3 ms·

The FTX disaster was not due to incompetence nor ignorance but to fraud.

• dragonwriter 4y ago
  I think SBF’s public and, AFAICT, honest belief in expected value optimization without regard to risk played a fairly central role in every step of the fraud, and that it constitutes a very specific form of incompetence.
  • olalonde 4y ago
    That's an extremely charitable interpretation of the events, in my opinion. Misappropriating custodial funds is not ever acceptable when you are running an exchange, no matter how good your EV looks like. And I'm not buying into his whole effective altruism thing. What I think is that SBF had a strong desire to make money, ethics be damned, but had a troubled conscience. Effective altruism gave him moral comfort and helped him rationalize his actions.
    • dragonwriter 4y ago
      > That's an extremely charitable interpretation of the events, in my opinion. Only because you seem to be reading into it a positive moral judgement that I did not, in any way, express. > Misappropriating custodial funds is not ever acceptable when you are running an exchange, no matter how good your EV looks like. I didn’t say it was. > And I'm not buying into his whole effective altruism thing. SBF doesn’t just advocate that method of decision-making in the context of EA, he advocates fairly consistently for financial and other decision-making.
      • olalonde 4y ago
        It seems I read too much in your comment. I can agree with labeling his method of decision-making as incompetent but I believe what happened at FTX goes beyond that and I just hope he doesn't get away with it by playing that card.