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FTX – The fraud was in the code

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Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code

#51

Post by r0ckarong »

bmitc wrote: post #5

Pretty 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…

There is nothing more enticing than the smell of money. You don't need charisma. You need the air of "get you rich". That's it.

Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code

#52

Post by kristofferg »

dilyevsky wrote: post #19
bmitc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally never found him charismatic at all, even before all of this got exposed. He has always seemed like a tweaker who thought himself smarter than he is, which is exactly what he turned out to be. I honestly struggle to understand how anyone would listen to him for any length of time.

What if he paid you to listen? You know, hypothetically speaking

Asking for a friend?

Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code

#53

Post by injeolmi_love »

smt88 wrote: post #37
injeolmi_love wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The position is visible to regulators via code - if the code is fraudulent or buggy, the regulators will believe false information.

Financial audits of public firms are not done through code. They're done by CPAs who copy files and generally run everything through generic Microsoft applications that aren't going to commit fraud for a bank.

At least at the firms I’ve worked with, new records were digitized and old files were undergoing digitization. Maybe it’s different in your country?

There’s always some process a firm must use to make digital records available to an auditor - it’s at this point in the step code must be trusted even if it’s supposed to be as simple as “make everything available “.

Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code

#54

Post by tomatocracy »

bmitc wrote: post #40
fallingknife wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside of throwing millions of dollars at someone is losing those millions, which they did. You are basically suggesting that a fraud victim should be punished more than the money they lost because they were too stupid to see the fraud.

It's a bit strong to call Sequoia "fraud victims". They were at a minimum incompetent and at a maximum intentionally misleading to other investors. You shouldn't write an article like this ( https://archive.ph/GQkCp ) unless you have done your research. Did they do literally any due diligence prior to leading a massive investment round? Just because they stand to lose millions doesn't excuse their responsibility and…

Isn't it a bigger indictment of the "follower" investors who did no due diligence of their own because Sequoia was investing? Why would anyone trust their money with these investors instead of investing with Sequoia if that's all they do?

Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code

#55

Post by RockRobotRock »

albert_e wrote: post #42

Off-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?

You can google and listen to her giving talks. It's clearly her real voice.

Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code

#56

Post by rich_sasha »

zinekeller wrote: post #32
shrimpx wrote: post #27

Was the exchange actually running on Python? Or was Python used for less intensive stuff?

Python usage != incompetent financial institution. 1) even before the speedups done now on CPython, PyPy has always existed (and NumPy was HW-accelerated) and more importantly 2) It has a native arbitrary-precision decimal type. Even other languages seriously used in financial institutions like OCaml ( https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ocaml-needs-an-arbitrary-precisi... ) doesn't even provide it natively.

OCaml is used by Jane Street but no one else in this space (certainly no major player). Jane Street are a successful and respectable company but no giant, by any standard. If anything, I'd say their fame for using OCaml is greater than their fame as a trading firm.

The benchmark would need to be Java or C++, which are the mainstay of the industry.

Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code

#57

Post by EdwardDiego »

lindq181 wrote: post #13
Centigonal wrote: post #4

The code snippet where they generated the FTX backstop fund's "current balance" displayed on the website by multiplying the exchange's daily trading volume by a random normal number is NUTS! This was the supposed crypto wonder-platform!

As someone relatively involved in the crypto space the past few years, no one saw FTX as anything to be proud of. It was a centralized exchange, basically a web2 company that handled crypto. Only the TradFi VCs (the Mr. Wonderfuls of the world) spouted rhetoric like that. The engineers building out the chain ecosystems & protocols on top of it never thought much of it other than another place to trade with orderbooks…

Really curious why you'd make this distinction?

> web2 company

Are web3 companies less fraudulent?

Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code

#58

Post by raverbashing »

anonzzzies wrote: post #30
chubot wrote: post #25

Earlier 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.…

Typical

And of course this is the "quality software" that is charged an arm and a leg for

Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code

#59

Post by EdwardDiego »

russellbeattie wrote: post #35

This 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 ternary.

Re: FTX – The fraud was in the code

#60

Post by raverbashing »

bmitc wrote: post #15
jhobag wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sequoia led their one of their rounds, everyone assumed sequoia did enough due diligence, everyone goes in and fills the round; it's assumed its a trustworthy platform for retail

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.

Yeah try talking with a VC while you play videogames and see where it leads you

But since it was the "wonder kid of crypto" (read, very well connected person) it was a reason for praise

Yes please explain me how he really merited that

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