I don’t know that “extremist” is a good characterization of FTX & Alameda’s actions.
Usually “extremist” implies a willingness to take highly antisocial actions for the sake of an extreme ideology.
It’s fair to say that trying to found a billion dollar company with the explicit goal of eventually donating all profits is an extreme action. It’s highly unusual and goes much further with specific ideas than most adherents do. But unless one is taking a very harsh stance against capitalism (or against cryptocurrency), it’s hard to call this action highly antisocial just yet. The antisocial bit comes with the first fraudulent action taken.
A narrative I keep seeing is that Sam and several others thought that not only the longstanding arguments against robbing banks to donate to charity are flawed, but in fact they should feel ok robbing customers who trusted them in order to get donation funds.
If someone believed this extreme-ified version of EA and so they committed fraud with billions of dollars, that would be extremist. But my impression is- whether it started as a grievous accounting flaw, a risky conspiracy between amphetamine fueled manics, or something else- the fraud wasn’t a result of people doing careful math, sleeping on it, and ultimately deciding it was net positive. It involved irrational decisions. (This is especially clear by the end. I’d need to refresh my memory to talk specifics, but I think in the last months SBF was making long-term illiquid investments that made it even less plausible they could have avoided bankruptcy, and that blatantly did not increase EV even from a risk-neutral perspective.)
If the fraud was irrational regardless of whether their ideology was ok with robbery, then in my view there’s little evidence ideology caused the initial decision to commit fraud.
Instead the relevant people did an extreme action, and then made various moral and corporate failures typical of white collar crime, which were antisocial and went against their ideology.
I don’t know that “extremist” is a good characterization of FTX & Alameda’s actions.
Usually “extremist” implies a willingness to take highly antisocial actions for the sake of an extreme ideology.
It’s fair to say that trying to found a billion dollar company with the explicit goal of eventually donating all profits is an extreme action. It’s highly unusual and goes much further with specific ideas than most adherents do. But unless one is taking a very harsh stance against capitalism (or against cryptocurrency), it’s hard to call this action highly antisocial just yet. The antisocial bit comes with the first fraudulent action taken.
A narrative I keep seeing is that Sam and several others thought that not only the longstanding arguments against robbing banks to donate to charity are flawed, but in fact they should feel ok robbing customers who trusted them in order to get donation funds.
If someone believed this extreme-ified version of EA and so they committed fraud with billions of dollars, that would be extremist. But my impression is- whether it started as a grievous accounting flaw, a risky conspiracy between amphetamine fueled manics, or something else- the fraud wasn’t a result of people doing careful math, sleeping on it, and ultimately deciding it was net positive. It involved irrational decisions. (This is especially clear by the end. I’d need to refresh my memory to talk specifics, but I think in the last months SBF was making long-term illiquid investments that made it even less plausible they could have avoided bankruptcy, and that blatantly did not increase EV even from a risk-neutral perspective.)
If the fraud was irrational regardless of whether their ideology was ok with robbery, then in my view there’s little evidence ideology caused the initial decision to commit fraud.
Instead the relevant people did an extreme action, and then made various moral and corporate failures typical of white collar crime, which were antisocial and went against their ideology.