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Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

nytimes.com

961–970 of 1001 posts

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#961

[flagged]

Does prison even do what society thinks it does? It definitely does not rehabilitate as rehabilitation is almost unheard of in most jails or prisons. Prison is only scary for criminals the first time they enter. Once you've been through the system going to prison a second time is a walk in the park. When I got arrested and sent to prison last year for retweeting a government tweet I walked back in the jail like I ran…

When I got arrested and sent to prison last year for retweeting a government tweet

Could you expand on that? What the complete story?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#962
post #890

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Out of interest did you make the same arguments about Martin Shkreli (arrogant and unlikable child of immigrants who did a much smaller scale scam similar to SBFs but where everyone was eventually repaid in full) and about Andrew Auernheimer (annoying and racist child of a working class single mother who performed a fairly successful hack without any personal gain) and about Brian Salcedo (working class, non-college-…

> Out of interest did you make the same arguments about Martin Shkreli (arrogant and unlikable child of immigrants who did a much smaller scale scam similar to SBFs but where everyone was eventually repaid in full)

There is more to Shkreli and his sociopathic capitalism.

Shkreli showing his real stripes:

A drug comes before the FDA for approval, and it is opened up for comment. Shkreli lodges an objection to approval of this drug.

Why? Because it's unsafe? No, trials thus far have shown it to be safer than existing drugs.

Why? Because it's less effective? No, it's also been shown to be more effective than existing drugs?

Perhaps it's more expensive? No, cost of R&D and production, and estimated retail costs are expected to be lower than existing drugs.

Huh, odd. So why did Shkreli oppose this drug getting to the market?

Because he and his company had just bought the patent to one of those 'existing drugs' recently, and this drug coming to market would torpedo demand for his drug, and torpedo the profitability of his investment in buying the patent.

Man of the people, fighting for healthcare rights, Martin Shkreli.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#963

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…

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.

It seems he was pretty convicted before deciding to appear so it probably couldn't make things much worse.

Take from Tiffany Fong who was at the trial: https://youtu.be/wpKQWJFA3aw?t=850

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#964
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…

An odd question, but: why is he like this? Even from the start, before the criminal charges, his press tour was so bizarre. Is he just a delusional narcissist who thinks he can talk his way out of anything no matter what? I feel like even very, very long into his prison sentence he's still going to try to talk your head off insisting it was all a big misunderstanding. And he's going to be denied parole because he's g…

I listened to wondery’s multi part podcast “spellcaster” about sbf.

One of the most fascinating takeaways I had from that show was the fact that he used to play the game Diplomacy with a specific strategy: he would intentionally make alliances with other players, then stab them in the back. He would do this over and over. Why nobody figured this out, I don’t know.

So when I go back and view his actions through this lens, it makes perfect sense.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#965

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.

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…

VCs often have no idea what they are actually doing and you would be surprised to learn how much just goes on vibes.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#966

I am as happy as anyone about arrogant half-smart crypto bros being called out as the frauds they are. It is still sad that a young person's life is taken away today. I don't think any type of nonviolent crime should get anyone a life sentence, especially not in a prison system as inhumane as in the US.

Revenge isn’t cool, but it did just get that much harder to become a crypto-bro-ponzi-scheming-asshole, of which SBF is the biggest x dumbest kind.

But if we’re so worried about individual lives, like SBF’s life in prison, what can we do to save the lives that he’s ruined?

Help me understand how letting SBF off the hook could be a net positive for society or how he could begin to repay his debt without indulging in similar activities.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#967

[flagged]

Sure, and we'll just trust that he'll be honest about what jobs he's doing and how much money he's earning. This is one of the lessons from the guy behind fyre festival - even whilst on bail he started another fraud . Yes it would be nice if we could put people on the naughty step when they've done something wrong, but we can't. Sam Bankman-friend is a convicted fraudster, the idea that given the chance of freedom th…

There's a lot of jobs you could give someone who's a non-violent white collar offender where the cost of monitoring would be trivial, and where society overall would be getting a better deal than paying to keep someone in a cage.

Like, send SBF to Antarctica to clean toilets for the next 10 years, or do the same at a military base, or allow them to work exclusively on oil platforms etc.

Disagreeing that this should be done is one thing, but to claim that it can't be accomplished due to logistical difficulties just shows a severe lack of imagination.

A US federal prisoner costs (according to some quick searching) ~$120/day, the minimum wage is ~$7.25. So to a first approximation you could get the guy a blue collar job paying taxes, and pay someone else to do nothing but watch him for 15 hours a day to certify that he's still doing manual labor, and still come out ahead.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#969

[flagged]

Does prison even do what society thinks it does? It definitely does not rehabilitate as rehabilitation is almost unheard of in most jails or prisons. Prison is only scary for criminals the first time they enter. Once you've been through the system going to prison a second time is a walk in the park. When I got arrested and sent to prison last year for retweeting a government tweet I walked back in the jail like I ran…

[deleted]

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#970
post #120

Interestingly, FTX made a $500 million USD investment in Anthropic; supposedly, this was made while Anthropic was valued at $4.6 billion (unconfirmed). Now, Anthropic is nearing $30 billion. Anyone know the latest on this? Is FTX going to sell that stake off to pay back the debts? [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-bankman-frieds-anthropic...

They're going through normal bankruptcy stuff and may liquidate the Anthropic stake. It looks at this point like there's likely going to be money enough to pay all creditors, which is just hilarious.

How do you know FTX only lost 3-4 billion?
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