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Was this another CEO "taking all responsibility" without any actual responsiblity/penalties? Not counting resigning.
by prh8 4y ago
Was this another CEO "taking all responsibility" without any actual responsiblity/penalties? Not counting resigning.
- Kiro 4y agoHe already lost his whole net worth overnight ($16B) and will live in hiding with serious death threats for the rest of his life. This is no ordinary CEO switcheroo where the he walks away with a slap on the wrist and a golden handshake.
- digerata 4y agoHe was running a Ponzi scheme. Don't feel sorry for him.
- Kiro 4y agoI'm not. Just saying that he won't get away with it like other CEOs have done in the past while "taking responsibility". His punishment has already begun.
- stingraycharles 4y agoWhich is what, exactly? Living in hiding?
- Kiro 4y agoYes, losing his money, reputation and freedom (whether that's in hiding or in jail). He's obviously royally screwed, regardless if he goes to jail or not, and yet people are saying he walks away from this unscathed.
- stingraycharles 4y agoTo be fair to the guy, he wasn’t afraid to admit it in some very public interviews. But yeah, don’t feel sorry.
- skeeter2020 4y ago> To be fair to the guy, he wasn’t afraid to admit it in some very public interviews. I don't think brazen criminals should get a different perspective than sneaky ones; perhaps a worse characterization because they either don't recognize what they're doing is wrong, or they simply hold society in contempt.
- jnwatson 4y agoIt wasn’t a Ponzi scheme, at least based on what’s publicly known. This is just investing with client funds, which the US learned the hard way must be carefully restricted. The US has the Glass-Steagall Act, and deposit insurance to try to prevent bank runs like this.
- jjulius 4y ago>It wasn’t a Ponzi scheme, at least based on what’s publicly known. >This is just investing with client funds... This is just plain not true.
- acdha 4y agoThe investing with client funds part is probably the easiest charge but his self-description sounds Ponzi-like: 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...
- tartoran 4y agoThis sounds like Napoleon Dynamite type of reasoning
- acdha 4y agoMe, as a kid: “the emperor’s new clothes is nonsense, nobody would go along with something that obviously wrong” Me, after watching people sell no-hope dotcoms, dubious real estate, and cryptocurrency: “… unless they thought they could cash out before the other fools wised up”
- roywiggins 4y agoThey were talking about stuff like Celsius. I don't think FTX was itself offering yield-farming products, just letting people trade those tokens. "Yeah, the stuff people trade on my platform are probably Ponzis" is definitely not great publicity, but it's not obviously admitting to your own crimes.
- hristov 4y agoI am still not convinced that he did not steal the missing FTX client funds. So at this point it is not clear to me how much he lost or gained from this. I do hope the DOJ conduct a full investigation and trace where all the money went.
- benmmurphy 4y agoI assume all those political donations bought something :)
- mywittyname 4y agoLet's hope some congresspeople were stupid enough to put their money into FTX.
- Freebytes 4y agoIf so, then he will be facing jail time. If not, then he is fine.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- wombat-man 4y agowell, they're not giving the donations back, and it doesn't look like he'll have much to give in the future. Where's their motivation?
- snapcaster 4y agoWhere there is fraud there is embezzlement
- ww520 4y agoDoes he still hold on to the billion dollar worth Robinhood shares?
- rinze 4y agoHe had $16b in Magic Dollars(TM) and he can have the same amount in the same token tomorrow if he wants, though.
- mayankkaizen 4y agoI am 100% sure he must have siphoned off some sizable part of his net worth in cash or other non-crypto assets.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoSeveral million dollars is a lot of money - but not sizable compared to $16B. If he siphoned off even 1% ($160M+)- you can bet he's going to lose it in bankruptcy proceedings.
- systemicdanna 4y ago10-20% is not $160M+, it's $1.6B+.
- meetingthrower 4y ago10% is $1.6B. Only needs 1% for $160M. .1% for $16M. Which is still generationally rich. Yeah, I think he would have taken that out right?
- sgt101 4y agoHe will have worked with some accountants and lawyers to move money into untouchable places. There will be someone employed to hold it for him, and dole it out in the future. Sure he will have to keep a low profile, but there will be resources. He will probably have dispersed quite some sums to friends and family, some of that will come back to him in one way or another. Finally, he will be able to go on the celebrity speaking circuit for quite a while...
- yawnr 4y agoLol give me a break. He will be fine and rich forever, just maybe not a billionaire. There are no real consequences when you are that wealthy.
- tasuki 4y agoNo death threats because he had money? Have you perhaps seen the extensive list of Russian billionaires who "committed suicide" during like the past five years?
- yawnr 4y agoRussia is a terrorist state oligarchy with a murderous dictator. No one is actually going to kill this guy in the US. He will obviously get threats, and then reboot with a new $500mm seed round for some new scam from Marc Andreessen in a few years. Nevermind that's Adam Neumann.
- adam_arthur 4y agoPretty likely that he has money on the side or some sort of assets that are worth a fair amount. Likely not Billions, but certainly in the Millions. Hopefully the US Gov goes after him and forces him to pay it back to creditors/customers, similar to Trevor Milton/Nikola
- skeeter2020 4y agoWhen you have a net worth of 16B it's probably pretty easy to make 10's or 100's of millions disappear.
- triceratops 4y agoOther than resigning, what more responsibility can someone take for a professional failure?
- shockeychap 4y agoIn this case, jail. He openly talked about how the whole thing was a Ponzi scheme. https://youtu.be/KZYqL79GDXU?t=1277 https://youtu.be/KZYqL79GDXU?t=1277
- gonehome 4y agoThat’s not what he’s saying in that clip. From Levine’s column yesterday: > “People on Twitter now are like “he admitted that FTX is a Ponzi!” but of course that’s not true. He conceded a certain validity to my claim that some crypto businesses — not his — are Ponzis. He is just in the business of trading their tokens. “In fact, I came away from that conversation bullish on FTX and Bankman-Fried. My view was, and is, that if you talk to a crypto exchange operator and he is like “crypto is changing the world, your old-fashioned economics are just FUD, HODL,” then that’s bad. A wild-eyed crypto true believer is not the person to operate an exchange. The person you want operating an exchange is a clear-eyed trader. You want someone whose basic attitude to financial assets is, like, “if someone wants to buy and someone wants to sell, I will put them together and collect a fee.” You want someone whose perspective is driven by markets, not ideology, who cares about risk, not futurism. A certain cynicism about the products he is trading is probably healthy.”
- shockeychap 4y agoI'm not arguing on the basis of what Levine thought of the conversation. At the very least, it's apparent that SBF sees crypto as being heavily based on speculation that's disconnected from any actual value proposition, but he's choosing to exploit and profit from those systems. And it's now apparent that he also was engaging in speculation with user funds himself via Alameda. A wild-eyed crypto believer might lose anywhere from a few thousand to a few million of their own money in poorly placed speculation. A sophisticated market-maker will facilitate the loss of billions (about $10 billion in this case) from numerous people. Which is more dangerous? A HODL who loses their savings on some speculative crypto purchase, or the next Bernie Madoff?
- shapefrog 4y agoI take full responsibility for stealing $10 billion and am stepping down as CEO, it has been a long journey from me having nothing to this point. I am sorry to those that lost some or all of your money. I will no longer take part in the company and will quietly fly away on my private jet to my $50 million home where I will contemplate my next venture.
- bogomipz 4y agoI'm not sure things will be that smooth for him. It sounds as though both DOJ and SEC are looking into this: https://ustoday.news/both-the-doj-and-sec-are-investigating-potential-criminal-activity-securities-crimes-at-ftx-a-source-says/ https://ustoday.news/both-the-doj-and-sec-are-investigating-...
- tombakt 4y agoLook at his connections, nothing of consequence will happen to him.
- bogomipz 4y agoDo you believe that Bernie Maddoff lacked connections?
- Kiro 4y agoThe context here is other CEOs stepping down after a fiasco, getting a massive severance check, saying they take "full responsibility". Compared to that SBF is massively screwed.
- wombat-man 4y agohe's bankrupt and deeply in debt. Why would his "connections" stick their necks out for him? I don't know if having a dad teaching at Stanford gives you a free pass everywhere.
- bananapub 4y ago
- nocoiner 4y agoI will bet you cash money that this is one CEO you’ll see in prison. This is like 10x as bad as anything Elizabeth Holmes did, and as far as I know, she wasn’t tweeting real time as the walls were closing in on her.
- HDThoreaun 4y agoI mean I doubt he's ever stepping foot in the US again. Dudes going into hiding and won't be seen.
- albntomat0 4y agoIs it as bad as Holmes? Theranos had patients with incorrect medical test results, which seems different in kind that a bunch of crypto investors losing a massive amount of money.