What an asshole. Dude has the nerve to badmouth regulators? What does he think he just did?
Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself
161–170 of 401 posts
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
For FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried, incompetence could be a legal strategy - https://www.axios.com/2022/11/16/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-incom... > Lawyers tell Axios the main criminal risk Bankman-Fried faces is an indictment on charges of fraud — one of the more common charges in white-collar prosecutions. But to convict, prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone had knowledge or intent to commit fraud, whi…
The notion that someone that made it through MIT physics, worked for several years at Jane Street, and actively cultivated the persona of a genius can't understand that making a million tokens, selling one of them to yourself for a dollar, and then calling yourself a millionaire is nonsense, is frankly preposterous.
I am a genuine believer that environment plays a big role in all of those "achievements".
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself
#163From the CEO of NuGenesis network and Metalabs global:
- Someone was dumping our coin
- We found out it was Alameda
- We asked them to stop market making, yet they continued dumping, all on Liquid
- We have a lot of proof showing the above
- We've known about the FTX scam months and months ago & contacted the SEC
- Media did not listen to us
- No one was listening because no one wanted to believe FTX & SBF was a scammer, even some of the biggest VC firm
- I sent everything to the FTC multiple times, MONTHS AGO, & they didn't even reply
- I won't comment on whether Gary Gensler was involved
- Many exchanges & entities are likely wash trading like FTX. This issue is systematic
More summary here https://twitter.com/marionawfal/status/1592947918146654208
Source is the Spaces chat here, starts around 4:51 https://twitter.com/nugenmediahub/status/1592941623306252288
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself
#164It this real? Is he really THAT stupid? His defense against "you took user deposits and gambled the money" is "No, I took user deposits, loaned them to myself and then gambled the money". I mean this is like nested layers of stupidity. You'd be stupid to do this, you'd be stupid to think it's not a major crime, you'd be stupid to think that this was in any way acts as a defense of your crime and you'd be stupid to ac…
For FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried, incompetence could be a legal strategy - https://www.axios.com/2022/11/16/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-incom... > Lawyers tell Axios the main criminal risk Bankman-Fried faces is an indictment on charges of fraud — one of the more common charges in white-collar prosecutions. But to convict, prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone had knowledge or intent to commit fraud, whi…
Judges won't side with him, like, at all.
>The point is to argue that he was sloppy or inattentive, not a fraudster.
If that's going to be his strategy there's still a lot of laughs to have at his expense.
If only it were that easy, "oh I didn't knew I was crossing the border with a hundred pounds of cocaine in my car", like, how come they never thought of THAT? LOL
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a silly idea that being the second largest donor to a political party in the US buys you special favors? Why else would anyone give that kind of money to politicians without expecting something in return?
I'd expect that the something in return buys you a king's seat at the regulatory table, not quite a get-out-of-jail-scott-free-for-stealing-billions card. I'm sure that in a few years, once the courts get everything sorted out, we'll learn which of our prejudices is closer to reality. As of today, though, we're both just speculating.
Bingo, and the line from electoral politics -> regulation is straight, legal, and requires one step. While filtering political donations through judicial + investigative bodies with egads of separate oversight & career employees & little to no electoral influence would be impossible to manage. Not for 28 million, you would have to buy a loooooot of people off and get extremely lucky. That’s why it doesn’t happen. The get out of jail free card, that is.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
For FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried, incompetence could be a legal strategy - https://www.axios.com/2022/11/16/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-incom... > Lawyers tell Axios the main criminal risk Bankman-Fried faces is an indictment on charges of fraud — one of the more common charges in white-collar prosecutions. But to convict, prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone had knowledge or intent to commit fraud, whi…
The notion that someone that made it through MIT physics, worked for several years at Jane Street, and actively cultivated the persona of a genius can't understand that making a million tokens, selling one of them to yourself for a dollar, and then calling yourself a millionaire is nonsense, is frankly preposterous.
And then there's also the question of actual deposits, which would still have to be sent to somewhere - intentionally - and given as those were represented, afaik, as deposits and not buying shares in a high-risk hedge fund, that alone constitutes separate fraud, regardless of how he tried to cover it up afterwards.
If I tell you "if you give me $1000 I'll keep them safe and return them to you anytime you want" and then I take these money and go gambling to Vegas, I can't say "I was just not paying attention, sorry". I knew I promised to keep them for you and gambled with them instead.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself
#167> I was trying to make sense of what, behind the PR and the charitable donations and the lobbying, Bankman-Fried actually believes about what’s right and what’s wrong — and especially the ethics of what he did and the industry he worked in. This seems like a weird thing to worry about right now, I imagine my question would be "hey, where'd all the deposits go?" Like, I'm sure it's all interesting in a psychological a…
I think this is... journalism.
You can't text a fraudster in the bahamas and say "Hey, why are you so shit". You have to text "Hey, you're a precious flower with a special story" and then they tell you why they're shit. There's very clearly a level where SBF feels safe to talk honestly, in a self-incriminating way to a friend, where that friend is actually a reporter working for Vox.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself
#168OMG. "The dog ate my homework" would have been a better excuse. > like, "oh FTX doesn't have a bank account, I guess people can wire to Alameda's to get money on FTX" > ....3 years later... > 'oh fuck it looks like people wired $8b to Alameda and oh god we basically forgot about the stub account that corresponded to that and so it was never delivered to FTX' So they "basically" forgot about $8B not transferred to FTX…
Since more than one thing can be true at the same time, why not a combination of a) total lack of internal controls, understanding of basic accounting and book keeoing, b) total lack of competence when it comes to manage these amounts of money and c) actively defrauding customers by stealing their deposits?
All of the above.
Alameda Research was clearly in the top of the worst hedge funds ever, and clearly they had terrible controls and accounting.
However, without (c) you don't get this epic disaster. From SBF's tweets it is clear that they were aware they had to keep customer funds segregated.
Remember the time they tried to pretend that USD is protected by the FDIC?
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/19/crypto-firm-ftx-receives-cea...
Well, actually it was protected by the FDIC, but not from FTX.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself
#169It this real? Is he really THAT stupid? His defense against "you took user deposits and gambled the money" is "No, I took user deposits, loaned them to myself and then gambled the money". I mean this is like nested layers of stupidity. You'd be stupid to do this, you'd be stupid to think it's not a major crime, you'd be stupid to think that this was in any way acts as a defense of your crime and you'd be stupid to ac…
For FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried, incompetence could be a legal strategy - https://www.axios.com/2022/11/16/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-incom... > Lawyers tell Axios the main criminal risk Bankman-Fried faces is an indictment on charges of fraud — one of the more common charges in white-collar prosecutions. But to convict, prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone had knowledge or intent to commit fraud, whi…
So you're saying is that a defense for fraud is stupidity? Oh dear god, it can't be that simple can it?
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried tries to explain himself
#170SBF, his foundation and his family are well connected politically. NYT already did a bizarro puff piece on him, now Vox does this (which apparently directly received FTX foundation money). It’s absurd as he is essentially a well connected criminal. edit I do want to correct one thing - this is not a puff piece like the NYT one, actually it implicates him.
This and the NYT interview are not puff pieces. They are handing SBF the rope to hang himself with, putting his confession on the record. Not sure what what the people pushing this narrative aren’t understanding. If they wanted to protect him they would refuse to interview him and try to convince him not to speak to anyone but counsel about this.
> Not sure what what the people pushing this narrative aren’t understanding
They are clouded by anger and frustration, I’d wager, many folks lost money in this fraud. Some maybe caught up in the mob mentality and excitement around taking SBF down.
Anything short of absolute demonization is not good enough when you’re mad, I suppose.