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Comment by adastra22 | Hacker News Reader

You shouldn’t be downvoted. This FTX saga has nothing to do with cryptocurrency. The whole point of defi is to make these sorts of institutions unnecessary.

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This article is about cryptocurrency facilitating SBF plausibly laundering funds.

SBF would never have had any customer funds (or customers) if people actually used cryptocurrency as intended.

And yet he still could have committed a crime using the funds at his disposal. Crypto doesn’t prevent crime. On the contrary it tends to make crime net easier via facilitating money laundering.

You don't seem to understand what "counterparty risk" means. If all FTX users had used a non custodial exchange to purchase crypto, the CEO of that non-custodial exchange would not have access to any customer funds, so he would not be able to commit any crime like that.

My wording wasn’t clear. I wasn’t referring to SBF commuting a crime with customer funds. I was referring to him committing any crime for which limiting his assets may be appropriate.

So what the DOJ should learn from this is to not allow bail to perpretaros of cryptocurrency-related scams.

In fairness to SBF (who I have no sympathy for and think should rot in prison), this could very easily just be set up to look like it's him.

If I was someone else with access to that wallet, I could easily see waiting until SBF is out on bail and then moving funds to make everyone think it's him.

On the flip side, if it was SBF, he maybe could have done it before. Martin Shrekli has stated how he did blockchain operations from a contraband cellphone while in jail.

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