5 ms·

Bankman-Fried survived the slump and still expanded

23 points by lxm 4y ago

s5300 4y ago
“Billionaire” & “survived” together is apparently our current state of media & wealth worship.
- latchkey 4y ago
  He's not just some get rich crypto lambo dude... https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/8/8/23150496/effective-altruism-sam-bankman-fried-dustin-moskovitz-billionaire-philanthropy-crytocurrency https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/8/8/23150496/effecti... https://fortune.com/2022/06/01/crypto-billionaire-sam-bankman-fried-give-away-his-fortune/ https://fortune.com/2022/06/01/crypto-billionaire-sam-bankma...
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  - vba616 4y ago
    I agree with this sentence, but I wasn't thinking of whatever philanthropy he may be up to. From what I read, the reason Bankman-Fried is not an ordinary crypto dude is because he's a quant educated in cutthroat conventional finance who sees crypto as a huge green-field opportunity without being hypnotized by it. Bankman-Fried should team up with Milton Friedman's grandson, Patri Friedman, and start the "Bankman-Fried Friedman Bank".
  - yunohn 4y ago
    These are definitely PR pieces (there’s even disclaimers), and SBF’s “Effective Altruism” is a limited scope sham aimed at lobbying his own interests. I don’t see any real charitable actions, just lots of influence-purchasing.
    - anonymoushn 4y ago
      Are his donations so far to pandemic-related causes and his future fund shams? https://decrypt.co/94045/ftx-1-billion-philanthropic-future-fund-improve-humanity https://decrypt.co/94045/ftx-1-billion-philanthropic-future-...
      - yunohn 4y ago
        The article you linked and my further research suggests it’s really vague where the money is actually going. I mean, he’s spending 1B$ on crypto lobbying - https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-08-12/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-political-donations https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-08-12/sam-bankma...
        comp_throw7 4y ago
        Here's a list of almost every single grant that the Future Fund has made: https://ftxfuturefund.org/our-grants/ https://ftxfuturefund.org/our-grants/ Doesn't seem terribly vague to me.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- missedthecue 4y ago
  ... They're talking about his crypto company FTX, not the the literal human being called Bankman-Fried. And owning x% of a crypto company isn't a very solid hedge against a crypto slump, so not sure what him being a billionaire has to do with it.
kareemsabri 4y ago
According to this[1] when you dig into these deals the "savior of crypto" thing is mostly spin. This submission seems like a PR piece for SBF / FTX. 1. https://protos.com/heres-why-sam-bankman-fried-is-not-the-jp-morgan-of-crypto/ https://protos.com/heres-why-sam-bankman-fried-is-not-the-jp...
- xiphias2 4y ago
  Of course he did do it for profit, but still saved those companies and life of lots of people. Giving credit lines and improving risk management was crucial and Celsius leadership prefered destroying many peoples life over giving up control.
  - anonymoushn 4y ago
    For sure. If I was an investor in a ponzi scheme, I would prefer a ponzi scheme that accepted a bailout from SBF rather than a ponzi scheme that continued paying executives millions of dollars of my money while those executives temporarily remain outside of prison and the company is in bankruptcy.
  - cuteboy19 4y ago
    Grave misunderstanding. It was not because of "hoarding control" that celsius collapsed. No amount of giving up control can change the fact that it was a late stage ponzi running on borrowed time. You could extend that time but it would only cause further suffering by dragging even more people into that black hole
    - xiphias2 4y ago
      I don’t think it’s that simple. I got a loan against my Bitcoin at Blockfi last year, added more Bitcoins as collateral as price went down, and paying 13% interest rate. Another person can loan USD for 5-10% interest rate and Blockfi can manage payment timelines and put away money, just like a non-fractional bank would (for example the Norwegian thin bank). The problem usually comes from the company loaning out my collateral. I would much prefer using a company that doesn’t loan out my BTC (but keeps it in a multisig wallet), but the best company that does this is US only.
CPLX 4y ago
Do these journalists do exhaustive forensic accounting of all these guys holdings? It's one thing to talk about how rich you are when you like founded Google and still own Google and there's some consensus on what Google is worth. But these kind of guys I feel like whatever numbers they're throwing around could be off by several orders of magnitude and it's not clear really how any of the people talking about it would be able to tell the difference.
- bushbaba 4y ago
  Well you see I created poopcoin, issued 100 coins. I own 10 and I sold 1 to my mum for $1000. (Then paid my mum 999$ back ssh) so I’m worth 10k.
- anonymoushn 4y ago
  FTX recently raised at a 32bn valuation
- junofan 4y ago
  It’s pretty easy to show tax forms from transactions for an exchange like this.
robswc 4y ago
I remember talking with SBF, telling him it was insane to start an exchange with %-based fees, I thought "who would take such a hit on their risk:reward ratio!" Crypto traders are something else though, lol.
- smabie 4y ago
  Tradfi has % based fees too tho?
- hackerlight 4y ago
  Aren't the fees of all crypto exchanges based on % of notional? As are most tradfi exchanges?
  - robswc 4y ago
    They are. IIRC the fees at FTX were higher than Bitmex though, which had the lowest fees. I figured it would be hard to convince people to swap exchanges with higher fees but I was obviously way off.
- anonymoushn 4y ago
  FTX has similar fees to other crypto exchanges. lit venues in US equities also charge percentage-based fees.
  - robswc 4y ago
    Sure, but looking at the fee schedule... https://help.ftx.us/hc/en-us/articles/360043579273-Fees https://help.ftx.us/hc/en-us/articles/360043579273-Fees Starting out, you're still looking at paying a ton of money in fees just to put on bets. I could do the calculations but I'm on mobile... essentially though, you would have to just do exceptionally well, for an exceptionally long time to make any sort of profit without some "unethical edge" which I just see as not being worthwhile. I run a trading firm and even at the best crypto fee tiers, those fees will absolutely destroy your risk to reward because you start the position down significantly if your targets are less than 1%. If you're a "swing trader" the fees aren't all too bad I guess... but at the end of the day, for equities, most brokers you're looking at only around $30-50 to trade $2 million, regardless of your targets or entry. $2 million even at the highest tier you're paying multiples of that. It's the taker fees that are brutal.
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
I can see FTX growing to challenge the dominance of Binance. They definitely have the resources to do so, although Binance have been very innovative in expanding their business.

23 points by lxm 4y ago

s5300 4y ago

“Billionaire” & “survived” together is apparently our current state of media & wealth worship.

latchkey 4y ago
He's not just some get rich crypto lambo dude... https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/8/8/23150496/effective-altruism-sam-bankman-fried-dustin-moskovitz-billionaire-philanthropy-crytocurrency https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/8/8/23150496/effecti... https://fortune.com/2022/06/01/crypto-billionaire-sam-bankman-fried-give-away-his-fortune/ https://fortune.com/2022/06/01/crypto-billionaire-sam-bankma...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- vba616 4y ago
  I agree with this sentence, but I wasn't thinking of whatever philanthropy he may be up to. From what I read, the reason Bankman-Fried is not an ordinary crypto dude is because he's a quant educated in cutthroat conventional finance who sees crypto as a huge green-field opportunity without being hypnotized by it. Bankman-Fried should team up with Milton Friedman's grandson, Patri Friedman, and start the "Bankman-Fried Friedman Bank".
- yunohn 4y ago
  These are definitely PR pieces (there’s even disclaimers), and SBF’s “Effective Altruism” is a limited scope sham aimed at lobbying his own interests. I don’t see any real charitable actions, just lots of influence-purchasing.
  - anonymoushn 4y ago
    Are his donations so far to pandemic-related causes and his future fund shams? https://decrypt.co/94045/ftx-1-billion-philanthropic-future-fund-improve-humanity https://decrypt.co/94045/ftx-1-billion-philanthropic-future-...
    - yunohn 4y ago
      The article you linked and my further research suggests it’s really vague where the money is actually going. I mean, he’s spending 1B$ on crypto lobbying - https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-08-12/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-political-donations https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-08-12/sam-bankma...
      - comp_throw7 4y ago
        Here's a list of almost every single grant that the Future Fund has made: https://ftxfuturefund.org/our-grants/ https://ftxfuturefund.org/our-grants/ Doesn't seem terribly vague to me.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
missedthecue 4y ago
... They're talking about his crypto company FTX, not the the literal human being called Bankman-Fried. And owning x% of a crypto company isn't a very solid hedge against a crypto slump, so not sure what him being a billionaire has to do with it.

kareemsabri 4y ago

According to this[1] when you dig into these deals the "savior of crypto" thing is mostly spin. This submission seems like a PR piece for SBF / FTX. 1. https://protos.com/heres-why-sam-bankman-fried-is-not-the-jp-morgan-of-crypto/ https://protos.com/heres-why-sam-bankman-fried-is-not-the-jp...

xiphias2 4y ago
Of course he did do it for profit, but still saved those companies and life of lots of people. Giving credit lines and improving risk management was crucial and Celsius leadership prefered destroying many peoples life over giving up control.
- anonymoushn 4y ago
  For sure. If I was an investor in a ponzi scheme, I would prefer a ponzi scheme that accepted a bailout from SBF rather than a ponzi scheme that continued paying executives millions of dollars of my money while those executives temporarily remain outside of prison and the company is in bankruptcy.
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  Grave misunderstanding. It was not because of "hoarding control" that celsius collapsed. No amount of giving up control can change the fact that it was a late stage ponzi running on borrowed time. You could extend that time but it would only cause further suffering by dragging even more people into that black hole
  - xiphias2 4y ago
    I don’t think it’s that simple. I got a loan against my Bitcoin at Blockfi last year, added more Bitcoins as collateral as price went down, and paying 13% interest rate. Another person can loan USD for 5-10% interest rate and Blockfi can manage payment timelines and put away money, just like a non-fractional bank would (for example the Norwegian thin bank). The problem usually comes from the company loaning out my collateral. I would much prefer using a company that doesn’t loan out my BTC (but keeps it in a multisig wallet), but the best company that does this is US only.

CPLX 4y ago

Do these journalists do exhaustive forensic accounting of all these guys holdings? It's one thing to talk about how rich you are when you like founded Google and still own Google and there's some consensus on what Google is worth. But these kind of guys I feel like whatever numbers they're throwing around could be off by several orders of magnitude and it's not clear really how any of the people talking about it would be able to tell the difference.

bushbaba 4y ago
Well you see I created poopcoin, issued 100 coins. I own 10 and I sold 1 to my mum for $1000. (Then paid my mum 999$ back ssh) so I’m worth 10k.
anonymoushn 4y ago
FTX recently raised at a 32bn valuation
junofan 4y ago
It’s pretty easy to show tax forms from transactions for an exchange like this.

robswc 4y ago

I remember talking with SBF, telling him it was insane to start an exchange with %-based fees, I thought "who would take such a hit on their risk:reward ratio!" Crypto traders are something else though, lol.

smabie 4y ago
Tradfi has % based fees too tho?
hackerlight 4y ago
Aren't the fees of all crypto exchanges based on % of notional? As are most tradfi exchanges?
- robswc 4y ago
  They are. IIRC the fees at FTX were higher than Bitmex though, which had the lowest fees. I figured it would be hard to convince people to swap exchanges with higher fees but I was obviously way off.
anonymoushn 4y ago
FTX has similar fees to other crypto exchanges. lit venues in US equities also charge percentage-based fees.
- robswc 4y ago
  Sure, but looking at the fee schedule... https://help.ftx.us/hc/en-us/articles/360043579273-Fees https://help.ftx.us/hc/en-us/articles/360043579273-Fees Starting out, you're still looking at paying a ton of money in fees just to put on bets. I could do the calculations but I'm on mobile... essentially though, you would have to just do exceptionally well, for an exceptionally long time to make any sort of profit without some "unethical edge" which I just see as not being worthwhile. I run a trading firm and even at the best crypto fee tiers, those fees will absolutely destroy your risk to reward because you start the position down significantly if your targets are less than 1%. If you're a "swing trader" the fees aren't all too bad I guess... but at the end of the day, for equities, most brokers you're looking at only around $30-50 to trade $2 million, regardless of your targets or entry. $2 million even at the highest tier you're paying multiples of that. It's the taker fees that are brutal.

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

I can see FTX growing to challenge the dominance of Binance. They definitely have the resources to do so, although Binance have been very innovative in expanding their business.