4 ms·

$65B seems oddly specific - could it be that they just set the liquidation limit for Alameda's account to 65,535 (max 16bit unsigned int), in millions of dollar

$65B seems oddly specific - could it be that they just set the liquidation limit for Alameda's account to 65,535 (max 16bit unsigned int), in millions of dollars?

dahfizz 4y ago
It feels more likely that he just chose $65B rather than an exchange using unsigned 16 bit integers to do accounting.
- detrites 4y ago
  This is FTX, remember.
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    This is less of a "haha FTX so dumb" and more of a "how could that possibly ever hang together for 2 years??"
  - cdjk 4y ago
    Nah, seems like they'd be more likely to use floats for accounting.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      Not quite the worst use for floats, bad though that would be. I've received a few SMSes over the pandemic that used a float for their caller ID. Not sure why the German Federal government chose to identify itself as "+4.4786E+11" when welcoming me into the country (actually me switching my UK SIM card to no-longer-Airplane-mode) and telling me to quarantine and test.
      - mgsouth 4y ago
        I recently recieved an email from Phillips (re CPAP recall) which said "In the meantime, your device registration confirmation number is 2.02xxxxE+15." [some digits obscurred by me, although they dropped some of the trailing digits].
- pasquinelli 4y ago
  a 16 bit unsigned integer with a unit of a million dollars, a very odd choice indeed
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
delaaxe 4y ago
Pretty sure their whole stack was in Python
- eddsh1994 4y ago
  Their tech team almost exclusively came from Jane Street, wouldn’t it be OCaml?
  - lolinder 4y ago
    OCaml still wouldn't have 16 bit ints.
    - eddsh1994 4y ago
      Uint8.t ;)
tobyjsullivan 4y ago
Reading between the lines (and pattern matching), my interpretation is it’s likely a line that prevents balances going below zero. The number was an account number which was exempted from that particular check. The $65B figure probably leads somewhere else and sounds like it would be counting bitcoins which peaked at over $65k per coin. If there was some other limit that prevented his balance from falling below -$1M BTC, then Alameda “had access to” over $65B in credit (in October 2021)

$65B seems oddly specific - could it be that they just set the liquidation limit for Alameda's account to 65,535 (max 16bit unsigned int), in millions of dollars?

dahfizz 4y ago

It feels more likely that he just chose $65B rather than an exchange using unsigned 16 bit integers to do accounting.

detrites 4y ago
This is FTX, remember.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  This is less of a "haha FTX so dumb" and more of a "how could that possibly ever hang together for 2 years??"
- cdjk 4y ago
  Nah, seems like they'd be more likely to use floats for accounting.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    Not quite the worst use for floats, bad though that would be. I've received a few SMSes over the pandemic that used a float for their caller ID. Not sure why the German Federal government chose to identify itself as "+4.4786E+11" when welcoming me into the country (actually me switching my UK SIM card to no-longer-Airplane-mode) and telling me to quarantine and test.
    - mgsouth 4y ago
      I recently recieved an email from Phillips (re CPAP recall) which said "In the meantime, your device registration confirmation number is 2.02xxxxE+15." [some digits obscurred by me, although they dropped some of the trailing digits].
pasquinelli 4y ago
a 16 bit unsigned integer with a unit of a million dollars, a very odd choice indeed
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

delaaxe 4y ago

Pretty sure their whole stack was in Python

eddsh1994 4y ago
Their tech team almost exclusively came from Jane Street, wouldn’t it be OCaml?
- lolinder 4y ago
  OCaml still wouldn't have 16 bit ints.
  - eddsh1994 4y ago
    Uint8.t ;)

tobyjsullivan 4y ago

Reading between the lines (and pattern matching), my interpretation is it’s likely a line that prevents balances going below zero. The number was an account number which was exempted from that particular check. The $65B figure probably leads somewhere else and sounds like it would be counting bitcoins which peaked at over $65k per coin. If there was some other limit that prevented his balance from falling below -$1M BTC, then Alameda “had access to” over $65B in credit (in October 2021)