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Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#721
post #718

I don't understand why we need to put this guy in jail for 25 years. Similarly, Bernie Madoff, whose crimes were far worse, was sentenced to 150 years. For stealing money! Given that the risk of repeat offense is low, I just don't see the point of these sentences. I think they're mostly about notoriety. Meanwhile murderers and rapists get less time, and they're at high risk for re-offending.

I think scammers are frequently repeat offenders too.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#722

I sincerely wish every centralized exchange had their own SBF to burn them down. The negative impact of "investors" has been terrible for crypto. They've turned what should have been a trustless medium into a caricature of traditional banking with all of its downsides and none of the benefits. Whats the point of computing all the hashes if you end up handing your coins to some guy who pinky promises to pay them back…

That would be nice, but what are the other on-ramps from fiat that are usable for mainstream folks? (Genuinely asking)

You can buy crypto directly from other people, you pay them and they sign it over.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#723
post #718

I don't understand why we need to put this guy in jail for 25 years. Similarly, Bernie Madoff, whose crimes were far worse, was sentenced to 150 years. For stealing money! Given that the risk of repeat offense is low, I just don't see the point of these sentences. I think they're mostly about notoriety. Meanwhile murderers and rapists get less time, and they're at high risk for re-offending.

For one thing, retribution is accepted in American law as a justification for punishment is my understanding.

For a second thing, I’m not so sure the chance of a repeat offense is low.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#724
post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't lose a penny and I'm giddy about it. Justice has been done.

> I didn't lose a penny and I'm giddy about it. Justice has been done. How can you be giddy about a human being locked in a cage for 25 years? Would you be giddy if he were being flogged, or hanged? As long as there has been recording, flogging and hangings were common punishments and usually defended as "justice has been done." Incarceration really isn't far from medieval punishments. I'm by no means suggesting that…

Justice is not opposed to empathy. Everyone should look at SBF and feel empathy, and think, "losing the prime years of my life as he will would be horribly painful. Maybe I shouldn't commit fraud and steal thousands of people livelihoods like he did?"

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#725
I love harsh American justice. In some countries you can stalk, kidnap, rape, kill, and then dismember a child and get less of a sentence than SBF. I have seen terrorists conduct attacks where mass casualties and death occur, they get sentenced to five years, get "rehabilitated" and then go free and do it all again. I have heard people drone on about American prison sentences being overboard but after seeing hundreds of murder/torture/terrorist cases prosecuted all over the world, the US is the only country that gets it right. If you are a danger to society you should be removed from society according to the risk you present. There is no excuse for reoffense.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#726

To put this into its proper perspective, see table 7 here: https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu... In 2022, the average murderer in the Federal Southern District of New York (N = 58) was sentenced to a median of 231 months, which comes out to 19 years and change. No crime of any type had an mean or median sentence higher than 25 years; most were far less than half. So it should be really hard…

I'm not saying that people should kill others or themselves because of the amounts of money involved here, and I'm not entirely sure what the minimum threshold is for financial crimes where that becomes an (grim and unfortunate) side effect, but when we're discussing the largest fraud in history it's definitely on that scale. Even though he stole money, the human cost of that is beyond just fractured careers and relationships, undoubtedly because of how humans behave people almost certainly lost their entire lives due to the continuing effects caused only by this crime. That cost in human life should be taken into account here, even if it shouldn't have had that kind of cost.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#727
post #723
post #718

I don't understand why we need to put this guy in jail for 25 years. Similarly, Bernie Madoff, whose crimes were far worse, was sentenced to 150 years. For stealing money! Given that the risk of repeat offense is low, I just don't see the point of these sentences. I think they're mostly about notoriety. Meanwhile murderers and rapists get less time, and they're at high risk for re-offending.

For one thing, retribution is accepted in American law as a justification for punishment is my understanding. For a second thing, I’m not so sure the chance of a repeat offense is low.

I'm not arguing against retribution. I'm arguing that this particular retribution is not proportional.

In terms of the chance of repeat offense...who would invest money with SBF at this point? It's not like he was mugging people, they voluntarily gave him their money.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#728
post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an indirect victim via BlockFi (headed by Zach Prince), which did business with FTX and lost my money as a result. I held 33 ETH in a BlockFi BIA account, and only recently got 4 ETH back. I don't know if I will ever recover the rest of my funds. I don't know what your financial situation is but I'm not rich, and it is extremely painful to look at ETH trading at above $3000 and realizing my rainy day fund has bee…

[flagged]

Median household wealth is about $200k, and 90th percentile is about $1.6 million.

That means every tenth person in line at the DMV (a decent cross-section of society) is worth over a million dollars, and if you're in a major metropolitan area, much more.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#729
post #718

I don't understand why we need to put this guy in jail for 25 years. Similarly, Bernie Madoff, whose crimes were far worse, was sentenced to 150 years. For stealing money! Given that the risk of repeat offense is low, I just don't see the point of these sentences. I think they're mostly about notoriety. Meanwhile murderers and rapists get less time, and they're at high risk for re-offending.

It's a deterrent for other would-be white collar criminals. The punishment should match the magnitude of the fraud so it indeed does deter in proportion.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#730
post #718

I don't understand why we need to put this guy in jail for 25 years. Similarly, Bernie Madoff, whose crimes were far worse, was sentenced to 150 years. For stealing money! Given that the risk of repeat offense is low, I just don't see the point of these sentences. I think they're mostly about notoriety. Meanwhile murderers and rapists get less time, and they're at high risk for re-offending.

It's about deterrence. Imagine you're considering committing a crime. You're looking at the upside and the downside. The equation on the downside looks like this:

risk = size of punishment * probability of being caught.

So how do you deter a potential criminal who is unlikely to get caught? You have to jack up the size of the punishment to compensate for that low probability.

Economist Gary Becker started this school of thought in the 60s and it's been implemented and debated in a million ways since then. Example: https://masonlec.org/site/rte_uploads/files/JEP/Readings/But...

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