First a disclaimer that I’ve never got anywhere close to interacting with SBF personally; I’m very much an outsider to this situation.
However, from everything I have read, I think it’s pretty ridiculous to suggest that EA wasn’t the main reason SBF tried so hard to maximize profit (poorly, I might add, but it seems like that was his goal) to the point of committing fraud. As far as I understand EA was SBF’s primary guiding ideology; it is why he went down this career path of Jane Street and then starting his own companies. This post seems overly reliant on the fun fact that SBF paid more for e-sports naming rights than on EA donations to show why actually Sam didn’t care about EA that much. But these are two completely separate things! E-sports naming rights is just a means of advertising, with the goal of making FTX more money which will eventually allow SBF to donate more to EA. I think there’s also decent evidence that SBF was looking to ramp up donations in the future, as Effective Altruism continues to grow and is able to use more funding. Once you take out this fun fact about SBF’s current EA spending, I think this whole argument kind of falls apart.
Seems like a reasonable objection to me. (Though it’s still weird that SBF overpaid so much for that particular form of advertising; and it’s weird that SBF didn’t set aside money for FTX FF.)
First a disclaimer that I’ve never got anywhere close to interacting with SBF personally; I’m very much an outsider to this situation. However, from everything I have read, I think it’s pretty ridiculous to suggest that EA wasn’t the main reason SBF tried so hard to maximize profit (poorly, I might add, but it seems like that was his goal) to the point of committing fraud. As far as I understand EA was SBF’s primary guiding ideology; it is why he went down this career path of Jane Street and then starting his own companies. This post seems overly reliant on the fun fact that SBF paid more for e-sports naming rights than on EA donations to show why actually Sam didn’t care about EA that much. But these are two completely separate things! E-sports naming rights is just a means of advertising, with the goal of making FTX more money which will eventually allow SBF to donate more to EA. I think there’s also decent evidence that SBF was looking to ramp up donations in the future, as Effective Altruism continues to grow and is able to use more funding. Once you take out this fun fact about SBF’s current EA spending, I think this whole argument kind of falls apart.
Seems like a reasonable objection to me. (Though it’s still weird that SBF overpaid so much for that particular form of advertising; and it’s weird that SBF didn’t set aside money for FTX FF.)