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I like how OP opens smugly by calling the NYT article a fluff piece, then proceeds to immediately cite anonymous Twitter anecdotes as better sources. He's righ
by gillesjacobs 4y ago
I like how OP opens smugly by calling the NYT article a fluff piece, then proceeds to immediately cite anonymous Twitter anecdotes as better sources.
He's right about the specific NYT article not including much pertinent information, but they're a serious journalistic publication and have verification standards for sources.
- wikfwikf 4y agoBut the author makes it very clear in the second par "our claims only remain tentative at best". Isn't it much more useful to write something which actually tries to answer the question of what happened, albeit with appropriate caveats, than something which doesn't advance the understanding of the reader at all?
- TotoHorner 4y agoThe New York Times piece is even worse, since it paints a misleading picture of SBF and his cronies losing all the money accidentally rather than malice (far more likely).
- nl 4y agoActually it's almost the opposite. This piece speculates very strongly about SBF's stimulant usage degradating his cognitive abilities. Eg: > If the above observations about SBF’s personality and competence are even half true, that would go a great deal toward explaining Alameda’s losses. The entire article goes into much further depth. But it doesn't even speculate about malice.
- blitzar 4y ago"their systems became unprofitable" - "Alameda & FTX jointly continued to lose large amounts of money" - "uncompetitive market-making strategies, risky lending practices" - "erratic behavior and unprofitable gambling". > losing all the money accidentally rather than malice (far more likely) They sound an awful lot like trading / accidental losses than malice to me.
- oldgradstudent 4y agoAlameda was a hedge fund. It could lose all of its money and it would be totally fine. The moment they touched customer funds it became fraud and theft. This was not accidental. Losing it in trading might have been, but it was trading with stolen funds.
- nl 4y agoI agree with that. I don't think this was malice though - just extreme stupidity (and hopefully criminal). I think they thought they could trade their way out of it. That's different to malice which goes to motivations.
- anonymoushn 4y agoAlameda just non-maliciously gave their own account special privileges on their own exchange, non-maliciously front-ran customer orders, non-maliciously traded on material nonpublic information (their own exchange listings), non-maliciously used their ownership of their exchange to strike trades that caused them $400mm of losses in one of their multiple KCG-style algorithmic meltdowns, non-maliciously stole billions of dollars from their exchange's customers, non-maliciously lied about Bahamas residents being senior to all other creditors so they could withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars again, non-maliciously "hacked" their exchange wallets to steal additional hundreds of millions of dollars from their creditors, and non-maliciously prematurely unlocked hundreds of millions of dollars of FTT and sent it to binance to dump.
- oldgradstudent 4y agoAll with the best of intentions. For the greater good of humanity. The most effective altruism.
- nl 4y agoYes to be clear I agree. I'm saying the article doesn't claim malice.
- 4y ago
- andromeduck 4y agoThe guy is Bronxe 2/3 in league - there's nothing to degrade.
- rkagerer 4y agoThere's so much rampant speculation in this article... for me it lost a degree of credibility around the point he fixated on the drug aspect. Despite all the disclaimers. Yes, it paints one picture of how the losses could have added up, but I'm looking forward to more exhaustively investigated reports grounded in more than heresay and gossip.
- andromeduck 4y agoWe have photographic evidence. What more do you need? This isn't a criminal court.
- HDThoreaun 4y agoThat picture could've been literally anything as far as I could tell
- andromeduck 4y agohttps://twitter.com/autismcapital/status/1592237980458323969?s=46&t=lKiusoeb_7UDuTzsThNEjg https://twitter.com/autismcapital/status/1592237980458323969...
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoCompletely unrealistic. You'll never find rampant drug abuse in the financial industry. Certainly not on Wall St.
- williamcotton 4y agoIs it more fun to read and talk about the story if it covers existing tropes about rampant drug abuse in the financial industry or more fun to read and talk the story without those tropes? Is it more fun if the shared story has a clear villain or more fun if the shared story has a diffusive, complex relationship between good and bad between not only the characters but also the readers?
- anonymoushn 4y ago
- naijaboiler 4y agodespite being tentative, I would guess its the best explanation of what happened. Their handing out margins, and market-making approach with Alameda left them potentially liable to losing lots of money really fast.
- why_only_15 4y agothe anonymous Twitter anecdotes are clearly far better than what the NYT people can come up with because Twitter is where all of these people spend their time.
- dereg 4y ago> they're a serious journalistic publication and have verification standards for sources It goes both ways. It seems like they didn't do much verification of Sam's claims.
- TotoHorner 4y ago> He's right about the specific NYT article not including much pertinent information, but they're a serious journalistic publication and have verification standards for sources. Ok? Regardless, this piece does a significantly better job than the NY Times and the "serious journalistic publication". The times articles actually misleads readers into thinking that the FTX downfall was moreso from bad timing & outside attacks then from SBF fraudulently stealing user funds. > immediately cite anonymous Twitter anecdotes as better sources The Twitter accounts directly quoted have many followers and a long history of tweets that are easily searchable. If you're referring to the Autism Capital tweet, that's a tweet of a photograph which you can look at yourself. It's clearly a stimulant that says EMSAM on it. Name the specific tweets in the piece that you find incredulous rather than an ad hominem.
- renewiltord 4y agoInteresting, this displays a classic problem with the NYT: they end up searching for their lost keys under the streetlamp since that's where the light is. If they report on an organization that has $1 million in verified assets, but the organization is suspected to have $999 million in assets and $2 billion in liabilities, they will report the organization as solvent because they have verification standards for sources and are a serious journalistic publication. Therefore, they can only publish about the $1 million in verified assets. The organization could therefore be widely suspected to be insolvent, but reported by the NYT as solvent. In fact, that's what happened this time. Perhaps this is why the NYT's Judith Miller has such prominent roles in journalism.
- ZephyrBlu 4y agoIf you had been following this whole saga at all you would know that Twitter anons have been a way better source of information than anyone else. The on-chain anaylsis, digging and commentary done by people on Twitter has been insanely insightful.
- SilverBirch 4y agoTwitter might provide more information than the NYT, but there's a reason NYT doesn't publish it - because the NYT wants to be reliable. They want their claims to actually stand up to scrutiny and be an accurate portrayal of the events we know happened. Whereas big chunks of this article are just pure speculation. The whole section about how Alameda might have had a rogue algo are just made up out of whole cloth. Is it true? Who knows, there's certainly no evidence for it, but let's stick it down as $1Bn of loss anyway. This article is very little more than just a gossip rag version of the NYT article.
- listenallyall 4y agoThere was a time, not that long ago, when what you say is true. Unfortunately NYTimes gave up caring about accuracy and reliability a while ago.
- ZephyrBlu 4y ago> This article is very little more than just a gossip rag version of the NYT article This characterization is so far from the contents of the article I have to assume this comment is in bad faith or you're extremely biased towards the NYT. The article is 90% discussing facts/quotes from various sources and 10% speculation on what actually happened by people who are very familiar with crypto markets. The NYT piece on the other hand contains almost no facts (90% narrative) and throws a pity party for SBF. It's a complete joke. NYT piece: https://archive.ph/413e0 https://archive.ph/413e0. E: the author of this piece even states on Twitter that it's mostly a compilation of known information. Nowhere near gossip or speculation. https://twitter.com/0xfbifemboy/status/1592387837126905857 https://twitter.com/0xfbifemboy/status/1592387837126905857
- TedShiller 4y ago
- blitzar 4y agoYeah it was in the basement of a pizza place right?
- EdwardDiego 4y agoHeard of it. Repeatedly. Never seen any, you know, proof.
- petchyindee 4y agoBoth the New York Times and the Washington Post have by now admitted the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden laptop story (of course they waited for the election to be over before doing so). If you haven't seen any proof, it's because you haven't looked.
- EdwardDiego 4y agoThe legitimacy of _which_ story about his laptop? Was it really filled with child porn? There were so many stories. Please feel free to share links to the NYT or WaPo acknowledging all this truth. I feel very remiss in having missed it.
- PubliusMI 4y ago
- AustinDev 4y agoIf you know how to torrent you can download an image of his iPhone or iPad taken from that same laptop.
- EdwardDiego 4y agoWhy would I need to torrent it? And how do I know it's legitimate? I had assumed that the big news about its contents would break any day now. All I've ever seen is people talking about what people told them that they totally saw on it.
- lawrenceyan 4y agoThe person who wrote this post is pretty well known in the crypto space. Not saying that what was written here is guaranteed to be accurate, but it's likely to be much closer to reality than what the New York Times put out. To be clear, I enjoyed Levine's commentary on the situation so it's not just because I dislike mainstream publications.
- trompetenaccoun 4y agoNever heard of them, I've been in the crypto space for many years. Their social media looks like it's run by a teenager and I'm not not being facetious, it literally reads like a 14 year old boy runs the account. The person also writes so many tweets they'd hardly have time for serious work. Over 90% are jokes, memes and rumors. https://nitter.cz/0xfbifemboy https://nitter.cz/0xfbifemboy Not sure how this stuff makes it to the top on HN.
- lawrenceyan 4y agoIt's how you say, the "lingua franca"? I myself greatly enjoy it and am happy to see it become more widespread, but that's mostly because I grew up immersed in the culture.
- wil421 4y agoYikes he posted a screenshot of your comment on Twitter. I agree with you about the tone and despise reading meme filled articles or tweets.
- hytdstd 4y agoI'm confused, I don't see any memes in the article. Were they deleted?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lawrenceyan 4y ago
- wweeeebb 4y agoThe NYT article was biased. Have you read it? Read the author's other articles and the sharp shift in tone. He is strictly apologetic towards the FTX ponzi scheme, the author's behavior is to the level which one could call morally compromised. He has a history of badmouthing other exchanges (e.g. Kraken) while singing the praises of FTX. Appeals to authority are weak compared to facts laid bare. The fact is that the NYT author has made clear biases against other exchanges and overly forgiving of a single exchange guilty of customer theft, which is papered over in his article. This is unusual compared to all other reporting of FTX amongst mainstream jouranlists. There were no articles attempting to humanize Bernie Madoff, this article hides the fact that SBF ran a ponzi scheme, imagine the same with Madoff, it would be shocking. This is shocking. Imagine having the Bernie Madoff subheading, "he had expanded too fast and failed to see warning signs". This is the scale of ludicrousness here. The facts aren't subjective or unclear in any way, FTX didn't have customer deposits, which they claimed to have up even until the very end. When it comes to journalism, this is an unforgivable failure.
- anonu 4y agoAgreed. This article is a fun read at best.
- bigbacaloa 4y agoAgreed. I'm sure that the NYT checks that its twitter sources have the little blue check mark before publication.
- shawabawa3 4y agoThe NYT article is a shockingly bad puff piece. It doesn't once mention fraud. Doesn't call out that Alameda borrowing funds from FTX deposits is insanely illegal Makes it sound like poor SBF got unlucky and it wasn't his fault he recklessly gambled $8+B of customer deposits
- spaceman_2020 4y agoGiven both SBF and Caroline's family connections, I'm not surprised that the MSM is going to treat them with kid gloves.
- headsoup 4y agoLet me guess, the article doesn't even mention those connections?
- petchyindee 4y agoWhere were the verification standards of the NYT when they advocated for the Iraq War, for example? Trust in mainstream media is at an all-time low, and for good reason. These appeals to authority seem out of touch to me.
- anonymoushn 4y agoThe piece is well informed and aggregates a variety of sources only a few of which are not completely credible. the NYT literally refuses to use the word "fraud" or hint at criminality after Sam stole ten billion dollars from customers.
- hoffs 4y agoBecause actual journalists have standards to abide
- jasmer 4y ago? Stealing $10B is fraud. So when $10B goes missing, due to what we know is 'bad behaviour' at minimum, and all the other 'smoke' around this story - we should use that word in proper context. This is literally one of the biggest fraud cases in history. By their own 'standards' they are compelled to use the word in proper context.
- thehappypm 4y agoI don’t think it’s up to their standard yet. Of course the whole world believes it’s a big case of fraud but they may need to wait until there is more clarity on that.
- danaris 4y agoWhile I'm sympathetic to this position, I can also easily see an argument from the NYT's side that "fraud" is a specific criminal allegation, and as such using it in an article like this could open them up to libel or defamation suits.
- enraged_camel 4y agoI mean, they can always call it "alleged fraud", right? They use that kind of language to describe all sorts of alleged crimes.
- 4y ago
- jasmer 4y agoIt's a 'puff piece' because they essentially take his words almost at face value, almost as if they are supporting his argument and don't dig more cynically into the underbelly of the issue. There are a lot of really crazy things happening with this story they don't touch upon. It's worse than a 'puff piece' to the point I suggest there is background manipulation going on. This is 'reputation laundering'. There is a huge amount of money here, and a ton of very, very powerful people involved. I suggest that within a few weeks this will be known to be truly a criminal enterprise and this NYT article will not age well.