191–200 of 401 posts
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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 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.
Author: "so the ethics stuff - mostly a front?" SBF: "yeah" Absolutely gobsmacked. I saw these screenshots on Twitter and I thought they were fake until I read the article. The rest of the messages from him are pretty terrible as well. I thought he just fucked up, but no. He was wilfully unethical and maintains he did nothing wrong: "Sometimes life creeps up on you". And the thing he regrets most is filing for Chapte…
On the one hand, you’ve got this ethics discussion, which in context happened previously, about the ethics of running an immoral business to do good things. Then an ethical discussion about how that answer was BS and all that really matters is perception, and how perception doesn’t mirror reality.
And here I’m trying to reflect on these topics. How do I feel about these things, how would I answer?
Then the next part begins soon after with “messy accounting.”
I view it the way I’d view Michelangelo’s David if it were displayed at a local county fair.
to be clear: - he lent his own hedge fund $8b collateralized by tokens he controlled issuance of (FTT, SRM, MAPS, OXY). At full size, the liquidation price of these tokens was 0 (he also purchased billions worth of FTT off the market when he could print them himself for free?). - Sensing alameda was insolvent and customer funds were misappropriated, customers withdrew until they ran out of liquidity. - Withdrawals we…
You kind of went off the rails there in the final sentence. Are you saying that any of this adds credence to the silly idea that Democrats are beholden to SBF campaign money?
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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?
Sorry but the "wildest conspiracy theory" is that Democrats sent money to Ukraine, Ukraine deposited the money at FTX, and SBF donated the money to Democratic congressional campaigns. Nothing about what we know today lends any credence to that theory. That some guy with access to a lot of cash tried to buy influence is not a "conspiracy theory" because it is unilateral. And, if that's what he was trying to do, it see…
Author: "so the ethics stuff - mostly a front?" SBF: "yeah" Absolutely gobsmacked. I saw these screenshots on Twitter and I thought they were fake until I read the article. The rest of the messages from him are pretty terrible as well. I thought he just fucked up, but no. He was wilfully unethical and maintains he did nothing wrong: "Sometimes life creeps up on you". And the thing he regrets most is filing for Chapte…
I'm wondering if there is some kind of mass insanity occurring in the world right now with this and the behaviour of numerous influential figures.
It would explain a lot.
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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
Is that not a valid defense? It's my understanding it's not uncommon for criminals to plant stuff on a marks car and then secretly grab it after it crosses the border. Possession of something should require your intent to control/keep it or at least knowledge it exists.
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How is this a puff piece? Just posting these chat transcripts is damaging to his reputation and probably his chances in court. He does not come off looking good here.
His father is a lawyer so I’m confused about his behaviour. Does he think this will help him somehow, to appear like he’s terribly sorry about what happened ? Surely his behaviour is criminal?
He would have done better with a street smart criminal lawyer.
Well there's a sense of contrition there, so that's good. However there's no reasonable excuse. You can't be like "aw man, I wish we'd been more organized". A big piece of this is on the investors. All those depositors would have been saying "Hey Sequoia and OTPP are in there, they must have checked things are sound". Was that foolish of them, to assume reputable investors had done their due diligence? You're between…
Sigh. So this is how confidence men and politicians and scammers can make good livings.
He just said that all the good-sounding things he said in the past about ethics and doing the right thing was "this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shiboleths and so everyone likes us".