padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape

If anyone hasn't read the SBF Vox interview btw it's fucking wild. He comes off like a singularly enormous piece of shit. His view of ethics is essentially a dumber version of "justice is the advantage of the stronger" (which is extremely on brand with the tech bro would be philosopher-king model").
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
And in another extremely on-brand plot twist it turns out that Caroline Ellison wrote a Mencius Moldbug-inspired blog back in college full of musings on all the greatest Dark Enlightment hits like racial "science" and IQ, redpilled based anti-feminism, etc
 

william_kent

Well-known member
as @padraig (u.s.) says, it's the little details that kill with the FTX story... loving the disses on SBF's inability to master League of Legends after years of play

While this [Sam Bankman-Fried being bad at the game League of Legends] may initially seem like a frivolous observation, it is actually shocking that SBF was unable to rank higher than the Bronze or Silver league after years of regular play across hundreds if not thousands of individual games. It is reflective of an incredibly impaired level of cognition, much like someone who was unable to learn how to ride a bicycle after an entire month of practice or someone who never progresses past the level of an average elementary school student after five years’ of daily piano practice. To me, this is one of the strongest indications possible that SBF is, to be blunt, “not entirely there.”
 

DannyL

Wild Horses

If anyone hasn't read the SBF Vox interview btw it's fucking wild. He comes off like a singularly enormous piece of shit. His view of ethics is essentially a dumber version of "justice is the advantage of the stronger" (which is extremely on brand with the tech bro would be philosopher-king model").
He did an interview a while back on Tyler Cowan's podcast, which will be interesting to go back and listen to in light of all this. Tyler didn't blow smoke up his ass as far as I recall and always asks good questions but was very much treating him as royalty. Amazing how fast things can change. This was like 3 months ago but feels like another aeon.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses

If anyone hasn't read the SBF Vox interview btw it's fucking wild. He comes off like a singularly enormous piece of shit. His view of ethics is essentially a dumber version of "justice is the advantage of the stronger" (which is extremely on brand with the tech bro would be philosopher-king model").
Reads a bit to me like he's actually shell shocked a bit. As others have commented why is he still talking? The comments about regulators are literally *fucking amazing* in light of what's just happened.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I don't buy shell-shocked for a minute btw

Brass tacks I think these people got in way over their heads, realized at some point it was irretrievably fucked, and decided to steal what they could of what was left and either flee (Ellison) or plead ignorance/incompetence (SBF). Either way they've known what was up for awhile. That "I just realized last week it was billions of dollars" is nonsense.

Just like Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were shocked - shocked! - to find out there had been any wrongdoing at Enron
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I don't buy shell-shocked for a minute btw

Brass tacks I think these people got in way over their heads, realized at some point it was irretrievably fucked, and decided to steal what they could of what was left and either flee (Ellison) or plead ignorance/incompetence (SBF). Either way they've known what was up for awhile. That "I just realized last week it was billions of dollars" is nonsense.

Just like Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were shocked - shocked! - to find out there had been any wrongdoing at Enron
yeah, that's an astute reading.
Did you read the comments from the guy who'd worked on the Enron case? Absolutely excoriating.
 

Leo

Well-known member
I always wonder how it feels to be one of the many journalists who wrote all the glowing articles about the genius of Enron, Worldcom, Pets.com, FTX and the like. Go back to any random issue of Fast Company or whatever from five, 10, 15 years ago, and there are tons of gushing articles about the next big things that will change the world...until they crash and burn. And like a weatherman who gets the weekend forecast wrong, there never seems to be any reckoning. They just make believe it never happened and move on to the next hype company or technology. Sometimes they even write critical articles about the fallen company, conveniently forgetting to mention that they fell for the hype themselves two years earlier.
 
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linebaugh

Well-known member
I think FTX should have its own thread, which I might make later if no one else does

it fascinates me in a way none of the long list of previous crypto hacks and outright scams have

I think in large part bc while so many of those were simple Ponzi schemes and/or, like OneCoin, basic grifts a Depression-era conman would have no problem understanding, FTX strongly echoes like every major traditional financial scandal of the last quarter century - the hubris of Long-Term Capital Management, the shady accounting and reality denial of Enron, the lack of regulation and disastrous intermingling (via mortgages) of retail and investment banking in 2008, the messianism and fraud of Theranos - all wrapped up into one incredible package

the idea that the exact same people could be simultaneously running a trading exchange doubling as a custodial bank (already a terrible idea) AND an investment firm at the same time, with zero questions asked, is mindboggling. It's exactly the kind of thing Glass-Steagall was designed to prevent and repealing Glass-Steagall was so disastrous that it wound up almost collapsing the world economy, and required even more stringent new legislation to set it right.

(nb: before anyone says it, yes I'm aware neither FTX nor Alameda are U.S.-based so U.S. laws and regulation wouldn't apply even if they did exist, the point is that commercial and investment sides should be separated for this exact reason)
You have a good article to share? Out of touch on this one
 

luka

Well-known member
You have a good article to share? Out of touch on this one
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
You have a good article to share? Out of touch on this one
both of the Forbes pieces are solid, as well as the piece @luka posted about the extremely shady relationships between FTX, Celsius, and Tether

the fawning in-house Sequoia Capital piece linked in the Ellison profile is a fascinating look into SBF/FTX at their zenith/the moment before its total collapse, a bizarre and tonally jarring mix of unabashed hero worship (the tone is very "is SBF a genius, or is he the greatest genius who's ever lived?") and a perhaps unintentionally surreal litany of details about the intersection of crypto startup culture, the cult of effective altruism, and lifestyles of the rich and famous ca. 2022

honestly anywhere you turn there's FTX coverage - I've seen multiple non-financial outlets put out crypto/FTX dictionaries to explain the basics to laypeople i.e. (I recommend Caroline Ellison's archived Goodreads reviews btw)
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
one of my favorite things in the Sequoia profile - and there are so many, it is a truly amazing document - is its description of FTX's Bahamas office, which sounds like Jonestown for crypto nerds, and its living space at a resort called Albany, which sounds your typical fortified ultramodern luxury housing development crossed with the kind of outlandish Spenglerian building projects you see in the oil emirates
 
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