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Comment by soumyadeb | Hacker News Reader

This tweet explains it all

https://twitter.com/RepMaxineWaters/status/15986938112528752...

(For folks who don't know, Maxine is a congresswoman sitting on U.S. House Committee on Financial Services)

1 year ago: "We need to put reporting requirements on account flow for all bank accounts worth more than $600 to avoid billionaire corruption."

Now: "SBF, would you join us for tea and coffee at a cordial executive meeting?"

My reading is this is a very cordial invitation to hang himself under oath. If you think SBF is guilty, than you have to believe he'd be insane to "participate in a hearing." (If you think he's innocent, it's still a crazy thing to do. I'd encourage anyone who hasn't seen Don't Talk to the Police to watch it. https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE )

Not unless you know you will be asked about weather in the Bahamas.

Would you bet your liberty on it? For what upside?

Say Waters throws only softballs. Why wouldn't Republicans on the committee seize the opportunity to make her look foolish and compromised by throwing hardballs?

Most prosecutions don't involve playing coy with the defendant in hopes they might be forthcoming with evidence before things get all adversarial. There's no reason for kid gloves, especially for this case with its clear cut set up of fraud - the hard evidence is going to consist of transaction logs and other digital files that need to be preserved.

About the most generous interpretation you can give the above tweet is the representative merely trying to get her name in the spotlight on a current hip topic. But that still begs the question of why she would want her name anywhere near stories about a con man - it still seems as if only some types of criminals need to be distanced from.

Waters is not a prosecutor. She's on the financial services committee; there's been a big disruption in the finance world. It's pretty normal for the committee to investigate it.

If you were in her position - wouldn't you reach out to SBF? If you did - wouldn't you do so with honey and not vinegar? What is there about what or how she did this that leads you to believe it's a ploy for attention rather than straightforwardly doing her job?

For me the only unusual thing is that it's over Twitter, but seeing as how he and CZ laid out all their bad blood over Twitter, that seems to be the preferred medium for this community.

Yes, I know that. The "big disruption" is that someone committed basic fraud - SBF seemingly took money while promising to act as its custodian, while actually gambling with it behind the scenes. What's the meta issue to be investigated and pondered here? Fraud is one of the oldest crimes. Arrest the fraudster, put them in jail, perhaps recover some assets for the victims, done.

I'm not saying that's a quick process, nor should it be. But congress treating this as some sort of exceptional meta issue simultaneously deemphasizes that SBF appears to be a run of the mill fraudster ("but on the Internet"), while also emphasizing the narrative that "something must be done" (in other words, never let a good crisis go to waste).

Is it basic fraud, or are there important facts we don't know? Should crypto be regulated and if so how? How can we answer these questions without conducting an investigation?

I agree with you that that is how it currently appears based on media reports, but that doesn't mean that's the whole story. To me it seems pretty obvious that Congress would want to know more.

What we're debating is where that investigation is conducted. Conducting it in congress implies some exceptional thing that needs to be reformed, rather than the brazen simplistic criminality that it seemingly was. This speaks to a two class justice system, with SBF in the same category as other "too big to fail" criminals.

How about starting with a criminal investigation? If that turns up some novel twist exonerating SBF and indicating a meta-issue, like say FTX was actually hacked, then congress can take over. As it stands, all signs point to simple fraud where customer deposits were given to Alameda to gamble with.

As far as regulating cryptocurrency more, that impulse is precisely what I mean by "never let a good crisis go to waste". Fuck, continuing this line of thought I almost have the wonder if SBF is more like an Epstein-club actor here, doing the deliberate job of looting cryptocurrency for the political class, while creating a disaster to usher in more regulation.

I think you misunderstand that investigations often take place in Congress and the DoJ simultaneously, and that Congress conducts quite a few of them, most of which don't result in regulation.

There's almost certainly an investigation in the DoJ. We're not going to hear about it for a long time.

It's a foregone conclusion that crypto will be regulated. Congress has been figuring out how it should be regulated - not if - for a while. One of their key contacts in this industry, who spent a huge amount of time assuring them it wasn't all a scam - was a scammer. That matters to them.

The last part of your comment, where you suggest SBF blew up his own empire so that Congress could maybe pass a law. I don't really know what to say, this is a literal conspiracy theory. I'd encourage you to try and get more perspective.

> Most prosecutions don't involve playing coy with the defendant in hopes they might be forthcoming with evidence before things get all adversarial.

What is this assertion based on because that’s exactly how things very often work?

Sure, there is always some of that dynamic. Police question a suspect without arresting. Police offer food and ask for a statement before your attorney shows up, etc. But not of this magnitude.

Crazy that NY mag would write a whole article when they could have just clicked retweet.

The NY Mag article argues against that interpretation.

He agrees. He's implying, reasonably, that the comment above is fatuous.

Ah, sorry, I think I didn't catch the sarcasm.

Yes a congresswoman is going to stand strong with some disgraced, new-money mark who donated to her, out of loyalty. Come on, get a grip

The US is corrupt but not that corrupt. There is separation of powers between congress and the DOJ. And even within the executive there are firewalls between the politicians and the prosecutors.

> The US is corrupt but not that corrupt.

By that metric, every nation is corrupt and the term becomes meaningless.

It would be like hyperbolically calling every person guilty of physically injuring someone else a “murderer”.

Every nation does have corruption. Corruption is not a binary.

If every nation had it, it would not be a binary. It would be a gradient characteristic, like temperature.

And given that nations are made of people and people are corruptible, that actually sounds about right.

Which is precisely the point. When you say a nation is "corrupt", you're generally referring to one that is notable for that factor. Because otherwise the term is meaningless (because every nation does have corruption).

As a complementary example, you could argue all legislation is authoritarian; but describing a nation as "authoritarian" in the general (vs specific, as in certain laws/bills) goes above and beyond "normal" legislation.

You know.... it might be time for a presidential candidate to run on fighting corruption.

well no, actually the linked article we're discussing explains it all.

I mean Congress doesn't arrest people

Technically speaking they can, but haven't since the 1800s.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/19/204/

Not applicable in this case, though.

In what way? They literally write and vote on the (Federal) legislation that puts people in jail via the War on Drugs, the War on Terrorism, various specific crimes, etc.

Or do you mean literally? Because they most definitely have officers in both chambers of Congress and they’re fully empowered LEOs.

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