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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

#901

Post by Intralexical »

petertodd wrote: post #212
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #159

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…

> If anything, it's excessive if you consider the nature of the crime relative to the nature of murder or kidnapping. The value of a single human life is not infinite. In engineering and public policy, a value like $10 million / life is typically used to make trade-offs. SBF stole funds far in excess of that. Secondly, when funds of this scale are stolen, inevitably people wind up dying early from things like stress,…

> Secondly, when funds of this scale are stolen, inevitably people wind up dying early from things like stress, and suicides.

Let's not forget that the time they spend living before dying of things like stress and suicide will often be quite painful too. Deaths of despair are no fun.

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

#902

Post by thowawatp302 »

ghnws wrote: post #297
marcinzm wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anything, it's excessive if you consider the nature of the crime relative to the nature of murder or kidnapping. I suspect the resulting number of shortened lives amongst all the people who lost $8 billion worth of their money due to the fraud is more than the number caused by a single murder.

Hopefully no-one bet their life on unregulated extremely risky investments.

What SBF did isn’t covered under anything that could even remotely be called investment risk.

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

#903

Post by Intralexical »

whatscooking wrote: post #439
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #159

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…

Yea let’s let fraudsters run amuck, he damaged the lives of millions of people, fuck him

Pithy, and concise.

Sometimes we moralize too much.

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

#904

Post by golly_ned »

dns_snek wrote: post #416
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #159

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…

Statistical value of a human life in the US is around $7.5 million. Stealing $10 billion is therefore statistically equivalent to killing 1300 people, or pretty close to half of 9/11. That seems like a pretty light sentence to me.

This equivalency of cash to bodies is ghoulish. Does anyone actually think like this?

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

#905

Post by sdo72 »

mpalmer wrote: post #759
sdo72 wrote: post #750

Everyone has only 1 life, imprisonment of a life is one of the ultimate forms of torturing. This basically is killing his most meaningful years away. I can only agree this form of imprisonment for murderers, rapists, ones who physically and mentally hurt people with permanent losses. Ones can argue that he mentally & physically hurt others, but we need evidence. We should have a better system to force these individua…

Without the swift promise of decades in prison, what prevents the "next SBF" from committing similar crimes and causing similar damage? > Everyone has only 1 life Doesn't that make imprisonment (the ultimate time penalty) one of the fairest, most equitable punishments there is? > We should have a better system to force these individuals to pay back or make up the losses. As you say, he'll never be able to pay it back…

I think what's going on right now isn't deterring people from committing frauds like SBF either.

I think imprisonment doesn't make it's one of the fairest penalty. A set of humans made that up to imprison/strip away freedom/rights of other humans. No human at birth signs these laws, it is all made up by the people with power.

I agree that creating a system to force him payback is challenging, there's no easy way to create a system like that. Maybe something as simple as 50% tax to start with for the rest of his life as long as he belongs to this society.

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

#906

Post by mattmaroon »

FabHK wrote: post #276
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…

FWIW, I didn't find Lewis's book as bad (or amoral) as it's often made out to be. Yes, he didn't put his judgement in every paragraph, but his description of SBF was: a) absolutely damning! SBF's lack of empathy, his notion that (given that everyone else is stupid) he knew best and should basically ignore the advice of everyone else (particularly his elders), his naive utilitarianism without any deontological/virtue…

Im a big Michael Lewis fan and my only major gripe with that book is that he released it when the trial began, which meant he had to finish it well before. He left out the ending.

It’s an interesting story but it’s basically a cliffhanger with no sequel. He cut out right at the point where we learn the gritty details.

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

#907

Post by mattmaroon »

tptacek wrote: post #596
FabHK wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I didn't find Lewis's book as bad (or amoral) as it's often made out to be. Yes, he didn't put his judgement in every paragraph, but his description of SBF was: a) absolutely damning! SBF's lack of empathy, his notion that (given that everyone else is stupid) he knew best and should basically ignore the advice of everyone else (particularly his elders), his naive utilitarianism without any deontological/virtue…

The problem with Lewis's book is that it was pretty clear it was an on-a-dime pivot from the original story he had planned to tell, about a wunderkind revolutionizing finance and trying to save the world at the same time.

To be fair, that’s probably what anyone would have seen from the ground level and I think what I liked about it.

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

#908

Post by rvba »

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…

> I think that's true for Sam. I hope it's not true for the people in his orbit

People in his orbit knew very well what they were doing and looks that they will get mostly slapped on their wrists, since most fault was attributed to SBF only.

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

#909

Post by lupire »

skaag wrote: post #527
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…

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…

Cryptocurrency is different because the primary value proposition is the "law of the jungle" market economics. The value of your tokens comes from the general swirl of criminal activity. You can't say you deserve the upside but not the downside risk.

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

#910

Post by px43 »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #889
tim333 wrote: post #811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deposited some money with FTX and expected them not to steal it in the same way you expect a bank not to steal your deposits. I didn't gift to them or expect anything too good to be true. If a bank manager steals customer deposits to pay his gambling debts I put the blame 100% on the manager 0% on the customers.

Why on earth would you "expect them not to steal it in the same way you expect a bank not to steal your deposits" when a cryptocurrency exchange / hedge fund is not subject to even a fraction of the regulations banks are? Especially when prior to FTX's collapse, numerous other crypto exchanges were turning out to be scams or going under, and even back then there was plenty of evidence that crypto was being used and m…

> a cryptocurrency exchange / hedge fund is not subject to even a fraction of the regulations banks are?

US ones are. Shady ass casinos in the Bahamas like what SBF was running aren't though. Exchanges like Coinbase have been operating in the US under heavy US regulations for over a decade, and have never had anything close to a solvency issue. It's absolutely ridiculous that SBF was getting invited to basically write US policy despite FTX not even being a US based exchange.

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