While there are several stylistic things one might disagree with in the post, to the main charges raised by Ben, this seems about as close to exonerating as one can reasonably expect to get in such cases.
Thanks for writing such an exhaustive post; it can’t have been easy.
I want to clarify the claims I’m making in the Twitter thread.
I am not claiming that EA leadership or members of the FTX Future fund knew Sam was engaging in fraudulent behavior while they were working at FTX Future Fund.
Instead, I am saying that friends of mine in the EA community worked at Alameda Research during the first 6 months of its existence. At the end of that period, many of them suddenly left all at once. In talking about this with people involved, my impression is:
1) The majority of staff at Alameda were unhappy with Sam’s leadership of the company. Their concerns about Sam included concerns about him taking extreme and unnecessary risks and losing large amounts of money, poor safeguards around moving money around, poor capital controls, including a lack of distinction between money owned by investors and money owned by Alameda itself, and Sam generally being extremely difficult to work with.
2) The legal ownership structure of Alameda did not reflect the ownership structure that had been agreed to by the parties involved. In particular, Sam registered Alameda under his sole ownership and not as jointly owned by him and his cofounders. This was not thought to be a problem because everyone trusted each other as EAs.
3) Eventually, the conflict got serious enough that a large cohort of people decided to quit all at once. Sam refused to honor the agreed ownership structure of Alameda and used his legal ownership to screw people out of their rightful ownership stake in Alameda Research.
4) Several high-ranking and well-respected members of the EA community with more familiarity with the situation believed that Sam had behaved unethically in his handling of the situation. I heard this from multiple sources personally.
5) I believe the basic information above circulated widely among EA leadership and was known to some members of FTX Future Fund.
A person who did work at Alameda during this period described Sam’s behavior as follows:
Additionally, Jeffrey Ladish has a Twitter thread that further suggests that concerns about Sam’s business practices were somewhat widespread.
Information about pre-2018 Alameda is difficult to obtain because the majority of those directly involved signed NDAs before their departure in exchange for severance payments. I am aware of only one employee who did not. The other people who can spreak freely on the topic are early investors in Alameda and members of the EA community who heard about Alameda from those directly involved before they signed their NDAs.
I want to add that I am reasonably afraid that my discussing this will make me some powerful enemies in the EA community. I didn’t raise this issue sooner because of this concern. If anyone else wants to step up and reveal their information or otherwise help agitate strongly to ensure all the information about this situation comes to light, that would be most appreciated.
I think this is really important.