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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

#951
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…

FTX wasn't a "too-good-to-be-true crypto hedge fund".

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

#952

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…

Excessive? I don't want to put monetary value on people's lives, but I don't think it's obvious that someone murdering one person has done more wrong than another who stole billions of dollars and ruined the lives of hundreds or thousands of people. Especially if any of those people committed suicide because of what happened, but even if not.

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

#953

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 lost hundreds of thousands of dollars with this guy. I was hateful when this whole thing was unwinding. Now I’m indifferent — I just hope John Ray can make the customers whole

[deleted]

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

#954

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. 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,…

To me it is an absurd comparison. Someone stealing a billion dollars is committing a far worse crime than someone that murders me. The problem I have with this is imagine what a statistical poll would be if you posed the question "would you spend 20 years in jail for 1 billion?" There is a good percentage that absolutely would sign up for that, obviously a much different result than "would you spend life in prison to…

I think a more interesting question would be around risk of getting caught. Like, would you do it if you had a 10% chance of getting caught and going to jail? 20%? 30%? 50%?

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

#955
post #403

To be honest, isn't 25 years too much? He didn't beat or kill anyone, he simply found dumb people and took little of their money. It is not like he was robbing poor people by increasing their utilities bill every year or raising rent. Why is such a small, non-violent crime so severely punished? Of course he deserves a punishment but maybe not that much?

> It is not like he was robbing poor people A crime is not less of a crime based on the economic status of the victims. And raising rent or utilities is not a crime.

But poor people suffer much more from raised rent than rich people from losing little money on dubious cryptocurrency investments. If the punishment was based not on absolute dollar amount but on damage relative to person's total amount of money then it would be more fair.

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

#957

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…

revenge is a sword without a handle. it also hurts the wielder

it might not be "fair", but forgiveness is healthier for you

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

#958

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I broke into a person's house and stole $1000, even if I didn't directly hurt that person, I could expect to get several years in prison, basically regardless of the state. Lets say three years to be conservative on this? Sam Bankman Fried stole billions of dollars [1], probably often around $1000 at a time from tens of thousands of people. If going with my logic, he should be getting a lot longer than 25 years, u…

You’ve identified one of the primary failures of the courts. As the number of victims raises the punishment for each victim decreases in our judicial system. Victim count is an aggravating factor and should be a multiple when calculating punishment. Instead we have a system that pretends to grant justice but is an actuality a tool of injustice and repression wielded by people whose entire perspective can be effective…

Does this mean we would stop charging people with victimless crimes? If so, I'm all for it.

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

#959
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I broke into a person's house and stole $1000, even if I didn't directly hurt that person, I could expect to get several years in prison, basically regardless of the state. Lets say three years to be conservative on this? Sam Bankman Fried stole billions of dollars [1], probably often around $1000 at a time from tens of thousands of people. If going with my logic, he should be getting a lot longer than 25 years, u…

Why do you think SBF requires 20-25 years to rehabilitate?

The better question is likely why anyone thinks the US justice system is actually about rehabilitation.
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