Most of that isn’t even clearly bad, and I find it hard to see good faith here.
Your criticism of Binance amounts to “it’s cryptocurrency”. Everyone knows crypto can be used to facilitate money laundering; this was, for Bitcoin, basically the whole point. Similarly the criticism of Ponzi schemes; there were literally dozens of ICOs for things that were overtly labeled as Ponzis—Ponzicoin was one of the more successful ones, because it had a good name. Many people walked into this with eyes open; many others didn’t, but they were warned, they just didn’t heed the warnings. Should we also refuse to take money from anyone who bets against r/wallstreetbets and Robinhood? Casinos? Anyone who runs a platform for sports bets? Prediction markets? Your logic would condemn them all.
It’s not clear why FTX would want to spend this amount of money on buying a fraudulent firm.
FTX would prefer that the crypto sector stay healthy, and backstopping companies whose schemes were failing serves that goal. That is an entirely sufficient explanation and one with no clear ethical issues or moral hazard.
Even in retrospect, I think this was bad criticism and it was correct to downvote it.
My criticism of Binance was not “it’s cryptocurrency.” My criticism of Binance was that at the very time that that SBF allied with Binance, it was a “hub for hackers, fraudsters and drug traffickers.” Apparently your defense of SBF is that “everyone knows” crypto is good for little else . . . but perhap if someone enters a field that is mostly or entirely occupied by criminal activity, that isn’t actually an excuse?
As for backstopping other scams and frauds, that isn’t a way to make sure that the “crypto sector stays healthy” (barring very unusual definitions of the word “healthy”), and in actuality, we’re now seeing evidence that FTX was just trying to extract assets from other companies in a desperate attempt to shore up their own malfeasance and fraud. https://twitter.com/AutismCapital/status/1591569275642589184
Yeah, still not seeing much good faith. You’re still ahead of AutismCapital, though, which is 100% bad faith 100% of the time. If you believe a word it says I have a bridge to sell you.
Is this Sam in disguise? You’re literally the only person in existence who seems to think it was somehow unfair to be suspicious (and correctly so!) of SBF for having hired a chief compliance officer with a long history of fraud, and of his pattern of trying to buy up other people’s frauds/scams.
The only flaw in my earlier comment is that I was too charitable towards SBF in suggesting that there might be some plausible excuse for the multiple red flags I noticed.
Most of that isn’t even clearly bad, and I find it hard to see good faith here.
Your criticism of Binance amounts to “it’s cryptocurrency”. Everyone knows crypto can be used to facilitate money laundering; this was, for Bitcoin, basically the whole point. Similarly the criticism of Ponzi schemes; there were literally dozens of ICOs for things that were overtly labeled as Ponzis—Ponzicoin was one of the more successful ones, because it had a good name. Many people walked into this with eyes open; many others didn’t, but they were warned, they just didn’t heed the warnings. Should we also refuse to take money from anyone who bets against r/wallstreetbets and Robinhood? Casinos? Anyone who runs a platform for sports bets? Prediction markets? Your logic would condemn them all.
FTX would prefer that the crypto sector stay healthy, and backstopping companies whose schemes were failing serves that goal. That is an entirely sufficient explanation and one with no clear ethical issues or moral hazard.
Even in retrospect, I think this was bad criticism and it was correct to downvote it.
My criticism of Binance was not “it’s cryptocurrency.” My criticism of Binance was that at the very time that that SBF allied with Binance, it was a “hub for hackers, fraudsters and drug traffickers.” Apparently your defense of SBF is that “everyone knows” crypto is good for little else . . . but perhap if someone enters a field that is mostly or entirely occupied by criminal activity, that isn’t actually an excuse?
As for backstopping other scams and frauds, that isn’t a way to make sure that the “crypto sector stays healthy” (barring very unusual definitions of the word “healthy”), and in actuality, we’re now seeing evidence that FTX was just trying to extract assets from other companies in a desperate attempt to shore up their own malfeasance and fraud. https://twitter.com/AutismCapital/status/1591569275642589184
Yeah, still not seeing much good faith. You’re still ahead of AutismCapital, though, which is 100% bad faith 100% of the time. If you believe a word it says I have a bridge to sell you.
Is this Sam in disguise? You’re literally the only person in existence who seems to think it was somehow unfair to be suspicious (and correctly so!) of SBF for having hired a chief compliance officer with a long history of fraud, and of his pattern of trying to buy up other people’s frauds/scams.
The only flaw in my earlier comment is that I was too charitable towards SBF in suggesting that there might be some plausible excuse for the multiple red flags I noticed.