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It's incredible that SBF was being touted by Sequoia, WEF, Fortune, chumming it up with Clinton and Blair in the Bahamas, getting meetings and kid glove treatme

• zozbot234 4y ago
  Wait, wasn't the NYT supposed to take a very critical look at everything in "tech", as a matter of editorial policy? Why were they giving such a glowing (no pun intended!) endorsement of crypto, of all things? Something doesn't add up here.
  • settrans 4y ago
    In case you're not being facetious, Sam was the single second largest donor to the Democratic Party.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • Marazan 4y ago
      To Democratic Primary races. To get the pro-crypto candidate over.
      • headsoup 4y ago
        What a lovely democratic process it is, candidates weighing up which industry interest has done the best job at wooing them. SBF is another reminder of how far down the list of priorities integrity actually sits (not that he succeeded here, but that he's in good company in the approach).
        • WeylandYutani 4y ago
          And one of the great innovations of crypto is sending untraceable money to corrupt politicians. The Chinese banned it. Unfortunately Americans genuinely believe they are above corruption.
          • MichaelCollins 4y ago
            The average America has little personal experience with corruption. I wouldn't dare even suggest to a cop that he take a bribe to make my speeding ticket go away, while in many other countries that sort of low-grade corruption is standard. I think this experience leads many Americans to falsely believe that America is generally free of corruption, which of course isn't true in the higher rungs of society. Rich people in America commonly bribe politicians, universities, etc. It's a whole different game for them, they play by a different set of rules that most Americans have never been exposed to. (I think it works this way across the anglosphere, not just America. The average Briton can't bribe the average British cop, but their royals/etc certainly pay to make crimes go away.)
    • HWR_14 4y ago
      He donated in the primaries. He told the democrats he would donate again in the general, but didn't. Like a month ago there was articles like "Where is the $100MM Sam promised the Democrats, he's donated nothing in the general"
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • twright 4y ago
    I think crypto aligned itself more with finance in the last year or two. E.g. Super Bowl ads, big bank partnerships and that may influence how a company is covered. The culmination of this was Roose’s “Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto” which was generally uncritical.
  • doorman2 4y ago
    Crypto doesn't pose an existential threat to the NYT business model like social media and search do. I.e. The NYT is in the advertising business. Google, Facebook, et al are direct competitors.
    • HWR_14 4y ago
      > The NYT is in the advertising business. Google, Facebook, et al are direct competitors. The NYT is in the "providing content to lure people to advertisers" business. They don't sell ads to third parties. They could be very symbiotic with Google, for example. If Google was searching their content, bringing readers in, and supplying ads. But, instead, Google scrapes their content and helps people never visit their site at all.
      • doorman2 4y ago
        > The NYT is in the "providing content to lure people to advertisers" business. What does that mean? The NYT sells ads, i.e. you can pay the NYT to have your advertisement shown in the NYT. Google sells ads, i.e. you can pay Google to have your advertisement shown in Google results. The NYT and Google sell the same thing. They are competitors.
        • HWR_14 4y ago
          The NYT's business model is to sell their customer's eyeballs to advertisers. While Google does that with search results, they have a big arm that sells random third party eyeballs to advertisers, and then splits the money with the site supplying the eyes. I would characterize the first of Google's businesses and the NYT business as "providing content" and the second as "advertising". In fact, the NYT outsources their ads to Amazon's advertising business.
          • doorman2 4y ago
            Google's first party platforms (Search and YouTube) account for 85% of ad revenue [0]. Search alone accounts for 72%. I'm not really sure how AdSense is relevant to the discussion. Google is clearly a huge competitor to the NYT. [0]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204422000029/goog-20220331.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204422...
  • jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    SBF likely hired a PR firm that pitched the story to a writer they're friendly with.
  • MichaelCollins 4y ago
    Perhaps that default-critical stance is just how they thought to solicit "donations" from the industry.
  • rideontime 4y ago
    Yeah, a lot of us have questions that Kevin Roose won't answer.
  • headsoup 4y ago
    The dollars add up, every time.
    • hef19898 4y ago
      Not for Wirecard, or FTX.
  • jmull 4y ago
    ...NYT...Why were they giving such a glowing (no pun intended!) endorsement of crypto I don't think they did. To check my memory, I clicked on to the "Cryptocurrency" keyword to see the crypto-related stories going back. It's mostly reporting news (which is mainly bad) and skepticism. Is the next crypto narrative is going to be "why didn't the media save us?" I guess it makes about as much sense as all the previous crypto narratives.
    • _jal 4y ago
      "The lamestream media, whom I never listen to, failed to warn me!" Anyone else remember those folks who suddenly realized climate change was actually happening and immediately started whining about how the media failed to tell them? People failing to think critically about how media works while simultaneously whining about how the media works will never cease to amuse me. It is almost exactly like taking a bus to the end of the line and then yelling at the driver for taking you there.
  • burkaman 4y ago
    Did you read it? I would not call it glowing at all, it seems pretty matter of fact and actually somewhat negative if you read between the lines. Opening with an anecdote about some scripted banter with Anthony Scaramucci (not a name that NYT readers have any good associations with), and then: > The laughter has faded. Over the last few days, the collapse of a so-called stablecoin called TerraUSD has sent the crypto market into meltdown, accelerating a dramatic sell-off that tanked the price of Bitcoin and Ether, the two most valuable cryptocurrencies. At Baha Mar, Mr. Bankman-Fried was throwing a giant party for the industry; this past week, he was attempting to restore calm, tweeting long threads about the state of the market. Then discussing how his awkward, unkempt appearance is actually calculated and intentional. And look at the final paragraph: > Outside, the convention center was emptying, as hundreds of crypto enthusiasts headed for the airport. It was the calm before the coming meltdown. To leave the resort, guests had to walk through the Baha Mar casino, the largest in the Caribbean, a brightly lit hall of flashing slot machines. The whole thing is framed around this guy hanging out with celebrities and lobbying government officials while his market crashes. Reading it for the first time 6 months after it was written, I think it holds up as an accurate profile with a bit of foreshadowing of what was to come.
• bitcharmer 4y ago
  Also, this is Alameda's CEO. https://youtu.be/aW6SqLXw944 https://youtu.be/aW6SqLXw944 Un fucking believable.
  • mariusio 4y ago
    Already gone, do you have a mirror?
    • bitcharmer 4y ago
      Here you are: https://youtube.com/shorts/BVjZsLafkz8?feature=share https://youtube.com/shorts/BVjZsLafkz8?feature=share
      • gruez 4y ago
        I don't get it. What's supposed to be outrageous/"Un fucking believable" about that video? I watched the video once, and checking the transcript, the things she said were: 1. "yeah absolutely could pull it off without my math degree I use very little math" - given that her position is a CEO (ie. leadership), it seems plausible that she doesn't use her math degree in the day to day. Also, the clip has zero context as to what the question actually was. 2. "being comfortable with risk is very important" - Would you rather have a hedge fund CEO that's not comfortable with risk? 3. "we tend not to have things like stop losses I think those aren't necessarily great risk management tool" - ...which is true. Stop losses are basically market orders that get placed when the price drops below a certain amount. It's true that they can stop losses, but it could also lead you to sell at the bottom and at the worst price. 4. "trying to think of a good example of a trade where I've lost a ton of money um well I don't know I probably don't want to go into specifics too much with" - This is one of these questions where you need to have a prepared answer for, because answering it any any honest/unprepared way would make you look bad. The closest real life example would be something "what is your greatest weakness" or "what was the biggest fuck up in your last job". Obviously she didn't have one prepared, hence the response.
        • nullc 4y ago
• AlexandrB 4y ago
  With every crypto collapse there seems to be an associated failure by the media to do any real digging. The same thing happened with Theranos where, with a few exceptions, the media fawned over Elizabeth Holmes. It's hard to tell if the media has gotten worse at their jobs or they've always been this bad and I'm just getting older. There are plenty of earlier scams and bubbles (Enron, dot-com bubble) that slipped under the radar until thing went to shit, so I suspect the latter.
  • brookst 4y ago
    “The media” is mostly just a bunch of 20-40 year olds with liberal arts bachelors degrees, trying to make ends meet and feed their families. Serious investigative reporters with the smarts and experience to dive deep were always the exception, maybe a handful in the world at any given time. So IMO, “they’ve always been this bad” is the answer, but it’s not entirely fair. Kind of like saying the cooks at McDonald’s have always been this bad; in fact it has never been their job to do world-class work.
    • MichaelCollins 4y ago
      > “The media” is mostly just a bunch of 20-40 year olds with liberal arts bachelors degrees, trying to make ends meet and feed their families. Sounds like the "Yuppie Nuremberg Defense" from Thank You For Smoking, in which a tobacco lobbyist excuses himself by saying he has a mortgage to pay.
      • hotpotamus 4y ago
        I'd rather get paid like a tobacco lobbyist (or a FAANG developer) than a journalist. Our society has clearly shown us what it values.
      • mikeyouse 4y ago
        So the onus on reporters to ferret out fraud has the same moral weight as tobacco lobbyists? Except they make $35k/year, get fired every 6 months as their newsrooms undergo layoffs due to lack of clicks, and get sued for investigating anyone powerful enough to matter? Can't imagine why more people don't sign up for that.
• hash07e 4y ago
  • hef19898 4y ago
    What anti-semtism are talking about?
• Mistletoe 4y ago
  The funny thing is Michael Lewis (Moneyball, Flash Boys, The Big Short) has been following Sam around for the last six months. He just got an incredible ending to his book.
  • bmitc 4y ago
    Is there more to this? As in, he was actually in the Bahamas documenting things and Sam? This was not a red flag to anyone at FTX or involved with FTX?
    • Mistletoe 4y ago
      No he was writing a book about SBF before all this went down. Probably about how awesome he was. Although you could be right and I’m sure he had some hunches it was all a mess after digging deeper. Then he got an incredible M. Night Shyamalan twist at the end. SBF and crew were probably basking in their own genius too much to realize how most Michael Lewis books end up. They probably thought they were more Moneyball than The Big Short.
      • bmitc 4y ago
        It will be interesting to see/read what comes out his investigations and research. It's almost a certainty that a dark comedy drama will come out of this ala Don't Look Up and The Big Short.
  • nytesky 4y ago
    Was Moneyball Jonah Hills first big role? Now he will take a star turn as Michael Lewis’s SBF.
    • mikeyouse 4y ago
      Superbad did like 50% more at the box office than Moneyball.
• lzooz 4y ago
  Sam Bankman-Fried donated $40M to the Democratic Party, making him the second-biggest donor of the party.
  • pjc50 4y ago
    Like most political donors, he gave to both sides. https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2022/11/11/checks--imbalances-sam-bankman-frieds-political-donations-how-billionaires-fared-in-the-elections/?sh=3e8130fa3433 https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2022/11/11/checks--... " The $69 million spent by Bankman-Fried and his deputies on the 2022 midterms likely would’ve done little to plug FTX’s reported financial hole, but it couldn’t have hurt. Bankman-Fried told Forbes last month that “in the end, I care about policy more than politics,” adding that “my giving has been bipartisan, and my goal is to help support great policy makers.” Bankman-Fried has supported Republicans during this cycle, primarily through his $2 million contribution to the blockchain and cryptocurrency-focused GMI super PAC. But the bulk of his giving, including $27 million to the Protect Our Future super PAC and $6 million to the House Majority super PAC, has gone to support Democrats. Bankman-Fried told Forbes last month that “much of this was for primaries, rather than D vs R general elections” ($33 million of his contributions were made during the first four months of 2022.) "
    • hunterb123 4y ago
      $67 million (D) vs $2 million (R) is significant. It also depends who it was given to.
    • yonaguska 4y ago
      I'd be interested to know exactly which primaries he donated to. The two sides are not Democrat/Republican, it should be finally obvious to everyone else after these midterms that the sides are actually Trump Republicans vs Democrats+GOP.
      • pjc50 4y ago
        Eh, all political parties have significant internal factionalism which isn't very well reported. That's why the US has primaries. It's just remarkable how well coalition discipline holds within the Republican party - any Republican will back any other Republican, at least in public. It seems SBF was backing/bribing pro-crypto candidates.
• xorcist 4y ago
  VCs buys anything they think they can unload on PE, funds, or even retail later down the line. It's not specific to crypto. Theranos was a similar fraud, and so was WeWork. They can make a public spiel about how they were deceived as long as they want, but to anyone following them at the time it was obvious they were going in with their eyes open. Whether the product works or not is simply not their top priority when making an investment. edit: I'd like to point out to the people who clearly disagree with the above that the dude running this scheme from Bahamas was openly taking drugs and playing videogames in meetings with investors. It's even mentioned in the VC material. Yet they did shower him with money. Please do tell what kind of due diligence could possibly miss the warning flags that maybe this company wasn't completely honest?
• jgalt212 4y ago
  Clinton and Blair are old. I'm starting to think this is no different from a scammer extracting a credit card number over the phone from your formerly astute great aunt.
• user3939382 4y ago
  To say this as gently as I can, do you really think people like Blair or the Clintons are the good guys? HSBC teaches us that the US govt happily approves of financial crime as long as it's large and they get their cut: https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2013/investing-news-for-jan-29-hsbcs-money-laundering-scandal-hbc-scbff-ing-cs-rbs0129.aspx https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2013/investing-n... Madoff's mistake was probably not sharing with the right people, and that the optics were a bridge too far.
• winternett 4y ago
  Jack from Twitter pumped crypto and NFTs heavily as well. It was likely a coordinate plot that will never result in punishment, but regardless, the money is gone. Many were warned that it was fraudulent early though... A whole lot of people lost their money based on pure willful ignorance, and that can't be given a pass either.
• ekianjo 4y ago
  > a "do-gooder" by the NYT. sbf was giving tons of cash to the democratic party so NYT cant find anything bad to say about him
  • COGlory 4y ago
    I'll have you know he donated to both sides: He also gave $5,800 to 6 different left-leaning Republicans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2021/10/21/the-worlds-richest-crypto-billionaire-who-donated-to-biden-is-now-giving-to-republican-senators/?sh=833ea7c3f5db https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2021/10/21/the-w...
    • TacticalCoder 4y ago
      that's not much compared to the $40 millions he gave to the democrats...
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • mikeyouse 4y ago
        The Co-CEO at FTX gave $24M to Republicans - seems more in line for 'both sides' since Republicans don't currently control any levers of government. https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/donor_detail/2022?id=U0000004758&type=I&super_only=N&name=Salame%2C+Ryan+D.+%26+Susan https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/donor_detail/20...
        • TornTongues 4y ago
          The Co-CEO in question, Ryan Salam, launched the American Dream Federal Action PAC to support "forward-looking conservative leaders who understand the urgency of advancing smart policies that set America up for success" He supported his girlfriend, Michelle Bond [2], who ran as a Republican (she lost) for New York's 1st Congressional District [3]. She served as Senior Council at the SEC during the Obama administration [4]. Local party officials accused Bond of being a "double agent backed by Dem money": > Ryan Salame, the live-in boyfriend of Michelle Bond and co-CEO of FTX, has rallied his crypto-billions behind his girlfriend’s Congressional campaign. Some local voters have claimed this is a shameful attempt to “purchase” the election. > As one of Bond’s most prominent financial supporters, Salame has become a familiar face on the campaign trail. He totes closely behind, posing in photographs while shaking the hands of Long Island Republicans and keeping his close association with Democrat mega-donor Samuel Bankman-Fried silent. This has led some to allege "@rsalame7926’s political contributions were made to offset the massive Democrat donations from @SBF_FTX and to spark the illusion that there was a balance of political donations coming from @FTX_Official" [6] [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/11/new-crypto-pac-launches-00024364 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/11/new-crypto-pac-laun... [2] https://twitter.com/michellebond111 https://twitter.com/michellebond111 [3] https://ballotpedia.org/Michelle_Bond https://ballotpedia.org/Michelle_Bond [4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbrett/2020/10/30/meet-michelle-bondthe-new-power-lobbyist-for-crypto-on-wall-street/?sh=34edb21860e6 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbrett/2020/10/30/meet-mich... [5] https://messengerpapers.com/2022/08/soros-successor-looking-to-take-zeldins-seat/ https://messengerpapers.com/2022/08/soros-successor-looking-... [6] https://twitter.com/JagoeCapital/status/1591466731448442881 https://twitter.com/JagoeCapital/status/1591466731448442881
• TacticalCoder 4y ago
  > It's incredible that SBF was being touted by Sequoia, WEF, Fortune, chumming it up with Clinton and Blair in the Bahamas, getting meetings and kid glove treatment with the SEC, relatively glowing profile as a "do-gooder" by the NYT. That's the real story here. I transcribed a discussion between Chamath Palihapitiya and Brian Armstrong and others talking about this. Here's what he was saying about all these people who've been very blind and didn't do any due diligence: "I just want to say the second uncomfortable thing out loud which is there are a lot of venture firms in SV in this period of both not doing any work or due diligence who also took the extra step and actually created classes and teached teams how to create these tokens. And those artifacts --those video links and artifacts-- are sometimes on their website, they're still on YouTube, they're inside of Twitter, and what these folds would do when we talked about this, the game that they played was they would get a team they would create a token, they would also buy equity at a crazy valuation, the equity was locked up but the tokens were not, and then they would put them on an exchange and sell them to unsuspecting people and they would be able to dump these tokens and if you look inside that trend those were the trend of "securities" instead it was done in an unregulated way. They're going to start to look at a bunch of other tokens and token sales and you're going to end up looking at some very well known venture firms in silicon valley. That token is not the only token that's been engineered by SV firms and it is also no the only token that's going to zero that's been engineered by SV venture firms site. There's videos (still) today on some of the most well-known Venture firm sites on how to do this. They're instructing people how to do this. It's what they did. but I really also hope they figure out these other tokens as well ... ... and you will see these are unregulated securities that were sold by our brethren..." It is, to me, about much more than "cryptocurrencies are scam". Many in SV are deep into this. There are officials and ex- officials implicated too. People have been dumping worthless tokens created by the tens or hundreds on people all the while the media were presenting SBF as an altruistic trustable white knight. That's the real story here. Complete with SBF being the biggest or second biggest donor to Biden's campain for presidency though a fund which SBF's mom (a lawyer and teacher at Stanford) was running. And SBF's father, also a lawyer and teacher at Stanford, recorded explaining how he's helping FTX with charity and regulations. > Crypto turned into a haven for replaying every form of financial fraud ever invented on an epic speedrun against retail "investors", and a whole lot of powerful people and institutions have dirty hands. The idea all of this could be adequately explained by stupidity rather than malice strains credulity. Exactly. I'm glad some at least this for what it actually is. Thankfully some people warned and described the very scam SBF was pulling the day FTX launched (in 2018 ?). Before that several had already noticed Alameda Research was behind crypto market manipulation and pump and dumps of shitcoins. The signs were all out there and nobody looked.
• indymike 4y ago
  > Crypto turned into a haven for replaying every form of financial fraud ever invented on an epic speedrun against retail "investors" Best description of all that is wrong with crypto. It's a human problem, not a tech problem.
• Balgair 4y ago
  Looking on the bright side: This whole crypto failure is going to act as a bit of an 'innoculant' for any relaxation of financial laws. If anything, it should lightly strengthen support for further financial regulation of Wall Street and the like. All responses to any loosening up of the banks can reasonably be countered with 'Yeah, but look at what happened with Crypto.' So I guess that's at least something.
• that_guy_iain 4y ago
  > Crypto turned into a haven for replaying every form of financial fraud ever invented on an epic speedrun against retail "investors", and a whole lot of powerful people and institutions have dirty hands. The idea all of this could be adequately explained by stupidity rather than malice strains credulity. This was clear years ago. That is why I've been avoiding crypto like the plague.
• georgeecollins 4y ago
  The question is, did the VCs get tokens along with their investments? They may have already made money from selling them before the collapse while giving a sheen of respectability to FTX. That would make sense because then they wouldn't need to do any diligence.