In the meantime, I suggest that you consider whether you would reevaluate your priors in any meaningful way if, as I expect, SBF is ultimately prosecuted.
Consider a rushed indictment: SBF can always invoke his right for a speedy trial (i.e., the prosecutors must be ready for trial within 6 months of indictment). The prosecution would thus be in the ineviable position of simultaneously gathering evidence and building the case. Alternatively, they could wait to indict until after they've gathered evidence, which will give them ample time to meticulously build a case against him.
Since the harm of losing the case is greater than the harm of letting him roam free for a couple years, a delayed indictment seems like the clearly better option.
His really good thread starts here: https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1600877380683280384
It's 71 days for federal trials, not six months. I know, it's a nit.
The right to a speedy trial may well have been incorporated against the States, but I don't know. In any case, a speedy trial mostly seems to mean that there must be a statutory limit to how much time can pass between indictment and the start of the trial, and between the start of a trial and closing arguments. Different States have different limits, and the variation in those limits surely must be constitutionally allowed, provided that in general they are a) statutory, b) not very long. I suspect a State could get away with 90 days from indictment.
EDIT: Defendants don't actually get to waive the right to a speedy trial, but if they don't assert that right, then they don't get to ask for dismissal of charges due to violations of the right to a speedy trial.
The right to a speedy trial is incorporated against the states, yes. Klopfer v. North Carolina, 386 U.S. 213 (1967).
> a speedy trial mostly seems to mean that there must be a statutory limit to how much time can pass between indictment and the start of the trial
No, it doesn’t, nor does it provide such fixed limits on its own, instead being applied lookong at reasonableness case by case. The Speedy Trial Act of 1974 providing federal limits was largely a reaction to this, rather than required by it.
Public health is one of the clearest legitimate reasons to infringe on individual rights in an emergency.
70 days from indictment or arraignment to trial, 30 days from arrest to information or indictment, under the Speedy Trial Act of 1974. But those timelines can be paused for many reasons. (Enforcement of the Constitutional rule does not use a hard timeline, but looks holistically at the length, reason, ans effect of delay and whether and how the defendant has asserted his right.)
He very well may go to prison for something other than defrauding FTX customers. See Al Capone for tax evasion and Elizabeth Holmes for defrauding investors (not patients).
You mean Billy McFarland. Billy Mitchell appears entirely innocent of this ;-)
Madoff confessed to his sons and said he was imminently going to surrender to authorities, his sons called the FBI, the FBI interviewed him at home (no arrest, no warrant, no indictment), and he confessed to the scheme being a large scale fraud to the FBI.
And Madoff was physically within US jurisdiction.
And Madoff had much clearer records and much less complicated an organization that the FTX network of companies, which seems to have been highly optimized to conceal specific evidence of fraud and theft by, between, and by insiders against the companies in the network.
It's strange to see people actively seeking a space outside of the government's legal jurisdiction, and then getting incensed that the government isn't entering that jurisdiction more quickly to protect them when things inevitably go sideways.
Crypto users that espouse freedom from government are usually talking about being able to use crypto, on chain, without government interference. They don’t want to be taxed for using bitcoin as a currency, be able to use decentralized services without complex regulations and tax laws, etc. etc
I’ve never heard the case made that asset custodians should be able to steal assets from their customers regardless of the underlying asset.
When the scam fell apart he even confessed to them so they could immediatelly report him to the FBI.
After all they didnt know anything!
He definitely did everything on his own and definitely didnt make this move to save his children.
The fact that Madoff is the only one in prison while his innocent children and innocent employees are free shows that the justice system works!
One of his sons, Mark, committed suicide on the 2 year anniversary of Bernie's arrest. It was his second attempt. The suicide note he left (his first attempt) read in part: "Now you know how you have destroyed the lives of your sons by your life of deceit. F*ck you"
Let's be careful before rushing to judgment.
Ken Lay, who did not admit to crimes, took 3 years to be indicted and then was convicted.
Plus her sons, who actually turned their dad in: one killed himself over this, and the other died of lymphoma (won't comment on psychological stress, but you have to imagine the fallout from the scandal didn't help).
[1]https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2009/06/ruth_madoff_...
I guess I'm glad that Alan Turing was never convicted of 'Gross Indecency' then! Makes the UK look a lot more progressive!
As we saw with the Fyre Festival guy and other similar fraud cases, the government wants to move quickly to secure physical hard drives. In the case of that dude, Fyre happened on Thursday and they executed a search warrant at his apartment on Monday morning.
It’s possible that grand jury subpoenas have already been issued and served, but that doesn’t typically generate the criminal intent evidence they will need for this case.
We also know from former employees that routine business was typically discussed on Signal. That’s probably not a great sign for the government as they will need physical access to the devices used OR they will need to snag an iCloud (or other) device backup and grab the contents from there.
Your points about a speedy trial and losing a case are generally valid BUT the DOJ can always opt to file a superseding indictment once he is in custody. I don’t know the full deal with Extradition from the Bahamas but it’s likely it will take some time (several months). Despite this being a white collar case the government will absolutely seek to keep him incarcerated given his flight risk and resources unaccounted for. Anything he’s embezzled from FTX in the span shortly before bankruptcy will be used by the DOJ as proof he has hidden resources.
Remember, in pretrial arguments, they can come up with pretty far fetched or ridiculous arguments that have no merit or bearing later on. For example, in the case of Marcus Hutchins (the WannaCry kid), prosecutors argued he was potentially violent because he visited a shooting range several days prior. He was, in fact, in Las Vegas for DEFCON and went to one of many shooting ranges advertised on the Strip.
Then cross off the countries that have people you screwed or governments that might find it politically advantageous to prosecute you. And then cross off the countries that might send you back even without an extradition treaty.
And then cross off countries that have worse internet than prison.
What's left?
Yes, and there's plenty of that, have you read his Twitter timeline? Have you seen his interviews, etc? The guy's indicting himself, lol.
IANAL but I'm not sure that's true. I believe they can charge him with fraud or negligence. The latter carries lesser penalties, and everything SBF is doing now is trying to steer the inevitable indictment in that direction.
The various fraud statutes require intent.
‘Reckless indifference for truth or falsity’ and "The requisite intent under the federal mail and wire fraud statutes may be inferred from the totality of the circumstances and need not be proven by direct evidence."
It’s not a super high bar to clear in this case.
[https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...]
Also, contrary to popular claims made here and everwhere else, the prison she's going to does in fact seem to have fences. With razorwire even.
It would be like if Epstein just came out on a public interview and said "yeah I hosted a pedophile ring for global elites as part of a CIA operation to get dirt on foreign nationals, in particular these ones: <insert list of names> but I didn't know what I was doing!"
I don't see how SBF can walk back all of his very public admissions to date. "Oh I was lying in all of those just to troll the internet", but then he can't make any statement in his own defense. He must really be one of those liars who believes his own bullshit, that's the only explanation for his behavior. He's totally going to jail at this point
Don't get me wrong, I think that doing all of these interviews is really the nail in his coffin. I don't see how anyone can watch these interviews and not think that what this guy did was criminal. I could imagine in an alternate universe, where he just kept his mouth shut, SBF could get some kind of deal if he helps the bankruptcy courts claw back some of the assets improperly paid.
This guy is clearly a narcist who thinks that he will be able to win this in the court of public opinion by smiling at the camera and paying lip service.
FTX/Alameda is now the poster child for Defi, isn't it? Good overview here:
https://blockcast.cc/news/revealing-the-new-defi-gang-ftx-an...
I recognize there are tons of fraudsters who latch onto the vocabulary of cryptocurrency and twist it to trick naive consumers who don’t know the difference. Another example would be “staking” where the original intent meant earning proof of stake rewards without giving up your keys, but was frequently used as a marketing term for things like Blockfi where you literally transferred ownership if your coins.
Despite the manipulation around the terms, it’s unfortunate how a fairly technical audience like Hacker News refuses to have good faith discussions around this.
This crowd should know better than to call FTX DeFi.
This crowd should know better than to call fractional reserve interest programs staking.
I think this crowd does know the difference but chooses to ignore it in bad faith because of a general dislike of cryptocurrencies.
By all means call out the swindlers but a site called hacker news deserves better when it comes to using technical terms accurate and in good faith. And by calling FTX DeFi you’re doing neither.
Serum was meant to compete with Uniswap. [6]
Oxygen and Solana DeFi tokens were working with FTX on Serum. [3], [4]
Now that FTX has failed, people are saying "FTX was never a De-Fi". We should stop calling it that because if we do we're now "dishonest". [you and 5]
[1] https://www.projectserum.com
[2] https://cryptopotato.com/serum-srm-backs-community-hard-fork...
[3] https://decrypt.co/116652/ftx-solana-defi-serum-starting-ove...
[4] https://cryptoslate.com/defi-protocol-oxygen-held-95-of-supp...
[5] https://www.rebellionresearch.com/is-ftx-a-defi
[6] https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/04/28/serum-token-beco...
Serum seems like a special case - it was branded as a DeFi protocol, but wasn't really decentralized, since FTX had sole upgrade authority. Because of that Serum collapsed when FTX did. That couldn't happen with something like Uniswap, where governance is actually decentralized.
Now only after FTX failed people are saying, "Oh that wasn't really defi, and you're being dishonest if you call it that."
Basically we're being gaslit after the fact.
But yes, in other circles, there are "crypto personalities" who cater to an audience that's just hoping to get rich quick. Such people usually don't know or don't care about things like contract upgrade mechanisms.
(... yet).
There does not exist a morality detector that can measure people's true intentions in crypto. SBF may have had a true heart of gold but is just an idiot. Or he's the smartest con-man in the room and squirreled the money away in a series of numbered bank accounts.
Either way, the crypto press gave him very little skepticism, and lauded his venture -- celebrating him as the next financial genius.
In the traditional banking world, I don't need a morality detector. I just need an FDIC bank.
- Not your keys, not your crypto. I.e. don't trust a random foreign company like FTX to custody your funds. If you really don't want to self-custody, there are reputable, insured custodians like Anchorage or Coinbase Custody.
- Don't use niche DeFi protocols if you don't know much about them; stick to widely-used protoocls like Uniswap, Curve, Aave, etc.
It's not foolproof, but neither is traditional finance. There are plenty of ways to lose your money there, particularly if you're looking to get rich quick with exotic investments.
In fact FTX was getting into equities, so it's not just crypto investors who will probably lose money (pending bankruptcy proceedings). It's anyone who decided to trust a questionable Bahamian company with their assets, crypto or not.
True custodial banks could in fact be fraudulent for allow e know. But they don't buy super bowl ads to buy reputation -- they've earned it over the course of decades.
Real banking should be boring.
I would compare FTX to say Tastyworks. Clean brand, but they're not a bank, not insured, and not focused on custody, so it wouldn't really be prudent to store idle cash or crypto with them.
If you take away gambling and speculation, cryptocurrencies lack a compelling use case when compared to competing technologies.
Pretty much anything? (including cowrie shells and gold) Bitcoin has a lot of hype about being "money," but it's rarely used as such.
Good luck sending somebody crypto to make a payment.
Maybe you can make 1 on 1 payments to other people who are also convinced to use the same crypto as you. People who don't use that crypto (almost everyone in the world) or your grocery store (most in the world) won't take your payment in crypto.
That's kinda like saying the Mafia could be good if it weren't for all the bad actors.
At some point the Mafia itself becomes bad and then becomes the reason someone joins it -- to be paid handsomely for committing crimes.
That's I think where we're at with crypto.
The mafia is a emphatically criminal organization made up of people whose unique and specific purpose is to extort, rob, threaten, kill and steal as their core activities.
Crypto is a bundle of interrelated technologies and cryptographic protocols that can be used for bad, good or neutral purposes by humans with all kinds of agendas. In the case of decentralized cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, nobody's even in specific control and claiming they're evil is like claiming a random algorithm is evil, or that encryption is evil because alongside dissidents and social activists, pedophiles and con men also use it to keep their communication private. Ridiculous.
Crypto mathematically prevents fraud. The problem here is that business was conducted in the fiat world and on a "trust me" basis.
Uh what? How could it do that. Fraud isn't even a technical layer issue. It's an identity issue and identity is pretty much entirely abstracted out of the crypto ecosystem. So, if you think about it that way, it's actually impossible for crypto to "mathematically prevent fraud". That you even said something so ridiculous without any reflection speaks to your intuitions in this space.
Only the person with the private key can move the funds.
If this was on-chain, SBF would not have had their private keys and mathematically could not have moved their funds without their consent.
There are DEXs which you can deposit funds and retain full custody.
We have never once seen someone successfully steal users' funds without access to their private keys. That's the entire point of crypto.
Crypto never claimed to prevent fiat fraud. Crypto never claimed to prevent human custodians from absconding with funds.
It's a fallacy. No true crypto. No point in responding further to this approach.
Centralized finance is subject to the whim of creditors and custodians.
Decentralized finance mathematically prevents theft within the system.
The point is, if you self-custody your funds, no one can take them from you except by threatening you.
Everyone had their funds taken from them because they did NOT self-custody.
Everyone could have gotten all the utility of FTX (trading spot and derivatives) via a self-custody solution (a DEX).
Stop blaming self-custody solutions and stop trying to make self-custody solutions illegal. They literally mathematically prevent this type of theft and fraud.
I use centralized exchanges plenty, and I am also aware that it defeats a large portion of the whole trustless money thing. Therefore, I also keep crypto offline in cold storage. Those addresses and the coins involved will go with me to the grave or until someone threatens me with a hammer.
The decentralized nature of most cryptocurrencies makes it difficult for a single entity to manipulate the market or falsify transactions, but it does not completely eliminate the possibility of fraud. In addition, the anonymity of many cryptocurrencies can make it difficult to trace the source of fraudulent activity, which can make it harder to prevent or prosecute.
If you participate in actual DeFi where you keep your keys and participate via smart contracts, nobody can steal your coins.
All of this was true and is true. What happened is that corporations adopted the language of cryptocurrency to mean something totally different to trick consumers, like calling FTX a DeFi platform.
You want a villain, it ain’t the maxis who kept repeating “not your keys, not your coin”. It’s VCs like a16z, sequoias, and paradigm who lended credibility to centralized exchanges that defrauded people who ignored the cryptocurrency advocates.
The FTX story only strengthens the facts and narratives the cryptocurrency advocates have been saying. The real fraud is happening in venture capital which is rotten to the core.
And by the way, bitcoin is down this year but not nearly as much as VC darlings like Carvana and Affirm.
VC is the scam. VC is the engine of pump and dumps in both TradFi and crypto centralized exchanges. The real voices of cryptocurrency have been vindicated.
Yeah, people think that. But what does that have to do with FTX. Yeah, if you never sent money to FTX, they couldn't take it. What insight!
SBF stole users' deposits. Fact.
SBF could not have done this had FTX been a self-custody DEX. Fact.
Crypto's sole purpose is to prevent the theft that occurred. Fact.
The theft happened because crypto was not used. The theft happened because users did not self-custody (which they could have, as is demonstrated by the billions of dollars custodied in numerous DEXs today). Fact.
It’s a simple truth that an investment fund that is getting more deposits from withdrawals can vaporize the money and not have any problems until people ask for the money back. That is why financial institutions need strict controls.
"we do not invest user deposits, not even in bonds"
and yet he _did_ take user deposits. He defrauded them by taking their funds. This is also known as theft.
This type of fraud, which also counts as theft, is not possible with self-custodied funds.
I never said they were.
> A DEX might preclude the need for trust relationships in order to prevent the circumstances that make fraud possible
So you agree?
You just admitted that DEXs would have prevented SBF from committing this fraud. That's what I'm trying to convince you of.
Those who do not distinguish self-custodied funds from non-self-custodied funds, like you refuse to do, will continue to be defrauded and stolen from.
* A contract (a piece of software) hosted on the network * This contract is immutable (its code cannot be changed) * This contract defines rules such as allowing deposits, withdrawals, and trades, and those functions of withdrawing deposits or enacting trades require transactions signed by the depositor
In that scenario, it is a deposit, is controlled (and thus owned, both legally and cryptographically) by the users.
In real life, these contracts are generally mutable, so there is the possibility that users can still get fucked over.
If "Crypto" has proven anything over the last few years the only thing it mathematically prevents is reversing transactions, which is really useful when you want to steal money.
I'm fine with highly regulated exchanges despite that being counter to that glory of crypto. Also, move your large bags to cold storage.
To Molly White's point, SBF is essentially walking around shouting "I was incompetent! Very very incompetent!" In an attempt to make that, as opposed to his clear fraud, the narrative.
Even for people who believe that everything is 100% corrupt 100% of the time in the American justice system, SBF going to jail should be seen as confirmation of that bias.
And stealing from the rich isn't the only factor at play here. Even if all of the money was returned to everyone, there are plenty of rich/powerful people and institutions who dislike crypto for various legit and corrupt reasons, so there would still be some pressure to prosecute.
IMO he's fucked, even aside from the stealing from the rich angle. It's just too high profile and too embarrassing to too many regulatory agencies. He's well into "make an example of" territory.
Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to jail. Adam Neumann was not.
Without the evidence we're just hypothesizing, as far as I'm concerned justice could have been served in both cases, I simply don't know and I doubt most people who are so eager to take one side or another truly care deeply enough to actually go through the entirety of those two past cases and look at all the legal arguments and details of the case (which is all public) before reaching a conclusion.
The perils of thinking you're the smartest guy in the room. He apparently didn't even think to set up a victim to take the fall. Retroactively blaming his girlfriend will probably doom her, but isn't doing him any good.
I don't imagine a jury would see that level of unfathomable complexity and think "clearly a guy in over his head".
Somewhere in the terabytes of internal emails, screenshots, and discord logs there will be something showing that SBF knew what he was doing, even if it shows up in a completely unforeseen way.
FTX had risk officers, they had a legal team. Whoever signed off on this, including SBF, needs to be prosecuted.
There was a Samsung VIP involved too. [2,3]
I was quite impressed because putting ex-presidents on trial is (was?) illegal in my own country! (there was a referendum recently, but I'd need to look up the outcome of that, no ex-presidents are on trial as far as I know)
I'm telling this because 'recently', they overturned that ruling.
so even if he goes to jail, let's wait 3 or 4 more years after any public rulings to check if he's been pardoned.
There was a Samsung VIP involved too. [2,3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Geun-hye#Pardon_and_relea...
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55674712
[3] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/samsung-heir-lands-pres...
Or, alternatively, they realize it's impossible to run a country and not be corrupt. Then, all "presidents" are actually defacto dictators. Not too far off the reality of the matter...perhaps the US should get on this train.
Joking aside (I think I'm joking)... what else would "getting on that train" even look like?
I'm also not sure if what you said was an alternative to what I said. I said it may point out that South Koreas presidency is routinely corrupt, and you said "alternatively, what if they just realize all presidents are corrupt" -- that doesn't seem an alternative, those seem consistent!
moreover, the usa security apparatus designed south korea. they're a subsidiary country of the city of washington corporation (or something); i.e. they're on the same train already.
I must add that this is pure speculative guesswork, I ain't got no 'clearance'.
Is there anything similar in USA? Only for violent crime maybe?
In the US when you're arrested you go to jail (which is distinct from prison, which is for long-term convicts).
When a person is arrested in the USA, one of the first courts is the "Bail Hearing" which determines how the accused person will be kept until their trial. They may be sent home, or given a GPS ankle-monitor, or they may be told they have to pay a large "bail bond", which is a deposit that they will lose if they fail to show up for trial and they will get the money back after the trial, or they may be just taken to jail until the conviction if the judge thinks they're too dangerous.
He could, in the worst case, simply relocate to a country without an extradition clause and add their leadership onto his little black book of "donations."
But it is not like this is a violent crime where such incarceration is entirely possible.
Plus, if you were to ask me, I don't really have a specific sentence duration in mind which I would consider to be sufficiently long, so it would entirely come down to my takeaway from whatever the judge says.
Eg if the judge gives him ~10 years stating that he did indeed intentionally fraud people out of $8B, it'd be okay. But on the other hand, if it seems like they're intentionally avoiding the obvious fraud to make his charges weaker, it obviously won't be satisfying.
Prison time won't bring back the money, meaning it is really just to satisfy a primitive urge for revenge. So what are you talking about, at that rate I won't do it, seems to work, see how it deterred SBF?!?
Almost everyone who commits crimes while expecting to get caught is in desperate circumstances (near starvation, jail preferable to available housing, loved one in big trouble, etc.), where the time isn't a big deterrent, either.
It's much more effective to increase (at least the perception) of the probability crimes will be caught and prosecuted. Excessive jail sentences presumably result in greater costs, meaning less money available on the investigation and prosecution side. (Yes, this makes faulty assumptions about how government budgeting works in practice.)
Doubling jail time probably doesn't move the needle much, but I would be very surprised if there wasn't a significant behavioral difference between "go to jail" and "don't go to jail at all".
People are vocalizing their lack of trust in the government to serve justice in part because cases where people whom they feel deserved more punishment didn't receive it and similarly with people whom they feel didn't deserve as much punishment as they got.
An example that comes to mind is that for all the layoffs happening lately in the tech industry, a common sentiment here on HN seems to be that CEOs are talking about taking responsibility but usually don't really face proportional negative consequences to demonstrate how they're doing that. Similarly with criminals, of course you can and should rehabilitate them to prevent re-offending, but if that's all you focus on, you kind of miss out on making them take responsibility for their actions.
Enron (a pretty good analogue since the same CEO is liquidation FTX) went under in 2001 and Ken Lay was indicted in 2004.
Madoff only went to jail right away because he cooperated
Bringing immediate charges against him on the low hanging fruit does not preclude later charging him with anything that may require further work. And it also helps snag him before he decides his little 'blame everybody else and get the corporate media (which I also "donated" to) to back me up' isn't working out and plays a disappearing act. He's a billionaire already living in the Bahamas who could easily spend the rest of his life behind bars. He is an extreme flight risk, yet the DoJ continues to hem and haw.
Actually, it very easily could:
Speedy trial rules don't allow delaying trial freely once charged, and a conviction (or acquittal) on a charge that would be a lesser included charge forecloses later charging a more serious offense that includes that conduct with additional evidence, b/c double jeopardy.
And speedy trial rules are regularly "bent" when convenient. See, for instance, the January 6th rioters who have been kept in brutal conditions for what will soon be years, without trial, for far lesser charges than what SBF stands to face - if he ever faces anything.
This is not a defense of the January 6th guys, as I do believe those who broke the law should face justice. But I believe all people should face justice equally. And they're one of the most visible demonstrations, as SBF is becoming, that the justice system in this country is, at best, deeply dysfunctional.
The US judicial system is always "one chance to convict (Double Jeopardy), many chances to appeal" and given the whole 'speedy trial' thing (The Feds get about 2 months), building a case is the only reasonable solution before charging him. Again, the Feds need to convince a jury beyond a shadow of a doubt that Sam did this (not that it was done, that Sam did this)
People seem to thing we can let him sit in jail indefinitely pre-trial while we collect the documents and facts, but the Constitution is pretty aggressive about that and no-one even knows what happened yet (not even SBF per his own claims).
A prosecutor can't just point towards ambiguous bad things that happened, they need iron-clad facts that a defense team can't poke holes in (even if those holes are only a shadow of a doubt).
>plays a disappearing act.
I mean, sure, there's always flight risk, but to where? Russia? I mean it "worked" for Snowden I guess, but obviously different circumstances there.
China? They banned crypto, so I doubt they want him potentially stirring up economic tumult there.
Pretty much anywhere else? The US has an extradition treaty and I doubt SBF is going to settle into a quiet life of hiding given his current behavior.
>He's a billionaire
This is always such a funny thing people say about others. Liquidity matters. Even if Sam has access to hidden billions of liquid crypto, then what? He sells it in secret and secretly buys a yacht from a company that's not worried about having those funds seized by the US Gov't? He can't make any meaningful purchase, other than legal defense, because any counter-party will know that the funds are at risk for seizure (since they are ill-gotten).
It's the same as Putin, like sure Russia's national wealth is his, but what's he gonna spend it on? The palaces he already lives in?
And then by that measure, isn't the current US President probably the wealthiest person (Say what you will, but no amount of money is going to give MBS the power to launch a nuke if he wants).
>He is an extreme flight risk, yet the DoJ continues to hem and haw.
Again, can you really be a flight risk if you're already not in the US's jurisdiction?
I don't see why people thought SBF and FTX was any different from any other billion dollar finance company. The old men in suits were young men in suits at some point. BlackRock, with it's trillions of dollars under management, is only 34 years old. There wasn't any change or a new era that was going to be ushered in by FTX/SBF. Just more financial crime, how long would have it gone unpunished if it wasn't for their own incompetence?
Anyone who wants to prognosticate on this subject should record their prediction on Metaculus or similar, and link to it. Anyone not going on record thusly should shut up.
Update: Fixed the year (15 instead of 14)
Nobody is saying the FTX saga will be concluded in 1-2 years, but it's quite reasonable to think the principals will have been indicted by then with legal proceedings underway.
As per the original comment:
> how SBF won't go to jail because of American corruption--I'll see you back here in a year or two.
Going to jail implies he will be found guilty and it will be concluded. If SBF is only indicted, he is still innocent until proven guilty.
> That's an apples to oranges comparison.
Would like to know more about this. I am not saying he won’t go to jail, but why would prosecutors be faster in indicting SBF?
Lastly, I am caught off guard by how emotional you seem about wanting to demonstrate how efficient the US legal system is. I am not saying it isn’t, but 1-2 years to conclude (again per original comment) seems quick for any legal system.
Then you are a bad judge of emotion.
Having knee jerk reactions doesn't show me you have control of your emotions. It's a sign of toxic personality and difficulty working with others.
I was bothered by the level of rhetoric from high-profile people in technology predicting that the US justice system would never pursue SBF, because these claims seem to smuggle in the conspiracy that the US government is controlled by some cabal or hidden element. While of course the US government has many problems, these insinuations don't represent a serious take on the issue, and this FTX debacle seems to be simply a convenient opportunity for "network state" or techno-libertarian proponents to promulgate some more damaging untruths into an already poisoned information environment.
Nobody has yet taken me up on the bet.
Federal wire fraud (and conspiracy to commit the same) has a maximum sentence length of 20 years. I guess she could have gotten 80 years if all 4 convictions were ordered to be served consecutively. I don't know how common consecutive senteces are vs concurrent.
In federal prison you can only parole at a maximum the last 15% of sentence, so she well serve the majority of the time (if held up on appeal etc., etc.)
They were made by people with solid credentials in the legal field. My guess is that in the end they dropped a bunch of charges to levels that would skate under the multipliers, or she simply wasn't convicted on the ones that had big multipliers. But since I am not the lawyer, that is my non-credible speculation.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-03-03-me-38444-...
Not to mention the years tens of thousands of people (mostly Black again) have gotten for smoking some joint, or much minor theft of 1/1000000 scale to Holmes.
Or immediate execution by some cop for just talking back, or merely walking about...
And societies who have them don't belong among civilized ones...
In the meantime, I suggest that you consider whether you would reevaluate your priors in any meaningful way if, as I expect, SBF is ultimately not prosecuted.
1. A lot of money was lost, especially rich people's money.
2. The fraud is particularly egregious, that is where it wasn't just a one time thing, but where the whole enterprise was a house of cards.
3. Where there is a clear smoking gun.
1 and 2 are obviously true in the FTX case, and I think given what has been reported so far that #3 will also be fairly apparent (e.g. there are tweets SBF made at the end of September that were lies that deliberately tried to hide the token movement between Alameda and FTX).
I'd easily bet that SBF will, when all is said and done, spend at least a decade in jail.
This is also why SBF can not testify to congress in person as he will likely be arrested once on US soil as a flight risk. Also why he didn't attend the recent NYTimes event in person -- again he can not step foot on US soil right now or probably ever again.
But what is life like for someone living outside the law who stole billions from angry people including likely many criminals? His life expectancy would not be long.
https://manifold.markets/mr22222222/sbf-convicted-of-a-felon...
(On Manifold, you can only donate winnings to charity rather than withdraw, which allows them to legally operate.)
I'd go online to see if I could find someone to take a wager on that, but that's such easy money I doubt I'd get odds worth it.
I'd lay $1000 against that happening, and I don't have $1000 to spend lightly.
Then again, I try not to tempt those that should not be tempted.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-bankman-frieds-...
People are forgetting he stole money from rich people, the worst crime imaginable in America. If instead he made billions killing poor people either by selling them highly addictive drugs or by poisoning their drinking supply his company would be hit with a fine.
If you are alluding to pain killers, those were approved for use so whether or not the company knew they were addictive is a moral question not a legal one. A massive fine was also leveed against Purdue.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...
As for the water, I assume you mean Flint? What crime was committed?
For example, if SBF evading jail would increase your confidence in the statement "The US justice system is wholly corrupt" then SBF being sentenced should decrease your confidence in it.
In your example, according to logic, if X implies Y, then if you don't have Y, you necessarily don't have X. If this were a logic exercise, then not "SBF goes to jail" necessarily implies not "the government is not corrupt."
However, in real life there's no connection between the two.
I imagine you’re remembering that P -> Q does not mean ~ P -> ~Q. That’s right, but you can absolutely get to ~Q -> ~P.
In conclusion, naysayers say he wont be convicted is imying and thus proves that the gov is corrupt. The top comment says he may get a sentence, meaning the government is not necessarily corrupt. Yaysayers say the gov is not corrupt and he will get a conviction iff he is guilty.
This is trivial, but difficult to formalize. Thanks for your correction.
- If the government is corrupted it does not matter if SBF is guilty, he will not go jail. - If the government is not corrupted and SBF is not guilty, he will not go to jail. - Only if the government is not corrupted and SBF is guilty, he will go to jail.
The problem is: There are more factors in life that just a corrupted government and guilt. There are jurys, capable lawyers, incapable DAs, loopholes, you name it.
So in truth we have "(corruption ∨ ¬guilty ∨ X) <-> ¬jail", with X being the unknown. Thus, if SBF does not go to jail, it could be true that the government is not corrupted, that SBF is guilty, but any of the other factors were at work.
I think this is what people are really arguing about: what will be causally relevant for the outcome. Mind you, even a conviction would not convict (ha!) people that the convernment is not corrupt. They'd rather say that somebody did not pay enough, other interests were at work, aliens, and so on.
The truth is that you cannot infer much based on a singular outcome if you do not have extremely good insight into the mechanics behind the outcome. Which is precisely why people rather update priors as a way to build up an evaluation based on statistics over a longer time frame. Quite ingenious, if you ask me.
As others have mentioned, X implies Y does in fact require ~Y implies ~X. I think your example is confusing because "the government is corrupt" means many different things, but you're using it in a rather specific way ("the government is protecting SBF"). The equivalence of `X implies Y` and `~Y implies ~X` is more manifest through the following example
"The government is protecting SBF, so SBF won't go to jail"
"SBF went to jail, so the government wasn't protecting him."You're modelling X and Y as propositions and you're correct about the inference of ~X and ~Y, but Bayesian updating is about degree of belief in those propositions, which your inference is not a claim about.
US blacklisting Bahamas with the various tools at its disposal isn’t worth it for Bahamas.
(Cutting off preclearance, cutting off from US financial system, increasing visa/travel barriers for Bahamians)
Really for SBF? Removing financial systems? I think this is a far stretch. Fraudsters are held up in extradition messes all the time. The US doesn't change international policy for a single case (usually).
US swinging its dick around in that manner over one dude who ran one fraudulent company isn't worth it for the US.
https://apnews.com/article/brittney-griner-freed-viktor-bout...
We "overpayed" for her and everyone knows it. Getting taken advantage of is kind of the opposite of putting pressure on another country to make them do something that's a crap deal for them.
SBF, the name of the visible head, is as good a collective label for the network of individual criminals and the many dozens of companies they used in their crimes as FTX, just one of the companies, is.
Using SBF as a collective is a confusing and incorrect. If you want to use it as part of a collective label, you could use "SBF & co.", "SBF et al" or similar conventions for creating a collective label from a singular one.
The ruling class needs the PMC to see the system as legitimate and they'll happily throw one of their own in jail to do it.