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Comment by shockeychap | Hacker News Reader

I'm not arguing on the basis of what Levine thought of the conversation.

At the very least, it's apparent that SBF sees crypto as being heavily based on speculation that's disconnected from any actual value proposition, but he's choosing to exploit and profit from those systems. And it's now apparent that he also was engaging in speculation with user funds himself via Alameda.

A wild-eyed crypto believer might lose anywhere from a few thousand to a few million of their own money in poorly placed speculation.

A sophisticated market-maker will facilitate the loss of billions (about $10 billion in this case) from numerous people.

Which is more dangerous? A HODL who loses their savings on some speculative crypto purchase, or the next Bernie Madoff?

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That is not the comparison at all, and while I have to assume you are commenting in good faith, it is really hard to do so here.

The difference Levine is pointing out is between the type of person operating the exchange. It is not the comparison between janitor and CEO at a fortune 500 company.

A "true believer" will cause just as much (or per Levine's assertion: more) damage as a "sophesticated crypto cynicist", but one will at least understand financial fundamentals while the other brings none of the learnings from running any kind of investment or banking firm.

A "true believer" isn't able to carry out their work without a marketplace. Nobody lost money in crypto on the scale we're seeing 5 years ago.

The largely unregulated, uninsured, and opaque marketplace of crypto, facilitated by people like SBF, has been the conduit for the true believers.

If somebody says "I know you're a sucker and I'm going to take your money", (as SBF did in Levine interview) they just told you everything you need to know. You can rest assured that their other dealings are dirty, as is now coming to light for SBF.

I'm not sure why "good faith" is being brought into question, and I certainly haven't challenged the good faith of those who disagree with me. So I'm not going to address that aspect of the conversation.

>I'm not sure why "good faith" is being brought into question, and I certainly haven't challenged the good faith of those who disagree with me. So I'm not going to address that aspect of the conversation.

Per the commenting guidelines, we are expected to believe people are commenting in good faith even when they say:

>A wild-eyed crypto believer might lose anywhere from a few thousand to a few million of their own money in poorly placed speculation.

>A sophisticated market-maker will facilitate the loss of billions (about $10 billion in this case) from numerous people.

Which is either a deliberately bad comparison (akin to janitor vs CEO), or completely irrelevant in the context of what SBF was saying / what Levine thought.

A wild-eyed crypto believer would make all the same mistakes as the sophisticated trader and run the exchange into the ground while breaking laws. The sophisticated trader will typically run their business within the legal framework, while taking as much profit as possible.

I don’t really agree with this.

A wild eyed Luna type can lose a lot of people’s money and is probably more likely to do so than a skeptical trader making deals. The issue with this wasn’t that general heuristic which is still true (imo), it was SBF’s decisions despite that (which were bad and extremely high risk, but different than it being a ponzi).

Pair that with an intelligent enemy looking for ways to destroy you and this is where it ends up.

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