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Comment by celestialcheese | Hacker News Reader

> Still it is striking that the balance sheet that FTX circulated to potential rescuers consisted mostly of stuff it made up. Its balance sheet consisted mostly of stuff it made up! Stuff it made up! You can’t do that! That’s not how balance sheets work! That’s not how anything works!

This is absolute gold.

Also...

> FTX/Alameda were funneling customer money into effective altruism. Bankman-Fried seems to have generously funded a lot of effective altruism charities, artificial-intelligence and pandemic research, Democratic political candidates, etc.

This is just catnip to the "right-wing" media machine, Even worse is that it's not even really that far-fetched of a theory. Billions spent influencing elections and policy over the last 3 years, and a $10B hole of customer funds just missing. This is just reinforcing the worst conspiracy theories out there, and I'm sad to see it..

*edit, formatting

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> Even worse is that it's not even really that far-fetched

Partizan politics aside... SBF's very mom was running a fundraising campaign. And after George Soros SBF was the biggest donor.

SBF had already siphoned $95m out of Canadian teachers pension funds.

> This is just reinforcing the worst conspiracy theories out there

At this point it's not just conspiracy theories anymore. BlockFi had already reached an agreement with the SEC (and SBF "bought" BlockFi when it was in trouble) and it's totally obvious that FTX would have been a licensed regulated exchanges once the current bill would have passed.

It's an undisputable fact that the chief FTX lobbyist was an ex-CFTC commissioner. He apparently also was an ex- colleague of the SEC's chair, Gary Gensler.

And as weird coincidence would have it: Gary Gensler was an ex-colleague of Alameda's 28 years CEO's father.

And you dare to say it's "re-inforcing conspiracy theories"?

Let the scum of this earth be exposed for what it is.

I'm not defending people because they happen to be leeches close to the political party I'm voting for.

I should have been more clear - this isn't a conspiracy theory. The money disappeared and there were huge donations to left-wing causes. It's fraud propping up political spending. No defence and not defending them. It boils my blood.

The conspiracy theories I was referring too are the"jewish space lazers, George Soros Jewish Cabal Running The World Drinking Babies Blood" type anti-semetic conspiracies spouted off by people like Kanye and other far-right conspiracy nuts.

This gives them ammo and confirmation bias that the more nutty and harmful theories have legs, and that can have real-world, extremely dangerous outcomes.

Which left-wing political causes were championed by the ~40 million he gave to the Republican party?

Without digging into the minutia, it seems like a classic example of 'pay both sides so that no matter who wins, we get a seat at the table.' Unsurprisingly, the incumbents got paid more.

The causes don't seem to matter, pay to play does.

Now, if the right is ready to embrace an end to corporations and millionaires donating to political campaigns, it's a fantastic idea that we should embrace. If, of course, it's just sour grapes and complaining after losing a midterm senate election after putting forward a slate of some of the worst candidates they could field, I don't have a minute of time for it.

Given the historic track record on campaign financing, I think it's the latter.

Unfortunately, there is a history of this exact type of scam among firms very, very closely associated with the Democratic party.

The owner of this firm probably had more pull with the higher-ups than SBF will ultimately have - he got no jail time & a 5 million dollar fine. He's already back to running hedge funds.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MF_Global

Why is a coal billionaire spending money on campaign contributions normal, but a finance billionare doing the same catnip for the worst right-wing conspiracy theories? [1]

For someone who just arrived on Earth from another planet, modern campaign financing rules are indistinguishable from bribes, regardless of who the money goes to.

[1] I mean, aside from the obvious answer (Which is that their guys aren't the beneficiaries.)

I absolutely hate myself for replying, but in this situation you gave, SBF may have used customer's money, but an oil/coal baron uses their own money.

Even if you consider billionaires to be a disgusting stain on society, like myself, there's still a difference between stealing money to spend on stuff (political donations or Lambo's) and spending money/stocks you legally made in a horrible, earth-killing industry.

I absolutely detest greed in all it's forms, but I also don't think people should lower their morals and ethics to match the lowest of the low, as if they're Robin Hood (the character, not the company).

That just makes SBF a thief, but that's not really relevant to the core problem of pay-to-play campaign contributions.

The parent comment was asking what the difference was, I said the difference was the theft. I guess I was wrong because I looked up the right wind conspiracies and they all seem to care only about the part to play aspects, which is definitely very ironic considering the history of right wing financing.

> to have generously funded a lot of effective altruism charities

That should have read “dubiously funneled money to his mates fake charity”

For all of this the fact that he was, even back when he wasn’t “the next big tech wizard” was funneling 50% of his salary, tax deductible, to his friends charity fund should have raised flags that this “charity” is actually that, and it should be put under scrutiny now, because it’s obviously these guys slush fund.

> generously funded... Democratic political candidates

This isn't the smoking gun that Republicans want to portray it as. A third of their political spending went to Republicans. Companies will typically donate to the incumbent party because they're the ones who actually write the laws, so it's not unusual for them to donate more to Democrats.

I worry the hand wringing about truth being revealed about rich/powerful due to concerns about "right wingers" is in some way contributing to the lack of accountability these people face

The current unsubstantiated right wing rumor is that Ukraine "invested" a bunch of the US aid money into FTX.

I think the rumor is probably conflating "actual" ($ backed) aid with the crypto donations individuals made through FTX at the beginning of the war, but who knows.

Or more likely, it's just "everybody we hate are surely connected and conspiring against us" type of thing, where everything just gets dumped into one huge pot, mixed up and served up for rage clicks. I mean, it both has words "crypto" in it, there's billions here and billions there, shake up weeple!

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