Why is the escrow deposit still sitting somewhere? Some quick online research (so take it with a grain of salt) makes it sound like the escrow process usually takes 4 to 8 weeks in California—so this seems significantly long, in comparison.
Can you clarify when you received these grants and the escrow money? The complaint filed by FTX (documents here, for anyone interested) have the dates of transfers as March 3, July 8, July 13, August 18, September 20, and October 3, all in 2022—so well within the timeframe that might be subject to clawbacks, and well within the bankruptcy lookback period. (For a comparison point, EV US and EV UK paid the FTX estate an amount equal to all the funds the entities received in 2022.)
Why would you not proactively return this money or settle with the FTX estate, given the money came from FTX and could have been originally obtained in fraudulent ways? My prior is that you (Oliver Habryka) have written multiple times on the Forum about the harm EA may have caused related to FTX and wish it could have been prevented, so somehow it seems strange to me that you wouldn’t take the opportunity to return money that came from FTX, especially when it could have been obtained in harmful, unethical ways.
Did you in fact ignore FTX’s attempts to contact you in 2023, as the complaint says? And if so, why?
I also think it’s worth pointing out that in bankruptcy cases, especially regarding clawbacks, the question of whether you have a legal obligation to return the money isn’t a question of whether you currently have the $5M of FTX money sitting around or whether you’ve already allocated or used it. Demonstrating that you’ve spent the funds on legitimate charitable activities might strengthen your case, but that doesn’t guarantee protection from clawback attempts.
The post you linked to from Will MacAskill (“The history of the term ‘effective altruism’” from 2014) doesn’t reference the Rationality community (and the other links you included are to posts or pages that aren’t from Will or Toby, but by Jacy Reese Anthis and some wiki-style pages).
Do you have examples or links to talks or posts on EA history from Toby and Will that do discuss the Rationality community? (I’d be curious to read them. Thanks!)