I highly recommend reading this article, from 50 days ago . So many humorous quotes to be had in that article. https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlig... edit: archive https://archive.ph/GQkCp
Please tell me someone has this on internet archive.
FTX tapped into customer accounts to fund risky bets, setting up its downfall
121–130 of 746 posts
Re: FTX tapped into customer accounts to fund risky bets, setting up its downfall
#122This seems to be a slam dunk for prison time. Only thing I can think of is if these companies are international so he doesnt get prosecuted in the US under US laws. Thats his only hope.
Well, his ultimate hedge is that both his parents are Stanford law professors. Slam dunk unlikely.
He was also the 6th largest political donor for the 2022 election cycle.
Re: FTX tapped into customer accounts to fund risky bets, setting up its downfall
#123Re: FTX tapped into customer accounts to fund risky bets, setting up its downfall
#124Remarkable that a venture-backed company can loan $10B to the founder's hedge fund without running into some sort of board/corporate sign-off that's required to literally execute the agreement/fund transfer.
It feels like a very Adam Neumann move.
Sequoia did a nauseating, hilarious puff piece on him a couple months ago and this guy sounds like Adam Neumann’s second coming.
https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlig...
Re: FTX tapped into customer accounts to fund risky bets, setting up its downfall
#125I highly recommend reading this article, from 50 days ago . So many humorous quotes to be had in that article. https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlig... edit: archive https://archive.ph/GQkCp
Please tell me someone has this on internet archive.
https://archive.ph/GQkCp
archive of google cache (best thing I can do!)
Re: FTX tapped into customer accounts to fund risky bets, setting up its downfall
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But not once - not from word of mouth, or directly from them, or someone, ever, anywhere - have I heard a common sense way these guys make money due to intelligence, instead of due to a scam or due to luck. Financial markets have a fascinating property: any well-known strategy that can be implemented at reasonable cost [0] stops working. This is because people implement it and the profit goes away. If Jane Street h…
The original comment addresses that concern: >Why in the absence of any positive evidence, like "oh here is our genius but nonetheless expired" trading strategy, which anyone could have furnished in the last two decades, they agree, oh it must be real? I agree that there should be some obviously awesome things these funds did that they can share now given they are no longer able to exploit them. I have no idea if the…
There are known expired strategies that generated large profits for long periods of time. In some cases the people involved in developing the strategies have directly published things explaining what they did.
Re: FTX tapped into customer accounts to fund risky bets, setting up its downfall
#127The Twitter thread from SBF is even better where he admits he messed up. And still trying to throw jabs at Binance here and there like it’s their fault they’re here. Unbelievable.
In case anyone wants a link to the thread, here it is: https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1590709166515310593?s=20&...
It was actually in an adjacent paywalled article (https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-news-today-11-...). If anyone knows a way to bypass that paywall, I'd be curious to read the rest.
Re: FTX tapped into customer accounts to fund risky bets, setting up its downfall
#128All: please don't fulminate*. Perhaps you don't owe embattled billionaires better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. HN is a site for curious conversation, so please wait to feel some curiosity before you comment. * https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Sorry, no. If I can’t protest here, where can I protest? Is this supposed to be a safe space for billionaires? It’s my community, too. Don’t censor me in the name of curiosities. This isn’t Iran.
This is one of those times when it's helpful to know what you're optimizing for. On HN we have the luxury of a single principle that we're optimizing for: intellectual curiosity. (See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html plus lots of past explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...)
This makes it easier to answer questions that would otherwise feel like hard tradeoffs. In this case: should people be shouting angrily in a protesty way in HN threads? No—but not because protest is bad or unimportant. It's just incompatible with intellectual curiosity, and since we're optimizing for the latter, it takes precedence.
When people are protesting or doing battle, they tend to either repeat their most effective phrases (slogans, etc.) or to spontaneously vent their strong emotions (name-calling, etc.). But repetition and name-calling are clearly bad for curiosity. I believe these are even different neurological states: high indignation comes with a level of arousal that rules out the relaxed playfulness that curious conversation depends on.
I hope it's clear that this isn't a judgment about protest or indignation in general—those are as human as anything else and when they're called for they're called for. It's just relative to the particular mandate of this particular site. We're trying to play one game rather than the other.
Is that censorship? Well, that word has become so stretchy that you can apply it however you feel. But I'd say no, for the same reason that chess isn't crokinole. It isn't censorship to say you don't get to whack your opponent's bishop.
Re: FTX tapped into customer accounts to fund risky bets, setting up its downfall
#129I highly recommend reading this article, from 50 days ago . So many humorous quotes to be had in that article. https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlig... edit: archive https://archive.ph/GQkCp
> o I find myself convinced that, if SBF can keep his wits about him in the years ahead, he’s going to slay—that, just as Alameda was a stepping stone to FTX, FTX will be to the super-app. Banking will be disrupted and transformed by crypto, just as media was transformed and disrupted by the web. Something of the sort must happen eventually, as the current system, with its layers upon layers of intermediaries, is antiquated and prone to crashing—the global financial crisis of 2008 was just the latest in a long line of failures that occurred because banks didn’t actually know what was on their balance sheets. Crypto is money that can audit itself
> there. The FTX competitive advantage? Ethical behavior. SBF is a Peter Singer–inspired utilitarian in a sea of Robert Nozick–inspired libertarians. He’s an ethical maximalist in an industry that’s overwhelmingly populated with ethical minimalists. I’m a Nozick man myself, but I know who I’d rather trust my money with: SBF, hands-down. And if he does end up saving the world as a side effect of being my banker, all the better.
Re: FTX tapped into customer accounts to fund risky bets, setting up its downfall
#130Remarkable that a venture-backed company can loan $10B to the founder's hedge fund without running into some sort of board/corporate sign-off that's required to literally execute the agreement/fund transfer.
Would this even be possible at any hedge fund?
I was partner at a couple of hedge funds. Every fund has its own docs, but normally it is going to restrict you to sending money to specific things, you can't just do anything you want. Certainly you cannot just lend it to yourself if you want serious investors, they do a whole due diligence questionnaire about what sign-off is needed, who can sign, audits, and so on.
I remember a friend with a fund, he was in a short-term pickle waiting for some money to bridge a house purchase. Didn't even cross his mind to lend it to himself and pay it back two weeks later, even though that would have been nearly risk free and a minuscule proportion of the fund.