Reminds me of the documentary Weiner, which was supposed to be a comeback film about Anthony Weiner's run for NYC mayor but instead became an intimate portrait of a man's life (as well as that of his unfortunate wife) utterly collapsing.
But SBF? The last interview I saw him give was I think with Levine; it was shocking because SBF was describing whence crypto derives its value. And Levine remarked that SBF was describing a Ponzi scheme.
For me, that interview showed two things. First, that SBF quite obviously has no morals whatsoever. And second, he's not nearly as smart as he's portrayed to be.
His whole cred derives from his MIT degree combined with his experience at Jane Street. Jane Street is a great firm, but what they do is really specific, and not necessarily the "coolest" way to make money. It's a lot of tech and infrastructure, less finance and trading chops. (The real badasses are RenTech, for example.)
Anyway, I watched a few videos that he made while working at his crypto hedge fund, Alameda. He described the strategies, and they sounded like the typical market maker stuff - arbing exchange discrepancies yadda yadda. Not the most inspired stuff.
How is that something that can be seriously engaged with? Other than trying to talk some sense into these people about limiting their EA calculations to a reasonably observable time-space continuum?
For instance, you push someone in front of a trolley to save 5 lives, but the trolley isn’t stopped and you end up with 6 dead.
There’s no privileged neutral really. Consequentialism just owns that. Now, that might be a separate question from whether society should act as if there’s a privileged neutral (ie be nonconsequentialist).
All I know is that when humanity faced the decision with respect to WWII medical experiments , the decision was made to not utilize the data, regardless of potential benefits.
See the problem with utilitarianism?
Unlike other hypothetical examples given here (Skynet, cancer cure), this scenario is possible today.
There's also just the fundamental stupidity of thinking you can reduce something as complex as human morals and ethics to a karmic checking account balance...
[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/renaissance-executi...
The article says they were advised by Deutsche Bank that they could classify certain trades in a way as to pay long-term instead of short-term capital gains taxes.
The IRS disagreed, RenTech went through an appeals process and eventually decided to settle instead of continuing the process.
There’s nothing evil about trying to legally lower your tax obligations and then being told by the IRS “Nope, you can’t do it like that.”
The real "badasses" if you insist on calling them that, work about a dozen years for a fund, hit their number, and promptly retire to do whatever the hell they want for the rest of their life. You don't read much about them vs the obsessive people who keep playing the game for the high score contest though, because there's no drama to cover.
he's just one player in the ecosystem, trying milking as much as possible
good job building FTX into one of the largest CEX but.... :)
Filming was in 2007, the 2008 financial crisis hit, and the documentary devolves into watching this mogul go bankrupt.
I remember a quote from the mogul, something like "I have nothing but the business. I've re-invested nearly every dollar I've ever earned."