Thanks very much to both of you for having this difficult conversation, and handling it with such professionalism.
Cards on the table, I agree with MacAskill about character vs structure/governance. So to me the 30 minutes of trying to get inside Bankman-Fried’s head seemed a little fruitless. Though I guess there’s something fascinating about trying to get into bad people’s heads.
I would have liked more questions about due diligence. MacAskill says that he and Bankman-Fried chatted in early 2021 and then again with Beckstead after the FTX Foundation. That’s really useful information and context. But he didn’t say more about, for example, what due diligence had been done by Beckstead, whether MacAskill did any further due diligence, what sort of questions he asked, or what the key considerations/evidence were.
For example, at some point MacAskill says “I heard they didn’t even have a board” implying that he only found out after the FTX collapse. However, this seems like it should have been an obvious question to ask in late 2021 / early 2022. Indeed later he says the lack of a board in retrospect was a “very legible and predictable” signal. Similarly, MacAskill also says “if there’d been this discussion about Sam’s character in 2021”, which implies there wasn’t much of a discussion. In general, I came away continuing to want to know a lot more about the questions and discussions that went into supporting the FTX Foundation in October-December 2021.
It seems very likely to me that Bankman-Fried, Nishad Singh and other FTX leaders would have lied to Beckstead and the rest of the FTX Foundation team, like MacAskill was lied to, and the employees/investors/media/regulators/etc were lied to. They would have portrayed FTX as having strong incentives to be the ′ good guys as they intended to give away their money and wanted to be regulated’. But some due diligence signals are harder to fake.
Thanks very much to both of you for having this difficult conversation, and handling it with such professionalism.
Cards on the table, I agree with MacAskill about character vs structure/governance. So to me the 30 minutes of trying to get inside Bankman-Fried’s head seemed a little fruitless. Though I guess there’s something fascinating about trying to get into bad people’s heads.
I would have liked more questions about due diligence. MacAskill says that he and Bankman-Fried chatted in early 2021 and then again with Beckstead after the FTX Foundation. That’s really useful information and context. But he didn’t say more about, for example, what due diligence had been done by Beckstead, whether MacAskill did any further due diligence, what sort of questions he asked, or what the key considerations/evidence were.
For example, at some point MacAskill says “I heard they didn’t even have a board” implying that he only found out after the FTX collapse. However, this seems like it should have been an obvious question to ask in late 2021 / early 2022. Indeed later he says the lack of a board in retrospect was a “very legible and predictable” signal. Similarly, MacAskill also says “if there’d been this discussion about Sam’s character in 2021”, which implies there wasn’t much of a discussion. In general, I came away continuing to want to know a lot more about the questions and discussions that went into supporting the FTX Foundation in October-December 2021.
It seems very likely to me that Bankman-Fried, Nishad Singh and other FTX leaders would have lied to Beckstead and the rest of the FTX Foundation team, like MacAskill was lied to, and the employees/investors/media/regulators/etc were lied to. They would have portrayed FTX as having strong incentives to be the ′ good guys as they intended to give away their money and wanted to be regulated’. But some due diligence signals are harder to fake.