Timing of his arrest is a bit suspicious. Tomorrow SBF is supposed to testify before Congress [0] and his arrest by Bahamian authorities is a perfect way to make sure that the testimony will not happen. Coincidence...?
SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities
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Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities
#802Timing of his arrest is a bit suspicious. Tomorrow SBF is supposed to testify before Congress [0] and his arrest by Bahamian authorities is a perfect way to make sure that the testimony will not happen. Coincidence...? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33957542
Or, the call for congressional testimony made sure they knew where he was.
Or even more likely: the committee had no idea what the executive was doing.
Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities
#803Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's clear Caroline Ellison has turned against him. Stephanie Avakian, former SEC enforcement chief, is representing her in NY. I'm guessing they wouldn't have been able to file charges this quickly without Caroline becoming a cooperating witness.
I remember there was a picture of her in a NYC Starbucks in the past week. Someone predicted she had made a deal with DA and SBF would be indicted soon. Now it appears the prediction was spot on.
There aren't too many variables here to work with. One of the predictions is bound to be "spot on."
Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities
#804Earlier quoted context omitted.
This article reports on: - commingling of funds between Alameda and FTX - conflicts of interest between the two, including SBF's relationship with the CEO - use of customer deposits to pay off loans for Alameda - that FTX and SBF are under investigation
It uses the same tone that SBF uses when characterizing the situation as a complicate mixup instead of what it really is, deliberate fraud using customer funds to increase leverage. If you want to compare tone, you can look up any NYT article on FB https://www.nytimes.com/topic/company/facebook-inc . If you want something specific to compare, just take a look at the headline/subtitle which about as far as most people…
You're streching now from puff piece to "tone".
Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities
#805Earlier quoted context omitted.
John J. Ray III is a star. The board did right to hire him for the clean-up. I am sure he is cooperating closely with US and Bahamian authorities for criminal evidence gathering. And, he is being paid ~2.6M USD annualised (1,300 USD per hour, 2,000+ hours per year). Seems cheap to clean-up that mess. It might take 5-10 years for full clean-up and wind-down. As the mess is so extensive, I wonder if some board members…
FTX's Board of Directors actually consisted of just one person: the controlling shareholder, Mr. Bankman-Fried
The last press release I could find is here: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ftx-us-derivatives-...
FTX US had (at least) nine board members. FTX International (non-US entity) was private, as I understand, and essentially unregulated, so who cares about the board.
Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities
#806Earlier quoted context omitted.
Madoff's scam was so baffling because his contributions to finance before that were legendary. He practically invented modern market making but his firm and others following in his footstep were wiped out by HFTs.
Madoff practically invented modern market-making? Do you have a citation for that? I’ve certainly never heard that claim before.
https://news.fintechnexus.com/payment-for-order-flow-bernie-...
Is one of many articles on the topic. I had an old textbook (maybe 2003) textbook on markets and trading that had a sidebar that lionized him but almost everything on the web is colored by his scam.
Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities
#807Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the charges include manipulating the prices of TerraUSD and Luna earlier in the year - that ironically probably caused the FTX implosion, it's hard how to see Caroline Ellison as head of Alameda wasn't heavily involved in major criminal activities. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/business/ftx-sbf-crypto-m... Getting one of two culpable people to testify against the other and let them off the hook seems a dreadf…
I suspect she may be leveraging political connections.
It's possible - but politicians don't stick their neck out very far for past donations, it's the prospect of future donations which is important.
If you've just got wiped out financially? Unless they can expect donations from your allies, or from your peers in industry who are eager to see you released, they can just stop returning your calls.
Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities
#808His parents are law professors, themselves with hundreds of millions they must have gained from their son's activities. We know that they have at least 10s of millions of dollars in real estate to their names. The probabilty that it's hubris, stupidity or privilege (all suggested in these comments) causing these interviews is less close to 1 than the probability it's a tactic to portray himself as a distracted lunati…
> hubris, stupidity or privilege Narcissism, there's a lot of that going around these days.
People are too quick to attribute personality traits they're speculating on, when there are simpler explanations. When tens or hundreds of millions of dollars are at play, when a family of career and academic attorneys are involved, it seems simpler to see rational reasons for his behaviors.
Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities
#809Earlier quoted context omitted.
She is also VERY well connected to the SEC. It wouldn't surprise me if they gave her a sweetheart deal.
I know her parents would have been colleagues of SEC Chair Gary Gensler when he was still at MIT, that's a large faculty though. Is there evidence that they were more than just colleagues though?
They were known to be friends while they both worked at MIT, and both were economics professors in the same sub-field, which makes it very unlikely that they didn't speak to each other.
I just learned that people have been theorizing on the internet that Caroline Ellison is Gary Gensler's daughter, which is completely nuts and totally false.
Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities
#810Earlier quoted context omitted.
There isn't. Loony conspiracies need to be banned here.
The theory of six degrees of separation states that everything and everyone are no more than six steps away from being introduced to anyone. That may have been revised down to 3 from 6...
That number is 2. Ellison's dad was known to be friendly with Gensler when they were on the faculty in MIT's economics department together.