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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

#931

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…

Because it wasn't personal or individualized. You'd probably also be more vengeful if it was someone who had stolen your credit cards (or identity).

The same reason why the bigger the company, the more the public lets them get away with.

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

#932

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think a 25 year sentence is impossible to recover from? I think he can still leave a meaningful life coming out in his mid 50s.

I highly doubt he will serve all 25. There is no parole in a fed case, but could get reduced time for good behavior. Unlikely he will be in prison stabbing people.

Good behaviour in federal sentences is restricted to 15% off the total.

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

#933

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think a 25 year sentence is impossible to recover from? I think he can still leave a meaningful life coming out in his mid 50s.

Imagine going into prison in the late 90's and coming out all the technology in the world today, none of which you've seen except maybe on TV. The Dick Tracey movie came out in 1990 and now we've got smart watches which are literally a cell phone on your wrist. Imagine going into jail when AIM/MSN/ICQ were the hotness and coming out to tiktok and snapchat. That's someone who went into jail in the 90's. Imagine someon…

Pfft, in what ways has society advanced since then?

I'm being a bit facetious, but lets be real, most of the interactions people have with technological advancement create negative value for themselves and everyone around them.

The only thing that's arguably neutral is basic chat, and maybe HN which is marginally more sophisticated than it would have been then. Being able to take high quality photo and video at any time is quite a lot more commodified, but I feel like a former prisoner could handle that.

Maybe video calls would do it, that's another big one, but people born in the 30s can deal with it.

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

#934

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> kid He's a 32 year old man.

No no, he is rich so of course he is just a kid, lost in the sauce, accidentally squandering a few billion. Now, 16 year old male from a low income household, those are men, and should know the consequence of their actions better. /s This infantilizing is disgusting propaganda in and of itself.

Exactly...

> The students were also shown photographs alongside descriptions of various crimes and asked to assess the age and innocence of white, black or Latino boys ages 10 to 17. The students overestimated the age of blacks by an average of 4.5 years and found them more culpable than whites or Latinos, particularly when the boys were matched with serious crimes, the study found

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/03/black-boys-o...

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

#935

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…

> 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.

beyond me why this irrelevant uncle comment is at the top but let me tell you this ... you can always recover. the only thing you don't recover from is death.

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

#936
post #909
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…

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.

Is false

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

#937

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTX was one of the biggest frauds in history.. and you're showing us averages. Madoff received a 150 year sentence, and that was with leniency for pleading guilty.

Wasn't Madoff's plan the whole time to pocket investor money for himself, whereas Sam's was to arrogantly (and illegally) gamble it with the thought being he could return the principal from Alameda back to FTX in future? Genuine question, I'm not super informed on these.

Madoff was supposedly on the level for some 25-31 years. He started business as a broker-dealer and money manager in 1960. Madoff claimed that he started just putting fund contributions in a personal account in 1991, but prosecutors think he was at it sometime in the 1980s, maybe since Black Monday in 1987?

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

#938

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prison is also a deterrent for future offenders, if everyone is knows/feels all they will loose is their license to practice finance then you will have lot more financial crime than there is.

Is there any evidence this actually works? My understanding was that "prison as a deterrence" was largely ineffective.

Murder will land you in prison and people are still out murdering all the time so I think not.

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

#939
post #527

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…

>So when a group of people behaves irresponsibly with people's money it boils my blood. He deserves every jail year he got, just on the hubris alone.

I don't want to rub on your wound but you need to take some responsibility as well. You knew crypto was risky. You knew many exchanges have scammed and went under, taking their customer's funds with them. It's arguable that every crypto exchange is shady and it's inevitable that every single one them will fall.

You should also blame the laws because exchanges and most crypto are clearly securities. But our law makers have been slow to respond and have probably been paid off by crypto money.

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

#940

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well he stole $10 billion, imagine all of your friends' friends' friends' friends losing their entire life savings just before retirement. What % of these people are going to kill themselves, how many thousands of lifetimes of work did he destroy, how much stress did he cause, how many of those people are going to suffer for the rest of their lives, and how many early deaths is that going to cause, among direct victims as well as their family members?

Or is it somehow more okay because they're out of sight, out of mind? There's still going to be a real body count for his actions, it just won't be immediately apparent.

Yes, it's ghoulish, as were his actions, but it's too easy to handwave them away as just some techbro oopsie if they're not contextualized like this.

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