The entire financial operation was expressly set up by funding from top Effective Altruists.
The article discusses how some effective altruists were the earliest donors to FTX. Since they funded it at that stage, lots of non-EA funding/talent/publicity came in.
> I think we previously saw EA as resembling a victim in this scenario, but I am curious how that understanding evolves at this moment as we learn more.
It’s a complicated situation. I think it’s definitely possible to give early-on support to a project that eventually really bites you. Similar to early unsuspecting investors of other orgs that later did some bad things.
The “project” was just to make a bunch of money on crypto; I don’t see how the investors could justify that as a moral use of their capital. The entire industry runs on the expected losses of random less educated people, third world countries, refugees, black market vendors, and gambling addicts. Losses that come from unregulated manipulation of market value of tokens which have no real world value. Manipulation like that which SBF is now under investigation for. This is quite the stretch to say there were good intentions going in.
The article discusses how some effective altruists were the earliest donors to FTX. Since they funded it at that stage, lots of non-EA funding/talent/publicity came in.
> I think we previously saw EA as resembling a victim in this scenario, but I am curious how that understanding evolves at this moment as we learn more.
It’s a complicated situation. I think it’s definitely possible to give early-on support to a project that eventually really bites you. Similar to early unsuspecting investors of other orgs that later did some bad things.
The “project” was just to make a bunch of money on crypto; I don’t see how the investors could justify that as a moral use of their capital. The entire industry runs on the expected losses of random less educated people, third world countries, refugees, black market vendors, and gambling addicts. Losses that come from unregulated manipulation of market value of tokens which have no real world value. Manipulation like that which SBF is now under investigation for. This is quite the stretch to say there were good intentions going in.