Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX Team Among Top Political Donors Before Bankruptcy

Isn't the house still controlled by Democrats with the new congress starting in Jan?

And for the record, I agree with you. But if it’s just a “gut feeling” it’s not an argument I can put forward.

That's why the co-CEO donated millions to them.

But as gross as all this is (and I think our political system's legalization of bribery is extremely gross) I tend to think that political cynics are also being insufficiently cynical about the current dynamics:

If the FTX donors were a potential future source of funds, I have no doubt that there might be some political soft-touching going on. But that's not the case. SBF et al. are never going to be a significant source of political donations in the future. (Even if they somehow manage to recover some personal wealth, they're all politically radioactive.) There's no percentage for any politician to do them political favors at this point, and a huge amount of political downside. I think what you're seeing in the Bahamas right now is mostly to be expected: a whole bunch of agencies competing to figure out who will get jurisdiction and access to any remaining funds. This requires forensic acounting and some cooperation from the principles. SBF et al. being in jail (as opposed to being free but closely watched) will just make this early process much harder.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/428c7800-c72d-4c59-9940-4376fea6e...

I don't mean this as an attack, but I find it's useful to occasionally examine my own bubble.

It's likely a very complicated case, so I would imagine it will take some time. It took what, 2-3 years to bring the case against Elizabeth Holmes over Theranos?

But we missed the opportunity to proactively regulate. We can’t get this back. Governments absolutely should not shoot first and ask questions later. The wheels of justice should be slow and exact. The alternative is much worse.

So you just care about the optics?

They knew it, and their plan was to hope the public signs on in a big way. They did not.

Super PACs — which I assume you're thinking of — would only become a thing later in the SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission decision.

SBF has always had the right to spend millions on politics. FTX has not (well, it wouldn't have had it if it existed between 2004 and 2010.)

Hedge Fund, it was Alameda where the customer deposits were backdoored to and it was a Female Standford grad in Mathematics (who claimed to only use elementary math while operating it) who was CEO of said hedgefund where all the funds were lost--I only say this because of the wide-spread condemnation of the tech industry to downplay the effect that Women have on tech, and are entirely silent when it's negative as in the case wit Alameda or Theranos.

Just so it's clear, I'm not a misogynist I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of the woke mob(s) that SBF played n order to get where he was when it comes to hypocrisy and outright refusal to acknowledge it's prejudices because she doesn't seem to be getting any coverage in this crime at all! SBF is a crook and he deserves all of the scrutiny so far, but so is she and it should be noted as such!

Edit because HN sucks at post liimts:

> Is this a distinction worth making? I'm not even sure whether "hedge fund" is even the correct term here. Wikipedia describes it as a "quantitative trading firm" and so does bloomberg.

Very much so, yes: one was an exchange (that took in customer deposits for the purpose of them to buy/sell on said platform) the other was a separate trading operation which was used to (among other things listed below) front-run tokens with said deposits on behalf if it's owners with said exchange based on the activity of it's user base--it's like not seeing the difference between Robinhood and Citadel in that debacle. It just so happens that FTX and Alameda were founded and owned by the same person, SBF.

So, yes their are critical and fundamental differences that should be acknowledged to comprehend what and how this occurred. The Court Ruling is worth a read.

Furthermore, the use of quantitative analysis to trade doesn't detract from the aforementioned so I'm not sure why you cited that at all other than to prove you can look up a wikipedia entry.

But ultimately, no... it isn't the same thing at all; here is the court ruling to prove it [0], and note the following:

> -8-4892-0827-0654 v.2C.The Alameda Silo22.The parent company and primary operating company in the Alameda Silo is Alameda Research LLC, which is organized in the State of Delaware. Before the Petition Date (as defined below), the Alameda Silo operated quantitative trading funds specializing in crypto assets. Strategies included arbitrage, market making, yield farming and trading volatility. The Alameda Silo also offered over-the-counter trading services, and made and managed other debt and equity investments.

>> In short, the Alameda Silo was a “crypto hedge fund” with a diversified business trading and speculating in digital assets and related loans and securities for the account of its owners, Messrs. Bankman-Fried (90%) and Wang (10%).

0: https://pacer-documents.s3.amazonaws.com/33/188450/042020648...

The weren't about altruism or progressive causes, they were playing both sides to embezzle 10x the amount they donated.

The "pledge" was just talk.

FTX as far as the public is aware is 2/3 Dem 1/3 Repub donations. You only brought up SBF. I was talking about FTX as a whole. Sibling comment notes this as well.

> “Bankman-Fried pledged to spend upwards of $1 billion”

A pledge doesn’t mean anything.

Holmes and Balwani were indicted for crimes both for medical claims and claims to investors

It's just that they were convicted only on the financial charges.

Also, I think it's vert likely the medical fraud made the priority of this case significantly higher. It's the kind of thing that makes people mad and prosecutors pay attention.

We have people in prison for life for 3rd time marijuana charges. We are still putting people in prison for long periods of time for repeat non-violent offenses. Imprisoned populations are disproportionately of certain demographics. Many see all of this as a sign of classism and racism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlPQkd_AA6c

It's just a legal convention to help think about how corporations fit into laws not explicitly written for them. For example, who can enter legal contracts and what are the repercussions if they are broken? Well contract law was thought of around people, but if you think of a corporation similarly, then the law still makes sense. Of course, they can and do specify restrictions that only apply to corporations or opt them out.

A better summary is that restrictions on money being spent on speech are effectively restrictions on speech, itself, and the freedom of speech is not limited to individuals.

Why buy votes when you can own the representative directly? Why should someone who donates massive amounts of money to a campaign have more sway over a representative than another constituent. On that note, maybe only those represented by a candidate should be allowed to contribute to that candidate's campaign.

Never gonna work. It was noted by Plato over 2000 years ago that in any system where the leaders can own property, they will use their political power for financial gain. And he has been proven right over and over again ever since. Plato even admits that his ideal system, where the leadership is not allowed to own property, is impossible.

It's not like you either have capitalism and democracy or communism and autocracy, you have capitalism with feudalism/fascism/oligopoly or communism. You've got an unstable state of democracy with capitalism in the middle which can easily decay either left or right but can hardly correct back into the middle.

Funnily enough, many citizens of so called democracies which are actually no longer democracies think that just because they aren't communistic then they are democratic. Democracies allow politicians to change the law for their own elections. They allow them to consolidate power in other ways. They can be overtaken by the media.

Many countries have the potential to become democracies again without violence, but it requires an understanding and education of the population that is missing, and heavy propaganda blinds them.