As a few people have mentioned, I have a very different financial background than SBF in that everyone knows how I became wealthy. In cinematic detail, no less!
Moreover, as an American citizen and California resident, audits aren’t just a fun intellectual exercise for me—they really happen 😲. Recently (culminating in 2021), the California Franchise Tax Board audited my 2016-2018 filings. Here’s what my accountant wrote me about that:
they have issued a “No Change” report. This audit was so extensive they literally ticked and tied every number on your tax return back to original source documents. We responded to a number of Information Document Requests (IDRs) and had over 20 video calls with the FTB team to talk them through various reporting positions on investments you hold. In talking with the lead agent on our audit conclusion call he said “we didn’t even find a rounding error……….great work on the tax reporting.” For tax filings of this size this is the Super Bowl victory for us geeky accountants.
We run self audits every year to prepare for the real ones, and I generally see no benefit to trying to get away with cheating at wealth generation when there are many legitimate options in front of me. (e.g. when I’m not fishing for karma on twitter, I run the enterprise software company Asana. Check it out!)
Would an independent auditor go deeper somehow than the govt who’s trying to find fraud and generate revenue? I guess so, maybe? Maybe you’ll trust that I didn’t fabricate the above? I’m open to it, but generally skeptical it’s actually adding that much. Perhaps PR self-oppo (like politicians do) would be a more novel exercise.
I don’t mean to derail the thread, but one question I’d have, at some point, is to get some idea of what you might feel comfortable with, regards to public forecasting of finances.
I generally stay away from forecasts around individuals. However, in our (unusual) situation, a huge amount of the EA landscape is now highly dependent on your net worth over time.
By chance, would you be okay or have reservations with any of the following being publicly forecasted? Is there anything you might actively be interested in being forecasted?
1. Total funding spent by Open Philanthropy over time. 2. Major shifts in spending between cause areas by Open Philanthropy / Good Ventures, over time. 3. Your public net worth over time.
I could imagine some people who would want this to happen anyway (i.e., would just be interested in the results), and others who really prefer privacy (also totally fine).
On the extreme end there are scandal markets. My guess is that they would show very low probabilities of any scandal around you, but these markets are also very new+experimental, and I realize they make lots of people feel kind of icky. (I’d also flag that if it would help, I’d be happy to publicly host any of these sorts of forecasts for myself/QURI, for a while, first.)
As a few people have mentioned, I have a very different financial background than SBF in that everyone knows how I became wealthy. In cinematic detail, no less!
Moreover, as an American citizen and California resident, audits aren’t just a fun intellectual exercise for me—they really happen 😲. Recently (culminating in 2021), the California Franchise Tax Board audited my 2016-2018 filings. Here’s what my accountant wrote me about that:
We run self audits every year to prepare for the real ones, and I generally see no benefit to trying to get away with cheating at wealth generation when there are many legitimate options in front of me. (e.g. when I’m not fishing for karma on twitter, I run the enterprise software company Asana. Check it out!)
Would an independent auditor go deeper somehow than the govt who’s trying to find fraud and generate revenue? I guess so, maybe? Maybe you’ll trust that I didn’t fabricate the above? I’m open to it, but generally skeptical it’s actually adding that much. Perhaps PR self-oppo (like politicians do) would be a more novel exercise.
And as a public company, Asana financials are also heavily audited. Here’s a new, audited, public filing from just yesterday: https://investors.asana.com/financials/sec-filings/sec-filings-details/default.aspx?FilingId=16238301
Huh Asana sure seems to have taken a dive from that news.
Thanks for commenting, this is very reassuring!
(Not urgent, feel free to ignore)
I don’t mean to derail the thread, but one question I’d have, at some point, is to get some idea of what you might feel comfortable with, regards to public forecasting of finances.
I generally stay away from forecasts around individuals. However, in our (unusual) situation, a huge amount of the EA landscape is now highly dependent on your net worth over time.
By chance, would you be okay or have reservations with any of the following being publicly forecasted? Is there anything you might actively be interested in being forecasted?
1. Total funding spent by Open Philanthropy over time.
2. Major shifts in spending between cause areas by Open Philanthropy / Good Ventures, over time.
3. Your public net worth over time.
I could imagine some people who would want this to happen anyway (i.e., would just be interested in the results), and others who really prefer privacy (also totally fine).
On the extreme end there are scandal markets. My guess is that they would show very low probabilities of any scandal around you, but these markets are also very new+experimental, and I realize they make lots of people feel kind of icky. (I’d also flag that if it would help, I’d be happy to publicly host any of these sorts of forecasts for myself/QURI, for a while, first.)
Thanks so much for the information+links here!
One tiny point:
It’s looking like in a few years we’ll also have cinematic representations of SBF too, for better or worse. Looking forward to comparing them. :)
https://news.bitcoin.com/hollywood-streaming-giants-scramble-for-movie-rights-to-ftx-saga/