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Is it at all possible that SBF is "merely" inept (yet still culpable)? Or is there any way to know whether SBF knew what he was doing was making FTX insolvent?
by wyldfire 4y ago
Is it at all possible that SBF is "merely" inept (yet still culpable)? Or is there any way to know whether SBF knew what he was doing was making FTX insolvent?
- RC_ITR 4y agoNo. His resume shows he's smart enough to understand how market-making and trading works, he just bought into his own mythos and thought he could out-trade the world. If he was actually as skilled as he thought, his strategy could have made him unimaginably wealthy, but he wasn't. I'd compare it to a magician throwing swords at an assistant on stage. You better be sure that you know what you're doing before you do it.
- wyldfire 4y agoSo that bonkers "magic box" interview he gave - was he deliberately planning a naivety defense while executing theft of the deposits?
- MrMan 4y agono he was bragging - a lot of the "trading" alameda did was participating and orchestrating "boxes" like what he so smugly described in the interview, which was horrifying to listen to.
- SilverBirch 4y agoThe problem with claiming he was just inept is that he was actively doing things to hide the insolvency - pumping the value of assets in which he controlled the market, doing deals with other insolvent entities to hide any defaults, and conditioning deals on collateral being held on FTX. It was very clear many months back that Alameda was underwater, and that whoever was their lender was going to face a massive default. SBF was both the issuer, borrower and lender of the FTT tokens - and none of that money was meant to be associated with customer assets. There are some simple questions of "Why did SBF do a load of deals in the spring which were clearly money losing?" and the answer is "The only possible reason to do those deals is to hide the massive losses he'd incurred".