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I love how the crypto community has decided that SBF is "not a crypto guy" now that he's done crimes. And he's somehow "establishment" because he gave to polit

I love how the crypto community has decided that SBF is "not a crypto guy" now that he's done crimes. And he's somehow "establishment" because he gave to political parties, and Democrat because we're ignoring the GOP contributions. SBF was more of a crypto guy than 99% of crypto. And he was way more crypto than he was establishment. And the problems in crypto that his actions highlighted (centralization, fraud, lack of consumer protections) cannot be waved away with "no true scotsman" arguments. He's your boy. Own it or the industry will not correct its own deep, ongoing mistakes, currently being made by entities like Binance.

TheNewsIsHere 4y ago
I think a generalist summation of the situation could be: Fraudsters will find any way to fraud, no matter the economics or tech. Enabling a fraudster to build and control something around a fig leaf will result in the same no matter the controls. Edit: this sounds defeatist on a second reading, but that is not my intent. I’m not saying there’s a futility here. I do think it’s futile to believe we could rid any field of fraudsters and con artists, but I don’t think anyone here has argued we can.
cscurmudgeon 4y ago
> And he was way more crypto than he was establishment. Not sure about that. He was meeting with the chairman of the SEC and was a top donor personally to the Democratic Party. That screams "establishment". How many crypto bros can meet with the chairman of the SEC?
- HWR_14 4y ago
  Historically, at least one cryptobro could. Unless you hold that meeting with the chairman of the SEC disqualifies you from being a cryptobro. In which case it's tautologically zero.
  - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
    > Historically, at least one cryptobro could. And that is out of how many cryptobros in existence?
    - EdwardDiego 4y ago
      Does Elon's deliberately influencing coin prices by Tweeting make him a cryptobro? I'm pretty sure he'll end up meeting the SEC a few times.
      - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
        This entire thread is just denial that SBF is in bed with the establishment just because the current establishment happens to be some folks favorite team.
        HWR_14 4y ago
        I thought this entire thread was denial of the fact that cryptobros could be part of the establishment. "No, it's not a Ponzi scheme. We're taking down the old order. Buy my coins." I'm fine with saying he's establishment. I just don't agree that makes him not a cryptobro
        cscurmudgeon 4y ago
        > I'm fine with saying he's establishment. And I am fine with saying he's a cryptobro. > I just don't agree that makes him not a cryptobro No one said that. The point is that he is not an ordinary cryptobro. He rose in status in the crypto world due to being in bed with the establishment.
        antifa 4y ago
        > just because the current establishment happens to be some folks favorite team. I don't think anyone here but you thinks this is that type of "political" or otherwise meaningful in this conversation.
        EdwardDiego 4y ago
arcticbull 4y ago
Ditto the "centralization" purity test. No decentralized system can fail ergo if it failed it wasn't decentralized. This doesn't apply to FTX of course which was more centralized than a black hole and never claimed otherwise - but it's another instance I've seen tossed around in the collapse. The truth is nothing in crypto is really decentralized, though, and decentralization isn't in and of itself a useful end. It's a means to an end nobody's discovered yet.
- JohnAaronNelson 4y ago
  Money laundering, black market money transfers, tax evasion.
- WalterSear 4y ago
  > Ditto the "centralization" purity test. No decentralized system can fail ergo if it failed it wasn't decentralized. It's a trick: Nothing in crypto is decentralized. Decentralization (ipfs, orbitdb) is dying on the vine because you can make vastly more money in crypto - because it's centralized.
johnnymorgan 4y ago
But he isn't, that's the core problem. He was a Ringer that was clearly parachuted in. The NYTimes puff piece absolutely confirmed that. Sam's not the first and he won't be the last. I got over the hype back in 2014, once you take the rose colored glasses off guys like Sam are easier to identify.
- brindlejim 4y ago
  The NYT interview confirmed nothing. People who argue that the NYT piece confirmed anything simply do not understand journalism. That was an interview-based piece that gave SBF a lot of room to talk. The *same* reporter published this piece today, based on Ray's court filing: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/business/ftx-bankruptcy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/business/ftx-bankruptcy.h... And I quote: > "John Jay Ray III helped manage the aftermath of some of the largest corporate failures in history, including the implosion of the energy trading firm Enron after an accounting fraud scandal in 2001. > But the corporate dysfunction at FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange that he took over last week, is the worst he has ever seen. > In a blistering court filing on Thursday, Mr. Ray described an astonishing level of disarray and said he had never seen “such a complete failure of corporate control.” He listed a series of “unacceptable management practices,” including the use of an unsecured group email to access sensitive data, and said the financial information maintained by FTX was deeply untrustworthy. > “From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented,” he wrote in the filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware." The evidence against SBF is damning. The NYT will continue to report that. You can cherrypick their pieces if you want to. But what you should be doing is looking at the 10,000 ways that crypto made SBF and FTX what they were, through your credulity and greed. The NYT had nothing to do with that.
- guiriduro 4y ago
  See cf No True Scotsman fallacy, of which this would be a perfect example.
  - 4y ago

TheNewsIsHere 4y ago

I think a generalist summation of the situation could be: Fraudsters will find any way to fraud, no matter the economics or tech. Enabling a fraudster to build and control something around a fig leaf will result in the same no matter the controls. Edit: this sounds defeatist on a second reading, but that is not my intent. I’m not saying there’s a futility here. I do think it’s futile to believe we could rid any field of fraudsters and con artists, but I don’t think anyone here has argued we can.

cscurmudgeon 4y ago

> And he was way more crypto than he was establishment. Not sure about that. He was meeting with the chairman of the SEC and was a top donor personally to the Democratic Party. That screams "establishment". How many crypto bros can meet with the chairman of the SEC?

HWR_14 4y ago
Historically, at least one cryptobro could. Unless you hold that meeting with the chairman of the SEC disqualifies you from being a cryptobro. In which case it's tautologically zero.
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago
  > Historically, at least one cryptobro could. And that is out of how many cryptobros in existence?
  - EdwardDiego 4y ago
    Does Elon's deliberately influencing coin prices by Tweeting make him a cryptobro? I'm pretty sure he'll end up meeting the SEC a few times.
    - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
      This entire thread is just denial that SBF is in bed with the establishment just because the current establishment happens to be some folks favorite team.
      - HWR_14 4y ago
        I thought this entire thread was denial of the fact that cryptobros could be part of the establishment. "No, it's not a Ponzi scheme. We're taking down the old order. Buy my coins." I'm fine with saying he's establishment. I just don't agree that makes him not a cryptobro
        cscurmudgeon 4y ago
        > I'm fine with saying he's establishment. And I am fine with saying he's a cryptobro. > I just don't agree that makes him not a cryptobro No one said that. The point is that he is not an ordinary cryptobro. He rose in status in the crypto world due to being in bed with the establishment.
      - antifa 4y ago
        > just because the current establishment happens to be some folks favorite team. I don't think anyone here but you thinks this is that type of "political" or otherwise meaningful in this conversation.
      - EdwardDiego 4y ago

arcticbull 4y ago

Ditto the "centralization" purity test. No decentralized system can fail ergo if it failed it wasn't decentralized. This doesn't apply to FTX of course which was more centralized than a black hole and never claimed otherwise - but it's another instance I've seen tossed around in the collapse. The truth is nothing in crypto is really decentralized, though, and decentralization isn't in and of itself a useful end. It's a means to an end nobody's discovered yet.

JohnAaronNelson 4y ago
Money laundering, black market money transfers, tax evasion.
WalterSear 4y ago
> Ditto the "centralization" purity test. No decentralized system can fail ergo if it failed it wasn't decentralized. It's a trick: Nothing in crypto is decentralized. Decentralization (ipfs, orbitdb) is dying on the vine because you can make vastly more money in crypto - because it's centralized.

johnnymorgan 4y ago

But he isn't, that's the core problem. He was a Ringer that was clearly parachuted in. The NYTimes puff piece absolutely confirmed that. Sam's not the first and he won't be the last. I got over the hype back in 2014, once you take the rose colored glasses off guys like Sam are easier to identify.

brindlejim 4y ago
The NYT interview confirmed nothing. People who argue that the NYT piece confirmed anything simply do not understand journalism. That was an interview-based piece that gave SBF a lot of room to talk. The *same* reporter published this piece today, based on Ray's court filing: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/business/ftx-bankruptcy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/business/ftx-bankruptcy.h... And I quote: > "John Jay Ray III helped manage the aftermath of some of the largest corporate failures in history, including the implosion of the energy trading firm Enron after an accounting fraud scandal in 2001. > But the corporate dysfunction at FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange that he took over last week, is the worst he has ever seen. > In a blistering court filing on Thursday, Mr. Ray described an astonishing level of disarray and said he had never seen “such a complete failure of corporate control.” He listed a series of “unacceptable management practices,” including the use of an unsecured group email to access sensitive data, and said the financial information maintained by FTX was deeply untrustworthy. > “From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented,” he wrote in the filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware." The evidence against SBF is damning. The NYT will continue to report that. You can cherrypick their pieces if you want to. But what you should be doing is looking at the 10,000 ways that crypto made SBF and FTX what they were, through your credulity and greed. The NYT had nothing to do with that.
guiriduro 4y ago
See cf No True Scotsman fallacy, of which this would be a perfect example.
- 4y ago