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Comment by colpabar | Hacker News Reader

So this isn’t really a big story yet, is it? I’m staying at my parents’ house for thanksgiving and when I asked them about it they both had no idea what I was talking about. My mom faintly remembered something about some crypto guy or something, but “FTX” didn’t ring a bell. This was very surprising to me because they are older and watch the news on television every day. I think their schedule is fox news from 5-6, then local news, then ABC world news (then jeopardy).

Oh well. I guess an international ponzi scheme involving politicians and journalists just isn’t newsworthy.

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> an international ponzi scheme involving politicians and journalists

We have no evidence any politicians or journalists were compromised. (Journalists at no-name outlets writing puff pieces is unfortunately banal.) That makes this a crypto story, and one whose victims are particularly unsympathetic at that. Those have a niche. But they aren’t mainstream.

Politicians were involved through donations. Whether to call that "compromised" is left as an exercise to the reader.

> Politicians were involved through donations. Whether to call that "compromised" is left as an exercise to the reader.

Plenty of people hopelessly throw money at politicians. Most get no remuneration. Again, there is a paranoid subculture that assumes every donation brings legislative power, and for them, this is a relevant story. Most do not because, in most cases, it does not.

> Plenty of people hopelessly throw money at politicians.

Those people throw tens or hundreds of dollars. Not tens of millions of dollars. Big difference.

> Again, there is a paranoid subculture that assumes every donation brings legislative power

No I don't believe the $3 Bernie was asking for would bring any legislative power but $30,000,000?

> people throw tens or hundreds of dollars. Not tens of millions of dollars. Big difference

Nope. I’ve been close to New York, California and Wyoming federal politics for a short bit. There is always someone throwing big money in a bill market. They get suave dinners and photo shoots. But nobody takes what they’re saying seriously. Enough is done, in private, to keep the dollars rolling. But for powerful incumbents, there are more big donors than swing senators. (The non-swing guys can’t push the margin. But they still get dollars, because the point is the photo shoot.)

> there is a paranoid subculture that assumes every donation brings legislative power

And there is a certain class of people so naive that they think any individual would give hundreds of millions to a politician with nothing but just good intentions, and that any politician would warrant such a donation purely through being outstanding and Jo able politicians.

> any individual would give hundreds of millions to a politician with nothing but just good intentions

Of course I don’t. They’re just raised outside power. They think money buys influence through donations. It doesn’t. They’re being played, and there will eternally be a joker in their seat.

So, you think the second largest donor isn't going to get favorable treatment? This is after we know that multiple congressmen already tried to block the SEC from looking into FTX too closely? And after FTX was allowed to acquire a stake in a FDIC member bank at a inflated valuation?

> no-name outlets

I'm not really a fan of WSJ or NYT but calling them no-name outlets is a bit much.

It's not a big story yet because the contagion is confined to crypto and there are no convictions yet.

But SBF should be thankful for Musk. Twitter's upheaval is more important to most people, and that seems to be sucking up most of the "look at this business" attention. And Musk was a bigger deal beforehand. (I mean, Musk is still a bigger deal. But I just meant in terms of as a multiplier on the underlying story.)

I would say 100% of my engineering circles, 50% of my non-engineering-but-I-work-in-tech circles, and 30% of my other circles are familiar with the story. Incredibly anecdotal of course and I imagine less than 10% of the general population has been exposed at this point.

As someone who doesn't really follow all this closely, it comes off as yet another case of crypto people scamming eachother. Most people don't really care what happens in the crypto world.

This matches my experience. The only people who've heard this story yet are those who keep a finger on the pulse of either tech or crypto news.

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