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Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

nytimes.com

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#791

BTW, no more Adderall for SBF once he is "remanded to the custody of the Attorney General." Once he gets out of US Marshals' custody and is transferred to the BoP, he can kiss Adderall goodbye. Amphetamines of any kind are not allowed by the BoP, unless he is undergoing a surgical procedure which requires its use (don't know of any, but can't say there are none).

don't know why you need adderall in prison even with adhd, not like there are many responsibilities that need executive function.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#792

Sequoia invested $200M in this guy. Has anyone looked at whether SBF could've done as much damage without that investment? Has anyone looked at if Sequoia did their due diligence? Seems like Sequoia could've seen red flags just from knowing Alameda existed. The potential abuse there was completely obvious.

Baffling. When I hear SBF speak and I analyze his system all I can see is a thoroughly medicore JAG hyping up a bad product that was a spit-and-a-prayer. And yet he was raking it in...I can still remember investors and the general public being appalled at facebook being valued at 11 billion in 2008, after they'd destroyed their competition and taken over "social networking". Something changed in the collective consciousness.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#793
post #393

> You’d think this MIT graduate would wise up, but he never did. The MIT campus has a major public road running through the middle of it, one of the busiest surface streets in the area. You don't have to stand there very long to see a crowd of students almost get hit by a car because they didn't look before they crossed the street. Point is, the old cliche is true, there really is such a thing as a person with a lot…

> there really is such a thing as a person with a lot of book-learning but less common sense than a sea slug I don't even think SBF had the book-learning, just intellectual arrogance. "I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that. I think, if you wrote a book, you f---ed up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post."

This is true for many non-fiction and business books. :-)

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair SBF convicted himself on a platter. Only he knows what made him think he'd get away by facing trial. Maybe he was just dumb, overconfident, ill-advised, or a combination of everything.

He is one of those people who think they can talk their way out of everything. Everything is not only negotiable, but the only possible "truth" is what they are saying right now (yesterday's "truth"? "You're remembering that incorrectly - I never said that!" ). I hated working for people like that, and I'd feel like I needed to take a shower after every meeting. If you only encounter them occasionally, a normal perso…

Gaslighting is a such a great phrase. It's a very specific kind of cognitive dissonance that is so common in the workplace. I find the worst gaslighters are "leaders" who surreptitiously change their stance on something without communicating why. Over time everyone under them just loses the motivation to do more than the bare minimum because they don't know if the goal will match the leader's requests.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#795
post #622

I liked the article detailing how poorly he did on the stand: https://www.thefp.com/p/humiliating-cross-examination-sam-ba... “Did you say in private, ‘Fuck regulators?’ ” “Did you call some customers ‘dumb motherfuckers?’ ” “Did you fly to the Super Bowl in a private plane?” “Most FTX customers did not have a line of credit, correct?” “Do you deny that Alameda had a $65 billion line of credit?” And on, and on, and o…

>just as often, he chose to dance around the question, to quibble about the phrasing, or say that he couldn’t remember the details. And every time he did that—every single time Which is exactly what representatives from Facebook, Google and Microsoft did on trials and when being questioned by congress

> Which is exactly what representatives from Facebook, Google and Microsoft did on trials and when being questioned by congress

Personal criminal trials hinge quite a bit more on "is the defendant personally likeable/credible" than a civil trial involving a multinational corporation.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the AUSA's performance here was not particularly impressive. Yes, they constructed an airtight case, but to do that, they handed out immunity deals like candy to all of SBF's co-conspirators. Sure, they got their guy, but it almost looks like they wanted to craft a narrative that puts all of the blame on him. Because of that, several other huge fraudsters here (eg Carol…

I agree, didn't they admit they knew what they were doing? They should all do the same amount of time.

Speaking as a victim, this seems to have been basically Sam's doing. Fair enough his underlings didn't shop him but that's a lesser offence.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#797

So what’s the final outcome? A long prison sentence or a few years hanging out on appeal followed by a few years in a low security federal penitentiary and a long career doing speaking engagements and appearances? Holmes got 9 years, but her actions had severe real world effects on people. Is that the ceiling for SBF?

I'm guessing he will get a bigger number, maybe even 30-50. But considering SBF and his personality, he doesn't seem like the guy that would ruffle too many feathers with prison officials and will most likely be released in half the time on account of good behavior.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#798

I was reading the trial report by Inner City Press. The AUSAs were incredibly thorough and strategic. The evidences were air-tight, the cross-examination was masterfully controlled with precision and incisiveness, and of course the closing argument was forceful. It was a great joy to read the report, as if I was watching an extended episode of The Good Fight. On the other hand, the defense was really weak, quite hand…

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the AUSA's performance here was not particularly impressive. Yes, they constructed an airtight case, but to do that, they handed out immunity deals like candy to all of SBF's co-conspirators. Sure, they got their guy, but it almost looks like they wanted to craft a narrative that puts all of the blame on him. Because of that, several other huge fraudsters here (eg Carol…

had similar POV but changing my mind after talking with someone this AM

their POV is that this is net good for society. outcome we want = no crime

how to deter? 1/ big punishment for main actor 2/ get complicit actors to cooperate

and so by giving plea deals the gov shows that cooperation can save you

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#799

A reddit post called out SBF as a fraud 2 years ago and no one on the Bitcoin subreddit believed them! https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/p1oqqu/the_ceo_of_...

This is actually one of the reasons why the FTX collapse came as a surprise for most crypto insiders. Everyone assumed that Alameda Research (the trading arm of FTX) was printing money, alas it was losing billions. Sam Trabuco, co-founder of Alameda, who has been surprisingly absent from any trial, was instrumental in creating this illusion of success for Alameda.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#800

A reddit post called out SBF as a fraud 2 years ago and no one on the Bitcoin subreddit believed them! https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/p1oqqu/the_ceo_of_...

In crypto community everybody is calling everybody a fraud. Probably because in the early days of the Bitcoin and the altcoins, the industry was largely unregulated with a lot of scams going around. But nowadays, governments seem to be catching up.
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