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CoffeeZilla covered this in a recent video. The effort to paint over such blatant fraud and negligence and pretend it was all a mistake from a well-meaning kidd

CoffeeZilla covered this in a recent video. The effort to paint over such blatant fraud and negligence and pretend it was all a mistake from a well-meaning kiddo is disgusting. https://youtu.be/0rL35_WV3lE https://youtu.be/0rL35_WV3lE

smallmouth 4y ago
- pfisch 4y ago
  This seems like a fake story. Didn't he give millions to both parties?
  - notyourwork 4y ago
    Can't lose if you are on both teams.
  - therein 4y ago
    No evidence of any donation to republicans.
    - keneda7 4y ago
      Yes there is. Plenty. For PACs where most of the money was spent: Left: 44.8 Right: 23.2 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recipients?id=D000073694&cycle=2022 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recipients?id=D000073694&cy...
      - therein 4y ago
        Why did he say in his interview the other day that they are dark donations and due to their nature, they will not be observable?
        keneda7 4y ago
        I had not seen it. This comment just linked me too it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33809968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33809968 Unfortunately in my opinion he is not a trustworthy source at all. He lies in that same interview. His own PAC is left. His mom helped found and run another left super PAC. Seems like the family heavily supports one side. I think he has plenty of reason to lie to help out that side. He should have receipts for those donations or at least evidence of them happening. That would at least give some credence to his claim.
        therein 4y ago
        Yeah, he lies all the time and I agree the support from him and his family seem to heavily support one side over the other. During his interview with Tiffany Fong, he said all his donations to the republican party has been dark but equivalent to what he gave to the democrats. He said they did this because journalists are deep down hardcore liberals and they get spooked when they see you donated to republicans.
  - xwolfi 4y ago
    This sounds like wishful thinking, didnt he pay millions to BOTH parties ? He did play for the winning team, even if he also gave money to some losers. The problem is not how many republicans he paid, it's how many democrats accepted.
    - pfisch 4y ago
      Why wouldn't you accept money from someone running a seemingly legitimate business? People invested billions with him, it wasn't obvious ftx was scamming.
  - keneda7 4y ago
    Yes. I linked to the page with donations at the bottom. The most money was spent giving to PACs. If you download the PAC list and sum it up it totals: Left: 44.8 Right: 23.2 So yes millions was given to both parties, but one party received far more. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recipients?id=D000073694&cycle=2022 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recipients?id=D000073694&cy...
    - fatneckbeardz 4y ago
      SBF himself said he donated the same to Republicans but did it secretly through dark money thanks to Citizens United because he thought Reporters would like him better in other words thanks to Citizens United we have no idea who is funding US political campaigns, and that is by design. So people looking at the open records are only seeing the tip of the iceberg
      - colpabar 4y ago
        > he thought Reporters would like him better He thought right. If there’s one takeaway from this whole debacle, I hope people realize that the mainstream media is inherently dishonest and there’s no reason to trust them by default.
        EamonnMR 4y ago
        I think the one takeaway might be that Crypto people sre dishonest. The Media didn't fleece their customers out of billions of dollars.
      - keneda7 4y ago
        You happen to have a source for that? I have heard that before but no one has been able to back it up.
        technosmurf 4y ago
        The source is SBF himself, in an interview with Tiffany Fong (covered by Coffeezilla): https://youtu.be/0rL35_WV3lE?t=77 https://youtu.be/0rL35_WV3lE?t=77 He said he donated about the same to both parties, with the Republican donations hidden as dark money.
  - jesushax 4y ago
    Who says the two parties aren't on the same team? Maybe the winning team is corrupt politicians and the facade of ideology is a marketing gimmick that sells tickets but at the end of the day, the NFL doesn't care whether you buy a the 49ers jersey or the Raiders jersey. Imo the real teams aren't you versus me, it's us versus them.
Alex3917 4y ago
> The effort to paint over such blatant fraud and negligence and pretend it was all a mistake from a well-meaning kiddo is disgusting Let's not forget that the folks using FTX were only doing so in an attempt to steal money from others. If the key innovation of crypto is that it's supposed to reduce the risk of lending by bringing realtime transparency to the assets and liabilities of borrowers, then why was FTX paying vastly higher interest rates than traditional banks? It's hard to feel sorry for those who lost their money because they thought they were in on the con or whatever. You can hear the folks who lost money saying this themselves, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cATvKsZA0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cATvKsZA0A And to those who think I'm being uncharitable, I've been saying the same thing on HN since long before the FTX collapse, e.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28457273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28457273
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  I’m not in total disagreement with your point, and, frankly, I’m glad that you made it. But how would you respond to the argument: those that lost money in FTX weren’t consciously in on the con, but instead had (vastly) exaggerated expectations about the future of crypto?
  - Alex3917 4y ago
    > those that lost money in FTX weren’t consciously in on the con, but instead had (vastly) exaggerated expectations about the future of crypto? I've said multiple times on HN that I consider blockchain to be the most economically important invention of the last 500 years, e.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14633148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14633148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18574399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18574399 But the reason it's exciting is, among other things, because it should radically drive down the cost of borrowing money. So yeah, I'm probably literally on the most bullish person on crypto on HN, but that's why it's so easy for me to see how the folks chasing those double digit interest rates on FTX aren't exactly the innocent victims they're being portrayed as. I'm hardly an economist, but even the most financially illiterate people know that interest rates should be vaguely proportional to risk.
TacticalCoder 4y ago
> The effort to paint over such blatant fraud and negligence and pretend it was all a mistake from a well-meaning kiddo is disgusting. I agree and this thread is honestly plain disgusting too. Many here are happy and find it funny to see people's crypto being stolen by fraudsters. From TFA: "It is now clear that what happened at the FTX crypto exchange and the hedge fund Alameda Research involved a variety of conscious and intentional fraud intended to steal money from both users and investors." And from the bankruptcy filings: "On-chain analysis has found the bulk of movements from FTX to Alameda took place in late 2021, and bankruptcy filings have revealed that FTX and Alameda lost $3.7 billion in 2021. This is maybe the most befuddling part of the Bankman-Fried story: His companies lost massive amounts of money before the 2022 crypto bear market even started. They may have been stealing funds long before the blowups of Terra and Three Arrows Capital". People may hate on Bitcoin, Ethereum, ape monkeys yacht club etc. (or whatever these NFTs are called) as much as they want, it's not reason to rejoice when thieves do scam people (including a canadian teachers pension funds' money). There's also another angle: the very same who are cheering on people losing all their money to a scam were the first to say: "Pay your taxes on any crypto gain you made" (so that, in the end, they get their share of these winnings too through the state's spendings)... If the state collects taxes on gain made on crypto, the state go after people stealing other people's crypto. As simple as that. P.S: and I hope people are happy that their politicians got greased by stolen funds and aren't giving these bribes (pardon, donations) back.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > Many here are happy and find it funny to see people's crypto being stolen by fraudsters. They are? I haven't noticed that.
  - EamonnMR 4y ago
    The FTX meltdown has been a major source of schadenfreude.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      Yes, of course. But I'm not seeing a lot of people happy about the victims.
nostromo 4y ago
I can't figure out why the media is doing such a terrible job covering this (other than Matt Levine, his coverage has been flawless). Is it because SBF gave a bunch of money to politicians? Is it because FTX got investment dollars from prominent VCs? Is it because journalists do not understand crypto, like, at all? Is it because he bamboozled journalists by talking so much about Effective Altruism? Nobody, literally nobody, said Bernie Madoff was "suffering from a solvency crisis." They said he lied and stole money. And yet SBF's alleged crimes are quite similar in nature, but he's portrayed as suffering from market conditions beyond his control. So was Madoff. If Madoff got lucky and his portfolio doubled in a year, then he too would have been able to make customers whole. But even if that happened, he still lied and stole, just like SBF.
- havella 4y ago
  “ If Madoff got lucky and his portfolio doubled in a year, then he too would have been able to make customers whole.” Maddoff didn’t have any portfolio since the late 80’s. So no trading, all fake records. Redemptions of principal and made up profits were paid with other customer funds.
- richbell 4y ago
  It doesn't hurt that he's greased a lot of palms and his family is well-connected. His mother runs a large secretive Democratic PAC. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33681750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33681750
  - colpabar 4y ago
  - toss1 4y ago
    She also wrote about "moving past blame" for things that go "terribly wrong". From "Sam Bankman-Fried's mom once wrote an essay about fixing problems rather than assigning blame when 'something goes terribly wrong'" Nov 20, 2022 [0] >> She has written pieces for the Boston Review, a quarterly political and literary magazine, arguing that attributing "personal blame" in times of crisis had "ruined criminal justice and economic policy," suggesting it was "time to move past blame." >> "The fact that we have gotten so little in return for our blame mongering at least opens up the possibility that people would be receptive to a new approach," she wrote in 2013. >> "The next time something goes terribly wrong, suppose that instead of immediately asking who is to blame, we were to ask: How can we fix this problem?" Seems a bit of a convenient philosophy for a fraudster . . . [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-bankman-frieds-mom-wrote-essay-questioning-blame-problems-2022-11?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-bankman-frieds-mom-wrote...
deaddodo 4y ago
Yup, 100% this. My own feelings on crypto notwithstanding (the whole thing is a fraud/built on hype); the crypto community seems to have pretty much agreed on this being a case of straight fraud. It’s only the tangential and traditional financial community (and some journalists) who are painting this as a “well-meaning company/crypto genius who made a mistake”.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  I think you misspelled "the media" there. Everyone I know in the actual traditional financial community thinks the guy is a fraud who scammed his customers.
jiveturkey 4y ago
I call it PR done to perfection.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Even if we assume the best: meaning kiddo, zero sympathy. Because it is negligent. (Unless he is a child under 16 which he isn’t)
iancmceachern 4y ago
CoffeZilla has been killing it on this. Youtube creators and similar have really taken over from traditional media.
classified 4y ago
SBF looks like a pathological liar who had gotten away with it all his life. He must be so disappointed.
foobarbecue 4y ago
Aw, but his hair is so messy, he can't be that bad! Honestly I wonder how intentional this Boris Johnson tactic of engendering sympathy through unkempt hair is. It seems to work. Maybe it reminds parents of their helpless teenagers or something.
- barfingclouds 4y ago
  He played a video game while talking to investors! That means he’s just like the rest of us! (??)
lajosbacs 4y ago
I don't get this obsession with mainstream 'the man' controlling the narrative. For example the FT slams him so much it's boring. They even have a (great) data driven article about how he sucked at LoL.

smallmouth 4y ago

pfisch 4y ago
This seems like a fake story. Didn't he give millions to both parties?
- notyourwork 4y ago
  Can't lose if you are on both teams.
- therein 4y ago
  No evidence of any donation to republicans.
  - keneda7 4y ago
    Yes there is. Plenty. For PACs where most of the money was spent: Left: 44.8 Right: 23.2 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recipients?id=D000073694&cycle=2022 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recipients?id=D000073694&cy...
    - therein 4y ago
      Why did he say in his interview the other day that they are dark donations and due to their nature, they will not be observable?
      - keneda7 4y ago
        I had not seen it. This comment just linked me too it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33809968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33809968 Unfortunately in my opinion he is not a trustworthy source at all. He lies in that same interview. His own PAC is left. His mom helped found and run another left super PAC. Seems like the family heavily supports one side. I think he has plenty of reason to lie to help out that side. He should have receipts for those donations or at least evidence of them happening. That would at least give some credence to his claim.
        therein 4y ago
        Yeah, he lies all the time and I agree the support from him and his family seem to heavily support one side over the other. During his interview with Tiffany Fong, he said all his donations to the republican party has been dark but equivalent to what he gave to the democrats. He said they did this because journalists are deep down hardcore liberals and they get spooked when they see you donated to republicans.
- xwolfi 4y ago
  This sounds like wishful thinking, didnt he pay millions to BOTH parties ? He did play for the winning team, even if he also gave money to some losers. The problem is not how many republicans he paid, it's how many democrats accepted.
  - pfisch 4y ago
    Why wouldn't you accept money from someone running a seemingly legitimate business? People invested billions with him, it wasn't obvious ftx was scamming.
- keneda7 4y ago
  Yes. I linked to the page with donations at the bottom. The most money was spent giving to PACs. If you download the PAC list and sum it up it totals: Left: 44.8 Right: 23.2 So yes millions was given to both parties, but one party received far more. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recipients?id=D000073694&cycle=2022 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recipients?id=D000073694&cy...
  - fatneckbeardz 4y ago
    SBF himself said he donated the same to Republicans but did it secretly through dark money thanks to Citizens United because he thought Reporters would like him better in other words thanks to Citizens United we have no idea who is funding US political campaigns, and that is by design. So people looking at the open records are only seeing the tip of the iceberg
    - colpabar 4y ago
      > he thought Reporters would like him better He thought right. If there’s one takeaway from this whole debacle, I hope people realize that the mainstream media is inherently dishonest and there’s no reason to trust them by default.
      - EamonnMR 4y ago
        I think the one takeaway might be that Crypto people sre dishonest. The Media didn't fleece their customers out of billions of dollars.
    - keneda7 4y ago
      You happen to have a source for that? I have heard that before but no one has been able to back it up.
      - technosmurf 4y ago
        The source is SBF himself, in an interview with Tiffany Fong (covered by Coffeezilla): https://youtu.be/0rL35_WV3lE?t=77 https://youtu.be/0rL35_WV3lE?t=77 He said he donated about the same to both parties, with the Republican donations hidden as dark money.
- jesushax 4y ago
  Who says the two parties aren't on the same team? Maybe the winning team is corrupt politicians and the facade of ideology is a marketing gimmick that sells tickets but at the end of the day, the NFL doesn't care whether you buy a the 49ers jersey or the Raiders jersey. Imo the real teams aren't you versus me, it's us versus them.

Alex3917 4y ago

> The effort to paint over such blatant fraud and negligence and pretend it was all a mistake from a well-meaning kiddo is disgusting Let's not forget that the folks using FTX were only doing so in an attempt to steal money from others. If the key innovation of crypto is that it's supposed to reduce the risk of lending by bringing realtime transparency to the assets and liabilities of borrowers, then why was FTX paying vastly higher interest rates than traditional banks? It's hard to feel sorry for those who lost their money because they thought they were in on the con or whatever. You can hear the folks who lost money saying this themselves, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cATvKsZA0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cATvKsZA0A And to those who think I'm being uncharitable, I've been saying the same thing on HN since long before the FTX collapse, e.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28457273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28457273

DiggyJohnson 4y ago
I’m not in total disagreement with your point, and, frankly, I’m glad that you made it. But how would you respond to the argument: those that lost money in FTX weren’t consciously in on the con, but instead had (vastly) exaggerated expectations about the future of crypto?
- Alex3917 4y ago
  > those that lost money in FTX weren’t consciously in on the con, but instead had (vastly) exaggerated expectations about the future of crypto? I've said multiple times on HN that I consider blockchain to be the most economically important invention of the last 500 years, e.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14633148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14633148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18574399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18574399 But the reason it's exciting is, among other things, because it should radically drive down the cost of borrowing money. So yeah, I'm probably literally on the most bullish person on crypto on HN, but that's why it's so easy for me to see how the folks chasing those double digit interest rates on FTX aren't exactly the innocent victims they're being portrayed as. I'm hardly an economist, but even the most financially illiterate people know that interest rates should be vaguely proportional to risk.

TacticalCoder 4y ago

> The effort to paint over such blatant fraud and negligence and pretend it was all a mistake from a well-meaning kiddo is disgusting. I agree and this thread is honestly plain disgusting too. Many here are happy and find it funny to see people's crypto being stolen by fraudsters. From TFA: "It is now clear that what happened at the FTX crypto exchange and the hedge fund Alameda Research involved a variety of conscious and intentional fraud intended to steal money from both users and investors." And from the bankruptcy filings: "On-chain analysis has found the bulk of movements from FTX to Alameda took place in late 2021, and bankruptcy filings have revealed that FTX and Alameda lost $3.7 billion in 2021. This is maybe the most befuddling part of the Bankman-Fried story: His companies lost massive amounts of money before the 2022 crypto bear market even started. They may have been stealing funds long before the blowups of Terra and Three Arrows Capital". People may hate on Bitcoin, Ethereum, ape monkeys yacht club etc. (or whatever these NFTs are called) as much as they want, it's not reason to rejoice when thieves do scam people (including a canadian teachers pension funds' money). There's also another angle: the very same who are cheering on people losing all their money to a scam were the first to say: "Pay your taxes on any crypto gain you made" (so that, in the end, they get their share of these winnings too through the state's spendings)... If the state collects taxes on gain made on crypto, the state go after people stealing other people's crypto. As simple as that. P.S: and I hope people are happy that their politicians got greased by stolen funds and aren't giving these bribes (pardon, donations) back.

JohnFen 4y ago
> Many here are happy and find it funny to see people's crypto being stolen by fraudsters. They are? I haven't noticed that.
- EamonnMR 4y ago
  The FTX meltdown has been a major source of schadenfreude.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    Yes, of course. But I'm not seeing a lot of people happy about the victims.

nostromo 4y ago

I can't figure out why the media is doing such a terrible job covering this (other than Matt Levine, his coverage has been flawless). Is it because SBF gave a bunch of money to politicians? Is it because FTX got investment dollars from prominent VCs? Is it because journalists do not understand crypto, like, at all? Is it because he bamboozled journalists by talking so much about Effective Altruism? Nobody, literally nobody, said Bernie Madoff was "suffering from a solvency crisis." They said he lied and stole money. And yet SBF's alleged crimes are quite similar in nature, but he's portrayed as suffering from market conditions beyond his control. So was Madoff. If Madoff got lucky and his portfolio doubled in a year, then he too would have been able to make customers whole. But even if that happened, he still lied and stole, just like SBF.

havella 4y ago
“ If Madoff got lucky and his portfolio doubled in a year, then he too would have been able to make customers whole.” Maddoff didn’t have any portfolio since the late 80’s. So no trading, all fake records. Redemptions of principal and made up profits were paid with other customer funds.
richbell 4y ago
It doesn't hurt that he's greased a lot of palms and his family is well-connected. His mother runs a large secretive Democratic PAC. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33681750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33681750
- colpabar 4y ago
- toss1 4y ago
  She also wrote about "moving past blame" for things that go "terribly wrong". From "Sam Bankman-Fried's mom once wrote an essay about fixing problems rather than assigning blame when 'something goes terribly wrong'" Nov 20, 2022 [0] >> She has written pieces for the Boston Review, a quarterly political and literary magazine, arguing that attributing "personal blame" in times of crisis had "ruined criminal justice and economic policy," suggesting it was "time to move past blame." >> "The fact that we have gotten so little in return for our blame mongering at least opens up the possibility that people would be receptive to a new approach," she wrote in 2013. >> "The next time something goes terribly wrong, suppose that instead of immediately asking who is to blame, we were to ask: How can we fix this problem?" Seems a bit of a convenient philosophy for a fraudster . . . [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-bankman-frieds-mom-wrote-essay-questioning-blame-problems-2022-11?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-bankman-frieds-mom-wrote...

deaddodo 4y ago

Yup, 100% this. My own feelings on crypto notwithstanding (the whole thing is a fraud/built on hype); the crypto community seems to have pretty much agreed on this being a case of straight fraud. It’s only the tangential and traditional financial community (and some journalists) who are painting this as a “well-meaning company/crypto genius who made a mistake”.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
I think you misspelled "the media" there. Everyone I know in the actual traditional financial community thinks the guy is a fraud who scammed his customers.

jiveturkey 4y ago

I call it PR done to perfection.

quickthrower2 4y ago

Even if we assume the best: meaning kiddo, zero sympathy. Because it is negligent. (Unless he is a child under 16 which he isn’t)

iancmceachern 4y ago

CoffeZilla has been killing it on this. Youtube creators and similar have really taken over from traditional media.

classified 4y ago

SBF looks like a pathological liar who had gotten away with it all his life. He must be so disappointed.

foobarbecue 4y ago

Aw, but his hair is so messy, he can't be that bad! Honestly I wonder how intentional this Boris Johnson tactic of engendering sympathy through unkempt hair is. It seems to work. Maybe it reminds parents of their helpless teenagers or something.

barfingclouds 4y ago
He played a video game while talking to investors! That means he’s just like the rest of us! (??)

lajosbacs 4y ago

I don't get this obsession with mainstream 'the man' controlling the narrative. For example the FT slams him so much it's boring. They even have a (great) data driven article about how he sucked at LoL.