[Maxatar]

Unlike CZ, who made Trump and his family hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars, SBF has absolutely nothing to offer Trump. He's broke and a complete outcast.

Ross Ulbricht became a cause celebre among libertarians, but SBF was always genuinely despised by pretty much everyone.

[evan_]

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly1qrl9l1qo CZ pardon- for reference

[bpodgursky]

Don't be a clown. If SBF was out of jail he could raise a twenty billion dollar fund tomorrow.

His Anthropic investment alone would give him credibility. If it hadn't been liquidated for pennies FTX would have been one of the best performing funds of all time, even with the theft and mismanagement.

[nujabe]

I highly doubt investors would be flocking to give their money to a convicted fraudster. And I would be surprised if he wasn’t still banned from starting a company by the SEC.

[rozap]

This is a good point. We should just let all the ponzi schemes that are currently underway ride. Maybe they made good investments that will return 100x. The only way to know is to not intervene.

[bpodgursky]

Did I say he should get out of jail?

IF he was pardoned, THEN he could easily raise money, because his old fund made EXTREMELY GOOD investment decisions. That's not a moral statement, that's a factual claim. "He should get out of jail because he is a good investor" is a strawman argument I did not make.

[themafia]

> FTX would have been one of the best performing funds of all time

Ponzi schemes often have that feature. Right up until the bottom completely falls out.

[bpodgursky]

It wasn't a Ponzi scheme. You really need to read up before commenting. It was a wildly successful fund he used as a slush fund for other projects. There's no mechanism for FTX to collapse unless Anthropic among other projects collapses to zero.

[verteu]

Alameda was only profitable in the years when Bitcoin was going up. By 2022 their trading operations were deeply negative (hence the decision to steal customer funds).

[themafia]

> Ross Ulbricht became a cause celebre among libertarians

And was a campaign promise Trump issued in order to secure votes from that base.