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Comment by digerata | Hacker News Reader

He was running a Ponzi scheme. Don't feel sorry for him.

It wasn’t a Ponzi scheme, at least based on what’s publicly known.

This is just investing with client funds, which the US learned the hard way must be carefully restricted. The US has the Glass-Steagall Act, and deposit insurance to try to prevent bank runs like this.

The investing with client funds part is probably the easiest charge but his self-description sounds Ponzi-like:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/sam-bankm...

This sounds like Napoleon Dynamite type of reasoning

Me, as a kid: “the emperor’s new clothes is nonsense, nobody would go along with something that obviously wrong”

Me, after watching people sell no-hope dotcoms, dubious real estate, and cryptocurrency: “… unless they thought they could cash out before the other fools wised up”

They were talking about stuff like Celsius. I don't think FTX was itself offering yield-farming products, just letting people trade those tokens. "Yeah, the stuff people trade on my platform are probably Ponzis" is definitely not great publicity, but it's not obviously admitting to your own crimes.

>It wasn’t a Ponzi scheme, at least based on what’s publicly known.

>This is just investing with client funds...

This is just plain not true.

To be fair to the guy, he wasn’t afraid to admit it in some very public interviews. But yeah, don’t feel sorry.

> To be fair to the guy, he wasn’t afraid to admit it in some very public interviews.

I don't think brazen criminals should get a different perspective than sneaky ones; perhaps a worse characterization because they either don't recognize what they're doing is wrong, or they simply hold society in contempt.

I'm not. Just saying that he won't get away with it like other CEOs have done in the past while "taking responsibility". His punishment has already begun.

Which is what, exactly? Living in hiding?

Yes, losing his money, reputation and freedom (whether that's in hiding or in jail). He's obviously royally screwed, regardless if he goes to jail or not, and yet people are saying he walks away from this unscathed.

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