Please someone explain to me, how the information publicly available years ago did not clearly indicate this was a fraud risk , as before starting FTX SBF engaged in the Kimchi Premium, or arbitrage on South Korean and perhaps Japanese exchanges ? South Korean authorities may have a word to say about that, considering that such arbitrage was as illegal then as it is now, and SBF used a EA cutout to carry it out.
How did the Goodwill MacAskill says existed with SBF originate, and what was the breaking point and limits defined? There is much more explaining to do here than pointing out at passages of your recent book I am afraid.
The 2nd google hit for it is “Investopedia” (no idea how reliable a source it is), which claims that it was widely perceived as legally unproblematic until recently, but might actually not have been: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/k/kimchi-premium.asp
’Was the Kimchi Premium Associated with Illegal Money Transfers?
While it was usually assumed that the Kimchi premium was innocuous, caused by technical limitations of the Korean banking system and the popularity of crypto, a new investigation in the summer of 2022 suspects that more than $3.4 billion of illegal foreign transactions in the country stemmed from cryptocurrencies.’
No further source is cited. I find it hard to tell whether this was something that CEA should have reasonably known was dodgy when SBF exploited it, and how dodgy they should have thought it was, but it certainly seems very worth investigating in any postmortem. In general, I think the actual harm-to-the-general-public causing decision here was helping persuade SBF to set up Alameda in the first place, as from that point on he was probably perfectly capable of making a lot of money, and then losing it, and stealing from his depositors whether or not he had the good will of EAs. (Even if getting a good reputation was somehow necessary, he could have just given to other charities and not mentioned EA, and we’d probably have shut up about him even if we’d officially decided he was bad. And it’s not clear having reputation for public charity was particularly important to FTX’s success, let alone Alameda’s, anyway.) But that decision might not actually have been a bad one based on information available to the people who persuaded/influenced him at the time: “set up a hedge fund” is not obviously immoral, unless you have specific evidence that the person your getting to do it is really dodgy, or the business model of the hedge fund is morally dubious. So my guess is to know whether the really crucial harm-causing decision was actually bad on the information available at the time, or just unlucky, we need to know about this.
You are my first reply in this forum, friendly and thorough as one would desire, as I have come in a bad time or a time of need and suffering for a group that seems to know and care about these things, doctor.
I address you by your title as I would like to offer a reflection on someone who also carries titles: vice admiral sir Francis Drake. The difference a title makes! And their role in disguising the truth of piracy, of slavery, of pillage and plundering! But perhaps more interesting, what some call ‘different perspectives of history’ but in reality may be a whitewashing and rationalization that was fundamental to the creation of the british empire, that passed through much charity and justified as regulations not having been defined at the time.
Any crypto enterprise is closer to privateering than to a Ponzi scheme, which in any case is only concensually defined as such postfacto. Privateering, which is less discussed, is a breaking things to go fast approach, fast before regulations catch up as they have anticipated from the very beginning, a quasi anarchic and ambitious career making project that ultimately wants to be in good society, pretend the good, but will never shed its links to piracy.
Please someone explain to me, how the information publicly available years ago did not clearly indicate this was a fraud risk , as before starting FTX SBF engaged in the Kimchi Premium, or arbitrage on South Korean and perhaps Japanese exchanges ? South Korean authorities may have a word to say about that, considering that such arbitrage was as illegal then as it is now, and SBF used a EA cutout to carry it out.
How did the Goodwill MacAskill says existed with SBF originate, and what was the breaking point and limits defined? There is much more explaining to do here than pointing out at passages of your recent book I am afraid.
The 2nd google hit for it is “Investopedia” (no idea how reliable a source it is), which claims that it was widely perceived as legally unproblematic until recently, but might actually not have been: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/k/kimchi-premium.asp
’Was the Kimchi Premium Associated with Illegal Money Transfers?
While it was usually assumed that the Kimchi premium was innocuous, caused by technical limitations of the Korean banking system and the popularity of crypto, a new investigation in the summer of 2022 suspects that more than $3.4 billion of illegal foreign transactions in the country stemmed from cryptocurrencies.’
No further source is cited. I find it hard to tell whether this was something that CEA should have reasonably known was dodgy when SBF exploited it, and how dodgy they should have thought it was, but it certainly seems very worth investigating in any postmortem. In general, I think the actual harm-to-the-general-public causing decision here was helping persuade SBF to set up Alameda in the first place, as from that point on he was probably perfectly capable of making a lot of money, and then losing it, and stealing from his depositors whether or not he had the good will of EAs. (Even if getting a good reputation was somehow necessary, he could have just given to other charities and not mentioned EA, and we’d probably have shut up about him even if we’d officially decided he was bad. And it’s not clear having reputation for public charity was particularly important to FTX’s success, let alone Alameda’s, anyway.) But that decision might not actually have been a bad one based on information available to the people who persuaded/influenced him at the time: “set up a hedge fund” is not obviously immoral, unless you have specific evidence that the person your getting to do it is really dodgy, or the business model of the hedge fund is morally dubious. So my guess is to know whether the really crucial harm-causing decision was actually bad on the information available at the time, or just unlucky, we need to know about this.
You are my first reply in this forum, friendly and thorough as one would desire, as I have come in a bad time or a time of need and suffering for a group that seems to know and care about these things, doctor.
I address you by your title as I would like to offer a reflection on someone who also carries titles: vice admiral sir Francis Drake. The difference a title makes! And their role in disguising the truth of piracy, of slavery, of pillage and plundering! But perhaps more interesting, what some call ‘different perspectives of history’ but in reality may be a whitewashing and rationalization that was fundamental to the creation of the british empire, that passed through much charity and justified as regulations not having been defined at the time.
Any crypto enterprise is closer to privateering than to a Ponzi scheme, which in any case is only concensually defined as such postfacto. Privateering, which is less discussed, is a breaking things to go fast approach, fast before regulations catch up as they have anticipated from the very beginning, a quasi anarchic and ambitious career making project that ultimately wants to be in good society, pretend the good, but will never shed its links to piracy.
I hadn’t heard that the arbitrage was illegal. Here’s a little more info for others: https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/2022/south-koreas-crypto-kimchi-premium-suspected-in-3-4b-fx-investigation/