Congressmembers Tried to Stop the SEC’s Inquiry into FTX | Hacker News Reader

Congressmembers Tried to Stop the SEC’s Inquiry into FTX

prospect.org

38 pointsahiknsr17 comments

I found this interesting "That money helped House Republicans win the majority in 2022. Though FTX has been portrayed as a Democratic firm, thanks to the high profile of former co-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, the company sprinkled around campaign donations fairly evenly, with a shade over 50 percent going directly to congressional Republicans and a shade under 50 percent to Democrats this cycle."

Yet if you go to the actual link the article provides (https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recipients?id=D000073694&cy...) it shows a massive unbalance in the donations to PACs. How can the author claim the company sprinkled around campaign donations evenly yet link to a page that shows a massive unbalance the PACs section?

Where is the massive imbalance to PACs? I see a bunch of numbers associated with different PACs but I don't see a way to get a total by party. How did you do that?

So on the PACS table there is a button that says download CSV. Click that to download the list and then open it in excel (or sheets or whatever) and then sort by the view column. You then can use =sum() and add up to donations to each different view. I then combined the totals for like views (Conservative/Republican and Liberal/Democrat).

Almost of the Republican dollars went to RINOs too. Specifically those that voted to impeach Trump so the whole bipartisan angle is bullshit.

> Almost of the Republican dollars went to RINOs too. Specifically those that voted to impeach Trump so the whole bipartisan angle is bullshit.

Roughly half the money went to Republicans, yet you say donations were _not_ bipartisan? Or am I misunderstanding you?

Not who you quoted but roughly half the money did not go to Republicans. This article is either misleading or just wrong. The article links to opensecrets to support its claim. In that opensecrets link look under the PACs section (its the last section). The donations for the left add up to 44.8m and donations to the right add up to 23.2m. That is close to 100% more going to the left.

Now take out the left's donations and we still have have 23.2m in donations from a company committing fraud. All 23.2m to the right and where it went needs to be investigated without question. However claiming roughly half the money went to the republicans is not true.

Okay that makes sense. But that seems like a different objection. Re-reading the post by /u/wellthatsawrap1, it looks like maybe the implicit claim there is that a RINO is not a Republican? In other words, the claim seems to be that a "Republican" is only someone Trump approves of? Frankly that's kind of insane.

> … maybe the implicit claim there is that a RINO is not a Republican?

That is what a RINO is: “Republican in Name Only”. Basically, whenever a Republican does something that isn’t “towing the party line”, the ones that are towing it claim the former isn’t a real Republican; They’re a RINO.

Ya I didn't bother replying to them. I haven't tracked the PAC donations but I would be utterly shocked if only non-trump supporting republicans benefitted from the 23m. I would wager many trump supporting republicans got lots of money. I think the donations had to do more with where influence could be bought (crypto/finance related committees) than what trump thought of the politician.

> The donations for the left add up to 44.8m and donations to the right add up to 23.2m

Republicans are just cheaper to buy

The SEC has put itself in a weird position.

On one hand, it claims the right to regulate crypto. But then it also refuses to actually do so. Aside from a few easy-win, barely crypto, high profile cases like the Kim Kardashian, they carefully avoid actually regulating AND loudly proclaim they are THE regulator.

Which is it?

I don't know. And one reason I don't know if that the SEC carefully avoids any court cases where "Is the SEC actually allowed to regulate crypto?" might be ruled on. That's their choice.

Another reason is the Congress (who really should answer this question) refuses to. So I don't want to lay all the blame at the SECs feet. Let's get real here, the SEC are the first group after FTX senior leaders themselves to blame. They have said so themselves. They investigated FTX and ... stopped despite it being their job? Missed a multi billion dollar fraud along with 1000s of other issues? Come on!

A regulator refusing to allow something isn't a regulator refusing to regulate.

When people say the SEC refuses to regulate crypto, what they mean is the SEC refuses to treat them like banks. That is, the SEC doesn't take the attitude "the general thing you want to do is fundamentally reasonable, let's work together to write rules that enable it". Instead, the SEC regulates crypto more like the DEA regulates weed: "we think what you're doing is bad, but we're probably won't arrest you. Still, don't take this as an endorsement".

But the regulator didn't refuse to allow anything.

They said FTX was an illegal, unlicensed, security exchange.

Then did nothing (except fine Kim Kardashian) despite it literally being their job, by their own admission (by their own demand really).

That's the problem here.

> "He [Matt Corridoni] added that FTX never directly lobbied Rep. Auchincloss’s office to join the letter."

So, FTX indirectly lobbied Auchincloss to tell the SEC to leave them alone.

> He [Byron Donalds] was merely concerned with the SEC’s procedure and guidance with crypto firms, which some have described as “regulation by enforcement.” > ... SEC chair Gary Gensler has been adamant that crypto platforms are trading and minting securities, and that these securities needed to be registered with the agency.

Sounds like the SEC is only doing "regulation by enforcement" because they're already claimed what you're doing is illegal and you've just ignored them so they're only left with enforcement ...

> @GaryGensler’s information reporting “requests” to the crypto community are overburdensome, don’t feel particularly… voluntary… and are stifling innovation.

Not all innovation is good, it turns out.

Theft isnt innovation.

That's not what our entire media apparatus was calling it two months ago. SBF and the other crypto-wunderkinds had everyone convinced that their innovation was genuine.

And honestly, it is innovation. It's a novel way to scam people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com