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Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

nytimes.com

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#951

Post by rvba »

Brushfire wrote: post #754
zztop44 wrote: post #750

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…

There is this weird thing in venture investing: the line between "crazy, brilliant founders who will build world changing companies" and "crazy, lunatic founders who will lie and cheat and be awful" is very hard to distinguish, especially at the series seed/series A level. It can lead to false positives and false negatives all the time.

Buy a bag from a hypeman. Sell the bag just in time before the house of cards falls

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#952

Post by P_I_Staker »

hoschicz wrote: post #740

[flagged]

What?!?!? Why him, or why white collar crime specifically? He simply HAS to get a substantial prison sentence.

He is among the worst of the worst in society. It's really easy to do what he did. Everyone's got a story, or could come up with one if you let them.

We have punishments for the worst of the worst in society. I think we should be more lenient, and under my values he might not be going away for 10 years, but there should be something substatial here.

I find it quite shocking to find people on HN that think he should get NO prison, but perhaps this is a typo.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#953

Post by P_I_Staker »

kawhah wrote: post #890
hoschicz wrote: post #740

[flagged]

Out of interest did you make the same arguments about Martin Shkreli (arrogant and unlikable child of immigrants who did a much smaller scale scam similar to SBFs but where everyone was eventually repaid in full) and about Andrew Auernheimer (annoying and racist child of a working class single mother who performed a fairly successful hack without any personal gain) and about Brian Salcedo (working class, non-college-…

There needs to be a real cultural shift here, and spaces like HN are doing a really bad job. The moderation heavily favors this privileged SV mindset, and criticism, results in extra scrutiny.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#954

Post by troupe »

matsemann wrote: post #634
FFP999 wrote: post #393

> 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…

It's quite insane that your society puts the onus on the pedestrians not to get hit, and even makes it illegal to cross the road. It should be the licensed drivers' responsibility to not hit someone. And in the middle of a campus cars should of course yield to pedestrians. Such a car-centric world.

Assume that laws gave people the expectation that they could just step out in front of a 3,500 pound moving vehicle and it would instantly stop. The world would probably be a lot less safe for pedestrians than it is today. The laws of physics come into play to at least some extent.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#956

Post by YossarianFrPrez »

meowface wrote: post #731
bmitc wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The defense really had no option. Several of Bankman-Fried's previous defense teams quit on him due to his behavior. Even in this trial, during a session with just the judge, the defense made an objection to a question, the judge sustained it, but Bankman-Fried answered anyways. His own defense team asked him where had he been this entire trial because the objection was sustained, you didn't have to answer that. Bank…

An odd question, but: why is he like this? Even from the start, before the criminal charges, his press tour was so bizarre. Is he just a delusional narcissist who thinks he can talk his way out of anything no matter what? I feel like even very, very long into his prison sentence he's still going to try to talk your head off insisting it was all a big misunderstanding. And he's going to be denied parole because he's g…

While Michael Lewis never says it outright, the picture painted in his book Going Infinite suggests that SBF has a few things going on. Self-delusion and rationalization, ego, etc., but he also might be on one or more neurodivergent spectra.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#957

Post by StressedDev »

IKantRead wrote: post #880
lubesGordi wrote: post #739

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.

As I mentioned in another comment, I think it's not accidental that SBF was pumped full of delusions of being a boy genius. This worked great as a marketing gimmick for sure, as people love the mythos of a revolutionary company run by a tech prodigy. But it also works when everything falls apart because SBF's delusion driven ego sucked up every morsel of attention and responsibility. I also wouldn't be surprised if,…

This does not sound plausible because the investors will almost certainly not get anything out of the bankruptcy. Also there is no evidence any investor secretly profited from FTX and it is hard to believe any VC put millions in and some how got them out. They put money in and FTX lost it.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#958

Post by StressedDev »

deltarholamda wrote: post #935
siskiyou wrote: post #324

Reminds me of working for MCI-Worldcom. When you think you’re working for crooks, you probably are. Run away.

Worldcom had a business model that was ahead of its time. Show growth, raise stock price, use stock to buy companies, grow, rinse and repeat. It worked great until regulators disallowed the Sprint purchase because it would have put too much of the long-distance market in one company. (And as we all know, we stress a lot about choosing our long-distance carrier these days.) Then all of the somewhat shady side-deals be…

Worldcom was a fraud. I believe they were caught inflating their earnings (i.e. saying they made more money than they really did). This was not a business model “ahead of its time”. It’s a crime.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#959

Post by smarmgoblin »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #720
hintymad wrote: post #243

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…

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the AUSA's performance here was not particularly impressive. Yes, they constructed an airtight case, but to do that, they handed out immunity deals like candy to all of SBF's co-conspirators. Sure, they got their guy, but it almost looks like they wanted to craft a narrative that puts all of the blame on him. Because of that, several other huge fraudsters here (eg Carol…

They didn’t get immunity, they just haven’t been sentenced yet.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#960

Post by slikrick »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #13

Remember: 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.

is this the level of discourse we're at? calling banks frauds when actual frauds scam people? hilarious
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