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Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

nytimes.com

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#801

Post by FFP999 »

dmoo wrote: post #616
shever73 wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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."

That’s an unfortunate attitude for a guy looking at a stretch with not a lot to pass the time…

Maybe they'll let him play LOL in prison. But I kind of doubt it.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#802

Post by thr0waw4yz »

ncallaway wrote: post #161
bo1024 wrote: post #122

Anyone know where to get good details? Specifically: do they know where the money went? If not, how did they prove intent (I assume they proved intent)? Edit: another thing I'm wondering is about jurisdiction, since most of this occurred offshore and didn't involve US customers.

If you want a good summary of each day of trial: https://www.theverge.com/authors/elizabeth-lopatto and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHD5JP6xZcE&list=PLySrw1Nvf-... If you want a really detailed overview of his testimony and cross-examination: https://www.youtube.com/@molly0xfff/streams > do they know where the money went Not all of it (at least, not for the trial). They showed significant components of it as part…

Did he have the right to say nothing at all in the cross-examination?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#803

Post by verteu »

acaloiar wrote: post #780
paulgb wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good find, but worth noting that this is accusing him of front-running when what he actually did was dumber and more criminal: using FTX customer deposits to cover losses on the Alameda side.

I imagine SBF's charges are more serious than a front-running charge. The prosecution also may not have had sufficient evidence of front-running to get the charges to stick. But any exchange in such close company with a hedge fund should always be suspected of front-running. There's an inherent conflict of interest between those two entity types. And I would be surprised if Alameda wasn't front-running FTX customers,…

> any exchange in such close company with a hedge fund should always be suspected of front-running

Indeed -- I knew several professional traders who used FTX. At the time, their consensus was:

1) "Probably Alameda has an unfair latency advantage, because they are the designated market-maker, and owned+operated by the same people who run the exchange." This could be called 'front-running' depending on how you define the term.

2) "However, SBF probably won't steal all our money because he is well-known, extraditable by USA, and would go to prison."

Needless to say, assumption 2) was incorrect.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#804

Post by josu »

rosege wrote: post #765
Ographer wrote: post #742

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_...

Shame the Youtube vid of him frontrunning has been removed.

It's still here: https://web.archive.org/web/20221113092101/https://www.youtu...

I don't really think it shows clear evidence of him front-running FTX users. He doesn't even seem to be trading on FTX.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#805

Post by mrkramer »

lubesGordi wrote: post #739

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.

Silicon valley investors always jump on hype, just remember the dot-com bubble and yea crypto was and still is very hypey although AI, LLMs and generative AI are now taking over the hype. To the next hype train we go.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#806

Post by tim333 »

meaningjoj wrote: post #716
bmitc wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The defense really had no option. Several of Bankman-Fried's previous defense teams quit on him due to his behavior. Even in this trial, during a session with just the judge, the defense made an objection to a question, the judge sustained it, but Bankman-Fried answered anyways. His own defense team asked him where had he been this entire trial because the objection was sustained, you didn't have to answer that. Bank…

This says something of culture of hubris that is so easily elevated to leadership positions in America's tech culture. It's nice to see one of these fail-bros get taken down. But two points remain. 1. Had they been able to sustain this Ponzi scheme to IPO, he would be celebrated as a tech-god, as opposed to facing hard time. 2. The VCs aren't required to disclose their sales of crypto. My guess is they made money of…

It wasn't really a ponzi. It was a legit crypto exchange apart from stealing customer funds. Here's a positive CNBC article before it went wrong https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/31/crypto-exchange-ftx-valued-a...

But yeah if he hadn't been caught, he'd be doing well now.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#807

Post by _fat_santa »

jackbravo wrote: post #761
zztop44 wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole Sequoia thing is so interesting. Here is an excerpt from their (now taken down) profile of SBF, highlighting the moment he convinced them to invest: > 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 currency to any friend anywhere in the world. You can buy a ban…

I think that idea in particular is quite good actually ^_^ I mean, I'm not imagining that they have groceries listings on the app, but that the app allows you to transfer money directly to someone from your crypto wallet. Like a venmo payment but with crypto.

> but that the app allows you to transfer money directly to someone from your crypto wallet. Like a venmo payment but with crypto.

The thing is that's not a novel concept, just about every crypto wallet app can already do this. And the achilles heel of all of these apps is the gas fees that are out of their control. The only way to conceptually get around gas fees is to keep everyones money centralized and sidestep the trading of crypto all together, but in the process you defeat the entire purpose of crypto.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#808

Post by Spivak »

cedws wrote: post #784
hoschicz wrote: post #740

[flagged]

Punishing the individual is only half of the reason we have prisons. The other half is to dissuade others from doing the same.

Surely we can do better than that, right? Like I imagine for a white-collar rich boy capping his income at $55k+inflation which includes the monetary values of gifts and any income from debt has to be pre-approved [1] would be far far more devastating, less cruel, and less drain on society. And this lasts for x years or until he pays back the damages.

[1] so he could buy a car and house but not skirt the rule by using loans against an asset portfolio to make more "income" for himself.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#809

Post by reidjs »

Ographer wrote: post #742

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_...

I’m sure there’s a Reddit thread for every cryptocurrency company and founder calling them a fraud.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#810

Post by bena »

paulgb wrote: post #751
Ographer wrote: post #742

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_...

Good find, but worth noting that this is accusing him of front-running when what he actually did was dumber and more criminal: using FTX customer deposits to cover losses on the Alameda side.

It's probably a result of not having complete information and giving benefit of the doubt.

The guy realized SBF was doing weird shit that was probably, if not straight up illegal, at least highly unethical. And front-running was the thing that made the most sense to him at the time.

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