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Comment by tibbydudeza | Hacker News Reader

I feel sorry for his parents - legal fees is going to financially wipe them out and any plans for retirement.

I'd rather stick to my mediocre returns of my money market accounts than this crypto forex NFT nonsense.

How can you feel sorry for them? They're professors of LAW at Stanford. And this white-collar crime was being committed right under their noses. Pynchon would have had trouble coming up with a plot this wacky.

SBF just played along with the sheer insanity of the concept of crypto (nothing can make nothing) and all the fools who gave him money - it seems that common financial sense is not taught to people anymore or is really in short supply these days.

Did people actually listen to him whenever he spoke - whenever did any of his BS make any financial sense ???.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6nAxiym9oc

Right, he openly described what he was doing as a ponzi scheme on stage, and everyone just waved it off.

I mean, that's what I'm wondering about his parents. They must have known, or at least had a feeling. And not looking into that and giving your child some advice not to go down this path, or to be careful, and at the very least, not to get involved yourself, that would have been the responsible thing. Maybe it's the blindness we can all fall prey to when it comes to objectively thinking about our blood.

Defrauding willfully ignorant people is still fraud and still a crime. You shouldn't be excused for doing bad things by doing them to people who aren't the brightest or best.

> nothing can make nothing

You can make money just buy buying money.

There are billionaires in currency arbitrage.

> Nothing can make nothing

Is the implication that technology (like blockchain and digital currencies) and financial operations (like brokerages and exchanges) can create no legitimate wealth? Because I might humbly suggest this forum, which is run by a venture capital firm specializing in technology, might not rush to agree with you.

Less humbly, if you're suggesting labor is what makes things valuable, that's possibly one of the worst ideas in the history of economic thought. SBF might be a fraud, but it doesn't implicate cryptocurrencies, much less capitalism.

> I feel sorry for his parents - legal fees is going to financially wipe them out and any plans for retirement.

Losing your money sucks but it's preferable to losing your freedom. It is very likely the parents are guilty of abetting or enabling the fraud in some way.

SBF "agreed" to be extradited, that implies some negotiation. The only possible incentive I can think of him agreeing to what is shaping up to be a slam-dunk case of a very long prison term, is immunity for the parents.

Or he just wanted out of rat-infested Bahamian prison.

I seriously doubt this. The long-term ability to improve one's "experience" in exchange for financial renumeration (i.e. bribes) is certainly much greater in Bahamas than US. It's also far from certain that Bahamas, on its own, could prosecute and convict SBF.

His father worked for FTX for a while. He may be facing charges too.

If they can afford a $250 million bond, they can probably afford the lawyer fees.

They're free to let him take a plea deal and go to prison

As a parent it does not work that way unless you have a toxic relationship with yours.

Bullshit. You are perfectly capable of letting your children be punished for their negligence or stupidity, and any action to lessen that punishment will just show them how far you are willing to sacrifice your own life to keep them from learning a hard lesson.

They know he knowingly defrauded millions of people out of billions of dollars. If I did that, my mom would let me go to prison for the rest of my life because she knows she taught me morals and that human beings are more important than money and if I decide to ignore that moral framework as an adult then that's on me. Dude is an adult with a fully formed brain. Stopping a twelve year old from burning themselves on a hot stove is one thing, but if your fully adult son still needs to told not to touch the hot stove, it's time to let them fuck around and find out themselves.

That all assumes they had no idea what was going on, which I don't know is believable.

Eh, this is probably their last chance to spend a significant amount of time with their son. By the time he gets out of prison they’ll likely be dead.

I can totally understand how parents wouldn’t give two shits about “teaching their child a lesson” in this scenario.

Are you a parent?

I disagree. Especially when your child is all grown up:

- You can balance their welfare vs. other goods, e.g. justice, well-functioning society, etc.

- Your view of their welfare can include their character, maturity, empathy, and taking responsibility for their actions. It sucks if that requires 20 years in prison, but that may be preferable to helping them be a free but terrible person for the rest of their life.

you're right. When going against the feds you are taking a huge risk trying to go to trial or otherwise fighting them. From their personal financial perspective and more likely also in their interest as SBF's parents, they'd be best served with taking the plea deal SBF is offered.

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