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Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too

#71

Post by clpm4j »

_bqrf wrote: post #68
clpm4j wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still crickets from the Sequoia partners (Alfred Lin, Michelle Bailhe) who backed and hyped FTX and SBF.

Not silence. Sequoia posted a letter declaring that their FTX investment is $0 and that this is not a notable fraction of their portfolio. FTX may have been a theoretically sound investment for Sequoia because many venture investments are marked to $0, and FTX got to huge-or-zero much faster than any other investment. A company that slowly goes to $0 is equally bad but worse for time-value. What hurts my brain is tha…

Yeah I saw that, but I meant directly from Alfred or Michelle (both had been vocal advocates on Twitter prior to this blowup).

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too

#72

Post by holyharvey »

giantdude wrote: post #54

not again... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33549059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33672924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33573636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33543718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33527047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33568141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33554271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33551288 Maybe enough with this. Hacker _News_,…

No post body was provided.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too

#73

Post by mkhpalm »

davidgerard wrote: post #27

Whenever you hear of a VC's "due diligence", remember this.

I keep telling people you don't drop hundreds of millions on something without glancing at a few numbers first. They had to know something wasn't quite right but infused him with their cash anyways.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too

#74

Post by [deleted] »

650 wrote: post #3

>Bailhe remembers it the same way: “We had a great meeting with Sam, but the last question, which I remember Alfred asking, was, ‘So, everything you’re building is great, but what is your long-term vision for FTX?’” >That’s when SBF told Sequoia about the so-called super-app: “I want FTX to be a place where you can do anything you want with your next dollar. You can buy bitcoin. You can send money in whatever currenc…

[deleted]

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too

#75

Post by randal_handle »

PM_me_your_math wrote: post #40

I've learned from this article that altruism means stealing billions to prop up your girlfriend's company. Thanks SBF!

It's not her company. He owns most of the company and she was just the CEO. He was giving money to himself.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too

#76

Post by Animats »

650 wrote: post #3

>Bailhe remembers it the same way: “We had a great meeting with Sam, but the last question, which I remember Alfred asking, was, ‘So, everything you’re building is great, but what is your long-term vision for FTX?’” >That’s when SBF told Sequoia about the so-called super-app: “I want FTX to be a place where you can do anything you want with your next dollar. You can buy bitcoin. You can send money in whatever currenc…

I'm amazed at that reaction from Sequoia. He was basically saying "I want to build Tencent's WeChat app." Except that WeChat does more.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too

#77

Post by civilized »

I've been wondering about this for years. If VCs make thousands of bets, knowing that most of them won't work out but a tiny number will be huge and more than make up for it.... won't people eventually learn how to game this system and hoover up the money for 99.9999999% or 100% useless purposes, instead of just 99%?

Or, the world will simply run out of trillion dollar ideas for the VCs to make their money back on, and eventually your 1% of good investments don't cover the 99% of shit anymore, and you have to improve your due diligence, and become more of an ordinary investor?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too

#78

Post by vba616 »

hotpotamus wrote: post #33
s28l wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Against better judgement (and advice of counsel, presumably), this guy is still running his mouth to the media. If you had a disgraced former crypto CEO who was still willing to speak at your finance conference, wouldn't you keep him on the docket? I certainly would.

Matt Levine says he's a fan, and that makes sense to me - Levine was pretty well respected as a journalist before he interviewed Fried, but it probably gave him a huge bump in interest when he did and even more now.

>but it probably gave him a huge bump in interest when he did and even more now

Nobody listened to or remembered the interview until a couple of people pointed out how prophetic it was with hindsight.

Levine found SBF pleasant to talk to and he's amused by financial chicanery.

At the time he said it sounded like a Ponzi, and SBF agreed, but after FTX blew up, it turned out to be so much more.

They didn't have an accounting department. Reporting makes it sound like they didn't even know what real accounting is. SBF was quoted as rejecting the concept of books. As Levine wrote more recently, their alleged balance sheet was mostly "magic beans" and cobwebs. None of this was part of the interview.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too

#79

Post by enraged_camel »

holyharvey wrote: post #72
giantdude wrote: post #54

not again... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33549059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33672924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33573636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33543718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33527047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33568141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33554271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33551288 Maybe enough with this. Hacker _News_,…

Quoted post unavailable.

I’ve been here for the past ten years, and not much has changed, including people who complain that things are just not the same.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too

#80

Post by gruez »

karpierz wrote: post #53
fedeb95 wrote: post #36

Effective altruism is just nonsense. Giving money "away" is so vague that it's obviously tax discounts. Away to whom? Will give money blindly really help solving problems or keeps them alive? A lot of questions pop up.

It is nonsense, but I don't think this is the right critique. EA is very focused on answering "where should money go". EA is notably less interested in answering "where should money come from" and "what impact does the manner in which I earn money have".

>EA is notably less interested in answering "where should money come from" and "what impact does the manner in which I earn money have".

Says who?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earning_to_give#Earning_to_giv...

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