"Some have wondered why Wang chose such a seemingly arbitrary number as $65,355,999,994"
int((2^16 - 180) * 999999.9999 + 1) = 65,355,999,994
FTX – The fraud was in the code
41–50 of 101 posts
Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code
#42Off-topic:
The "listen to the article" feature on this blog post ... is it using an AI voice trained specifically on the author's real voice? Or is it a real recording by any chance?
Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I honestly feel Sequoia should be held partially responsible for funding and marketing such a blatant criminal enterprise. I'm a little tired of these venture capitalists claiming all innonence when they should have a burden of responsibility. They want all the upsides and none of the downsides to throwing millions at people.
>They want all the upsides and none of the downsides to throwing millions at people. I see what you're getting at, but this is a bit of a silly statement. The obvious downside of "throwing millions at people" is that you lose millions of dollars.
It's not a right to have a guaranteed return on an investment. It isn't silly at all. They literally only want a single downside (losing their initial investment), absolving themselves of all responsibility for their investments while retaining maximum return in the event such a return on investment happens. They will also do everything they can, a la various modes of propaganda, to manipulate avoiding that single downside as well.
The startup culture that has fetishized making it big at all costs (move fast and break things) has lead to customer (and non-customer) deaths amongst several other massive failures. The investors should have some responsibility and accountability assigned. Right now, they have zero.
Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code
#44Pretty insane that Sam Bankman-Fried decided to plead not-guilty. And it's interesting that their defense is an implication that a witness is committing perjury for a lighter sentence without any evidence backing it up. And just what in the world were any of these people thinking? Sam Bankman-Fried isn't remotely charismatic, so I just don't understand why people would follow his demands and actively participate in s…
Perjury* Sam is highly charismatic, especially when all you want to hear is that you send 2000$ and will receive 100k$ if only you listen to him and use his product. He's part of the mumbo jumbo guru crowd. I'm a programmer in finance: I understand nothing when SBF talks, it's like complete random BS, totally different from the traders I work with who would use complex concepts but with always a visible thread: utili…
> I'm a programmer in finance: I understand nothing when SBF talks, it's like complete random BS, totally different from the traders I work with who would use complex concepts but with always a visible thread: utility -> transformation adding value -> profit, with SBF it's all so fuzzy and unclear, it's like he pretends to talk like we're idiots to hide the fact he's the idiot who forgot that you need to sacrifice potential upside for downside insurance...
It appears that there is a sizable audience who will hear that and conclude he's a subject matter super genius and that you're a total idiot.
Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also funny to me that they just use Github and Google docs. It seems like if you were committing massive fraud, you'd want to avoid leaving permanent records of it on someone else's systems. But I think this is generational thing. If you grew up when web browsers were already prevalent, a "text file on your hard drive" probably means almost nothing. It's just not the way you use computers. I also like this bit f…
I mean, the reason the fraud looks so brazen now is because they were obviously true believers - they never expected to get caught . If crypto had gone up and up and up forever as intended, the fraud would never have been discovered. Of course, the other possibility is that at least having this amount of visible paper trail was intentional - the CTO probably had a little voice in the back of his head going "Umm, mayb…
> If crypto had gone up and up and up forever as intended, the fraud would never have been discovered.
I'm not sure of that. When you need an account's credit limit set to $65 billion because the account (Alameda Research) kept hitting the credit limit, something is seriously, seriously wrong irrespective of the state of crypto. It seems like they were inevitably going to fail hard. FTX was literally allowing Alameda Research to trade with make believe money.
Some of the major traditional brokers will just up and close your account permanently if you abuse, even within their already strict rulesets, their margin accounts.
Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code
#46This is besides the point, but is this actually valid Python? if not account.allow_negative: if (balance.available_ignoring_collateral if ignore_collateral else balance.available) Not sure what's going on inside that second if statement.
I think it is? I don't have much python experience, but I think that inner expression is equivalent to
ignore_collateral ? balance.available_ignoring_collateral : balance.available
Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code
#47This is besides the point, but is this actually valid Python? if not account.allow_negative: if (balance.available_ignoring_collateral if ignore_collateral else balance.available) Not sure what's going on inside that second if statement.
Python's (T if C else F) is most languages' (C ? T : F)
Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also funny to me that they just use Github and Google docs. It seems like if you were committing massive fraud, you'd want to avoid leaving permanent records of it on someone else's systems. But I think this is generational thing. If you grew up when web browsers were already prevalent, a "text file on your hard drive" probably means almost nothing. It's just not the way you use computers. I also like this bit f…
> It seems like if you were committing massive fraud, you'd want to avoid leaving permanent records of it on someone else's systems. Yes, I had to give my professional opinion on why some healthcare software here was breached so I asked the company to deliver the source: this software is written from begin 2022. They don’t use any normal (git, cvs, sourcesafe etc) versioning system; just zip files with dates in them.…
Actually yeah, this would allow the Dan Ariely defense.
He said he got a spreadsheet from a company, and also insisted he didn't doctor the spreadsheet. But he also admits he was the only person who handled the spreadsheet (presumably to not through his collaborators under the bus).
He simply says he doesn't know how to reconcile those facts -- that's "your problem" if you want to prove him guilty.
But since there's no version control, there's no smoking gun. His defense is basically "I don't know what happened but I'm innocent"
And plausibly some of the FTX defendants could have tried this, had they not left permanent records all over the place.
They could have worked with zip files with no provenance :-P
After all, the burden of proof is on the prosecution.
(though of course I'm glad they did leave records, and wish Ariely would have)
Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code
#49This is besides the point, but is this actually valid Python? if not account.allow_negative: if (balance.available_ignoring_collateral if ignore_collateral else balance.available) Not sure what's going on inside that second if statement.
I think it is? I don't have much python experience, but I think that inner expression is equivalent to ignore_collateral ? balance.available_ignoring_collateral : balance.available Personally I would agree that it would be clearer if the syntax was more differentiated between a conditional expression and a statement.
Yes, that's Python's ternary.
https://docs.python.org/3/reference/expressions.html#conditi...
Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code
#50Pretty insane that Sam Bankman-Fried decided to plead not-guilty. And it's interesting that their defense is an implication that a witness is committing perjury for a lighter sentence without any evidence backing it up. And just what in the world were any of these people thinking? Sam Bankman-Fried isn't remotely charismatic, so I just don't understand why people would follow his demands and actively participate in s…
> Pretty insane that Sam Bankman-Fried decided to plead not-guilty. Would easily bet that was his decision. He's obviously made insanely stupid choices already, like leaking Caroline Ellison's journal and getting his bail revoked. I'm sure he was counseled against it, but his lawyers were probably like "well, he wants to swing the bat, and we get paid more if it goes to trial anyway."
>> Pretty insane that Sam Bankman-Fried decided to plead not-guilty.
>Would easily bet that was his decision.
That's a tautology. His decision to plead not-guilty is literally his decision.