I don’t think the content of the commercial was objectionable. I think it’s on par with all the other fanciful commercials out there. (Given, I think there is a larger moral conversation about commercials/marketing undermining the free will of people to make decisions based on their cognition and not through emotions and biases).
I think you are right that crypto is not the same type of asset as owning a stock or real estate, and the fact that regular people will more frequently come out as net losers in crypto than with stocks or real estate should have prompted moral questions. Because that means the success of FTX/SBF (and thus his potential EA giving) was in tension with financial welfare of many regular people.
I think another observation is that Super Bowl commercials and putting hundreds of millions of dollars into a basketball arena and a video game team were HUGE investments that should have been predicated on some serious ROI analysis and probably should have prompted questions from EAs adjacent to FTX’s inner circle. Apparently the video-game team sponsorship was tens of millions of dollars above the price for a sponsorship in that industry.
It’s not that these high-dollar marketing investments couldn’t be justified ROI-wise, but they should have prompted questions (by EAs that had direct contact with FTX) about if due diligence was been conducted by the FTX team, considering the stakes.
In general I think the most realistic red flags that could have been spotted was the management practices of FTX’s inner circle. One of those being the large amount of money burned on marketing, especially sponsoring that team way above the market price (it reeks of being a decision driven by the inner circle’s affinity for video games than a prudent marketing decision).
I think the line of questioning we need to ask about red flags should be directed towards the EA orgs and influential EAs that interacted directly with the FTX team, and it should go like this: Did they miss the red flags because they legit weren’t aware of any; did they see red flags but not recognize them as being red flags; did they recognize red flags but decide that things must be okay because the people at FTX are closer to the situation and are reasonable people; did they recognize red flags but not bring them up to people at FTX because they didn’t want to offend or felt they couldn’t approach FTX about those issues.
I don’t think the content of the commercial was objectionable. I think it’s on par with all the other fanciful commercials out there. (Given, I think there is a larger moral conversation about commercials/marketing undermining the free will of people to make decisions based on their cognition and not through emotions and biases).
I think you are right that crypto is not the same type of asset as owning a stock or real estate, and the fact that regular people will more frequently come out as net losers in crypto than with stocks or real estate should have prompted moral questions. Because that means the success of FTX/SBF (and thus his potential EA giving) was in tension with financial welfare of many regular people.
I think another observation is that Super Bowl commercials and putting hundreds of millions of dollars into a basketball arena and a video game team were HUGE investments that should have been predicated on some serious ROI analysis and probably should have prompted questions from EAs adjacent to FTX’s inner circle. Apparently the video-game team sponsorship was tens of millions of dollars above the price for a sponsorship in that industry.
It’s not that these high-dollar marketing investments couldn’t be justified ROI-wise, but they should have prompted questions (by EAs that had direct contact with FTX) about if due diligence was been conducted by the FTX team, considering the stakes.
In general I think the most realistic red flags that could have been spotted was the management practices of FTX’s inner circle. One of those being the large amount of money burned on marketing, especially sponsoring that team way above the market price (it reeks of being a decision driven by the inner circle’s affinity for video games than a prudent marketing decision).
I think the line of questioning we need to ask about red flags should be directed towards the EA orgs and influential EAs that interacted directly with the FTX team, and it should go like this: Did they miss the red flags because they legit weren’t aware of any; did they see red flags but not recognize them as being red flags; did they recognize red flags but decide that things must be okay because the people at FTX are closer to the situation and are reasonable people; did they recognize red flags but not bring them up to people at FTX because they didn’t want to offend or felt they couldn’t approach FTX about those issues.