Resolves as YES if Sam Bankman-Fried (aka SBF), founder of FTX, is convicted of a felony in any country. Resolves as YES whether SBF pleads guilty, is found guilty, or is tried and found guilty in absentia.
Clarification: AFAICT, 'felony' is a term only used in the United States. If SBF is convicted of a crime outside of the USA, the crime will be deemed a felony if the equivalent crime is considered a felony in the USA.
https://sambf.substack.com/p/ftx-pre-mortem-overview new sam post, likely hints at his intended defense.
@DeanValentine or if he talked so much in his interview circuit that the jury mistries because too many die of old age before the trial's done, hah
SBF likely to be released into custody of his parents. That changes the calculus a bit.
Pour one out for all the people who said “I dunno crypto seems bad” then “Sam did nothing wrong but be ambitious”;
May your moral compass be updated accordingly
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/technology/ftx-fraud-guilty-pleas.html
Former Alameda research head Caroline Ellison and FTX executive Gary Wang have pleaded guilty to fraud and are cooperating with authorities.
SBF agrees to extradition to the United States, giving up the opportunity to spend years fighting extradition.
The cooperation of two lieutenants with detailed insider knowledge and the rapid extradition to the USA mean that the probability of a conviction before 2026 is very, very high.
The lieutenants can corroborate each other's testimony. Any part of the fraud that was not documented electronically (sometimes on a cryptographically-signed immutable public ledger!) might be explained when Wang and Ellison are cross-examined.
I think the Southern District of New York is playing a very strong hand here. When SDNY tells other FTX executives to come forth and cooperate now, I don't think it's a bluff.
Things are moving fast. Just piled my last M into YES. Any price less than 98% is silly at this point. Nothing short of a presidential pardon or an epic procedural fuckup by the SDNY attorneys will keep SBF out of prison.
90% of people charged with a federal crime plead guilty. 8% have their cases dismissed. 2% go to trial and very few people in that 2% are acquitted.
I don’t think the chance that SBF’s case will be dismissed are very high.
Piling into YES.
@mr22222222 "8% have their cases dismissed"
But this makes you want to buy from 92% to 94%?
https://twitter.com/tier10k/status/1602446815772741632 Claimedly SBF has been arrested.
Bought more YES because SBF just. Will. Not. Shut. Up. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/01/business/dealbook/sam-bankman-fried-dealbook-interview-transcript.html?searchResultPosition=2
If he keeps going on like this he might just turn himself in and plead guilty because of 'duty.'
“yes I commingled the accounts and committed massive fraud, but like I didn’t *INTeNd to do a crime thing”
Has no one noticed that his name is literally “Bank man freed?” This is not a coincidence because nothing is ever a coincidence.
https://www.ft.com/content/c236d6f9-da5a-4da7-8dc8-5cd450dfe39d
Holy shit. This makes Enron look like Berkshire Hathaway.
@jack I wouldn’t say “a lot longer”, it’s been around about 15 years max, but you are absolutely right that it’s foundation is in consequentialist philosophy not crypto. We could argue about the merits of EA creator Peter Singer’s ideas, a lot of them are ridiculous in my opinion, but I imagine he is mortified by what has transpired this last couple weeks.
Sort of astonishing that this is trading at 72% after this article:
SBF is acting in a spectacularly self-destructive and worrying way.
SBF, if you're reading this, please give your social media accounts & email to your lawyers and seek some help. Take some inspiration from these people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale
They've done a lot of good for people after doing their time. You can't raise $8B in two weeks. Don't think that your life is worthless if you fail to do that. Do a Frank Abagnale.
https://bermudahospitals.bm/services-listing/mental-health/mid-atlantic-wellness-institute/
@mr22222222 Macabre to say, but he is to be alive to be convicted. He could off himself, or one of his now many enemies could “Epstein” him to keep him from running his mouth any further.
@MP You should create one so I can bet everything on NO. https://apple.news/AFUTpk5oESaKElagO0ElKow
After looking at those screenshots, I think there's a >5% chance of suicide when he doesn't raise $8B in two weeks
Well, all these screenshots are gonna get shown to a jury eventually. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23462333/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-cryptocurrency-effective-altruism-crypto-bahamas-philanthropy
@LeahLibresco The fact this guy is still talking is really astounding to me
@LarsDoucet He claims he believed that was a private conversation (and despite how foolish it was for him to assume that, I have no reason to doubt it, considering that in that conversation he basically said he was an error theorist publicly claiming to believe in morality because it was useful for him to make that claim.)
man makes Enron look like amateurs, see also the $250m Ftx (likely) paid to Alameda in 2021
While it wasn’t necessarily fraudulent back then, the slope has been so slippery for so long (orders of magnitude worse ethics than any other exchange has even be accused of, long before the fraud started)
If crypto is speed running financial history, and Sam was speed running ethics, perhaps many can profit from noticing that overconfident saviorism and careless selfishness end up being basically the same thing.
Golden mean more like modest good works, or realistic morality, more than …
In the United States, where the felony/misdemeanor distinction is still widely applied, the federal government defines a felony as a crime punishable by death or imprisonment in excess of one year. If punishable by exactly one year or less, it is classified as a misdemeanor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony
Does anyone else think this market could have originally been intended as a tip off that something was going on?? It was created October 4 and there are definitely some FTX insiders on this site.
i'm not sure why this market is so low - it took bernie madoff only ~ 4 months to get convicted of 11 felony counts after the exposure of his ponzi scheme in december 2008
it should be trading much higher than 40%, even
@EgeErdil Do people think ftx was an intentional fraud/ponzi the same way Madoff was though? I'm skeptical, I've been operating under the assumption that it was more of some really dumb choices and bad risk management, I don't know if some rules were broken but the core business model seems perfectly viable in principle, unlike Madoff?
@jack No FTX wasn't a Ponzi. It was fraud. Seems like it was an intentional fraud since at least April or May. Plus he lied pretty explicitly to the public for awhile. I don't think the business model is relevant to weather he committed fraud after the market turned on him. He was clearly taking deposits though for awhile knowingingly not segregating the funds like he was committed to do. So at the end it started looking more like a Ponzi, but it wasn't designed as such.
@jack If you look at the things they were doing to incentivize users to hold the FTT token they should have been big red flags that something strange was going on.
@EgeErdil There is bias on this site in SBFs favor because he is an investor via FTXFF.
Any staked coins could probably have been lent out to third parties, maybe been lent to Alameda, but everything else was clearly user property (title remains with customer, no right to transfer or use as its own).
He stole from customers to prop up his own insolvent trading firm—and has been engaging in dirty self-dealing for years, commingling assets between the two entities, and more; everyone knew about the latter, but no one quite expected him outright stealing custodial assets (or that Alameda was insolvent, versus getting underpriced capital from FTX, priority execution, listing priority, and every other unethical thing going on in mostly plain sight).
@jack Maybe more like Nick Leeson than Ponzi. Who was convicted and jailed.
Interesting, ok, I've mainly been going off Matt Levine who painted it like how banks operate (loaning out customer funds being the normal course of business). If they weren't allowed to do that then it becomes a very different story.
@EgeErdil Bernie madoff plead guilty. If Sam does not the trial could potentially drag on for a long time.
Bill Hwang faces up to 380 years in prison for slightly dissembling about his balance sheet to trade with higher leverage
Covering shorts—lock him up for life basically:
Can this say "a felony in any country?" Also, does felony mean something different to crime?
@NathanpmYoung Crime is a broader term but the distinction isn't super relevant here; a crime (at least the way the US breaks it down) can be a felony or a misdemeanor. Felonies are more serious than misdemeanors and given the scope of this event, if there is a criminal conviction it would be a conviction for a felony.
@NathanpmYoung If SBF is convicted of a crime in a country outside of the United States, it will be deemed a felony if the equivalent crime in the US is considered a felony.
Odds are going way up.
Nasty stuff if Binance wouldn’t touch it. Supposedly 6B negative equity, lent customer funds to his insolvent trading firm, fully gambled away and not just illiquid.
John Corzine avoided jail by playing dumb and political connections; SBF might be ~25% of the way there but there are a lot of countries in the world.
@GeorgeVii maybe the timeframe. but surely gensler et al will figure stuff out reasonably quickly in the aftermath
Another thing to consider; His lawyers will be fantastic given family connections etc
@GeorgeVii I'm not sure if having lawyer parents really offers you better legal connections than simply being a billionaire. I'm sure his lawyers will be talented either way.
@TylerJohnston I agree. As long as he has kept paying his insurance premiums he will be good on lawyers. Just like Elizabeth Holmes.
“History teaches it is better to engage is lawful evil than chaotic good”
(the US entities are supposedly clean, the politicians are bought and paid for, he has his own personal lobbying arm—he might get a tiny negative comment from the regulators he owns, but will probably be fine, would take this <1% )
Still would guess he's still in the clear on this regard. But if it comes to light how degen he really is ... idk.
Can't decide if this should be higher or lower than yesterday 🤔
Perhaps lower cos ftx.com is probs dealt with now which might have been some part of the overall risk. But then maybe higher given the likelyhood of greater scrutiny than before.
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