Sequoia Captials Puff piece on SBF just before FTX's collapse | Hacker News Reader

Sequoia Captials Puff piece on SBF just before FTX's collapse

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Original post:

"Sequoia: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33527047

Most comments & points:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33549059

Most recent:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33672924

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33672924 - Nov 2022 (83 comments)

Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex—And Maybe You Should Too - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33573636 - Nov 2022 (32 comments)

Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33551288 - Nov 2022 (2 comments)

Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33549059 - Nov 2022 (148 comments)

Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex – and Maybe You Should Too (Sep 2022) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33543718 - Nov 2022 (3 comments)

Sequoia: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33527047 - Nov 2022 (8 comments)

Oh, awesome. I just updated my fork of refined-hacker-news[0] to include the URL in the generated blurb at the bottom of the page for easier cut/paste.

Discussions on similar submissions:

Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33672924 (November 19, 2022 — 108 points, 83 comments)

Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex—And Maybe You Should Too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33573636 (November 12, 2022 — 68 points, 32 comments)

Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33554271 (November 10, 2022 — 14 points, 4 comments)

Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33549059 (November 10, 2022 — 119 points, 148 comments)

Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex – and Maybe You Should Too (Sep 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33543718 (November 10, 2022 — 26 points, 3 comments)

FTX CEO SBF Wants to Fix Crypto–and Everything Else https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33537981 (November 9, 2022 — 2 points, 2 comments)

Sequoia: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33527047 (November 8, 2022 — 18 points, 7 comments)

[0] https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news/blob/main/...

Any plans to make this extension available for Safari users?

It isn’t mine.

I have had thoughts of doing my own though. Been gathering a list of features I would love to see. This one is pretty much abandoned and it really needs a rewrite.

Is your fork available?

Yes! Easy enough to find it in the githubs.

Yikes - apart from this being a dupe, please don't editorialize titles like that! This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

The civil lawsuit against SBF's parents has email showing that they knew about the coming bankruptcy in 2021. So the father was asking how to transfer FTX assets to "bankruptcy remote" location: assets that couldn't be clawed back once the bankruptcy would happen.

But it was a scam from day one: FTX was losing half a million a day when FTX was created. Alameda never worked: the code SBF wrote to "arbitrage" wasn't even taking order book depth into account. So the code would see a bid/ask arbitrage and would make a big trade, but there wasn't enough liquidity at the bid/ask price found to make the arb work. So basically the code was losing money, for months. It's not even amateur hour: it's sheer idiocy and incompetence (or it was made on purpose to make the [unkown so far] party on the other side of these trades rich).

Several people realized SBF was full of shit: the tweets and articles exposing this (entire family of) scammer(s) were all out there. But nobody listened.

I don't understand how people could see a video of that guy talking and somehow think he was smart. I saw him during the craze, when there was on F1 race etc. and I sent an email to my brother asking him: "Have you heard of that dumb no-name?"

How people fall for that?

Shame on you Sequoia. Shame on you The NYT.

Sequoia was looking out for Sequoia. This should come as no surprise. They don't care who is left holding the bag, crypto, public securities, or otherwise. They're trying to make their rake off their LP funding, while also being a "thought leader" and being able to make a strong case you should be putting your investment dollars with them if you want VC/startup asset class exposure.

Incentives matter. Make investors jointly responsible for the fraud of their portfolio companies if you want to see meaningful change. Otherwise, there is no incentive to do due diligence, just to pump money into whatever the current lottery is, shielded from the blast radius by corporate limited liability. This applies just as much to public security institutional investors as it does to VCs or other PE investment arrangements. You're providing the powder, you can share in the blame when the cannon blows up. Returns must be earned through adult governance and oversight. If there are no adults in the room, that is what civil and criminal proceedings are for.

I'm not really "mad" at Sequoia. I think it's more funny VCs have developed a reputation for being experts in investing and technology but were still so easily duped by FTX through a simple combination of FOMO and credentialism (Jane Street/MIT/Ivy wunderboy creds).

“I am risk-neutral on overall impact.” isn't this a way of saying "I don't give a *@!# about any of you"? EA couched as nihilism.

Nowhere in this do I find the question of "what if he/I/we are wrong?" and if I rang Sequoia that is the thing that would make my blood cold and my mouth dry.

"Something of the sort must happen eventually, as the current system, with its layers upon layers of intermediaries, is antiquated and prone to crashing—the global financial crisis of 2008 was just the latest in a long line of failures that occurred because banks didn’t actually know what was on their balance sheets. Crypto is money that can audit itself, no accountant or bookkeeper needed, and thus a financial system with the blockchain built in can, in theory, cut out most of the financial middlemen, to the advantage of all. Of course, that’s the pitch of every crypto company out there. The FTX competitive advantage? Ethical behavior."

The most ironic quote of all time?

Lol this is good stuff. This perfectly illustrates how stupid it is to ever write headlines that includes phrases such as

"Heres why you should ____"

"... and Maybe You Should Too"

Have you heard the rule where, if a headline has a question, the answer is ALWAYS "no," because if the answer was "yes," then the article would simply be reporting on a fact and would assert it as a true fact and it would be a lot more convincing, no question required.

There's gotta be some corollary here where, if an article is nudging you to do something, you should always think twice, because if the thing was so good and popular, then the article would not be a "nudge," it would be a report about how many people are already using the thing, and would be trying to give you FOMO.

Sequoia should be investigated. Those who are close to dirty money especially in the same bed like Sequoia are as culpable ethically and legally. It is also a great reflection on the stupidity of most VC firms.

Does Sequoia not have access to regime media? Weird this was published on their own domain.

I suspect it was in the early stages of trying to follow the A16Z strategy of offering multiple services for its entrepreneurs including access to its in-house media property which provides "thought leadership" on tech investing and tech in general.

A16Z has a podcast and Youtube channel for discussing tech as well. [2][3]

"In January, Wennmachers published a blog post on the Andreessen Horowitz Web site, announcing the creation of a new in-house publication. “We are building a new and separate media property about the future that makes sense of technology, innovation, and where things are going,” she wrote. “We want to be the go-to place for understanding and building the future, for anyone who is building, making, or curious about tech.” The publication, she went on, would practice “rational optimism about technology and the future”; job listings for its editorial roles explained that Andreessen Horowitz aimed to be part of “the future of media.”

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/do...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/@a16z/videos

[3] https://a16z.com/podcasts/

I think lately they may gotten some pounding in regime media. So they believe that their cult followers must get real authentic hard hitting news from their own domain.

didn't the wapo or nyt also have pretty bad puff pieces on SBF around the same time? Probably an attack from all fronts approach to clean the man's image even if was already too late

> please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Ha, the title I used was the original from the source I got:)

I never thought to look to see what the original, original title was.

Good to see relatively new HN accounts trying to keep the rules here;)

The word "relatively" is doing some very heavy lifting in that sentence. Instead you could just justify the title without appealing to seniority

???

The commenter was kind enough to point out that I just copy and pasted the title from the source I found and didn't bother to search for the original title.

I gave them a compliment and said thanks. Not sure what more you want from me here?

And not sure where I appealed to seniority in my reply.

Sorry if i offended you somehow here.

Calling a four year old account with 10k karma "relatively new" with a winking smiley sounded a bit passive aggressive, but I take it back if you didn't mean it that way.

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