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Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

nytimes.com

911–920 of 1001 posts

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#911

I was reading the trial report by Inner City Press. The AUSAs were incredibly thorough and strategic. The evidences were air-tight, the cross-examination was masterfully controlled with precision and incisiveness, and of course the closing argument was forceful. It was a great joy to read the report, as if I was watching an extended episode of The Good Fight. On the other hand, the defense was really weak, quite hand…

sigh...convicted by adjective. Sad to see and a common trap for young entrepreneurs.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#913

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> on political donation, Fact is, this could have helped him and his company, eventually. Another two or three years of very sympathetic (bought) politicians on his side and his business could have become legit as a result of those politicians forcing the liquidation/closure of almost all SBF's competitors (certainly Binance would have become bust), and the US "standing behind" FTX as a beloved crypto assed in the fi…

It isn't a legal defense for the charges he's facing. He can't take money out of a customer's brokerage account and spend it on anything, and there is no political donation that could make that legal.

Take two or three steps back, and reason like this (if you’re SBF’s defenders, that is): the evil Democrats have made SBF do their dirty political doings for them because, well, they’re evil -> try and turn this whole case into a political thing (see the evil Democrats from before, also see Dreyfus from 100 years ago) -> try to turn SBF into a political cause celebre, again, like Dreyfus 100 years back -> 2024 comes and there are chances that those hating the evil Democrats I had mentioned are in the White House -> with SBF a political cause celebre put in prison by those Democrats there would be by then very big chances for a presidential pardon, because by then this would have transformed into a political issue, not a simple “some guy stole a lot of money”.

For added chances of success also try to find some pro-Palestine social media statuses or anything similar just hinting to that in the past of the district attorneys and federal agency people who had anything to do with this whole trial, and this being the very liberal Southern District of NY of course that there are big chances for that type of content to be found, and in so doing further turning SBF into a political prisoner instead of just a money swindler.

That’s as good a strategy that he could have had given the circumstances, i.e. going for a future presidential pardon and turning his trial into a political case, because, technically, of course that he did all of those things and that by the rules that apply to big money swindlers he should spend the rest of his days mostly in prison, but that’s the whole thing, if he still wants to be free anytime soon his defenders should have turned this trial into something totally different than a big money swindler case.

Of course, that’s also how OJ got out of all the mess he had put himself into the first time around, i.e. because his trial had very rapidly turned into a political case, it was not about a murder case anymore.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#914

Sequoia invested $200M in this guy. Has anyone looked at whether SBF could've done as much damage without that investment? Has anyone looked at if Sequoia did their due diligence? Seems like Sequoia could've seen red flags just from knowing Alameda existed. The potential abuse there was completely obvious.

The whole Sequoia thing is so interesting. Here is an excerpt from their (now taken down) profile of SBF, highlighting the moment he convinced them to invest: > That’s when SBF told Sequoia about the so-called super-app: “I want FTX to be a place where you can do anything you want with your next dollar. You can buy bitcoin. You can send money in whatever currency to any friend anywhere in the world. You can buy a ban…

You gotta remember, what's being sold in this kind of pitch is not a business model. They're looking for unicorns. What's being sold is the maximum possible size of the market you can extract value from.

I'm no VC, but I feel like if I am and you're telling me that _all_ consumer transactions of any kind are going to flow through a portal _you_ own, it doesn't get much bigger than that. The odds of success don't have to be that high, and in principle you just factor the possibility that the founder's full of crap into those odds; you don't have the time to understand every possible market and every person pitching you in the depth necessary to make that determination, right?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#915

Sequoia invested $200M in this guy. Has anyone looked at whether SBF could've done as much damage without that investment? Has anyone looked at if Sequoia did their due diligence? Seems like Sequoia could've seen red flags just from knowing Alameda existed. The potential abuse there was completely obvious.

The whole Sequoia thing is so interesting. Here is an excerpt from their (now taken down) profile of SBF, highlighting the moment he convinced them to invest: > That’s when SBF told Sequoia about the so-called super-app: “I want FTX to be a place where you can do anything you want with your next dollar. You can buy bitcoin. You can send money in whatever currency to any friend anywhere in the world. You can buy a ban…

> How was this compelling to people who control serious money?

Holders of serious money often put them into decidedly unserious things. Somebody once put together $44bn cash financing for Twitter dot com.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#916
post #128
post #120

Interestingly, 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.

Fuckin' cryptobros, ROFL

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#917

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole Sequoia thing is so interesting. Here is an excerpt from their (now taken down) profile of SBF, highlighting the moment he convinced them to invest: > That’s when SBF told Sequoia about the so-called super-app: “I want FTX to be a place where you can do anything you want with your next dollar. You can buy bitcoin. You can send money in whatever currency to any friend anywhere in the world. You can buy a ban…

This whole exchange made me think that there must have been a family or friend connection back to Sequoia. As a humble poor, if I were running the show over at Sequoia I would have these people out on their asses, but again, I also don't have buckets of money clouding my judgement.

Sequoia likely made plenty of money by underwriting their in-house e-coin FTT, hyping up SBF across the media, and then dumping FTT on retail investors afterwards.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#918

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole Sequoia thing is so interesting. Here is an excerpt from their (now taken down) profile of SBF, highlighting the moment he convinced them to invest: > That’s when SBF told Sequoia about the so-called super-app: “I want FTX to be a place where you can do anything you want with your next dollar. You can buy bitcoin. You can send money in whatever currency to any friend anywhere in the world. You can buy a ban…

You gotta remember, what's being sold in this kind of pitch is not a business model. They're looking for unicorns. What's being sold is the maximum possible size of the market you can extract value from. I'm no VC, but I feel like if I am and you're telling me that _all_ consumer transactions of any kind are going to flow through a portal _you_ own, it doesn't get much bigger than that. The odds of success don't have…

>[if] you're telling me that _all_ consumer transactions of any kind are going to flow through a portal _you_ own

>The odds of success don’t have to be that high

The odds of success are as good as nonexistent and I also don’t have to be a VC to understand that.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#920

I was reading the trial report by Inner City Press. The AUSAs were incredibly thorough and strategic. The evidences were air-tight, the cross-examination was masterfully controlled with precision and incisiveness, and of course the closing argument was forceful. It was a great joy to read the report, as if I was watching an extended episode of The Good Fight. On the other hand, the defense was really weak, quite hand…

One comment I saw pointed out that the verdict was returned in a spectacularly short time, for precisely those reasons.
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