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It’s a bit mind blowing that anyone who met Sam Bankman-Fried didn’t quickly come to the conclusion that he was a drug-addled kid who thought he was smarter tha
by bmitc 4y ago
It’s a bit mind blowing that anyone who met Sam Bankman-Fried didn’t quickly come to the conclusion that he was a drug-addled kid who thought he was smarter than everyone else. He basically comes across like that on camera and in interviews, so I can’t imagine what it’s like to meet him in person or over a direct video call. The information coming out that he was hopped up on amphetamines, Parkinson’s disease drugs (!), sleeping pills, and various other drugs basically 24/7 is alarming, and it’s crazy that no-one was sounding the bells on this alone, much less the fraud and trading boondoggles. It’s hilarious to think of all these powerful people speaking with a drug addict, much less as if he was a crypto messiah.
Maybe these organizations, the government, politicians, and corporations should be less focused on raising money at all costs. How many SBF, Madoff, Epstein, etc. do we need for these people to learn this?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> a drug-addled kid who thought he was smarter than everyone else This describes a lot of people who changed the world. This one, unfortunately, was simply a fraudster.
- jasonlotito 4y agoDid you meet him?
- bmitc 4y agoWhat is your point?
- d_graeme 4y agoI'm calling bs on this. I despise the guy (even before his crash, the way he was literally worshipped even here on hn, as though he was some kind of crypo-saint, was embarassing), but let's try and keep the rumor-mongering to a minimum. I've been junkreading all about ftx and it's silly founder the past couple of days, and nowhere have I read that he shot himself up with drugs. Let's not take tweets or posts by randos with an axe to grind as facts.
- bmitc 4y agoIt’s fine to be cautious, but you can basically infer this from his own tweets, where he directly admits to active amphetamine use and sleeping pills to sleep. Other evidence comes from former employee descriptions and even screenshots of the Parkinson’s medicine on his desk from some of his streams or interviews at his desk. It’s not hearsay, as far as I can tell. FTX even had a company psychiatrist/therapist who admitted to prescribing ADHD medications to employees, but tried to play it off as saying the occurrence of ADHD at FTX was supposedly in line with other similar size groups of people. I have never heard of a company, especially of one so small, having a dedicated psychiatrist/therapist.