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Math whiz Caroline Ellison was bound for success. Then she got into crypto
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- AustinDev 4y agoAnother puff piece, this is getting sickening.
- umeshunni 4y agoProbably planted by her defense lawyers in friendly publications.
- kevinmrose 4y agoHas the mainstream media even bothered to write about some of the individual retail investors who were hoodwinked by these people, or are they just too busy running cover for the perpetrators?
- notch656a 4y agoIf crypto people are destroying other crypto people it's basically seen by much of society as beneficial mutual attrition.
- chlodwig 4y agoI don't have a lot of sympathy for those who bought into crypto looking to get-rich-quick or to make unrealistic gains for no effort ... But how many normal people bought and lost crypto with FTX because of their Super Bowl ads and celebrity endorsements? How many people thought FTX was just the new normal for investing and they should get in before getting left behind (anaglagous to to how once upon-a-time stocks made a transition for ordinary people from bucket shop gambling to mainstream investing)? Sure would be nice to read an article about normal people who bought crypto with FTX as a result of the mainstream ads and endorsements.
- jerf 4y agoDon't forget about investors who didn't realize they were investors: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/ontario-teachers-pension-plan-is-latest-ftx-investor-to-mark-venture-investment-to-zero/ar-AA14h1Zg https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/ontario-teachers-p... That's not necessarily a catastrophe: "The FTX loss amounts to less than 0.05% of the pension plan’s total net assets and it remains in a financially strong position, according to a statement on the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan website." But, still, that's a lot of people who didn't think/know they were invested in FTX... but they were.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> mainstream media even bothered to write about some of the individual retail investors who were hoodwinked by these people The Journal, Times, Financial Times and Bloomberg each ran stories in this vein. They were, without exception, incredibly boring. Gamblers losing money after years of being warned simply isn't a story.
- anonymoushn 4y ago"Gamblers losing money" may give people the impression that this was something other than a custodian stealing their funds.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> "Gamblers losing money" may give people the impression that this was something other than a custodian stealing their funds Most people aren't bothered by this. It's interesting to those of us in tech and finance. But it's irrelevant to most Americans, who were protected by regulation from doing business with FTX. (Being defrauded and losing assets in hacks are well-established crypto loss modes.)
- shuckles 4y agoAmericans were not protected by regulation from doing business with FTX.us, though, and behind the scenes it seems both the entities were the same for practical purposes.
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoFair enough. I'd still wager that most Americans aren't exposed to FTX US, and those who are came in after years of warnings. I'm sure there are sympathetic victims. But there are more random victims of car robberies in San Francisco every day.
- kevinmrose 4y agoSo you find these stories about how the people who profited from all of it, and were just "unlucky", to be much more compelling?
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- luciusdomitius 4y agohttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/BVjZsLafkz8 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BVjZsLafkz8 This is a person bound for greatness according to legacy media. Alright, I trust them.
- jack_pp 4y agoWell I don't have a math degree (not even a basic college degree) and I'm not a quant / trader but I've dabbled with a little bit of machine learning (worked with some OCR DL models and some basic neural networks for image detection) and I was surprised to learn I didn't need much more than high school math to be able to use what others have created. So while I have no sympathy for her or SBF and think they should go to jail, this particular clip isn't that damning imo.
- myth_drannon 4y agoThat's a not a CEO of multi-billion firm, that's a 10 years old that ate too many candies and is trippin on sugar rush.
- ElfinTrousers 4y agoGood at math and bad at life: it's a story as old as time. I've spent most of my adult life in the Bay Area and Greater Boston respectively, and I couldn't begin to tell you how many well-educated total idiots I've met.
- caseysoftware 4y agoMedia: "Why don't people trust the media!??!" Exhibit 3,342,981
- gopuck16 4y agoIt's sickening to see how these people are portrayed as "destined to do great things" all over the media. Everyone who is writing fluff about such people should be documented and further publications from these sources should be taken with a grain of salt.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> sickening how these people are portrayed as "destined to do great things" all over the media I'm critical of the non-financial press presenting FTX as anything but a fraud. But this piece is far from flattering. Ellison was exceptional. She was then ruined by crypto. This is run of the mill for human interest pieces.
- numbers_guy 4y agoThat is exactly the problem with the narrative. It is portraying her as the victim. As if she wasn't one of the chief architects of it all.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> portraying her as the victim Could you cite where? I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm simply not seeing it. The article readily admits "Ellison told Alameda employees in a video call that she knew FTX sent customer funds to Alameda, and that her company used the money to cover its liabilities." She is called out as Alameda's "sole leader." And it ends with a "quip Ellison made" about crypto being "mostly scams and memes when you get down to it." Sure, Ellison is portrayed sympathetically at the start. But the conclusion is damning. And nowhere do I see her cast as a victim. We don't need to embargo empathy the moment someone commits a crime.
- SilasX 4y agoYou just repeated the framing yourself! “She was then ruined by crypto” — as if she’s some innocent victim. You’re just mystified at how it portrays her sympathetically, even as you buy the narrative hook, line, and sinker!
- blue039 4y agoWow it's incredible how deeply embedded in everything these criminals are. This is some Epstein level cover being run by the media basically 24x7. Really makes you wonder about those "fact checkers" we were supposed to "trust" 2 years ago...huh...
- georgeecollins 4y agoEveryone in crypto endlessly criticized governments (inevitable collapse of fiat, dumb regulators), traditional finance (slow greedy), the media (don't get it). Now, as FTX unravels people say the media was complicit. Politicians were bought off. It's more proof the establishment was corrupt! All roads seem to lead to this dark world view.
- blue039 4y agoThe only way a representative democracy can work, and moreover a justice system, is the assumption that the people in charge have extraordinary moral and ethical character. Since time imemmorial this hasn't been true. It's worse now than it's ever been. You can't even vote the corruption out at this point. So, we will never have that mythical democracy nor justice system. They feed on each other. The corrupt crypto people corrupt the establishment, which looks the other way, and the feedback loop continues. One does not negate the other and especially in the case of finance it's entirely possible to have exactly 0 good guys. The media has no interest in the telling the truth. There's no financial incentive. Hence every "fact checker" is a consummate liar, and every "journalist" is just an opinion pundit with (perhaps) a bachelor degree. We are literally living in the Truman Show. All it takes is a little money to change the public's perception of a person.
- frontman1988 4y agoAlso makes one wonder how true Ye was when he pointed out the fact that a certain religious minority is so prominent in media and finance. If this crime was commited by somebody of other religious affilication would the response have been any different from the pathetic gaslighting happening now? Really makes you wonder..
- more_corn 4y agoArguably she did succeed. She ran a trading company with billions under management. They just didn’t do the normie things like bookkeeping ;-) Also they had most of their investments in a token that became worthless when someone initiated a run on the exchange. Maybe lots of smarts and not a lot of common sense/wisdom/caution.
- guessbest 4y agoI don't think they even bought bitcoin and SBF admitted as much. They just took the money and send the user a fraudulent notice that an investment was purchased when in fact no investment took place. This made the 'bank run' easy to trigger as they would have to purchases a bitcoin or other crypto every time a 'withdraw' happened to cover the lack of assets to withdraw for the account. https://twitter.com/DoombergT/status/1598457179211812865 https://twitter.com/DoombergT/status/1598457179211812865
- swader999 4y agoSomewhat surprised SBF didn't get a Time Mag person of the year nomination.
- sfusato 4y agoHe kinda arrived too late for that, but there's always next year.
- subsubzero 4y agoBecause a inanimate technology like crypto turned a perfectly smart and honest mathematician into the next Bernie Madoff. Lets have some accountability here, Megan Ellison was morally bankrupt and preyed on clueless users of FTX by making extremely risky financial moves(read illegal). On the flip side anyone who got into crypto thinking they would make out like a bandit also know it was a bagholder game where the last one holding would lose, I mean it was backed by nothing and new coins are minted every week. Its gambling for the 21st century and both parties knew this coming into the casino, err, exchange.
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- neilv 4y agoI (like many others) have been telling investors and recruiters for years that almost everything "crypto"/blockchain is a scam, and that the dishonest dealings is from pretty much every direction. Now that a particular suspicious-looking thing is in the news as collapsing, and we're talking about specific people... I'll suppress my kneejerk reaction, and wait to see whether officials investigate, and what happens from there. At the same time, not talking about specific people, I'd be thrilled if US officials finally shut down the entire space.
- Animats 4y agoThe WSJ article mentioned: [1] "Alameda, FTX Executives Are Said to Have Known FTX Was Using Customer Funds." So, she knew. In a prosecutor's office, this is called "receiving stolen property". At least in California, where Alameda was nominally headquartered, receiving embezzled stolen property is a felony.[2] Some states don't define receiving stolen property to include embezzled property, but California apparently does. However, "intent to return" is a defense in California, but not in all states. This was nominally a "loan". Whether a jury will buy that argument remains to be seen. Something for a court to sort out. Only 3 years in jail, max, though. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/alameda-ftx-executives-are-said-to-have-known-ftx-was-using-customer-funds-11668264238 https://www.wsj.com/articles/alameda-ftx-executives-are-said... [2] https://www.kannlawoffice.com/california-penal-code-496-receipt-of-stolen-property https://www.kannlawoffice.com/california-penal-code-496-rece...
- notch656a 4y agoFelony isn't about the jail sentence, normally. It's about stripping you of your civil rights. That's usually the real punishment. She'll have incredible difficulty getting a residence visa for almost anywhere desirable to continue working offshore including the Bahamas, working a licensed position, carrying a gun for self defense. She'll have a bad time at traffic stops, be extra hassled by border patrol when she crosses a border, probably not be able to be involved in any future children's field trips and on-school activities, etc. Lifelong retribution, no matter if 70 years from now she is nothing but a sweet innocent great-grandma. Justice.
- willcipriano 4y agoThe people she robbed will never be refunded, no matter if 70 years from now they are dead broke and could really use it. Seems proportional.
- fatnoah 4y ago> “As a trader, the most fun thing is to make money,” she said on a podcast. There it is, right there. What was fun for her? Making money. All of the rules, regulations, societal norms, etc. are all just obstacles to overcome by ignoring them with or without some made-up rationalization.
- mancerayder 4y agoA DARE-reminiscent headline. Don't let your kids do crypto.