Yes, but you also seem to know more about the story than the average person. When SBF lies or gaslights, you can see right through it.
Different story for the average listener, who will be listening to most interactions with an open mind and susceptible to whichever person tends to be more charming or persuasive.
Is that true? I have to think that the average attendee of the New York Times's DealBook summit is probably going to be fairly high-information. I don't think the "average person" will even know about this conference much less care enough to watch the speeches.
They are not letting me speak. They are not letting average fraudster waiting for court day to speak. Given that, yes, they should be able to not let speak whoever.
They are selecting very few people to speak and rejecting huge amounts of other people.
But the other real thing is how you introduce the speaker. What do you say about the speaker in your materials, whether you promote him as trustworthy or not.
That does depend on how you introduce him and what questions you ask. It does matter on whether when he says lies about Jews for example in that interview, you let them stand unopposed. If you use positive or euphemisms ridden introduction, then you are endorsing actually. "The next speaker is smart awesome guy who has extensive experience in leading a crypto fund".
> if they could secure an interview with Adolf Hitler himself,
His speeches are no secret. If you invite Hitler, introduce him nicely and he then go about Jewish danger, they you are in fact helping him promote genocide. And that guy would not go for interview where he be in any danger of not dominating tone (he was good at popular politics).
But seriously, why is it that nazi speech is always the most important one? I dont see anyone going "interview with Usama Bin Ladin, lets have Pol Pot speaking, lets have Stalin speaking, we should add communists/anarchists/ISIS into the mix".
> Different story for the average listener, who will be listening to most interactions with an open mind and susceptible to whichever person tends to be more charming or persuasive.
That doesn't matter. Who cares how the public sees him? All that's going to matter is how a jury sees him shortly. And the prosecution will be able to present evidence.
In the meantime, let him keep speaking on the record and admitting to things. And providing a show for those of use who are paying attention.
Besides, I'm not sure how many "average listeners" are going to be tuning into the NYT event. I assume it's mostly people who have been following the story.
While I have little confidence in the average NYT reader I think people need to be able to make up their own minds, and Sam has an important and relevant perspective which we should be able to take into account, even if he might frame it in a way that makes him look good
His lawyers probably reckoned he was talking way too much, was too much of a liability and dropped him immediately.
The real question is he keeps receiving positive media coverage? They keep trying to frame him as, just a "dumb kid and his friends" that "accidentally misplaced billions" - when in fact, it is pretty obvious he planned most of it, by how his complex corporate structure was and the constant deleting of evidence every step of the way.
Not to mention how he gave himself over a billion of personal loans and spending millions on bribes towards the end for hopes of political protection when he knew he was running out of rope to hide his scam.
Headlines like "Sam Bankman-Fried’s Plans to Save the World Went Down in Flames" paint him in a more positive light than he deserves IMO. There were no plans to save the world.
Can you point to any one thing he said which no one else has said before? Maybe an insightful comment to help understand his "relevant perspective"?
He got a degree from MIT, did a year at Jane Street, but is unable to keep basic financial records??? This doesn't make sense to me, and seems like obvious fraud.
I don't think he has any special wisdom to impart, but I really like the potential payoff opportunity. Something really funny could happen! Like a pie in his face or a profoundly self-unaware quip that sends the crowd into half shrieking laughter and half boos.
I would withhold judgement. For all we know the interviewer (who is going to be much more prepared and informed than people here) is going to press him in front of thousands of people why he stole people's money and lied about it. Let's see.
I'm not interested at all, going by his Twitter, it will all be complete nonsense. Hopefully he's intercepted by the FBI and finally brought to justice.
I doubt any organized crime was using FTX. And if they were, he seems mart enough to pay them back first. But if there was some smallish organization of contraband dealers using FTX and he didn't know? White collar prison isn't his worst case outcome.
As said earlier he has bribed the right big fish. But ignoring angry medium fish can be a problem. Also those might not be bribes. It might be a way to launder money into campaign contributions. Not that you really need that in the US now.
The claim is that they’ll use the opportunity to grill him with hard questions and check his lies on the spot.
In reality, I have a hard time believing that after watching Kanye West’s recent media tour where he steamrolled his interviewers and used their platforms to repeat his claims over and over again. Even the podcasts where interviewers supposedly pushed back the most (Lex Fridman is often given as an example) barely resulted in Kanye acknowledging the pushback and didn’t stop him from repeating his points over and over on the platform.
The NYTimes event is especially weird because it’s not being held up as a “watch us grill this liar” but rather “come hear talks from this impressive lineup of accomplished people!”
I have a hard time believing that Kanye West, a public entertainer with decades of media experience, is a reasonable bellwether for how SBF is likely to perform under similar circumstances.
SBF is probably paying for the best personal brand repair money can buy. He knows if you can achieve the cult like following of Elon or Trump you can become untouchable with the right bribes.
His PR team bought the New York Times. It's ludicrous to think that they're giving him this positive treatment without bribes. Well, not bribe-bribes, of course, but rather the kind of bribes that very rich and well-connected people can afford.
There's plenty of journalistic value in interviewing him and the audience will be very interested in hearing it.
I'm not sure what being outraged over his interview is going to achieve Signalling you disagree with what he did? To protect people from his hearing his dangerous words? To punish him?
IMO hearing his rationale, seeing how he convinced people, the lies he tells himself, etc should all be analyzed and publicly scrutinized. It's not like he's promoting some new venture or something.
Associated with what? An interview being done with a public figure?
They aren't suddenly friends with the guy because he gave a virtual interview over Zoom at the same event as them.
You don't need to be constantly publicly showing your outrage to make it clear "x person bad". We get it. We know he's bad. Even without such brave moral heroics.
He's being interviewed by Sorkin so even if FTX hadn't crashed, it would have been as interesting* and enlightening as SBF's interview with Levine. It will be even better now, and I will enjoy reading the transcript.
* TBH my only interest in the whole things is Schadenfreude, like checking out a car crash in the street. The sector is so tiny that even if FTX brings the whole thing down it'll be a largely invisible ripple on a macro scale.
You said you were surprised the NYT had not deplatformed him. I was asking what they had done in the past that made you think they would. I guess nothing?
Surely they’ll pull him. The NYT may act like its above the people, the politics, but even this would be an overreach. However, if SBF is committed to showing up, then it could be the paper’s moment to shine. However I don’t think the Times quite has the nation’s confidence that it once enjoyed ..long ago.
Yes. If a tough reporter really nails him down with a tough interview, it could be a shining moment for journalism. If they fawn over him, as some have suggested of recent coverage, then it will be a failure. The NYT should keep him, dare him to show up, and then do their jobs: Hold his feet to the fire.
Even if it is a money-making endeavor, the NYT could slightly mend its journalistic reputation with some hard-hitting questions to SBF. They have been soft-handed so far in their reporting on SBF and FTX and it reeks of major bias and conflict of interest.
In case anyone doesn't know what I am referring to, here is some background.
He hasn't been convicted let alone charged with a crime (yet). When he is, his actions weren't violent. He's not a radicalizing figure and letting him speak doesn't hurt anyone (as opposed to an Alex Jones type).
Statistically speaking there's assuredly at least 1 person in this whole fiasco that lost most to all of their life savings, stolen from them, by this guy.
This is an extreme form of violence, not physical but definitely psychological, your whole life of work savings was wiped out and taken by this guy.
Holding the view you hold is why white-collar crimes are viewed so leniently compared to what you'd call violent crimes. Just because the effects of it are more abstracted away doesn't make them lesser, people might commit suicide over this. They might never recover the amount of money lost for the rest of their lifetime. It's a perpetual torture for those who got the shortest end of the stick. How is that non-violent?
Equating money losses with violence dilutes the term, and has a history of slipping into hurt feelings and blasphemy being tantamount to violence. There are crimes which may rise to the severity of violence. That doesn’t make them violence. Alex Jones incited violent. He, himself, was never violent. SBF perpetuated a massive fraud. He has not been connected with any violence.
Yeah. I see SBF coming up with some sort of self-exculpatory bullshit to a fairly hostile line of questioning; something unlikely to hurt anyone other than maybe SBF
I don't see him excusing himself by explaining that regulators aren't real, they're just actors playing a role in an evil New World Order conspiracy to take people's guns away, and if he does, I don't see the NYT Dealbook summit attendees being the sort of people that turn up on their doorsteps as a result. And FTX is far too dead for him to harm people's wallets any further by persuading them to park their money in it.
I'm saying Bankman-Fried has hurt a few orders of magnitude more people than Alex Jones, and allowing him to give interviews and flippantly defend himself is going to cause a lot of emotional trauma.
Is 1 murdered person better or worse than the long term impact of two or even one person becoming destitute enough that their movements have long term impact on another?
If you steal $10 from a local shop (sorry, $1000 in California now) you'll be in jail before the end of the week. Steal $1,000,000,000 eight times over and you.. get to speak at a NYT conference?
I don't know, I just want some consistency from the justice system. That's not too much to ask for, or expect, really.
> That's not too much to ask for, or expect, really.
Please tell me what reality you live in and how to get there. Hell, just look across this site to see all the advice that ethics are for those who like staying poor.
It's quite simple, you take a clear eyed look at the problems in the world and you say, "I don't need to accept this, this can and should be fixed." You'll no doubt encounter people saying silly stuff like you cited, because some people operate on the basis of "the most cynical take is the correct one;" you ignore these people and continue to focus on the problems at hand. Similar to how, if you want to start a business, there are likely people in your life who will shoot down every idea that you have; you stop asking those people for advice.
One challenge with that approach is if you're not careful, someone might start identifying you as a threat because of that behavior, and start attacking you using the BS and lies that a great many others are susceptible too (or outright violence).
What we're seeing now is the part of the larger cycle where folks get more and more insistent that they're warped world view is correct (and it wouldn't surprise me if we get more violence than we got on Jan 6th later because of it), since they can't acknowledge that they're wrong and something bad is happening because of it, which will cause more bad things to happen.
It is imperative more people stand up and provide counter-pressure, because otherwise they will win.
I mean yes it's true that JP Morgan isn't going to go bankrupt if they cash some bad checks but at the end of the day that's money that could go to opening new branches, hiring employees, paying bonuses or depositors more interest. The cost to society is the same it's just distributed over a larger number of people.
Not violent directly perhaps. I agree that letting him speak now won't hurt anyone, physically for sure.. but theft and destruction of wealth is not without consequences, in real life.
If, through my actions, you become financially ruined, I may not have kicked, beaten, or raped you, but is the harm comparable? Is it violence?
I think most understand violence to include things like intimidation, emotional abuse, and imprisonment. The expression "physical violence" is a reflection of this broader understanding - there wouldn't need to be clarification, otherwise.
I think of violence as the use of force or implied force to limit the agency of another. I'm not sure I'd call this violence but I can see where they're coming from.
Maybe ask for clarification instead of being rude and dismissive, or simply leave your sneering judgement unsaid. You may be find this view uninteresting, but I find your snark exhausting. I could just as easily say, "oh you're snarky, good for you?" Additionally GP added to the conversation, and your snark detracts.
He stole tremendous amounts of people's money. I hope you're as forgiving to him as you are towards to the people who caused the 2008 economic collapse. At least they weren't actively stealing people's money.
It is an alleged massive fraud going on a public relations tour pre-trial, which not every defendant gets. I guess we'll see if NYT allows him to sail through it sympathetically.
Honestly I actually doubt he did anything he can be charged with. The whole point of crypto is that you are investing in something ABSOLUTELY NOBODY wants to take responsibility for.
I find it amusing that there is now a call to apply the same rules for crypto exchanges. Didn't everyone hate traditional finance a few months ago?
He admitted to using client funds against the stated TOS. Embezzlement, Fraud, whatever - a crime did occur, regardless of if it was crypto, and every country I've run across has laws against that.
Untangling how to charge him, and where, and digging up concrete enough evidence to file an indictment is going to take awhile of course. The post-bankruptcy CEO seems to be finding plenty.
As with a lot of non-violent crime, it takes awhile to arrest someone because there is a lot of paperwork. When the suspect has a lot of cash and lawyers, it takes longer because they need to make sure there isn't an angle they are missing that could get them off.
> As with a lot of non-violent crime, it takes awhile to arrest someone because there is a lot of paperwork. When the suspect has a lot of cash and lawyers, it takes longer because they need to make sure there isn't an angle they are missing that could get them off.
Yes. The investigation has to happen before the arrest. With violent crime, it's usually clear what happened; the question is who did it. With white-collar crime, sorting out what happened is complicated. With FTX, it's really complicated. Prosecutors only get one chance; if they take someone to trial on early evidence and lose, they usually can't come back later and try again.
But it doesn't all have to be figured out. Just enough for a long sentence.
Known overt acts, such as buying US$300 million of Bahamas real estate with company funds and putting the real estate in a family name, are probably enough for grand theft.
What he's admitted to are loose financial controls and by the letter of the law it's not illegal to be bad at your job. Obviously no one really believes his "whoopsie poopsie accidentally lost a few billion" story but technically he hasn't yet admitted to a crime.
Nope. Mishandling customer funds yourself against your own stated use of said funds to customers when you gathered those funds is one of those crimes above, depending on specifics.
Bad financial controls is if someone else whoopsie accidentally steals or mishandles the funds. Which at least per a cite provided earlier, he admitted to doing it himself.
To be able to claim a lack of culpability for this requires a degree of plausible ignorance about what the left and right hands were doing. He seems to be working hard to chip away at any sort of plausibility there.
Based on what we’ve seen so far, unless he somehow can convince a Judge or Jury that he didn’t know what was happening, it would be very implausible someone couldn’t get a sizable conviction somewhere on one or more of those charges. But we won’t know for sure until the situation has been analyzed. But he sure isn’t helping himself.
Which is why I said what I said. He could of course have no defense and sit there mute for the entire trial, but I can’t imagine a Jury would be all that convinced by it, if the prosecution provided even the most basic set of evidence that seems to be lying around all over the place.
He signed up customers with documented agreements saying that their funds would be segregated and not lent out, and then he used the U.S. banking system's wire infrastructure to have their money sent directly to his hedge fund Alameda Research instead of the exchange FTX.
That doesn't really make a lot of sense. Customers sent him dollars to buy crypto. So any dollars that came in were almost immediately turned into crypto. The only way for those crypto assets to be missing is if the crypto was transferred.
The dollars were used to purchase a claim on crypto payable by the exchange FTX. But it is not at all clear at this point that if someone sent money to them ("them" being some kind of quantum superposition of FTX and Alameda Research) and used it to purchase Bitcoin on the exchange, that FTX ever did anything other than update a number in their internal customer-facing ledgers. They had only $639,000 in Bitcoin on their balance sheet in their bankruptcy filing. And obviously the crypto is not all sitting at FTX ready to meet customer withdrawals or they would never have paused them in the first place.
What would happen if everyone's starbucks phone wallet balance suddenly vanished because starbucks YOLO'd all the funds on Dogecoin? Would that be fraud? Or would they just get away with Oops moneys is gone, all your balances are now zero.
