I don't understand how he could hope to raise money if his idea is "We return it to the people I stole from." I have no doubt that, like Adam Neumann, there is some circumstance where VCs would give him another turn, but it would be because those VCs thought they could make money, not because they want to donate their money to make SBF's victims whole.
Adam Neumann _should_ have an atrocious reputation given how he treats other people's money but VCs seem happy to fund his new adventures (presumably assuming they can still make money on the way up before the bust).
There would no doubt be people happy to give SBF the funds to go fleece a whole new herd of victims on the off chance he got away with it enough to make the number go up.
I don’t understand the pressure to give bad people their money back. What’s it supposed to accomplish? I’m not sure it should even be legal to send money to SBF. It’s seeming more and more likely that he’s head of a criminal conspiracy.
Just remember, SBF wasn’t donating money to these causes: he was donating his customers assets. These organisations are lucky the assets don’t get clawed back because this money should be considered stolen or proceeds of crime.
Think about it this way. Money is people's time. SBF stole billions of hours of people's personal time. Effort, savings, sweat, tears all bundled in what we call money. Why shouldn't he repay them with his own time in jail?
That's an extremely charitable interpretation of the events, in my opinion. Misappropriating custodial funds is not ever acceptable when you are running an exchange, no matter how good your EV looks like.
And I'm not buying into his whole effective altruism thing. What I think is that SBF had a strong desire to make money, ethics be damned, but had a troubled conscience. Effective altruism gave him moral comfort and helped him rationalize his actions.
SBF would be a nobody without Sequoia and others throwing money at him. I'm more concerned about the judgment of monied people who are so desperate to find their own Adam Neumann, that they forgo common sense and invest based on 'feel'.
I'm not arguing against retribution. I'm arguing that this particular retribution is not proportional.
In terms of the chance of repeat offense...who would invest money with SBF at this point? It's not like he was mugging people, they voluntarily gave him their money.
While I agree that SBF was, to a certain extent, doing the promise-a-lot-and-stall-for-time method that a lot of overhyped founders do, there were two key differences:
1) he lied about key details of what would be done with the money people gave him, which is a specifically bad kind of lying because there are special laws for it
> I'm not sure how anyone could argue that what SBF was doing fits it any way with that. He's just been found guilty of fraud on multiple counts,
EA strikes me as the same sort of ambiguous slime as "breast cancer awareness."
You read the words and think hey, that sounds right. Benefit others as efficiently as possible. Guy's a Robin Hood type, stealing from the rich to benefit others. Good for you, buddy. Godspeed.
Except you look at what he's actually doing and see he's not stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. He's stealing from the foolish and giving to "others," who turn out to be his friends and associates. $500m to Anthropic? $5b for Twitter? This shit isn't charity.
It's kleptocracy masquerading as charity. I can't see his charitable causes as anything more than an ephemeral funds-parking scheme storing funds in a chain of IOUs.
Well, I mean, that's why I admitted my bias. I do think I'd have the same position even if I weren't a victim of a crypto scam, but I felt it important to disclose potential conflicts in what I'm saying.
SBF went on many podcasts and interviews, and instead of showing even the slightest hint of remorse, he instead denied everything, blamed everyone but himself, then pleaded ignorance, all while also claiming that he probably won't be charged with any crimes. I recommend looking at CoffeeZilla's coverage on this.
We can find plenty of examples of convicted conmen that manage to get funding again. Off the top of my head, the wolf of Wall Street himself, Jordan Belfort, was convicted of securities fraud, spent almost two years in jail, was banned from any kind of stock trading, but now promotes all kind of cryptocurrency and multilevel marketing scams.
"Bankman-Fried told Piper that he's still seeking to raise $8 billion from outside investors, in order to make customers whole, adding that 'a month ago I was one of the world’s greatest fundraisers.'"
Part of me thinks that maybe SBF actually is as bewildered as he sounds, about why it all came apart. Whereas Bernie Madoff knew he was presiding over a Ponzi scheme and was only surprised that it lasted as long as it did, SBF might have actually believed that he was as great at business as his media puff pieces said.
Like a person pre-2008 who believes they can afford this mortgage because the bankers are willing to lend them the money, and why would they do that if I couldn't afford it, SBF may have believed he must be great at business, because Sequoia and SoftBank and the rest were loaning him money in huge amounts, and they all had lots of experience in the space.
None of which means he wasn't guilty of fraud, but he may actually be a bit of a tragic figure, in some ways.
“I’ll give my ill gotten gains to someone who technically wasn’t involved (until they accepted my money)” couldn’t possibly be a new trick. (Hypothetically that is, if SBF actually did a crime; I’m not following the case).
SBF cannot even manage "ineffective" altruism. He puts other people through hell without a hint of empathy. How would anyone expect he could do "effective" altruism. In his own words, he "fucked up". But he is not sorry, he offers no apology, he's "not guilty". He is a compulsive liar.
It will be interesting how he fares in prison. Martin Shkrelli wants to be his friend. Perhaps they can be pen pals. Maybe he'll get special treatment or early release.
Even if SBF was following the EA playbook to the letter, it did not work. The attempt was ineffective. He failed.
Michael Lewis shared some SBF story where the scenario (the bet) presented to SBF was a chance to make the world better or, if it failed, the entire world would be destroyed. SBF allegedly would take that bet. All or nothing. Where have we seen this type of thinking before.
>but a16z's $350M investment in Adam Neumann's newest Thing makes me think that we are still flush with money ready to be thrown at anyone that has the connections to get a coffee chat in Sand Hill Road.
They have loose morals.
Kevin O'Leary, of Dragon's Den fame, who is now a creditor in the FTX bankruptcy (ie wiped out) recently said in an interview that he would invest with SBF again.
The guy literally had money stolen from him. How do you even explain that?
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