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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31649 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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I Accidentally Got SBF To Admit to Fraud

So...SBF is simply a moron. I've been trying to resist that conclusion, but now I'm asking myself why I bothered.

In the link above Youtuber Coffeezilla drops into a call with SBF (a second time! Why is he still taking calls??) and proceeds to basically get him to admit that funds were comingled.

Coffeezilla noted that SBF always deflects the issue by arguing that some accounts were trading on margin and so were deliberately open to being used by Alameda, unlike regular accounts. So literally all he does - and all any journalist needed to do - was just keep drilling down on whether the FTX only customers who weren't doing that could still get their funds. SBF obviously has no answer. Even worse, he basically screws himself by admitting that they had one withdrawal process which was him admitting to comingling funds.

So...the guy is just a moron. He doesn't have some grand legal plan to plead negligence or ignorance. He has a half-baked plan based on the idea that everyone is dumber than him (despite multiple counterexamples) and he falls apart the minute anyone puts any thought into his answers.

The entire video is actually a good look at how a journalist should view someone like SBF and his word games and deflections and how they should strategize to defeat them (and the end has the sort of pure joy at skewering the target that I bet all journalists feel but are too dignified to admit when picking up their Pulitzer). And this is coming from someone who thought the idea of people like Coffeezilla being "journalists" laughable.

But he has legitimately done the best job of questioning SBF out of everyone (Stefanopoulos was the close second)

Its hard to find someone more annoying than SBF, but this guy fits the bill. The guy who reports on scams after the damage is done, or scams no one actually falls for but total idiots or obvious inside jobs. Where was this guy a month ago. Just more annoying clickbait from this guy.

Well, you have a point about all the people who come out of the woodwork after something happens and go "I knew it all along", but on the other hand if you don't have solid enough evidence that somebody is scamming, just strong suspicions or indications that something is not right, then posting anything online or in the media about "Well-respected Joe Jones is a big fat fraud" is going to get you into legal trouble.

For example, right now I'm seeing stuff online that indicates maybe something hooky is going on with Binance. But it's also likely that maybe the guy claiming this is lying or crazy. My own personal opinion is that crypto is a scam (right now, at least) and I don't have enough information to point at Binance above any of the rest of them as "Yep, for sure, this is a scam and a fraud".

If six or more months down the line it comes out that yes, Binance is a scam like FTX, then I'll be one of the "where were you a month ago?" people saying "I knew it". I don't know it, I may suspect it or have feelings that it could be, but without evidence one way or the other, I can't and won't go on the record about "This is a fraud".

Yeah, some people suspected FTX was fishy well before its implosion, but no one made any link between Alameda, binance and FTT, etc.

just strong suspicions or indications that something is not right, then posting anything online or in the media about "Well-respected Joe Jones is a big fat fraud" is going to get you into legal trouble.

I believe this is protected by the 1st Amd. This is what Bill Ackman did with Herbalife, and what professional short-sellers do. They get evidence of fraud and make their case. They can be wrong, but it's hard to win damages against short sellers if taken to civil court.

Related case: by all info known to me Tether is a scam. But my reaction is to "lets not invest anything into it or anything related" not "spend effort on making people aware what is going on".

The same goes for FTX - if someone believed lies of 15% risk free returns and is not my family member/friends then I am not going to bother with it.

Uhhh, he literally did.

I mean, okay, he didn’t come out and say “FTX is a fraud, your money is getting stolen as we speak.” But he did strongly imply it.

I think he actually did call some crypto scams ahead of time...

Speaking of which, where was this guy? He seems to have opinions on crypto and it's his schtick to uncover overpriced frauds.

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