My main question re the Future Fund at the moment is: why does it seem like there weren’t any ring-fenced funds under legal ownership by the Future Fund or the FTX Foundation? Are there any? Were there any when it was founded last year (i.e. presumably when FTX/Alameda was still solvent)? If not, why not? Did this not raise suspicions amongst any of you? I can imagine maybe SBF saying something like the max-EV thing to do is keeping all the funds in the for-profit companies to maximise their growth, and you going along with it because you trusted him (or you just independently agreed and didn’t put any significant weight on FTX/Alameda collapsing or even just becoming less rich). Obviously an error in hindsight. Or maybe you kept asking about getting (more) ring-fenced funds, and kept getting fobbed off? That should’ve raised alarm bells if so! Sorry if this is a bit ranty and speculative, or too soon, or too accusatory, but I’m grasping for answers here. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for the world and EA in your careers, but can’t help feeling that you might’ve messed up a bit here.
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.
My main question re the Future Fund at the moment is: why does it seem like there weren’t any ring-fenced funds under legal ownership by the Future Fund or the FTX Foundation? Are there any? Were there any when it was founded last year (i.e. presumably when FTX/Alameda was still solvent)? If not, why not? Did this not raise suspicions amongst any of you? I can imagine maybe SBF saying something like the max-EV thing to do is keeping all the funds in the for-profit companies to maximise their growth, and you going along with it because you trusted him (or you just independently agreed and didn’t put any significant weight on FTX/Alameda collapsing or even just becoming less rich). Obviously an error in hindsight. Or maybe you kept asking about getting (more) ring-fenced funds, and kept getting fobbed off? That should’ve raised alarm bells if so! Sorry if this is a bit ranty and speculative, or too soon, or too accusatory, but I’m grasping for answers here. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for the world and EA in your careers, but can’t help feeling that you might’ve messed up a bit here.
I asked some further questions in this direction here.
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.