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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34413 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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SBF had a long interview with NYT where they were remarkably soft on him. The whole thing can be read read here.

For my part, it seems like he has little remorse and is spinning things as "things expanded too fast and I made a mistake". The fact that his hedge fund (Alameda Research) was propped up by client deposits without their knowledge is not something he wishes to mention.

Over at Twitter, he has been consistently deleting tweets such as his Nov 7th tweet assuring everyone that FTX has a "long history of safeguarding client assets". Some are speculating that his recent gibberish tweets are in fact a way to keep his tweet count constant, so to not alert bots when a large amount of tweets are suddenly deleted (as some bots may begin to do auto-archiving). In his interview with NYT, he instead spun his new tweets as some kind of cryptic message he wants to send.

All these things re-affirm my view that he's basically a manipulative psychopath. What's disappointing but not surprising is the soft gloves treatment he gets in the NYT. One cannot help but ask whether his status as democrat megadonor plays a part in that.

Has anyone posted this yet? It’s phenomenal.

https://milkyeggs.com/?p=175

Of note is the evidenced theory that SBF was on Parkinson’s dopaminergic drugs which led him to making ridiculous risks and purchases, and other information that can lead one to think the Bankman literally Fried his brains.

Thanks for the link, which includes a link to the NYT piece. It's hilarious in parts; Bankman-Fried tried to use his influence to get his rival clobbered by regulatory bodies in the USA, which pissed off the other guy and he then pulled the pin on the grenade. Too much arrogance due to (possibly) frying his brains on drugs and believing his own hype about being a wunderkind:

Perhaps Mr. Bankman-Fried’s most ambitious aim was to shape crypto regulation in Washington, where he testified to Congress and met with regulators. He also used his growing influence in the capital to criticize his biggest rival, Mr. Zhao, in private meetings, people familiar with the matter said.

Attacking Mr. Zhao “was not a good strategic move on my part,” Mr. Bankman-Fried said on Sunday. “I was pretty frustrated at a lot of what I saw happening, but I should’ve understood that it was not a good decision of me to express that.”

A former investor in FTX, Mr. Zhao still owned a large amount of FTT, a cryptocurrency that FTX invented to facilitate trading on its platform. On Nov. 6, Mr. Zhao announced on Twitter that he was selling the FTT, spooking customers who rushed to withdraw their FTX deposits.

“We won’t pretend to make love after divorce,” Mr. Zhao wrote on Twitter. “We won’t support people who lobby against other industry players behind their backs.”

When FTX collapsed, Mr. Zhao initially agreed to buy the exchange in what would have amounted to a bailout. But soon the deal fell through, after Binance found problems in the company’s financials. In a Signal group chat that included Mr. Bankman-Fried and other FTX representatives, Mr. Zhao posted a curt note, according to two people familiar with the matter.

“Sam, I’m sorry,” he wrote, “but we won’t be able to continue this deal. Way too many issues. CZ.”

Mr. Bankman-Fried scrambled to line up new financing. “I shouldn’t throw stones in a glass house, so I’ll hold back a bit,” he said in a message to employees obtained by The Times. “Except to say: probably they never really planned to go through with the deal.”

Listen, Binance is probably dodgy as fuck itself, but you have to admire the size of the balls on CZ for pulling this off 🤣 Revenge is a dish best posted on Twitter, indeed!

If SBF hadn't fucked up so badly we'd be speaking more about what was essentially a supervillain move by CZ.

Didn't batman do essentially the same thing?

I was thinking this was the more highly-apropos Batman clip

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