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The craziest thing to me is that when he was saying things like that noone in the mainstream media was questioning him. The FT had a very flattering lunch inter

• xwolfi 3y ago
  But you had Zeke Faux, a specialist, going there, looking at SBF screen and seeing nothing too special too. Blame the "mainstream media" all you want but as long as we refuse (for good reason) to give audit power to journalists, mainstream or specialist, you'll keep reading positive pieces about frauds if they stay hidden purposefully. I'm not sure why you would have wanted to NYT to destroy every company it interviews just for the sake of it. Wouldnt they need proof ? And how do you get them, when they're hidden by a conspiracy ? Plus, the police in the US, Hong Kong and the Bahamas found nothing and waited for Coindesk to publish a leak by CZ, a competitor, to start looking... I say that because at the peak of the crypto fever I couldnt distinguish SBF from, say, the CEO of Kraken, and I suspect it's hindsight convincing you something could have been done.
  • mejutoco 3y ago
    I don't suggest to "destroy" any company, or to say they are guilty of things without proof. The FT did an impressive investigation of Wirecard, for example. There is a difference between destroying a company and making a couple of common sense questions instead of parroting whatever the interviewee wants. Some basic journalistic practices. It is really not so much to ask. EDIT: interviewer/interviewee
    • xwolfi 3y ago
      Agreed but we only ask that after the conspiracy was revealed and honestly it's so mindblowingly stupid it's hard to imagine anyone could have thought they used QuickBooks or just thad no accountant. Again you re asking someth that had been done several times: many people did dig a bit deeper and couldnt find the Alameda hole or the real balance sheets, or the parents siphoning millions and all that stuff that took even time for prosecutors to find. The role of the media isnt to uncover fraud I think, it's to give you a chance to expose one if you know one. If nobody was willing to talk, what s a journo gonna do? Carreyrou, a personal hero, had tons of witnesses coming to him for instance.
• nikster 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • RandomLensman 3y ago
    Why would there be a greater agenda? Who would have been the owner of that agenda and why?
    • hef19898 3y ago
      This conspiratorial BS is where crypto bros and right wing conspiracy nuts start to overlap.
      • davidwritesbugs 3y ago
        I think conspiracy nutjobs, like this guy, have now learnt not to say "he's controlled by the Lizard People" out loud
        • hef19898 3y ago
          Not talking about OP, explicitly not, but sometimes it is worse than Lizard People...
      • mensetmanusman 3y ago
        Ummm, the government literally charged him with 7 counts of conspiracy in regards to the political donations. https://www.reuters.com/legal/bankman-fried-used-customer-funds-100-mln-us-political-donations-prosecutors-say-2023-08-14/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/bankman-fried-used-customer-fu...
        • hef19898 3y ago
          So?
• olalonde 3y ago
  Maybe not the mainstream media but I feel like a lot people, especially in the Bitcoin community, were suspicious of him. He just screamed grifter to me. I never really bought his arbitrage story either and wouldn't be surprised if that was not his first scam. Here's an interview he gave a few months before the FTX collapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6nAxiym9oc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6nAxiym9oc
  • roland35 3y ago
    The arbitrage story definitely seems bogus. People have been aware of difference in bitcoin price across Asia since like the beginning of bitcoin - I don't think it is any huge billion $ opportunity. Now Tether on the other hand.. I would not be surprised if that has a lot to do with it.
    • olalonde 3y ago
      I was running an arbitrage bot well before he claims to have started arbitrage and even back then, it was competitive enough that there weren't tons of money to be made, especially considering all the risks and costs involved. In those days, a relatively common scam involved setting up an investment scheme that promised high returns thanks to "arbitrage trading" (but which was really just a ponzi scheme). I wouldn't be surprised if he was involved in something like that.
  • eiirv33 3y ago
    Maybe you did, but check the subreddit for bitcoin and cryptocurrency for posts before the FTX collapse. The prevailing sentiment, I recall, was that FTX was less scammy than competitors such as Celsius and Voyager, because the rewards for staking on FTX wasn't quite as absurd as the others. I think a lot of crypto investors thought Sam was the real deal, and that's one reason why they were able to attract so many customers.
• michaelt 3y ago
  > The craziest thing to me is that when he was saying things like that noone in the mainstream media was questioning him. Well, what's the difference between an unhinged, drug-addled loony and an eccentric visionary genius? The difference is having $26 billion. Why not call him out on what seems like bullshit? That bullshit has convinced "informed" tech investors like Softbank and Sequoia Capital. And elsewhere at the same time, Andreessen Horowitz is investing $450 million in ape jpegs. This is absolutely gourmet, Grade A, top quality wagyu bullshit.
  • hnbad 3y ago
    To be frank, the value proposition of those investments was never what the companies claimed they did but how much money they could bring in before going bust. And of course some of those companies were also useful by fostering acceptance of ideas those investors benefit from: for example, a big part of the "blockchain" and "smart contracts" narrative was privatization (or "democratization") of government functions (e.g. managing land deeds, educational certifications and other claims). Not to mention that a big part of investing in start ups is just ape jpegs with extra steps (i.e. "greater fool" theory).
  • tim333 3y ago
    He came very close to getting away with it all. If the investments had panned out a little differently he would have been able to stay solvent and no one would have really noticed the regulation breaking.
    • RandomLensman 3y ago
      That kind of assumes a change in behavior and that any number of other things wouldn't eventually trip things up.
      • meepmorp 3y ago
        Exactly. Evading disaster doesn't make someone like this reconsider their decision making process and act smarter next time, it shows them that they're a goddamn genius who can do no wrong.
• nytesky 3y ago
  Have we talked about sequoia recently? https://web.archive.org/web/20221027181005/https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlight/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221027181005/https://www.sequo...
  • kgwgk 3y ago
    They were deliberately misled and lied to - there’s nothing they could have done to prevent that! https://twitter.com/Alfred_Lin/status/1720240388311810382 https://twitter.com/Alfred_Lin/status/1720240388311810382
    • tiahura 3y ago
      I’m at a loss for how to process that tweet. Is he just completely incapable of reading the room, or is it a lvl 10 cynical FU?
      • nytesky 3y ago
        Honestly my completely outside the valley impression is that VC operates a lot on pedigree and connections. SBF has an impeccable pedigree, so the thought that he was a Michael Fenne type was never even considered. Why would he lie, when he could live an honest life and be fabulously rich and comfortable (Jane St, wealthy connected parents, etc)
        • FFP999 3y ago
          Not too different from the case of Elizabeth Holmes, when you frame it like that.
  • 300bps 3y ago
    I knew the embarrassment level was going to be turned up to 11 when your link was to archive.org.
  • AutumnCurtain 3y ago
    Wow. Hagiographic would be an understatement
• zelphirkalt 3y ago
  It is mainstream culture to not question (at least temporarily) financially successful businessmen. Financial success in the eyes of many must mean, that they are doing something right. But that "something" quickly is left out and the conclusion becomes "doing all things right". Basically ethics is supplanted by how capitalism works. It is not brought up too often, that often one of the most important differences between them and the viewer of mainstream media is, that this person is vastly more ruthless with regards to ethics.
• gardenhedge 3y ago
  People like people who talk a lot. It's that simple.
• greg7mdp 3y ago
  Elon Musk says idiotic stuff all the time and people revere him.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • FFP999 3y ago
    Hey, Musk did one thing right: he picked fabulously wealthy parents.
    • ralfd 3y ago
      https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-elon-musk https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-elon-musk > Musk claims to be self-made; he moved to Canada at age 17 with $2500 and worked his way up from there. For a while he supported himself by cutting logs, Abe Lincoln style. Nobody paid for his college and he took out $100,000 in debt. Musk’s father invested $28,000 in his first company, but Musk dismissed this as a “later round” and claimed he was already successful at that point and would have gotten the money anyway. The total for that round was $200,000, so Musk’s father’s contribution was only about 15%. > Obviously there’s still some sense where he benefited from a privileged upbringing or whatever, but in a purely business sense he’s mostly self-made.
  • smegger001 3y ago
    The difference being Elon has a history of multiple successful business and products. And didn't defraud anyone in the process. (Note he is still a narcissistic asshole but he is a successful narcissistic ass and we generally value competence higher than personality)
• eiirv33 3y ago
  Think that's crazy? Read what HN commenters were saying about FTX before the collapse. There were skeptics, for sure. But plenty of people here who thought sam was smart, good at business, and more prudent and above board than other crypto CEOs. Many users here have a blindspot when it comes to detecting bullshit. Sam reminded us of ourselves, so we believed him.