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Comment by BrainVirus | Hacker News Reader

>SBF was treated as the king of crypto by the mainstream for whatever reason.

I think the reason is getting more and more obvious with every passing day.

His father and mother are professors of Law (and Business) at Stanford. (The mother is also one of two founders of Mind The Gap.) His aunt is a dean of Columbia University's School of Public Health.

https://showbizcorner.com/sam-bankman-fried-parents

His brother was running a lobby group called Guarding Against Pandemics. FTX's head of policy and regulatory strategy was a Commodity Futures Trading Commission commissioner under Obama.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/14/former-ftx-ceo-sam-bankman-f...

And that's not the end of it all, there are many more interesting connections.

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The reason was actually marketing and he was the first to admit it. During the invite only Chicago money trade show he explicitly said he spending all his money on brand awareness and marketing, basketball teams, stadiums, TV ads, the sponsorships were relentless and shaped public opinion that he was trustworthy. He' main spokesperson (and investor) was pretty much the most trusted athlete in the last decade. He knows how to build trust through marketing and politics.

The best video I've seen is SBF basically admitting it was a ponzi scheme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=131&v=C6nAxiym9o...

Selling something with no value other than the attention it gets on Twitter and the reputation it gets via reputable investors.

What gets 'reputable investors' to invest in the scheme is the most interesting part of this story, if you at all care about stopping it. Something that has existed long before crypto.

> The best video I've seen is SBF basically admitting it was a ponzi scheme: [link omitted]

> Selling something with no value other than the attention it gets on Twitter and the reputation it gets via reputable investors.

But that is clearly not a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme involves an obligation to pay people returns on their fake investment. Here, the pitch was "I don't know why people want these things, but they do. Want one?", and that pitch was honest and accurate. There was no pretense that you'd be getting any special returns.

By your standard, all trading in any commodity or stock is a Ponzi scheme, unless you're planning to consume the stuff yourself. Did you buy 300,000 pork bellies? Ponzi scheme. Do you have a bar of gold? Ponzi scheme. Do you have a share of Tesla? Ponzi scheme.

Compare Charles Ponzi, whose investment thesis was "guaranteed returns of 50% in 45 days", who specified the exact trade he was making (buying American stamps in Italy, where they were cheap, and selling them in America, where they weren't), and who never actually performed that trade. A Ponzi scheme is defined by paying off people who have invested in you with funds from other people who have invested in you.

Obviously he was part of the Deep State!

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