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by hobom 1307 days ago
The just-world fallacy is strongly in play with many comments here. Because those foundations and charities are massively affected by this scandal, there MUST be something they did wrong, right? Surely they should have vetted their donors better? And when making these arguments, we totally forget that people specialising in vetting people, like investment funds, journalists and so on, completely fell for the guy. If you want charities to implement a standard that would have prevented them from taking money from SBF, congratulations, you now have a process that prevents them from taking money from basically any billionaire.
3 comments
alistairSH 1307 days ago
The only mistake these foundations made was committing to spend money they hadn’t yet received. And relying on a single source of funding. Something about eggs and baskets.

Should they have known FTX was about to fail? Maybe, but so should a lot of other people who should have definitely known better. So, it’s hard to fault them for that.

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jefftk 1307 days ago
> committing to spend money they hadn’t yet received

In several cases they have received the money, but now feel like it is not ok (morally, legally, or both) to spend it.

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dahdum 1307 days ago
These foundations and charities were willing participants of SBF's PR campaign, but they're constantly being used for such purposes. Expecting them to unravel his complex, opaque, international fraud before accepting grants is a hard ask. Hell, Gensler's team was meeting with FTX to write regulations while freezing out other crypto companies. SBF had been anointed.

Still, while victims of his fraud, they are certainly lower in standing than almost everyone else.

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rglover 1307 days ago
> we totally forget that people specialising in vetting people, like investment funds, journalists and so on, completely fell for the guy.

This is not an excuse for assuaging due diligence. And to be frank, the guy looked shifty. Even worse, a cursory look at his company would have told you he was shuffling billions of dollars in investments and user deposits without a board of directors. If it quacks like a duck...

It would do a lot of people well to assume that anybody portrayed as a wünderkind or super genius in the media is anything but and cautiously invest their time, money, and attention in them accordingly.

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