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Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

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Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#91

Post by remarkEon »

dibt wrote: post #58
RC_ITR wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The tokens didn't suddenly drop in value. May I point you to a chart showing the price of Solana (SBF's preferred token)? Down 80% in four months is a pretty sudden drop in value. To be clear, I think the fraud started then , but that was after the damage had been done. >He has experience as a market maker and remaining delta-neutral Yeah, but market makers in unexpectedly lopsided markets lose all the time. It's t…

These were the top tokens they held in order of how they marked them on their balance sheet: FTT $5.9B SRM $5.4B SOL $2.2B MAPS $865M Found here: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/596a07c029687f... >May I point you to a chart showing the price of Solana (SBF's preferred token)? Down 80% in four months is a pretty sudden drop in value. FTT, SRM, and MAPS are the garbage tokens they claimed were worth more…

>That's when they minted more FTT.

Can you explain how exactly they did this? I want to understand, on a technical level, how they "minted" more of these tokens.

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#92

Post by Melting_Harps »

pram wrote: post #89
Melting_Harps wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that a "bank run" caused this is just silly. FTX is not a bank. Are you familiar with the adage: The easiest way to rob a bank is to own one? Here is the thing, FTX may not ave been a registered bank, but it definitely functioned as a fractional reserve bank: and in the end that is what matters most! SBF is so screwed, and a part of me makes me think he wanted to implode all along: despite being born on 3r…

Tbh I think he’s talking to this specific person because he thinks she’s hot. I’m totally serious about this lol He’s not trying to convince the world he’s not a bad guy, just her.

> Tbh I think he’s talking to this specific person because he thinks she’s hot. I’m totally serious about this lol

I didn't bother listening to it, and honestly if it is the reason it goes to show just how inept he really is considering how incriminating this all is and will be used against him; honestly, if this goes long as Theranos trial I will be extremely upset.

He and his gf at Alameda should be thrown in prison as fast as Charlie Schrem was, but because he is an insider they will make a show of it and expensive lawyers will get them short sentences in a light security jail at worst.

Hell, they should already be sitting in a cell next to Razzlekhan and her BF while being interrogated to hand over the funds while they sort all this out, that's the State's MO when it comes to these matters-- for them to sign a plea deal under duress and indefinite detainment like they have done to so many others. The fact that he is doing this podcast from the Bahamas shows the hypocrisy of the legal system entirely.

Edit: I didn't know who she was so I looked at her playlist and this came up [0], she personally got scammed for 200k on Celsius with the yield farming rugpull. I think it's just another youtuber making content trying to get more traffic/ratings: it's totally transactional for her and it seems since he has the social graces of a lamp post doesn't realize he has no chance.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3AWve7QYIQ

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#93

Post by SilverBirch »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #29

From my perspective, the problem here is no-one (including SBF) appears to know what kind of an enterprise FTX was supposed to be . Everyone seems to agree that Alameda is a hedge fund, but looking at the facts, FTX also appears to have been operated as one as well; but without the qualification of investors or others kinds of things. There's no just a really good correlate in traditional finance for "I'm going to ac…

Woah woah woah. Don't buy into the bullshit. We know exactly what FTX was meant to be. FTX US was meant to be a US based crypto exchange regulated in the US, FTX International was meant to be a Bahamas based crypto exchange with less regulation. Alameda was meant to be a hedge fund.

FTX made very clear promises about what it was - and that all customer deposits were safe, which we know is a lie because at the point SBF said that we knew the liabilities of Alameda and FTX was denominated in an imaginary currency.

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#94

Post by helloworld11 »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #76
medvezhenok wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any time someone loses value, someone else gains it (in the short term), short of destruction of physical or knowledge capital (i.e. WWII bombing raids). We mark things in dollars but real value is measured in resources, physical capital, and intangible capital (rather than USD). Unless any of that was lost, the $ value losses just re-accrue to someone else instead. This is different from imaginary value inflating an…

Incorrect. Value can be created and sent back to ether. It’s not a zero sum closed system. Let’s look at NFTs, they weren’t ever worth anything but some people thought they were, and counted them like they were, and convinced dumb people to pay for them at these prices, but it was all imaginary. The ones that never sold are just as worthless as the ones that did. The entire market collapsed, the “value” is really jus…

But no. Those NFTs never had anything but subjective bubble value to begin with and cost next to nothing to create too. The money transferred in exchange for changing ownership of them passed to other hands but didn't disappear. Its much more concrete value wasn't lost and nothing was destroyed in the process except the wispy perceived value of the digital NFT tokens that had (again) cost nothing to create in the first place.

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#95

Post by cykros »

remarkEon wrote: post #90
iudqnolq wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One theory is that it was their users. That is, Alameda lost huge amounts taking the other side of trades on FTX, and then FTX stole customer money and gave it to Alameda to compensate

Given this all happened on the "block chain", wouldn't it be possible to confirm this theory? Btw, I find this explanation compelling - I'm not challenging it necessarily.

The block chain shows the bitcoin moving from one address to another. That's about it. It doesn't say what was exchanged for it, be that USD, FTT, or any other token, good, or service.

And those addresses are potentially pseudonymous to boot, at least if the BTC is withdrawn. If it ISN'T withdrawn, it's entirely plausible that the transactions took place off chain in the first place -- simply moving numbers around in an internal database while staying right in the same, FTX owned wallet. What you'd call in the trad fi space "holding assets in street name."

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#96

Post by cykros »

trident5000 wrote: post #17
RC_ITR wrote: post #10

A very important nuance for everyone following this. SBF keeps saying there was a liquidity crisis at FTX, which is 100% not true. A liquidity crisis implies that he took deposits, flipped them into good, but illiquid investments, and ran into trouble because people asked for more cash than FTX had on hand. FTX actually had a solvency crisis, where he took deposits, put them in completely inappropriate investments (m…

I have no idea how this plays out. One question is what was in the agreement for FTX users? Can FTX use deposits for investments and to fund his other businesses? In my view the path to prison for SBF is likely to come in the form of misleading investors rather than customers, but I dont know what the pitch deck told them at the time of funding. It might not even be against the law regarding what he did to customers…

Some of that will ultimately be determined by whether or not it's against Bahamian law, rather than US law, which opens up a whole 'nother can of worms. The fact that he had over 100 companies he was operating makes this a dizzying case to speculate on the specifics of from a legality standpoint. I don't envy anyone who gets tapped for jury duty for this case.

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#97

Post by cykros »

dibt wrote: post #25
RC_ITR wrote: post #10

A very important nuance for everyone following this. SBF keeps saying there was a liquidity crisis at FTX, which is 100% not true. A liquidity crisis implies that he took deposits, flipped them into good, but illiquid investments, and ran into trouble because people asked for more cash than FTX had on hand. FTX actually had a solvency crisis, where he took deposits, put them in completely inappropriate investments (m…

> took deposits, put them in completely inappropriate investments (many of which are now worthless, all of which were speculative nonsense) I think it's naive to think this is the case. It's reasonable to assume he knows those tokens couldn't have been worth what he claims they're worth, before or after the FTX collapse. The tokens didn't suddenly drop in value. He has experience as a market maker and remaining delta…

I think it's likely he initially was using other investments that were similarly worthless, but which may not have been quite so obviously worthless to him at the time. Don't forget about the Luna/Terra debacle back in May, and the fact that he was running around buying up failing firms in the crypto space. The house of cards was already crumbling, and he was sitting on top in a panic trying to prop up the base before his pinnacle fell. The results were what we'd expect in that situation.

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#98

Post by [deleted] »

eachro wrote: post #43
memish wrote: post #19

There's another part of the interview where SBF says he donated about the same to Democrats and Republicans, contrary to the public record. https://youtu.be/6DezodR9hNI?t=775 His explanation and reasoning is that Democrat donations would be treated favorably by the media so those were done publicly, while "reporters would freak the fuck out" about Republican donations. So he made those in the dark.

I'm not sure how accurate that is: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/biggest-donor...

[deleted]

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#99

Post by strikelaserclaw »

bluelightning2k wrote: post #34

The crazy thing: he still has a very valuable brand. There's many many people like us quietly trying to bootstrap enough traction to maybe get into YC one day... But if SBF ever wants to start another company it will be another record setting a12z seed valuation. Irrelevant if he goes to jail ofc.

well all these crooks are in cahoots, he probably stole money off some people but made the "big fish" more money than they invested.

Re: Phone interview with Sam Bankman-Fried [audio]

#100

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

smcl wrote: post #38
RC_ITR wrote: post #10

A very important nuance for everyone following this. SBF keeps saying there was a liquidity crisis at FTX, which is 100% not true. A liquidity crisis implies that he took deposits, flipped them into good, but illiquid investments, and ran into trouble because people asked for more cash than FTX had on hand. FTX actually had a solvency crisis, where he took deposits, put them in completely inappropriate investments (m…

100% re the "aww shucks" thing - his only way out of this is to convince everyone he was just a naive little guy with a heart of gold who got too successful for his own good, so we're going to see a lot of this and the "I can't actually code" stuff as the final few chapters of the FTX story play out.

He said something about altruism and funded Democrats for like the entire midterm season… I mean, how can this be a bad guy?
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