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Sequoia has marked its investment in FTX down to $0
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- paulpauper 4y ago$0. That sounds about right. Wow.. I think Mr. Bankman's wealth was $100 billion in Jan 2022 according to a Fortune estimate. I wonder what would have happened had CZ not made that tweet. Hmm...makes you wonder who profited from all of this. Imagine if binance bought puts on BTC before this announcement.
- babyshake 4y agoWe probably don't have to imagine.
- senttoschool 4y agoFTX and Alameda would have gone under regardless.
- ijustwanttovote 4y agoBinance probably shorted FTT and SOL. I would’ve done the same if I wasn’t based in the USA.
- sfe22 4y agoI think they had plenty of FTT, probably just sold their instead.
- throwoutway 4y ago> not made that tweet Which tweet?
- friedman23 4y agoSo their cost basis was $150mm. What was the highest valuation FTX was marked at? I'm curious what the real change in value was for this fund.
- wmf 4y ago$32B in September.
- techsplooge 4y agoSo much FUD around this event. FTX is fine, they have a stadium and other high profile sponsorships.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- braingenious 4y agolol
- dmak 4y agoThat is too much copium.
- MrMan 4y agoThe Kroenke's will back FSB just like they backed Arteta, FTX will be top of the table this time next year remind me one year
- noirbot 4y ago"They've spent too much money to be out of money" is a really weird read of how money works.
- bowenjin 4y agoI feel had this comment been on reddit, it would have been interpreted as sarcasm and received upvotes.
- dorkwood 4y agoReally? In my experience, sarcasm doesn't fly on reddit unless you end with /s
- MandieD 4y agoNot sure if this was sarcasm, but during the transition from Dotcom Boom to Dotcom Bust, it was a bit of folk wisdom that if you saw a Dotcom rename a stadium, its shareholders best start selling and its employees best start job hunting.
- danrocks 4y agoThis piece will forever be on their site, however: [0]. [0] - https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlight/ https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlig...
- pram 4y ago>I open with a doozy: “Am I,” I ask, “talking to the world’s first trillionaire?” wow this is shameless lol
- rippercushions 4y ago> Professor Bankman-Fried is my tutor. He’s as good at explaining the principles of macroeconomics as anyone out there in the world today—and I know this for a fact because I’ve subsequently watched YouTube’s best on the same subject. But SBF teaches me Macro while simultaneously playing round after round of Storybook Brawl. This stuff is beyond parody. Dude's getting interviewed for a nauseatingly butt-kissing puff piece, and he can't tear himself away from a game targeted at literal children. (He bought the developers and proceeded to cram NFTs into it.)
- SantalBlush 4y agoAlso, this >I know this for a fact because I’ve subsequently watched YouTube’s best on the same subject should never be said about any subject, unless it's being said ironically.
- dghlsakjg 4y agoI mean, MIT, Harvard, LSE, Chicago and others have Econ course lectures on YT. You can watch lectures from lecturers that students at these institutions have trouble getting access to. Don’t be so sure that you can’t learn from the absolute best on YT.
- parineum 4y agoYouTube's best and the best that are on YouTube mean something different to me. The latter being MIT, Harvard, LSE and Chicago's best on YouTube and the former youtube.com/econonomydude.
- sawzaw 4y agoGiven Sam Bankman-Fried's relation to effective altruism, it's also interesting to read how the EA community is responding to this. For example: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tdLRvYHpfYjimwhyL/ftx-com-bought-out-by-binance https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tdLRvYHpfYjimwhyL/... https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yjGye7Q2jRG3jNfi2/ftx-will-probably-be-sold-at-a-steep-discount-this-is-bad https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yjGye7Q2jRG3jNfi2/...
- rippercushions 4y agoEh, taking venture capital and donating it all to random strangers is pretty altruistic in my book.
- senttoschool 4y agoHe took even more user funds and did the same.
- robswc 4y agoI actually talked to Sam for a bit in the "early days" and he always seemed like an OK guy. Approachable and "honest" which makes this all the worse... I kept asking "why start an exchange when you're killing it with Alameda?" and his response seemed to consistently be about wanting to make a better product and legitimize crypto... ugh, don't even know what to think now... if that was all a front. It's really odd to think because its always "some guy in the news" that gets bad press and demonized (not unjustly), never really someone you "know of." (prob a lot of ppl w/that experience hanging around HN tho, lol) It's just weird feelings but mostly just "wtf man."
- AlexandrB 4y ago> ugh, don't even know what to think now... if that was all a front. It's very easy to "get high on your own supply" and lose objectivity around what you're doing and how likely it is to succeed. This doesn't require malice either.
- vba616 4y agoFrom April of this year: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/sam-bankman-fried-described-yield-farming-and-left-matt-levine-stunned https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/sam-bankm... I don't know how to reconcile this with the comments people are making. He didn't sound like he was under illusions about what he was doing. And surely other people read/listened to this. It was pretty much laid out with a ton of foreshadowing. Near the end: "And it is sort of like real monetizable stuff in some senses. And you know, at some point if the world never decides that we are wrong about this in like a coordinated way, right? Like you're kind of the guy calling and saying, no, this thing's actually worthless, but in what sense are you right?" "And if you're like, that's dumb, it has no cashflow flow. I'm gonna short sell it. You lose all your money."
- cryptoanon 4y agoAlameda messed up in the same way that three arrows did. That’s not necessarily Sam’s fault, because he did not run Alameda at the time. However, it seems like you build them out by providing them with a ton of FTT collateral so he’s pretty much complicit.
- baidifnaoxi 4y agoFrom a linked article, a quote that basically describes the Federal Reserve >It’s almost as if SBF found a way to hack the financial system, printing billions of dollars out of thin air against which he was able to borrow massive sums from unknown counterparties. Almost as if he discovered a financial perpetual motion machine…
- iainctduncan 4y agoAm I the only who feels like these stories are the Boogie Nights of the 2020s? Unreal.
- ksec 4y agoThis makes me wonder, is Sequoia as good as they once were? Or are they now completely different?
- eurasiantiger 4y agoThe fund remains in good shape. It has a gym subscription with two hours personal training per week, and it regularly participates in marathons and Iron Man events.