I actually talked to Sam for a bit in the "early days" and he always seemed like an OK guy. Approachable and "honest" which makes this all the worse... I kept asking "why start an exchange when you're killing it with Alameda?" and his response seemed to consistently be about wanting to make a better product and legitimize crypto... ugh, don't even know what to think now... if that was all a front.
It's really odd to think because its always "some guy in the news" that gets bad press and demonized (not unjustly), never really someone you "know of." (prob a lot of ppl w/that experience hanging around HN tho, lol)
It's just weird feelings but mostly just "wtf man."
> ugh, don't even know what to think now... if that was all a front.
It's very easy to "get high on your own supply" and lose objectivity around what you're doing and how likely it is to succeed. This doesn't require malice either.
I don't know how to reconcile this with the comments people are making. He didn't sound like he was under illusions about what he was doing. And surely other people read/listened to this.
It was pretty much laid out with a ton of foreshadowing.
Near the end:
"And it is sort of like real monetizable stuff in some senses. And you know, at some point if the world never decides that we are wrong about this in like a coordinated way, right? Like you're kind of the guy calling and saying, no, this thing's actually worthless, but in what sense are you right?"
"And if you're like, that's dumb, it has no cashflow flow. I'm gonna short sell it. You lose all your money."
Alameda messed up in the same way that three arrows did. That’s not necessarily Sam’s fault, because he did not run Alameda at the time. However, it seems like you build them out by providing them with a ton of FTT collateral so he’s pretty much complicit.
Most people (all?) are driven by circumstance rather than their "inner" self. He might be a good/honest guy that started this with good and honest intentions; but things went very differently. There is little he can do, and I think there are few people in the earth who can stand to circumstance. (especially when billions and millions of people are involved.)
It’s a regular failure mode in human interactions. Just because someone is attractive/charismatic/sincere doesn’t mean they should be taken seriously, and just because someone is ugly/inarticulate/creepy doesn’t mean they should be disbelieved. Extreme idiocy and true genius are just invisible to most people (before the fact), and the discerning folk get only Schadenfreude.
> Professor Bankman-Fried is my tutor. He’s as good at explaining the principles of macroeconomics as anyone out there in the world today—and I know this for a fact because I’ve subsequently watched YouTube’s best on the same subject. But SBF teaches me Macro while simultaneously playing round after round of Storybook Brawl.
This stuff is beyond parody. Dude's getting interviewed for a nauseatingly butt-kissing puff piece, and he can't tear himself away from a game targeted at literal children. (He bought the developers and proceeded to cram NFTs into it.)
I mean, MIT, Harvard, LSE, Chicago and others have Econ course lectures on YT. You can watch lectures from lecturers that students at these institutions have trouble getting access to.
Don’t be so sure that you can’t learn from the absolute best on YT.
A YT video does not give you assignments, reading lists or office hours to ask questions in.
I'd question the value of OCW-only autodidacts, in much the same way I would someone who claimed fitness training is unnecessary because he already knows about proper form having Arnold Schwarzenegger's VHS workout tapes.
YouTube's best and the best that are on YouTube mean something different to me. The latter being MIT, Harvard, LSE and Chicago's best on YouTube and the former youtube.com/econonomydude.
The prostrating quotes from the VCs in here are pretty unbelievable.
First, that they are even real. Second, that they actually decided to post them in a piece like this, and lacked the self awareness about how incompetent it makes them look.
Even if he turned out to be the real deal, maybe stick to the fundamentals of the investment. I'd be interested in learning what their DD process looked like
That’s an amazing article. It sounds like the he’s never heard of the kelly criterion, just makes massive bet after massive bet and then blows up. He does have ~1 billion more than me even after this mess, so maybe it all worked out.
Given his business moves I wouldn't be surprised is all his personal debt is also collateralized by FTT. As wise Walter Sobchak would say: "Mark it zero!"
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“Of the exchanges that we had met and looked at, some of them had regulatory issues, some of them were already public. And then there was Sam.”
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Wow.. I think Mr. Bankman's wealth was $100 billion in Jan 2022 according to a Fortune estimate. I wonder what would have happened had CZ not made that tweet. Hmm...makes you wonder who profited from all of this. Imagine if binance bought puts on BTC before this announcement.
The fund remains in good shape. It has a gym subscription with two hours personal training per week, and it regularly participates in marathons and Iron Man events.
From a linked article, a quote that basically describes the Federal Reserve
>It’s almost as if SBF found a way to hack the financial system, printing billions of dollars out of thin air against which he was able to borrow massive sums from unknown counterparties. Almost as if he discovered a financial perpetual motion machine…
Not sure if this was sarcasm, but during the transition from Dotcom Boom to Dotcom Bust, it was a bit of folk wisdom that if you saw a Dotcom rename a stadium, its shareholders best start selling and its employees best start job hunting.
It's really odd to think because its always "some guy in the news" that gets bad press and demonized (not unjustly), never really someone you "know of." (prob a lot of ppl w/that experience hanging around HN tho, lol)
It's just weird feelings but mostly just "wtf man."