How many years could Sam Bankman-Fried get in jail?
It is also interesting to read on his Wikipedia profile [1] about "Bankman-Fried is a supporter of effective altruism and claims to pursue earning to give as an altruistic career. He is a member of Giving What We Can and has claimed that he plans to donate the great majority of his wealth to effective charities over the course of his life.". Having direct access to a lot of money changes a some people ethics.
That's quite a stretch to compare, as taxes are derived from rules for the economy that everyone collectively votes on. Everyone benefits from collective projects run by the government to some degree, and a tiered tax system also counteracts the snowballing effect of how it becomes easier to make money the more you accumulate.
Here, we have a guy who is taking money for a specific purpose under circumstances that he completely lied about. And he used that money to attempt to enrich his company at catastrophic risk to the customers.
I suppose it's easier to justify this to yourself when you know most of the people whose money you're gambling with are also driven by the same greed.
The cryptocurrency bubble was very transparently built on delusion and avarice, and everyone involved knew it. There are very few truly innocent victims here.
This is crazy. He was funneling customer funds to politicians too? $40m worth and was planning up to $1b.
"SBF was planning to spend up to one billion dollars to help influence 2024 presidential election campaigns. His real plan is to bankroll the candidate running against former president Donald Trump. In 2020, SBF donated $5.2 million to the Joe Biden presidential campaign.
According to Open Secrets, a platform following the money in politics, SBF is the sixth largest political contributor. The platform reports that he has made a total contribution of $39.8 million for the 2021-2022 cycle."
There should be a tracker for companies that come out of nowhere and buy themselves into the top 10 of any major politician contributors list. So much money, so fast, should be a red flag for astute investors.
It's also a red flag about the savviness of the donors, since the races we're talking about here are extremely overcapitalized. SBF had a good shot at buying influence at the House level, but even in most Senate races the campaigns are probably already at a point of diminishing returns on dollars raised without any of this guy's goofy crypto money. Not that the campaigns won't assiduously take his calls! They'll take the money! Even the Biden campaign, which does not in the final analysis give even 1/15th of a fuck about an additional 5MM, will have someone set up some phone calls to get that money.
Whenever a person in their mental framework have a very high moral goal, it is easy for them to justify to themselves, less-moral actions. Almost impossible for it to not happen.
Although this is a common criticism of utilitarianism in the Bentham traditition, it is not in fact how utilitarian ethics work as a whole. For example John Stuart Mill would say that whether or not an act in a specific case is ethical can be decided by whether or not it is in violation of a general rule, and whether or not the consequences of the general rule are positive or not. Taking clients funds and using them to go double or nothing would clearly lead to lack of trustworthiness and the consequences of this would be clearly negative in general so this is very clearly unethical according to Mill.[1]
> To maximize your expected value, you must aim for it and then march blindly forth, acting as if the fabulously lucky SBF of the future can reach into the other, parallel, universes and compensate the failson SBFs for their losses. It sounds crazy, or perhaps even selfish—but it’s not. It’s math. It follows from the principle of risk-neutrality. [0]
I think he figured in a million realities, the expected value is net very large. He just happens to live in a reality where it collapsed, but how much of his wealth is due to these games? I don't know if the probabilistic method is common among EA. For instance, if you gave me a chance to bet my entire net worth on a 51% odds game, sure the expected return is positive and if i had a million realities and netted everything out, I should take the bet. But most people would see that as insane
It is also interesting to read on his Wikipedia profile [1] about "Bankman-Fried is a supporter of effective altruism and claims to pursue earning to give as an altruistic career. He is a member of Giving What We Can and has claimed that he plans to donate the great majority of his wealth to effective charities over the course of his life.". Having direct access to a lot of money changes a some people ethics.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-Fried