[keiferski]

I do find it odd that almost all of the negative coverage of crypto, SBF, FTX, etc. has avoided his political donations. Unless I'm misunderstanding what happened here (and please correct me if I'm wrong), but it very much seems like FTX stole money from regular people to use for lobbying and influencing elections. I can't think of anything more anti-democratic than that.

[anonymoushn]

Don't worry, some of the politicians who received money stolen from regular people have verbally committed to donating the same amount of money to their own nonprofits.

[ethanbond]

Yeah it's just reliably the top 1 or 2 comments on anything related to SBF as well as being discussed in no fewer than 10 articles in a small publication called the New York Times.

[keiferski]

It's not so much that it's avoided entirely, just that the narrative has been about the corruption of the crypto industry and SBF himself and not what the money was used for and what that indicates about the political system as a whole.

[ethanbond]

Yeah, I get that it can feel "off," but practically I'd actually much prefer that we focus the money theft conversation on money theft and the campaign reform conversation on campaign reform.

I.e. the fraud isn't made worse by the fact it was turned into donations and, likewise, campaign donations of that sort aren't less troublesome when they're made with legitimately-earned money.

[keiferski]

I.e. the fraud isn't made worse by the fact it was turned into donations

Not sure how that's true. If he scammed a bunch of people to buy a boat, that's one thing. If he scammed people and then directly influenced a very close election, that seems a little worse?

[ethanbond]

I don't think it makes the scam worse.

For example, imagine this was the test case that people wanted to push on campaign finance reform. Politicians finally give in and say "yeah you know you're right, this was really wrong. From now on, funding campaigns via dark money channels with stolen money is punishable by death."

Is campaign finance fixed? Did we make any meaningful progress on any actually meaningful problem?

[keiferski]

Fixing campaign finance is a separate issue from the particular scenario that played out. I don't see how that's controversial or confusing.

As I said, this seems like a particularly relevant and influential example, considering that it affected a close election.

[kemotep]

Campaign finance reform is a popular issue with voters, not so much policymakers. Same as voting and election reform.

What it says is that industries can perform regulatory capture by funding the right people in office. Crypto just doesn’t have the same clout at oil and gas and other groups.

[vkou]

Yeah, and it's not like his crimes were stealing money, with where the money went being largely incidental to the theft.

[ethagknight]

NYT ran stories making him out to being a victim, how his family was "caught on the middle," how FTX was simply a success story turned to bad luck. NYT effectively lead blocking PR

[ethanbond]

Can you produce links to and specific passages from the NYT articles that make him out to be a victim?

[anonymousab]

Here's a breakdown of one of them: https://gizmodo.com/nytimes-bizarre-softball-article-ftx-sam...

It would be more accurate to say that the NYT has been far too eager to positively misrepresent and run interference for crypto in general, so of course the face of crypto got his fair share of that for a couple of years.

[ethanbond]

This reads to me like run of the mill softball reporting on white collar crime. I don't get the impression that's what GP was alleging, but if it is, then yep, agreed.

If Madoff were stupid enough to take a NYTimes interview shortly after implosion, I don't think it'd look much different. (Edit: Actually, quite a bit more glowing, and not even an interview: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/nyregion/13madoff.html)