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Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

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Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#31

Post by TacticalCoder »

RC_ITR wrote: post #10

A very important nuance for everyone following this. SBF keeps saying there was a liquidity crisis at FTX, which is 100% not true. A liquidity crisis implies that he took deposits, flipped them into good, but illiquid investments, and ran into trouble because people asked for more cash than FTX had on hand. FTX actually had a solvency crisis, where he took deposits, put them in completely inappropriate investments (m…

> FTX actually had a solvency crisis, where he took deposits, put them in completely inappropriate investments (many of which are now worthless, all of which were speculative nonsense) and is now revealed to have done that.

Who was on the other side of these losing trades? People need to follow the money trail. Where did the money go?

There are people who called the Alameda / FTX scam from day one, before FTX was even created (Alameda already existed). Then there are others, like Marc Cohodes, who realized SBF / FTX was a fraud when they looked into it. It's these people we should listen to. They knew SBF was full of shit back then and he's still full of shit now.

I do not buy the "inappropriate investments" angle. To me it was defrauding both users and investors by any means possible and funneling the money into the Bahamian blackhole. While putting the blame on "leveraged trades without stop-losses gone wrong".

There are just way too many things that do not add up: SBF/FTX bought a bank which belonged to the owners of Deltec in the Bahamas (the bank behind the whole iFinex (tether+Bitfinex) fraud, except that one hasn't blown yet).

And the latest amazing development: the current Bahamas attorney general used to work for... Deltec.

There's only one thing to say: you cannot make that shit up.

I don't think any movie or book writer could ever come up with something that insane.

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#32

Post by smcl »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #18
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #2

Also Coffeezilla's take on the interview with more context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rL35_WV3lE

That video was remarkable. Apparently the guy couldn't code but worked as a trader at JS for three years. In my own head, that almost reflected worse on JS than SBF. I think everyone assumed Alameda were doing something clever. In reality, they were just idiots stealing from and front-running their customers. Lol. These moments when you see the man behind the curtain, it is just ludicrous and shakes your faith in the…

Coffeezilla remarked that he's deflecting - rather than saying "there was no backdoor" he seized on a slightly clumsily worded question and replied with "I didn't implement a backdoor" then padded it out with the fluff about how he isn't a coder. The guy is flailing around saying whatever he can to try to rescue himself (and not succeeding). He also said they got $4bn minutes after declaring bankruptcy ... but that the bankruptcy lawyers are too embarrassed to use it so they're burning the company to the ground? Absolute nonsense, everything he says in these little interviews should be taken with an enormous helping of salt.

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#33

Post by hef19898 »

RC_ITR wrote: post #10

A very important nuance for everyone following this. SBF keeps saying there was a liquidity crisis at FTX, which is 100% not true. A liquidity crisis implies that he took deposits, flipped them into good, but illiquid investments, and ran into trouble because people asked for more cash than FTX had on hand. FTX actually had a solvency crisis, where he took deposits, put them in completely inappropriate investments (m…

Based on what we know how FTX was run internally, it might well be the case SBF simoly doesn't know the difference between liquidity and solvency. Which doesn't mean that FTX wasn't a scam, more than thing can be true at the same tike after all.

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#34

Post by bluelightning2k »

The crazy thing: he still has a very valuable brand.

There's many many people like us quietly trying to bootstrap enough traction to maybe get into YC one day... But if SBF ever wants to start another company it will be another record setting a12z seed valuation.

Irrelevant if he goes to jail ofc.

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#35

Post by maxbond »

shkkmo wrote: post #26
blamazon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" -- commonly attributed to Napoleon

That is incredibly bad advice to generalize. Not all mistakes one's "enemy" makes are to one's benefit. Your enemy might make a huge mistake by killing your family in front of a lot of witnesses, doesn't mean you should let him because you want to see him go to jail.

Fair, but from the perspective of a prosecutor, it makes sense to let him dig his hole deeper. Every time he lies to the public he further establishes mens rhea.

But of course it would take much longer than a month to extradite him anyhow, so the most likely explanation is that they haven't had time to decide if they have enough evidence to extradite him, let alone to do it.

(IANAL)

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#36

Post by tpxl »

trident5000 wrote: post #17
RC_ITR wrote: post #10

A very important nuance for everyone following this. SBF keeps saying there was a liquidity crisis at FTX, which is 100% not true. A liquidity crisis implies that he took deposits, flipped them into good, but illiquid investments, and ran into trouble because people asked for more cash than FTX had on hand. FTX actually had a solvency crisis, where he took deposits, put them in completely inappropriate investments (m…

I have no idea how this plays out. One question is what was in the agreement for FTX users? Can FTX use deposits for investments and to fund his other businesses? In my view the path to prison for SBF is likely to come in the form of misleading investors rather than customers, but I dont know what the pitch deck told them at the time of funding. It might not even be against the law regarding what he did to customers…

> One question is what was in the agreement for FTX users? Can FTX use deposits for investments and to fund his other businesses?

I doubt you can just put that in the ToS and EULA.

> In my view the path to prison for SBF is likely to come in the form of misleading investors rather than customers

This isn't like Theranos, there is clear and provable monetary harm that was done.

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#37

Post by SilverBirch »

hef19898 wrote: post #33
RC_ITR wrote: post #10

A very important nuance for everyone following this. SBF keeps saying there was a liquidity crisis at FTX, which is 100% not true. A liquidity crisis implies that he took deposits, flipped them into good, but illiquid investments, and ran into trouble because people asked for more cash than FTX had on hand. FTX actually had a solvency crisis, where he took deposits, put them in completely inappropriate investments (m…

Based on what we know how FTX was run internally, it might well be the case SBF simoly doesn't know the difference between liquidity and solvency. Which doesn't mean that FTX wasn't a scam, more than thing can be true at the same tike after all.

The problem with claiming SBF doesn't know the difference between solvency and liquidity, then how come he's figured out which one he needs to claim for his legal defence. If he doesn't know the difference, he wouldn't be so deliberate about claiming one happened not the other.

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#38

Post by smcl »

RC_ITR wrote: post #10

A very important nuance for everyone following this. SBF keeps saying there was a liquidity crisis at FTX, which is 100% not true. A liquidity crisis implies that he took deposits, flipped them into good, but illiquid investments, and ran into trouble because people asked for more cash than FTX had on hand. FTX actually had a solvency crisis, where he took deposits, put them in completely inappropriate investments (m…

100% re the "aww shucks" thing - his only way out of this is to convince everyone he was just a naive little guy with a heart of gold who got too successful for his own good, so we're going to see a lot of this and the "I can't actually code" stuff as the final few chapters of the FTX story play out.

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#39

Post by hef19898 »

SilverBirch wrote: post #37
hef19898 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what we know how FTX was run internally, it might well be the case SBF simoly doesn't know the difference between liquidity and solvency. Which doesn't mean that FTX wasn't a scam, more than thing can be true at the same tike after all.

The problem with claiming SBF doesn't know the difference between solvency and liquidity, then how come he's figured out which one he needs to claim for his legal defence. If he doesn't know the difference, he wouldn't be so deliberate about claiming one happened not the other.

Maybe he's smart enough to listen to his lawyers. Or maybe he knows the difference. He still seems to be a criminal fraudster and crook, the other questions are secondery concerns mostly driven by curiosity.

We'll have to wait for any verdicts and court rulings so to onow what exactly went down, this thing is far from having reaching the end of the beginning.

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#40

Post by bena »

SilverBirch wrote: post #37
hef19898 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what we know how FTX was run internally, it might well be the case SBF simoly doesn't know the difference between liquidity and solvency. Which doesn't mean that FTX wasn't a scam, more than thing can be true at the same tike after all.

The problem with claiming SBF doesn't know the difference between solvency and liquidity, then how come he's figured out which one he needs to claim for his legal defence. If he doesn't know the difference, he wouldn't be so deliberate about claiming one happened not the other.

Turtles all the way down. Or in this case, stupidity. He knows one is a thing bad people do and the other isn't. He believes he is not a bad person. Not-bad people don't do bad things. So obviously he couldn't have done the bad thing, because he's not a bad person.
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