Thanks for going to the trouble of sourcing these quotes.
To me, the focus on “What this is referring to” is illuminating because it shows how SBF is laser-focused on what the prosecution has on him. What’s strikingly absent is a desire to try hard at remembering so he can tell as much of the truth as possible.
I mean, in the “practice” cross-examination, I think he was frequently rebuked for guessing at what the prosecutor meant or sharing information beyond a short, binary, direct answer to the question the prosecutor (thought she) was asking. For example, “A. And by “go negative,” you’re talking about negative in a particular coin or negative net asset value? Q. Just have a negative balance, Mr. Bankman-Fried. A. Sorry. I— … THE COURT: … I’ve gotten beyond my tether here. … part of the problem is that the witness has what I’ll simply call an interesting way of responding to questions for the moment. Q. Mr. Bankman-Fried, in May of 2022, were you aware that account ID 9 @AlamedaResearch.com could have an overall negative value? A. I am giving you my best guess at answering the question. Q. I’m not asking for a guess. I’m asking what you understood at the time. A. I am going to answer what I think the question you are asking is, but I apologize if I’m answering the wrong question.” I think the precise question she intends to ask here is extremely important, but she won’t specify (or doesn’t understand that she needs to.) It’s a very complicated case and the details matter. If Alameda’s trading accounts collectively had a net liability of billions to FTX for an extended period with no uncorrelated collateral, then they “borrowed” billions here in the way ~everyone thinks they did. But if one subaccount was temporarily negative $3 billion in a particular coin while another subaccount was temporarily positive $4 billion in another coin and it’s mostly for market-making purposes, then the sense in which Alameda was “borrowing” $3 billion via its customer accounts is extremely different.
And then there are plenty of reports of how when SBF gave extra information that wasn’t asked for, that was surely “evading questions, trying to pour forth verbiage to distract Sassoon from what she’d asked.” (from here)
Perhaps we’re understanding the term “referring” differently—I hear it as “I don’t understand exactly what you’re asking me (and if I guess wrong you might make me look like a liar)” while you might be hearing it as “I don’t know which of the many pieces of supporting evidence have prompted you to ask this question and I don’t want to reveal more than you already know about.”
Taking the first example of “referring to” in your comment, we have:
Q. In fact, over and over again in public forums you described FTX platform as safe, correct?
A. I am not sure specifically what that is referring to. I may have.
I’m picturing his thought process as something like, “I think I used the word ‘safe’ multiple times in public forums in reference to FTX U.S. If that is what she’s referring to then my answer is ‘Probably.’ But maybe she’s referring to that tweet someone else wrote using the FTX Twitter account that said FTX International was safer than Binance. And I can’t think of any times I’ve actually described FTX International with the word ‘safe’ and I don’t think I would have said that, so what do I say? If I say ‘Yes’ then I’m giving the impression that I said something bad that I don’t think I said, but if I say ‘No’ then she might bring up that tweet and make me look like a liar.”
I think that’s how my mind would respond anyway, given the way other interactions had gone. For example, “Q. Now do you remember telling Zeke Faux in early 2022 that Alameda played by the same rules as other traders? A. Not in that wording, no. Q. So you don’t recall that. A. No. Q. Do you recall telling him that in other wording? A. I recall saying that Alameda wasn’t front running other customers, that its trading access was like other customers.” If SBF had given a straight “no”—because he did not in fact make the claim that the prosecutor is heavily implying he did—and then the prosecutor had shown the jury a quote from Faux paraphrasing SBF that was taken out of context, would that have been perjury? I would definitely have been wary of giving yes/no answers to imprecise or misleading questions.
It would also include saying confidently “no” if you’re sure you never said something.
Who is ever sure they never said something? I’m not sure why you and I disagree here. I feel like the “normal” way to answer questions about things you may or may not have said a year or so ago is to say “yes” when you’re >50% sure you said it and “no” otherwise. Or, perhaps when testifying in your own defense, to just say “yes” every time you get the sense the prosecutor is about to pull out some written record of you saying it, even when that’s technically lying because you don’t actually remember, because it’s not worth the risk. But I think literal-minded people will feel very uncomfortable having only those two options and would rather say “I don’t recall”, especially if in squeezing their 25% confidence into a “no” only to get proven otherwise would constitute perjury.
I don’t know which of the lines above are the 2+ suspicious ones, but none of them strike me as such.
Thanks for the summary. One nitpick:
To be fair to Will, he does acknowledge that Nishad’s insurance fund code “seems like really quite clear fraud”, if comparatively minor.
As for the other code snippets in your link—the “backdoor”—Nishad and Gary said the intention was to support Alameda’s role as a backstop liquidity provider (which FTX was heavily dependent on in its early days to function):
“[Wang] testified about several changes Bankman-Fried asked him to make to FTX’s software code to allow Alameda to withdraw unlimited funds from the exchange. . . . Wang agreed that the changes were necessary for Alameda to provide liquidity on the exchange” (Reuters)
“Singh also acknowledged that he originally thought some of the special treatment Bankman-Fried’s trading firm Alameda Research received on FTX was meant to protect customers by allowing it to more effectively ‘backstop’ some trades. ‘My view at the time [was that] it would be helpful for customers,’ Singh said” (Financial Times)