were not treated like employees, and courts have forced payments-- that's not like disappearing deposits but since laborers were wrongly under-compensated it's effectively just as harmful.
Had SBF somehow raised say just $1-2b, which seems to be what the gap will be for the recovery, I wonder if today he'd still be a billionaire and out of jail like TK and AN.
> You’d think this MIT graduate would wise up, but he never did. The MIT campus has a major public road running through the middle of it, one of the busiest surface streets in the area. You don't have to stand there very long to see a crowd of students almost get hit by a car because they didn't look before they crossed the street. Point is, the old cliche is true, there really is such a thing as a person with a lot…