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Comment by BobbyJo | Hacker News Reader

Why not? He did plenty more harm to plenty more people than many others who had to wait in jail for their trial. I think it's perfectly rational to be upset that someone who destroyed billions in wealth is treated more kindly by the justice system than than people who've done far less damage.

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Did he destroy billions in wealth?

Seems to me that he made chart go up for no reason and everyone was perfectly happy with that, and when chart went down for the same reasons (i.e. fraud/no legitimate reason) then everyone is upset about it.

If people are upset about lesser offenses getting handled more aggressively, they should spend some time lobbying for lesser offenses to get handled less aggressively.

He didn't destroy money, he transferred it from whoever trusted him to the people he bought things from or made losing trades with on the market. He destroyed wealth by directing it away from honest business, and that's very hard to quantify the effects of. If I had to guess how he justifies it all in his head, it's that he was taking money away from the financial sector and giving it to the Future Fund.

This is an absolute guess because I don't know, but I think a lot of it was average joe crypto-curious investors having their money stolen and then given to the smart financial firms who were on the winning side of his secret bad bets. There may also have been some pension fund involvement because they seem to be caught up in this stuff on a regular basis. (Because of the way bonuses work, managers can skim off the top by investing in known Ponzi schemes and taking the credit for the 20% returns. They know they're not going to have to pay those bonuses back when they're inevitably "surprised." This happened with Madoff and was a big contributor to his success.)

Right, so he stole $x and "destroyed" $y. My position is that the theft is real and the destruction is not.

Yes, he destroyed (or stole) billions in customer deposits.

This has nothing to do with the chart. FTX terms of service promised that if customers had a simple account, without signing up for higher-risk stuff, then FTX would hold their full assets at all times without putting them at risk.

Then SBF allegedly moved those assets over to Alameda for risky trades, and also pulled some out to buy fancy houses.

It's still early to tell but as far as I can see, there's <$2B of customer deposits missing, and even insofar as those are missing, they have been stolen and not destroyed.

The "billions destroyed" seems more likely to refer to the general "destruction" of nominal wealth which, I posit, wasn't real to begin with.

Where are you getting this $2B figure? The claimed "liquidity shortfall" was $8-10B and most of the assets (MAPS, SRM, OXY, FTT) are worthless. I would expect people in the FTX creditors telegram group for example to post about it if there was news that caused the expected value of our claims to increase from 10-30c to 80c.

Ha just replied to your other comment. I'd trust your $10B figure over mine!

He stole like 10 billion dollars from his customers. Not sure how much of it he managed to subsequently destroy vs. successfully convey to other people, but does that matter?

Well one way in which it matters is that destroyed wealth is irrecoverable. It no longer exists. Stolen wealth might still exist somewhere and might be recoverable.

Also is it $10B in stolen deposits?! I seem to be coming across a $1-2B figure but admittedly haven't been following super closely.

Yes, about $10b of customer funds.

Funds misappropriated by Alameda and spent on VC investments may ultimately have become people's salaries. Some politicians have announced their intention to donate an amount of money equal to SBF's contributions of customer funds, but it's unclear whether they mean "donate to my own 501(c)(3)" or "return to FTX to be paid to creditors" and the phrasing certainly sounds more like the former. Most of the funds were probably embezzled (you will hear these people say "loaned" I guess) by FTX/Alameda executives or lost as part of Alameda's trading operations. Recovery of trading losses is extremely unlikely, especially trading losses that occurred long before the bankruptcy on venues other than FTX. SBF and BlockFi are currently arguing that each of them should receive the $441 million of Robinhood shares that SBF purchased using customer funds. "Hackers" stole about $500 million of customer funds from FTX US and FTX Intl immediately following the bankruptcy, and these funds have (mostly?) made their way into RenBTC and been bridged to native BTC and sent to mixers.

Some FTX customers who withdrew funds as part of their normal operations will face clawbacks, and some other FTX customers such as Modulo Capital and @AlgodTrading who have essentially stolen from all other creditors will hopefully also face clawbacks, but the total amount recoverable this way is maybe $1-4 bn, and all of these people are creditors anyway, so giving the money to other creditors doesn't do anything to address the shortfall.

He operated a Ponzi scheme, so yes, he did in fact destroy billions in wealth. What is the evidence to the contrary? The fact that FTX destroyed billions in wealth is not relevant to this trial at all. It’s whether or not he intentionally and maliciously defrauded his customers.

It's not correct that he operated a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme involves selling people equity, then not actually having the underlying business, lying about returns and paying redeemers using money from other depositors. If I open a bank or "fintech" and let people deposit dollars and just steal their dollars without ever claiming that their balance of dollars has increased, it's not a Ponzi scheme.

I agree the inequity of the justice system is terrible. I disagree with what I perceive as calls for his head.

You are intentionally exaggerating this situation. People are calling for him to be jailed — a perfectly reasonable call.

Intentionally? Are you proposing I have some kind of agenda, or just that I'm being willful in some way?

This is my honest read of the situation, you're welcome to disagree. I have no agenda, only an opinion.

Intentional in the sense that you understand that you are exaggerating and still repeatedly do it. No one is calling for him to be flogged or beheaded in front of the White House. Jailing a fugitive, a flight risk financial scammer is not unreasonable. He was extremely wealthy at one point and so there is a chance he has enough money stashed somewhere to make fleeing a possibility. In addition, defrauding thousands if not millions of people is a heinous crime, for which the perpetrator should not be given any easy treatment. When we ("the society") catch a serial killer, we agree that letting them go free on a negligible bail and an IOU note is not wise.

No, I am not exaggerating while secretly agreeing with you or something. That it may interpretation; you are free to disagree with it, but it's my sincere interpretation. Please avoid supposition about my mind state and intentions, if you want to know something about those subjects, just ask.

We deny bail to serial killers to avoid putting lives at risk, not because they're extra guilty. There's no indication SBF is a danger to anyone around him, and the conditions of his bail include counseling in case he's a danger to himself. Maybe he does have a house in Argentina with a stack of unmarked bills, who knows, but that is that the bond and the ankle monitor are for.

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