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Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

cnn.com

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

#861

Post by tim333 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #281
rgbrenner wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you conduct criminal activity while employed, you conducted criminal activity. You can't just walk into work at 8am, kill someone at 9am, and go home at 5. You still did the crime, and can be prosecuted for it. So let me rephrase your question: can a US citizen file some papers internationally that would permit them to conduct criminal activities in the US against other US citizens. The answer should not be surpri…

That's not at all how I interpreted the comment you are responding to. That is, FTX's customers knew, or most definitely should have known, that FTX (and crypto at large - that is essentially the primary selling point of crypto) was "outside the regulatory financial framework". Yet when things blew up and all these FTX customers lost all their money, there was very little reflection of "Hey, perhaps these financial r…

If you look at the superbowl ad, it all looks American style and doesn't say much about offshore. "FTX US all rights reserved." and crypto is volatile it says in the small print. It looked kind of US regulated and US regulators certainly took note when it stole US customers money. https://youtu.be/hWMnbJJpeZc?t=129

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

#862

Post by immibis »

CivBase wrote: post #479
bdcravens wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps previous exit scams in the crypto space dulled your senses? If anything, I feel like you should share your story to protect others, especially during times when crypto is peaking (like now) and others are tempted to jump in: use exchanges to buy/sell and get out, store your keys on a cold storage device, and transfer out fiat ASAP.

Surely the better takeaway is to just not bet on crypto in general? It's supposed to act like a currency, not a stock. So long as people keep feeding into these pump-and-dump schemes they'll keep happening. Money doesn't come from nowhere. For every dollar you make on crypto, somone loses a dollar. All these BS coins do is shuffle wealth from the unlucky gamblers to the lucky ones. Go spend your money at a casino ins…

Crypto is supposed to act like a stock. Very few people actually want decentralized digital dollars. Compared to the number of people who want decentralized digital get rich quick schemes.

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

#863

Post by theragra »

daxaxelrod wrote: post #815
theragra wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of fraud, he donated a lot of money, some to noble causes. This is useful, even of it was not his money.

I'd be upset if my bank used my checking account to fund Alzheimer's research.

Government does it all the time ;)

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

#864

Post by danparsonson »

laurels-marts wrote: post #736
ragazzina wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is funny - especially when you consider a mugger on the street would need your money much more than SBF ever would.

Need money for what though. Alcohol, drugs and gambling? The vast majority of crimes are not committed due to an inability to obtain food.

Source?

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

#865

Post by jmspring »

anonymoose33282 wrote: post #802
jmspring wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, I don't think I feel the same way as you (my loss was small). There have been many cases where white collar crime which has similar (or greater) financial ramifications as the example of mugging you give, but the punishment is generally significantly lower (if at all). Granted a mugging could have differing levels of direct emotional impact, but white collar crime generally ends in lighter sentences. SBF and…

I think “violence” is at times such a silly measuring stick for modern justice. Instead, we should see it as lost/ruined human potential. What is worse, violently robbing one bank of $10k, or “peacefully” robbing a massive number of people for billions of dollars? I sure as hell know what I think, and it’s absolutely not in line with SBF’s sentence. He should rot in Ryker’s with people who have, unfortunately, done l…

25 years will be enough to where he’s doing time, wish it was more. Sadly his parents have enough cushion to where he won’t have to work when he is out.

Many people are in prison for doing less harm and for longer sentences than many white collar criminals.

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

#866

Post by compiler-guy »

thot_experiment wrote: post #359
compiler-guy wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lewis also soft-sells the polyamorous relationships and complications that caused around SBF's relationship with Caroline Ellison. Caroline wants to go public, and why that would be a much bigger deal in the polyamorous world they were living in. It's similar in many of Lewis's other analysis of SBF's relationships. Lewis avoids context that makes SBF look much worse.

I'm not familiar with the book but this doesn't sound like it pattern matches with any of the poly I've experienced. Going public is a big deal in poly in particular? Since when? What kind of self respecting tech bro group house doesn't have a graph of all the poly on their whiteboard?

If it wasn't a big deal, SBF would have been OK with Ellison going public with it. But he wasn't, and held out against it. Lewis spends not a single word digging into SBF's motivations around that.

Worse, he spends barely a chapter on how the polyamory which pervaded the highest levels of both Alameda and FTX might have clouded everyone's judgement and ability to say no. Mostly just limiting himself to: "It was a bunch of young adults all living together and who slept with whom changed rather fluidly. It wasn't a sex or orgy den, and the lurid tales about sex parties and all that aren't accurate."

Which I guess is probably true as far as it goes.

But not spending any time at all about how those relationships may have affected the corporate governance shows a strange lack of curiosity and unwillingness to think about conflicts of interest any relationship between business partners creates.

[I have no problem with polyamory itself--as long as everyone is consenting it's not really any of my business.]

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

#867

Post by redox99 »

publius_0xf3 wrote: post #449

It's funny. I lost tens of thousands of dollars thanks to this individual, yet his sentence brings me no joy or arouses any emotion at all. I'm utterly indifferent to his fate for some reason and I don't know why. Yet if he had been a mugger who stole a much smaller amount of money from me on the street, I think I would've been far more vengeful. Should I feel vindictive? Or is it healthy to forget about it and move…

If you get mugged, you feel it was outside your control. If you get scammed, you feel it was partly your fault that you were fooled.

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

#868

Post by thomastjeffery »

publius_0xf3 wrote: post #449

It's funny. I lost tens of thousands of dollars thanks to this individual, yet his sentence brings me no joy or arouses any emotion at all. I'm utterly indifferent to his fate for some reason and I don't know why. Yet if he had been a mugger who stole a much smaller amount of money from me on the street, I think I would've been far more vengeful. Should I feel vindictive? Or is it healthy to forget about it and move…

A mugger would have traumatized you. You can't put a price on [the lack of] trauma.

The harm you received was mostly financial, so the healthy way to recover is also mostly financial.

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

#869

Post by [deleted] »

sopooneo wrote: post #277
setgree wrote: post #176

An uncle once commented about a cousin of ours that he demonstrated how it's possible to screw things up so badly that you can't possibly recover. I think that's true for Sam. I hope it's not true for the people in his orbit; I hope they can get out from under this and try to find meaning, ideally from repairing the harm they've done. As Rick Heicklen writes, "We are not ever going to be Sam. But we could be Caroline…

No dog in this race either way, but what is Michael Lewis meant to have done? Is it just that people feel hist treatment of SBF in Going Infinite was too lenient?

[deleted]

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

#870

Post by ponector »

bambax wrote: post #62

I think that's about fair and reasonable. It's been said in Europe he would not have gotten more than years and it's probably true. 25 years is a really long time and even if he does only 20, still super long. Here's a live tweeting of the sentencing hearing; some of Judge Kaplan's remarks are really interesting. https://twitter.com/innercitypress/status/177334004374401064...

In comparison to his cellmate, ex president of Honduras, who got 40 mandatory years this is not a super long sentence.

On 8 March 2024, Hernández was convicted of three counts of drug trafficking and weapons conspiracy and faces mandatory minimum sentence of 40 years in prison.

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