Crypto Crash Comedy

Burnwinter

I say comedy, but no doubt this stuff's destroying the livelihoods of thousands upon thousands of small investors.

The FTX crash has been heavily reported in the news past few days. Little bit of extra detail in this FT report about the way internal finance was accounted at FTX … turns out it was a spreadsheet made up of fibs.

https://archive.ph/nDFm6

Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried was reportedly living with 10 "roommates", some of whom were allegedly in a polycule or dating each other, most of whom it sounds like were constantly dosed on amphetamines, in a $40m penthouse in the Bahamas.

The "roommates" included current or former girlfriend Caroline Ellison, who he'd met while at college, and he'd appointed as CEO of FTX trading sibling Alameda Research. The people living in the penthouse basically ran Bankman-Fried's whole operation across multiple ostensibly billion-dollar organisations it seems, with seemingly no internal regulation at all. There was reportedly a mutual friend who'd get flown into the Bahamas for dispute resolution when the people dating, fucking or working with each other had a major clash.

This whole story's a massive rabbit hole, the links to to the "effective altruism" or "longtermist" movement that's gained a lot of traction in Silicon Valley are of interest, and that movement's own links to soft techno-fascism are damning too …

Claudius

After WeWork and other failures, it comes back to the continued largesse of companies like SoftBank, Sequoia, etc. how are these companies continually allowed to invest 8 and 9 figures in professional fraternities? There’s something very rotten in the process of identifying investees - it’s certainly not companies they’re investing in, it’s the swagger of these promoters.

Gazza M

the inevitable washout/scam phase of the market. 95%+ of actors in this space are swimming with no clothes. there's a smattering of nice ideas in crypto but they're often undone by all the typical failing of human nature and market eg. greed, hubris etc

it's also a microcosm of what will hit traditional markets. crypto is like traditional markets on speed, so whatever plays out there in the space of 6-12 months is a leading indicator of what happens everywhere else over the next couple of years

Burnwinter

Not that I think Bankman-Fried was a "longtermist" (pretty clear he was just a fraud), but this is a good little hatchet job on "longtermism".

It's a type of reasoning prevalent among people distant from reality, you set up some pithy premise, such as Hobbes' contention "the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short", and then start extrapolating wildly until you end up at a conclusion such as "if most people live in daily suffering, it's probably better in the long run if they die."

https://www.salon.com/2022/11/20/what-the-sam-bankman-fried-debacle-can-teach-us-about-longtermism/

Burnwinter

ECB to BTC: you're a hollow investment, I can't pay for things with you legally, being associated with you makes me feel dirty … you're shit?

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/blog/date/2022/html/ecb.blog221130~5301eecd19.en.html

Only a blog post, but it's not exactly genial in its outlook.