Hacker Read top | best | new | newcomments | leaders | about | bookmarklet login

> he couldn't correct the record unless he simultaneously updated all his institutional investors at the same time.

Hmm, conference calls, twitter, e-mail, web pages. And so on.

Is it really that difficult to issue an update which satisfies this legal requirement.



sort by: page size:

> Why can't anyone do this?

The dude does own 200B + worth of publicly traded equities.


> we discovered we had made a big mistake in drafting it that had gone unnoticed by me, the expert bankers and lawyers and all the investors so far. There is literally no chance that this error would have been found or solved by a formal system and if anything it would actually have been worse.

There is no chance that a formal system wouldn't have revealed this bug? Static analysis and simulations wouldn't have helped?


>> an organization such as FTX comprises a complex interaction of financial, technological and legal issues.

>It is unclear if this complexity was designed specifically to hide blatant acts of fraud or just cover up incompetence. Either way, the lack of transparency does not look good for him.

I would strongly suggest neither. I did not intend to imply that this complexity was specific to FTX but rather all organizations in that field. The complexity is a unavoidable result of combining the demands of financial, technological and most significantly legal aspects.


> Given the situation, offer they pay you a reasonable fee for the problem to go away.

I'm afraid the investors would read it as some kind of bribe and the culprit could sue him for such accusations. He doesn't have a contract to support his claims, the e-mail would cause more trouble than it's worth it.


> How is this sort of shenanigan allowed?

Investors gave Adam virtually unchecked power over their capital.


> 3. Prosecutors, needing to do something got him on fraud charges where he misstated information on an investment but still tripled their money.

I don't think the outcome should matter. Lying to investors should land you in jail. It shouldn't become okay "if investors still made money"


> During the crowd sale, it was often said that 'investors' need to look at the code because that is the only binding agreement. I guess it turns out that's a lie too.

No, it turns out that that's completely true, and that's the problem.


> That doesn't make him a fraud.

Why not?

What is the point of deadlines then?

Being a fraud doesn't mean you fail to deliver.

fraud: 'wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain.'

He promises deadlines to soothe shareholders. I don't see the difference in his behavior and fraudulent behavior, other than that he has a large fan-base to validate the behavior.

He profits from promises that aren't delivered.


> It's going to get real messy, especially since he holds all money, bank, passwords info (now I understand why he wanted to take control of those stuff in the beginning).

You're not kidding. I hope you just mean logistical access (as in, currently holds the details to), as opposed to actually having them in his name. If the latter, you're pretty much screwed. In any case, when you discuss this with the board, once you get them on board with this decision in the first place, you're going to need to make a clear plan for getting access to all of those resources transferred. Hopefully you can do so quickly and without legal action required. Fortunately, if they're in the company name, there are steps you can take to get that access.


> what those CEOs are doing to let a situation roll like this for so long. How boards accept this kind of thing?

It's approved by the board. They signed off as part of some strategy. No way a ceo outside of Zuck is permitted to lose money like this otherwise. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TWLO/twilio/net-in...


> This doesn't look good for him.

Can I ask what you mean by this?

Will the SEC arrest him? Ban him from being a Director of a public company?

I keep hearing about him 'getting in big trouble'. But I don't get it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it is upsetting for him to possibly be forced to pay millions in fines and maybe even be kick off one of his projects.

But that isn't a very big downside, and half of it isn't even from the SEC.

I mean, there seems to be a pattern when it comes to the misbehavior of the ultra powerful:

The upside to his action has the potential in the billions, while the potential IF caught is generally going to be a fine worth millions.

He may have snubbed his board badly enough that they make him pay for this incident by removing his control of the project, but that is a separate matter.

I feel whenever someone powerful is going to be punished the media goes crazy over every detail of the noodle that is going to be used as a whip.


> He certainly didn't help it by going on TV and lying about their liquidity issues.

Aren't there laws against lying to investors?


>He bought something that was damaged and its value went off a cliff.

He waived due diligence now is complaining about something that should have been obvious in advance, and in fact was one of the things he said was an issue with the platform that he'd fix.

>What kind of person would pay full freight for Twitter as the tech valuations plummet

The kind of person that signs a deal. Were he and his team not smart enough to offer fair value for the company? What kind of person absolves a billionaire from rules we all have to follow?


> Was there any evidence that they couldn't do "normal bank stuff"?

His fund had problems transferring money and that's why he noticed something was wrong.

Someone else would have had similar problems, and would have noticed, even if Thiel didn't act.


> It seems ludicrous to me that he would be able to do this without a serious plan to increase the value of the investment.

There's been much more ludicrous abuses of financial instruments in tech.


> have to wonder what kind of logic they were using to wait so long.

It’s called greed. And also private money was incredibly cheap so why bother with reporting requirements that come with an IPO


> I guess you have to set the rules based on the average idiot CEO and the average idiot Speculator

Idiot CEOs are a self-correcting problem. The rules are there because of smart scoundrel CEOs scamming idiot Investors.


> of course shouldn't have said those words yesterday.

They were going to have to say something sooner-or-later. I think the biggest part is that before they could raise capital, they needed to be honest about their books or risk securities fraud charges.


> but we are far from agreeing that large financial institutions are inherently competent because they're large.

I don’t see anyone making that argument.

Speculating on an ETF “accidentally” acquiring more than 15% of Twitter implies a whole different level of incompetence than a big ETF ever fucking up big.

next

Legal | privacy