Asked whether he had set up any kind of endowment for his giving, Mr. Bankman-Fried said in the Times interview last month: “It’s more of a pay-as-we-go thing, and the reason for that, frankly, is I’m not liquid enough for it to make sense to do an endowment right now.”
Thanks for linking. That should’ve raised alarm-bells, in hindsight. Could he not at least have donated illiquid assets to the Foundation, for them to liquidate as they see fit (and put the Foundation under independent control)? Although guess that still might not’ve helped much in this case with FTT and FTX stock collapsing.
I think this (the fact that there is no endowment) was (or at least should have been) pretty well-known in the EA community from the point in time that the FTX Future Fund started to pay grants, as these came from all kinds of sources, but not from an endowed foundation. And it obviously would have been known to the people working for FTX Foundation from when they started working there.
(And I would guess one reason that it didn’t raise more alarm bells for lots of people in the EA community that learned about this, is probably that they put high trust in the people working for FTX Foundation.)
I agree this would be very useful information. In theory, the FTX Future Fund team should know this information but they probably are not allowed to share it.
Of course, someone could try to collect this information by contacting all named FTX Future Fund grantees and it might be worth the effort to try to do this. (Though it’s unclear who might be best suited to do that, given that they’d have to be trusted enough by all grantees for them to share their individual details with them.) Maybe the largest recipients (I think these are CEA and Longview) could start by stating how much they received.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/13/business/ftx-effective-altruism.html
Thanks for linking. That should’ve raised alarm-bells, in hindsight. Could he not at least have donated illiquid assets to the Foundation, for them to liquidate as they see fit (and put the Foundation under independent control)? Although guess that still might not’ve helped much in this case with FTT and FTX stock collapsing.
I think this (the fact that there is no endowment) was (or at least should have been) pretty well-known in the EA community from the point in time that the FTX Future Fund started to pay grants, as these came from all kinds of sources, but not from an endowed foundation. And it obviously would have been known to the people working for FTX Foundation from when they started working there.
(And I would guess one reason that it didn’t raise more alarm bells for lots of people in the EA community that learned about this, is probably that they put high trust in the people working for FTX Foundation.)
How much did the Future Fund actually pay out? The website lists $160 million in committed grants.
I agree this would be very useful information. In theory, the FTX Future Fund team should know this information but they probably are not allowed to share it.
Of course, someone could try to collect this information by contacting all named FTX Future Fund grantees and it might be worth the effort to try to do this. (Though it’s unclear who might be best suited to do that, given that they’d have to be trusted enough by all grantees for them to share their individual details with them.) Maybe the largest recipients (I think these are CEA and Longview) could start by stating how much they received.
Made this into a post: Why didn’t the FTX Foundation secure its bag?
Can anyone find the original source for the “interview last month”? Clicking that link from the link above takes me to https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/08/business/effective-altruism-elon-musk.html (a) which doesn’t contain the quote.