Why was the media hypnotized by Sam Bankman-Fried? | | John Norton

S.o Sam Bankman-Fried (hereafter SBF) finally arrested His multi-million dollar mansion in the Bahamas, a tax haven bordered by a lovely beach. The only mystery about this was that it took Bahamian authorities so long to measure him in handcuffs. He said he was arrested at the request of U.S. law enforcement officials for “financial crimes” under U.S. and Bahamian law related to Alameda Research, a hedge fund he founded in 2016. A local court on Tuesday denied him bail.

The gruesome details of SBF’s alleged guilt will come out in the upcoming criminal proceedings. But expectations are already high: Amazon announced Working with the Russo brothers, the makers of Marvel films, on a series about scandal.

But for now, I have to give you a quick overview. FTX was a cryptocurrency exchange that made it easy to buy and sell these cryptocurrencies. Many people invested billions of dollars of “real” money to facilitate joining crypto casinos. However, in early November, another cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, dramatically declined Cite reports of “corporate due diligence” and “mishandling of customer funds” to bail it out.

Then, like that night, I kept running FTX, as panicked investors tried to withdraw their money, resulting in insolvency and bankruptcy filings. But the big mystery was why FTX failed to return the money to its investors. The answer didn’t seem to be there. In some way, SBF’s hedge funds are treating his FTX like a piggy bank, and may even have been using investors’ money in the hedge fund market.

Once it became clear that this particular game was finished, SBF set out to: Amazing Apology Tour in every media outlet he could find. In nearly every interview he emotionally apologizes while remaining ignorant of potential misconduct at his company, such as using billions of dollars in customer deposits as collateral for loans for other purposes. He explained with regret. In some cases, he also appeared to be trying to shift the blame to Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of his research, another company, Alameda.

The biggest question raised by this apology tour is why so many apparently serious media outlets have forgiven him. Interview questions were often about softball, and sometimes tiptoe questions. Some interviewers apologetically confessed to not knowing anything about the complex business he ran, allowing themselves to be embarrassed by the incomprehensible bullshit he was uttering. They often seemed hypnotized, as many sensible people were before the crash. This high-tech prodigy with huge hair and baggy shorts until recently promised to donate his staggering wealth to good causes, but in reality he’s the only one who’s made other people’s money. It seems to preside over the evaporation of billions of dollars in savings.

But this embarrassing failure of mainstream media was really just the beginning of an even bigger failure. Earlier that year, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent a letter to his FTX questioning whether the company was as unstable as some observers (mainly on his web) suspected. It turned out that I was trying to judge.As Corey Doctorow pointed outthe SEC was unable to get an answer. wrote a letter to the SEC chairman requesting a retraction.When 5 out of 8According to Doctorow, he had received donations in significant cases from SBF, his employees, affiliated companies, or political action committees.

There was a true story here. So it was long before FTX imploded. But the reason it didn’t get talked about is because the mainstream media invested too much in founder worship, which is the curse of the tech industry, let alone some of the people who report it.According to one commentator, the idea is “a symbol of the libertarian ethos where the benefits of cryptocurrency go to the most talented”. Stated SBF, may be as politically manipulative as oil magnates and tobacco executives never conceived to poor dear. Sometimes society gets the mainstream media they deserve.

what i am reading

fake world
A platform is not an ecosystem Maria Farrell’s nice attack on the company’s claim that the closed tech platform is the “ecosystem” of the site Crooked Timber.

what the poet said
Written by James Parker great essay On TS Elliott’s post-apocalyptic vision wasteland in the Atlantic Ocean.

technology finds a way
AI’s Jurassic Park Moments A very sharp blog post by Gary Marcus on his Substack about the long term impact of generative AI.