Absentee Godhead

December 13, 2022 9:31 AM

On the day when "SBF" is arrested and charged with criminal fraud and money-laundering and his rival "CZ" remains the target of a federal probe and Binance's audit is questioned [despite badly-timed efforts at PR [ungated]], it's a good day to revisit the "true believers of the bitcoin cult" in this article by David Golumbia from 2018.
posted by chavenet (49 comments total)

Molly White livetoots the FTX hearings.
posted by Artw at 9:33 AM on December 13, 2022 [6 favorites]

Adding to the lulz, Binance saw 1.9b in withdrawals and has "temporarily paused" some withdrawals. (Story.)

It appears fortune does not favour the magic bean-heavy investor.
posted by Dark Messiah at 9:40 AM on December 13, 2022 [14 favorites]

And, of course, the exact same people who yesterday were yelling that SBF not being arrested is proof of Democrat corruption are today yelling that him being arrested is proof that the Democrats are trying to stop him from testifying about their corruption. There's just no winning.
posted by star gentle uterus at 9:42 AM on December 13, 2022 [11 favorites]

https://twitter.com/ben_mckenzie

His running commentary follows the crypto news, consistently predicting the implosions. Also just wrote a book on the subject and is considered an expert critic in forthcoming congressional testimony.
posted by Brian B. at 9:45 AM on December 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

He openly said he funded both parties, he just used dark money for the GOP since it didn't square with the image he was cultivating. He also wanted the CFTC to regulate Bitcoin and they just sued him. I see no point in overthinking the SBF / FTX situation, he bluffed his way into -- and promptly out of -- billions of dollars and will be almost certainly going to jail because he lost some of the wrong folks' money.
posted by Dark Messiah at 9:47 AM on December 13, 2022 [9 favorites]

The Blockchain Eight are at least a bipartisan group of dudes that suck.
posted by Artw at 9:51 AM on December 13, 2022 [6 favorites]

“They used Quickbooks! A multibillion dollar company using Quickbooks! Nothing against Quickbooks. A very nice tool, but not for a multi-billion dollar company."
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:35 AM on December 13, 2022 [9 favorites]

Long interview with Coffeezilla, an investigative journalist about evidence that SBF was consciously fraudulent, not just sloppy, not to mention how Coffeeezilla got into investigating financial scams, the ethics involved, etc.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:37 AM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Thanks for all the references — I have an ask. As a person who has deleted their Twitter account and is doing everything I can to not click on links and increase the “engagement” metrics, can we start tagging Twitter links the same way we do SLYT? Something like SLTW?

I appreciate an effort to help those of us who have disengaged as a response to current leadership remain consistent.
posted by Silvery Fish at 10:43 AM on December 13, 2022 [20 favorites]

Molly White livetoots the FTX hearings.

Molly White @[e-mail]

Rep. Cleaver (D-MO) describes SBF's submitted statement as "so disrespectful."

He reads, "'I would like to start out by formally stating under oath...' I can't even say it publicly. Absolutely insulting."

SBF was going to say "fuckup" in Congress, huh

Use of the word "fuckup" is what he's upset about in this situation?

America is weird.
posted by clawsoon at 10:47 AM on December 13, 2022 [11 favorites]

Also in the news today reports that FTX had an inner circle on Signal with the group being named... wait for it...

Wirefraud. (archived Financial Times Link.)
posted by loquacious at 10:50 AM on December 13, 2022 [10 favorites]

As a person who has deleted their Twitter account and is doing everything I can to not click on links and increase the “engagement” metrics

Public service announcement: You can replace "twitter.com" in every link with "nitter.net" and the link will work without engaging.

"Nitter is a free and open source alternative Twitter front-end focused on privacy and performance. The source is available on GitHub... No JavaScript or ads. All requests go through the backend, client never talks to Twitter"

The only downside is that Nitter can get overloaded, however there are dozens of instances to use.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:55 AM on December 13, 2022 [13 favorites]

my only regret is that Dave Chappelle did not get the chance to invite SBF up on a stage

I mean, at the rate he is trending who is next?
posted by elkevelvet at 10:55 AM on December 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

Who’s snitching on the big crypto group chat?
posted by chavenet at 11:00 AM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

As someone who doesn't really engage with crypto in the same degree as most MeFi commenters, but who nevertheless has to hear about it because we all do, I was interested to read in a recent Southern Poverty Law Center magazine about the degree to which crypto has enabled white supremacists in the last few years.

None of this has to do with Sam Bankman-Fried specifically, but I just wanted to share the link in at least one crypto thread. Delete if necessary to keep discussion on track, I guess.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 11:05 AM on December 13, 2022 [12 favorites]

The podcast Behind the Bastards has an episode on Bankman-Fried that I don't think I can completely recommend, there's some fewer hard things there against him than normal. Like, it tries to make his contributions to ProPublica, a generally excellent organization, seem terrible because they once did a questionable piece about the possibility that COVID could have escaped from a Chinese lap. It's a fair cop, but not typical for them. They've done so much great reporting that the occasional misstep can maybe be forgiven. Yet, the podcast tried to make it one of their smoking guns against SBF.

It also made a lot of hay about SBF's upbringing, including the fact that people call him "SBF," and where he was a kid who "believed in Utilitarianism," which is a weird thing for a teen to espouse, but lots of smart kids say and think weird things, especially in the rather rarefied air of his upscale family. Both of his parents are professors at Stanford Law school.

It does fill in some blanks as to why he did what he did. Because of the "effective altruism" dogma to which he subscribed, and his focus on "risk neutrality," he believed he had to take great risks in order to build up a pile of money to save the world with. Concern for the fate of the people who gave them their crypto doesn't seem to have factored into that altruism.
posted by JHarris at 11:10 AM on December 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

and where he was a kid who "believed in Utilitarianism," which is a weird thing for a teen to espouse

I'd suggest it's a very teenage thing. It's a much weirder thing for a middle-aged person to espouse.
posted by clawsoon at 11:15 AM on December 13, 2022 [21 favorites]

Host Robert Evans' point was, few kids even know what the heck Utilitarianism is, let alone consider it a guiding principle. But yes, weird smart kids might just latch onto it, due to their weird-smartness. Evans engaged in proclaiming what a kid of that age "should" be doing, and it wasn't a great look.
posted by JHarris at 11:25 AM on December 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

(I might have gotten that wrong a bit, I was getting more and more upset at his kid-shaming, which is sometimes a problem with him. I don't think I finished the episode. Overall Evans does a good job, just, not in these cases.)
posted by JHarris at 11:27 AM on December 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Ehhh, it’s not utilitarianism, it’s this dumb shit: How Sam Bankman-Fried Put Effective Altruism on the Defensive
posted by Artw at 11:36 AM on December 13, 2022 [6 favorites]

No, the podcast episode specifically described his upbringing with his Utilitarian parents. The effective altruism horseshit seems to be a later development.
posted by Dark Messiah at 11:46 AM on December 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

'Need to double-check the federal statutes but I believe SBF's arrest means that "crypto" means "cryptography" again.'
posted by jeffburdges at 12:05 PM on December 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

SBF's parents, prominent Stanford law professors and legal authors, who also blended risk aversion, moral philosophy, and anxiety reduction with their courses in tax law and compliance.
posted by Brian B. at 12:08 PM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

TIL Ben McKenzie, an actor best known for his role in The OC, wrote a book about crypto and fraud. That is actually cool as hell.
posted by Kitteh at 12:08 PM on December 13, 2022 [10 favorites]

"Effective Altruism" is the paramilitary wing of Utilitarianism.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 12:10 PM on December 13, 2022 [18 favorites]

A bit irritated that the Baffler piece starts out with the author having a big, rusty ax to grind about MeFi's Own cshirky and his 2008 book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, even though Clay doesn't seem to have much (or much good) to say about cryptocurrency generally. Specifically, he faults Shirky for not spotting "the various social media recruitment techniques used by ISIS and other violent groups"... several years before almost nobody outside the Middle East had even heard of them.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:33 PM on December 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Almost anybody, grr.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:50 PM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Like, it tries to make his contributions to ProPublica, a generally excellent organization, seem terrible because they once did a questionable piece about the possibility that COVID could have escaped from a Chinese lap. It's a fair cop, but not typical for them. They've done so much great reporting that the occasional misstep can maybe be forgiven. Yet, the podcast tried to make it one of their smoking guns against SBF.

ProPublica is unquestionably a net good, but they've doubled down on the story with an editors note, and remain generally opaque about it, having announced they'll not answer any more questions. So I'm giving them the side eye right now.

But also, given that SBF's $5 million donation was specifically described as funding things like investigation into Covid-19, pandemic preparedness and investigations of lab security, I think it's fair to say that him using his money to incentivize sensationalistic (and bad) reporting from an otherwise good organization . . . well, he sucks, and this is indeed more evidence of that.
posted by mark k at 2:32 PM on December 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Aaah... could it be that his contribution to ProPublica was contingent on them publishing that piece? Then Evans's criticisms could be justified.
posted by JHarris at 3:13 PM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

ProPublica's been going after very rich people hard-core for a good ten years now...nothing is impossible, but I'd be pretty surprised if it had turned out he bought a bad-faith story.
posted by praemunire at 3:13 PM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

(The ProPublica journalist on the story (which was joint with Vanity Fair), Jeff Kao, has an established history of going after the Chinese government for its coverups relating to the spread of COVID. I don't think you need to believe he and the organization sold their integrity for a piddling $5m to understand what went wrong with the story.)
posted by praemunire at 3:18 PM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Because of the "effective altruism" dogma to which he subscribed, and his focus on "risk neutrality," he believed he had to take great risks in order to build up a pile of money to save the world with.

My understanding is that nobody who espouses effective altruism actually believes in it, or in anything, it’s a dodge all the way down.
posted by Jon_Evil at 3:25 PM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

"I have to make billions! For...for the good of all mankind. Yeah! That's the ticket!"
posted by praemunire at 3:31 PM on December 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

It’s more or less the same as Elon’s “I have to make billions to send mankind to colonize the stars” dodge, actually.
posted by Jon_Evil at 4:18 PM on December 13, 2022 [8 favorites]

Praeminire, what sort of monster wouldn't start a charitable foundation if the world at large made them a billionaire?!? I know I would, so you should give me your cash and make me a billionaire today!

And, Praemunire, I'd do a better job of righting the world's wrongs than all the civil servants, elected officials and charity workers currently spending their lives doing this. Hurry up now and make me a billionaire already!
posted by k3ninho at 4:27 PM on December 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Idea for an Ursula LeGuin parody:
The Ones Who Bought Omelas, Turned it into a Party Resort and Started Charging the Child in the Awful Basement Rent.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 7:30 PM on December 13, 2022 [12 favorites]

Could it be that his contribution to ProPublica was contingent on them publishing that piece?
* * *
Jeff Kao, has an established history of going after the Chinese government for its coverups relating to the spread of COVID. I don't think you need to believe he and the organization sold their integrity for a piddling $5m to understand what went wrong with the story. I don't think you need to believe he and the organization sold their integrity for a piddling $5m to understand what went wrong with the story

There's no way Pro Publica took money linked to this specific story and conclusion; that would be a major breach of journalistic ethics.

But why did they hire Kao? Because they got $5 million and needed to hire people to investigate lab security, and they were obviously approaching it from the cover up in China angle. That was probably contingent. I mean, it was announced right in the press release! Investigate this theory. That sort of thing is not a breach of ethics, at least not a cut and dry one.

I'm sure they went in with the belief that they'd write a good story. There's a lot of pressure in journalism, once you do a long, expensive investigation, to publish something. And it is almost impossible to imagine publishing "everything is fine, no leak" when you're dealing with a secretive organization like the Chinese government, because they aren't going to ever open up enough records to convince you of that. The story wasn't predestined to be this bad, but once they took the money it was going to be tough to avoid doing something that would stoke the conspiracy theorists. Now they're institutionally invested in defending it.

If it was their own money they'd more likely just have dropped it when they weren't getting far.

FWIW the NYT gets into this trap itself all the time (especially with the Clintons). I mean, that's how I know it's a trap, we've seen it before. But the NYT does it to themselves--they have a huge budget. In this case SBF's money did it to ProPublica.
posted by mark k at 7:47 PM on December 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

But why did they hire Kao? Because they got $5 million and needed to hire people to investigate lab security, and they were obviously approaching it from the cover up in China angle. That was probably contingent. I mean, it was announced right in the press release! Investigate this theory. That sort of thing is not a breach of ethics, at least not a cut and dry one.

I would start my investigation of this theory by comparing the date on which Kao went to work for ProPublica and the date on which the Bankman-Fried grant was announced. But I'm kinda nitpicky about the directionality of time and stuff.
posted by praemunire at 10:08 PM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Oops, I misread his bio to interpret it as him being at the NYT through 2021, as opposed to already at ProPublica.

His publication history, though, is very consistent with ProPublica using the SBF money to put him on the leak story--he's doing biweekly publishing early in the year, then goes silent after the grant announcement. Until he coauthors the mess.
posted by mark k at 10:55 PM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

"withdrawals have been temporarily paused" is just another way to spell "we are utterly insolvent"
posted by rmd1023 at 7:03 AM on December 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

His publication history on the Chinese government's response to COVID goes all the way back to March 2020 and involves multiple stories.

We don't have access to internal discussions, so nothing is certain, but it seems to me that it's easier to think that a journalist already on this beat at this publication continued to pursue this kind of investigation into a legitimate topic of interest (along with another, well-established publication that wasn't, as far as I know, being funded by SBF's foundation) and messed up for other reasons than that SBF somehow magically led them astray.

Also, if you're familiar with the kinds of projects that this dude tended to fund, "the security of labs around the world doing cutting-edge research, the factors that may lead to the next pandemic, and the state of monitoring systems meant to catch new infectious diseases as they emerge" seems a lot more in the vein of his speculative-to-the-point-of-silliness anti-AI funding--i.e., focused on systemic (supposed) future threats--than an anti-Chinese witch hunt. He was a politically agnostic, cynical fuck who gave handsomely to both parties in the U.S. and seems primarily to have been truly concerned with minimizing/controlling regulation of his purported product...a specific anti-Chinese axe to grind on the origins of COVID (a favorite right-wing theory) sits oddly with that.
posted by praemunire at 7:36 AM on December 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

"withdrawals have been temporarily paused" is just another way to spell "we are utterly insolvent"

"Liquidity crunch" is my favourite -- sounds like a Ben & Jerry's flavour, not a euphemism for "I lost all your money".
posted by Dark Messiah at 7:58 AM on December 14, 2022 [9 favorites]

FTX hearing livetoot, day 2
posted by Artw at 8:16 AM on December 14, 2022 [2 favorites]

Idea for an Ursula LeGuin parody:
The Ones Who Bought Omelas, Turned it into a Party Resort and Started Charging the Child in the Awful Basement Rent.

The Word for the World is FOREX.
posted by loquacious at 8:35 AM on December 14, 2022 [11 favorites]

This is an effect of the crypto collapse. I am speculating here, but I think that when normally rock solid manufacturers suddenly shutter, you have to look at how ownership and management was using the company resources. There will be other corporate crashes, and it will be hard to pinpoint what happened.
posted by Oyéah at 2:12 PM on December 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

What's the crypto connection with United Furniture? Or is that the speculation? In which case what's it based on? Smells like fraud and embezzlement, but those existed long before crypto.
posted by mark k at 3:39 PM on December 15, 2022 [1 favorite]

We've designed all our financial tools for economic growth, so they'll largely break down as our economic growth winds down, and reverses, over the next decade or so, due mostly to peak oil. In this, people could chase scams like crazy for a while, ala Theranos, Bitcoin, Binance, etc.

I suggest "liquidity crunch" could be a sorbet-ish flavor, initially constructed from smoothy recipes, which melt nicely, while containing crunchy components like coconut.

Avocado, strawberries, blueberries, cinnamon, and vanilla makes a wonderful smoothy, but not sure the avocado gives the right melting behavior. Apple, spinach, and fennel makes a wonderful sweet green juice, but not sure if you could make a sorbet from it, nor if you could keep apple chunks crunchy.

As one "liquidity crunch" attempt, I'll suggest carrot, apple, ginger, and lemon juice, made into sorbet with small chunks of ginger, carrot, maybe apple, and maybe lemon. I think lemons and ginger are considered diuretics, which plays nicely with the theme, but worth exploring herbal diuretics too.

"I served melted liquidity crunch as slurp juice at the ape nft convention, and now the hotel is out of toilet paper"
posted by jeffburdges at 6:32 PM on December 15, 2022 [4 favorites]

"I served melted liquidity crunch as slurp juice at the ape nft convention, and now the hotel is out of toilet paper"


"I served melted liquidity crunch as Trump slurp juice at the nft convention, and now the hotel is out of toilet paper"
posted by loquacious at 2:52 AM on December 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

opsie dopsie
posted by jeffburdges at 6:57 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]