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Notes -
Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested.
There had been some speculation on when and even whether he would be arrested. Just yesterday someone told me to expect it to take two years. So, why right before tomorrow's hearing? And why not wait for him to give more interviews and provide more evidence?
I thought this would potentially take years. The relatively quick arrest makes me think the government has an extremely strong case. I’d guess he’s getting 15+ years.
he'd be lucky to only get 15
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/12/sam-bankman-fried-has-been-arrested-this-is-what-happens-next.html#:~:text=That%20means%20Bankman%2DFried%20could,that%20prosecutors%20will%20reportedly%20pursue.
Size of the loss is a huge factor in sentencing. Shkreli got 7 years even though the investors he defrauded actually made >2x returns, and frankly he got lucky with his judge. SBF isn't quite as infamous as Shkreli, but he's close. 20 years is a better guess.
No way. My normie siblings were eventually making Shkreli jokes, while I haven't heard anyone talk about this FTX guy outside of The Motte, ACX, and Twitter.
This will likely turn into a bigger story.
Maybe objectively, but I can't imagine my boomer relatives picturing this guy as a villain in the same way, and thus they won't be able to care as much. "Evil patent troll businessman jacks up the price of important medicine 1000%**" is an easy story for normies to digest and understand, while "Finance tech bro guy gets money from investors and turns it into imaginary (?) fake(?) digital internet money and then spends the real money which he argues he was allowed to do but actually there were two different companies involved and etc. etc.**" is a lot harder to understand and thus harder to get outraged about.
I remember the 2008 financial crisis, and while there was general outrage at "banks," I don't recall a lot of hate targeted at specific individuals involved in the subprime mortgage and exotic derivative stuff because it's just too hard to understand. In contrast Bernie Madoff was excoriated because "Lying greedy bastard pulls giant pyramid scheme con" is easy to grasp.
I imagine this will just make normies think "gee, crypto sure is a shit show, that guy should probably go to jail I guess" and that's about it. I feel like there's an ACX essay to be written titled "Be Nice, At Least Until You Can Coordinate Illegibility of Your Crimes to the Public"
**not saying this is an accurate summary -- it's an approximation of these events will be remembered in the public memory
it can be (accurately) summarized to "weird rich guy on drugs stole more money that you can imagine and lost almost all of that"
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