[robswc]

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."

[AlexandrB]

> 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.

[vba616]

From April of this year:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/sam-bankm...

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."

[cryptoanon]

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.

[csomar]

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.)

[balsam]

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.