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Comment by stefan_ | Hacker News Reader

Well it seems it was SBF in the bed with the Bahamian government.

Do you have any evidence? At a glance, this seems to be Bahamian civil servants diligently doing their duty that was given.

SBF discussion with Vox reporter is a big hint.

My takeaway from his interview is that if you just give SBF another $10bn he can double it in a couple of months and make everyone whole again.

Yea he could create a FTFY token!

The Bahamas has a total population of a smallish city and surely a national budget to match. Grabbing 500M anonymously (while letting everyone run around for days thinking it was a hacker) doesn't make much sense either. Did they put their entire country's budget on the exchange or something?

When exchanges registered in the Bahamas are in danger of losing customers money, Bahamian government has authority and duty to seize assets to protect customers. Bahamian government is taking custody, it's not their money.

Apparently, FTX is registered not in the Bahamas but in Antigua and Barbuda. I learned that recently as well.

And also has legal entities in the Bahamas. Plus, SBF is their himself, so the legal HQ, where decisions are made (an important factor in corporate and tax law) is to an extent yet to be determined by the various courts, the Bahamas.

I'm not so sure. Is it correct that the Bahamian government prompty converted all the seized tokens to ETH? If the seizure was for purposes of "safekeeping", what gives the Bahamians the right to trade in other people's cryptographic tokens?

This is conjecture on conjecture, but generally if you're holding assets in trust you can sell/trade them if it would be in the beneficiaries' best interests.

"Holding assets in trust" Does that apply to assets that were seized? To me, the phrase "in trust" implies that the owner of the assets has entrusted them to you, and you have a fiduciary duty to them.

[I'm uncomfortable referring to cryptographic tokens as "assets". I think of an asset as something with an intrinsic value, albeit floating. Cryptographic tokens have a price, but no value.]

A seizure of funds is certainly not the first step of bankruptcy proceedings. SBF seems to have "fled" to the Bahamas, and he would obviously have the access needed to make the transfer. And as the article says, the Bahamas are trying to get the US Chapter 11 proceedings thrown out arguing their own bankruptcy proceedings have priority. There was also the mystery texts from SBF arguing "Chapter 11 was my biggest mistake" and "trying to resolve a jurisdictional issue with Delaware".

The Bahamian government is overseen by "The Firm"...

>The Crown and the Police Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_the_Bahamas#The_Cr...

The national police force of the Bahamas is known as "The Royal Bahamas Police Force".

>The St. Edward's Crown appears on the Bahamian Police's badges and rank insignia, which illustrates the monarchy as the locus of authority.

>Every member of the Royal Bahamas Police Force has to swear allegiance to the monarch of the Bahamas, on taking office.

("Monarch of the Bahamas" aka King Charles III of Great Britain.)

I can imagine many levels of royal induced pressure being applied here.

> I can imagine many levels of royal induced pressure being applied here.

The royals give zero fucks about SBF and crypto.

So, Charles is also in direct control of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?

Come again? You think he handed it over to the government in exchange for his freedom and share it afterwards? Really? Pretty sure the Bahamas are going to coopertae with, e.g., the Delaware courts in the complex bankcrupcy proceedings that will follow.

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