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The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

justice.gov

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Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#511

Post by SoftTalker »

andirk wrote: post #434
Macha wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Various legal systems have standards for the form for which documents should be submitted to them which are surprisingly nitpicky in terms of items like fonts and spacing. Of course, these standards were created when typewriters were the dominant use case, so had deference to what typewriters could actually do. Even though most of the typewriter use has fallen out of fashion, the standards remain, with the results th…

There's definitely a fax machine at some point in this document's journey.

Scanner probably, to capture the signatures and the clerk's stamp on the front page.

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#512

Post by hervature »

bogwog wrote: post #493
sam345 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just enjoying their humiliation and reputation hit. Enjoying only so much as it is the correct free market result of betting big without [edited] due diligence. Some of it is result of fed priming the economy with free money. With so much money being dropped from the helicopter there's no time for due diligence. You win some you lose some so in that sense it was a rational bet I guess but not an intelligent one.

On the one hand, sure, but on the other hand, this was literally a case of fraud. A fraudulent business is going to go out of its way to hide the fact that it's committing fraud.

You do know that due diligence involves going over financial records correct? I imagine they didn't look at anything given the sheet SBF was shopping during the collapse.

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#513

Post by skissane »

andirk wrote: post #432
naniwaduni wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most systems don't have a Y10k issue: year numbers are variable-width already. Forcing a fixed-width 5-digit representation is creating a Y100k issue.

Never made sense how any software would consider the year value as _two characters_ when an integer works far better. There's even a 0 epoch date for crying out loud.

Possibly, the origins of the practice predates computers entirely, and goes back to their predecessors in business data processing, unit record equipment. As such, it may be like many other traditions - made complete sense when it was invented, yet people still clung to it long after it ceased to do so.

Unit record equipment generally didn’t use binary integers, instead using BCD; and most early business-oriented computers followed their example. Binary integers were mainly found on scientific machines (along with floating point), until the mid-1960s, when the hard division between business computing and scientific computing faded away, and general purpose architectures, equally capable of commerce and science, began to flourish.

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#514

Post by nradov »

kjellsbells wrote: post #473
humanizersequel wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don’t see how you respect Sequoia’s judgement after this. Me neither, sounds like that's the reckoning.

Helpfully, sequoia list who they are investing in, e.g. https://www.sequoiacap.com/our-companies/?_categories=fintec... or https://www.sequoiacap.com/our-companies/?_categories=crypto And of course you should all enjoy this while you can: https://www.sequoiacap.com/companies/ftx/

It's hilarious how they describe the problem at FTX as a "liquidity crunch”. Liquidity was the least of their issues. What a bunch of clowns.

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#515

Post by voganmother42 »

breck wrote: post #494
TacticalCoder wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. He's a pathological liar. There's probably great incriminating evidence there (as in lies that can be exposed as lies for not a word of that person can be trusted) and it's good to see him whine that his accounts got blocked but it's not a good read. The six counts of conspiracy are a great read though. I wonder who his co-conspirators are but in case they're in the Bahamas those implicated may not be sle…

Quoted post unavailable.

Curious why you believe sbf has earned the benefit of the doubt?

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#516

Post by coffeebeqn »

panarky wrote: post #449
coffeebeqn wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was also a lot of paper wealth. You can get back your FTT tokens but they’re completely worthless

This is a distraction. Billions of dollars and euros went into a black box. Then some magic beans invented out of thin air came out of the black box. Now when we open the black box, the billions of dollars and euros are gone. FTT tokens doesn't explain where the fiat went.

Yes the real dollars went somewhere. I would guess the majority of them were lost from poor trades by Alameda. Combine that with the fact that a lot of those real dollars were converted in to Crypto schemes which are now down 90%. And their insane spend on houses and politics and who knows what else. I’m waiting anxiously to see what the truth is once we get some real data

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#517

Post by sam345 »

bogwog wrote: post #493
sam345 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just enjoying their humiliation and reputation hit. Enjoying only so much as it is the correct free market result of betting big without [edited] due diligence. Some of it is result of fed priming the economy with free money. With so much money being dropped from the helicopter there's no time for due diligence. You win some you lose some so in that sense it was a rational bet I guess but not an intelligent one.

On the one hand, sure, but on the other hand, this was literally a case of fraud. A fraudulent business is going to go out of its way to hide the fact that it's committing fraud.

I agree that fraud trumps due diligence. You can do your diligence all you want but a fraudster can thing of a million ways to hide the truth, offer up forged/faked documents, etc. But due diligence is just that - you check out at least what is properly due - do they keep books, are they properly audited, do they have a proper board of directors, etc. It's evident Sequoia did none of that. SBF's balance sheet at the time this all thing went down was a spreadsheet that looked like it was made by a kid with no financial training which it was. Their corporate and financial controls were so lacking its insane that anyone gave them money. But Sequoia did and did so with what appears to be no substantive due diligence, other than being swept up by SBF saying exactly what they wanted to hear.

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#518

Post by me_again »

smeej wrote: post #438

When do you think we'll start seeing the politicians who received SBF's illegal campaign finance contributions insisting on returning them to FTX customers so as to be above suspicion or reproach?

Already started: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/11/29/beto-orourke-sam-ban... . Though I somehow doubt everyone will follow suit.

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#519

Post by dlkf »

jacquesm wrote: post #482
massysett wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is opportunity cost. People invested in Madoff to grow their money. So if I invest $100 in Madoff and ten years later they say “we recovered $90, congrats,” yeah that’s better than nothing. But if I had put that into a legitimate investment, maybe I’d have $180. Other folks got money out of Madoff during his scam years, and the trustee says “I’m taking that money back to pay back others.” So much of crypt…

> But if I had put that into a legitimate investment, maybe I’d have $180. Or maybe zero. Investing is a casino unless you are very closely supervising your investments and have a thorough understanding of the underlying market dynamics. So better do your homework if you want to see some or all of your money back, preferably with a premium.

Yeah, you have to be a real genius to make money buying the sp500.

Re: The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]

#520

Post by coffeebeqn »

jacquesm wrote: post #478
joeblubaugh wrote: post #455

Is there going to be any reckoning for the VCs who poured money into this ridiculous business? I don’t see how you respect Sequoia’s judgement after this.

> I don’t see how you respect Sequoia’s judgement after this. Same for a16z, Softbank and all the others that jumped on the crypto bandwagon without doing their jobs as board members and during the run-up to the deal and after investing. Ironically, the VCs will position themselves as the victims.

Did anyone respect SoftBank even before this? Their claim to fame was the botched WeWork money hole and a few other insanely overpriced rounds on unscalable/unprofitable(even in theory) businesses.
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