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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29318 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested.

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested by Bahamian authorities this evening after the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York shared a sealed indictment with the Bahamian government, setting the stage for extradition and U.S. trial for the onetime crypto billionaire at the heart of the crypto exchange’s collapse.

Bankman-Fried was expected to testify before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday. His arrest is the first concrete move by regulators to hold individuals accountable for the multi-billion dollar implosion of FTX last month.

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?

This is apparently the new idea floating around parts of (Crypto?) Twitter right now: that SBF might get "Epsteined," meaning he will end up dead in a manner most suspicious. I don't want to give it any credence, but maybe the people saying it would have taken years for the long arm of the law to nab SBF were onto something, since if they're getting him this quickly, then one of two possibilities must be true:

  1. The Occam's Razor explanation: SBF running his mouth for the past month or so has given the government all the ammo they need to throw the book at him, saving a lot of time and effort in building a solid case against him.

  2. The Tinfoil Hat explanation(s): TPTB are planning for anything but SBF seeing a day in jail. Either the speed of the actions against him are meant to blow their load early, preventing a substantial investigation that would end in his punishment (and thus letting him walk away scot-free), or they really are going the conspiracy theory-type route of planning to have him murdered and (try to) make it look like an accident/suicide.

  1. Evidence emerged in the last few days of plans by SBF to travel somewhere where he would be more difficult to apprehend. Which might be as simple as discovering a hidden crypto or fiat account which may be able to fund such a trip. Or as small as sometime stating in an interview that sbf had casually talked to them about what countries don't extradite. So they moved fast for fear of SBF trying to Snowden himself.

I've joked at home that if it were me, I'd already be at my distant uncle's house in Iran. "Hey uncle Mo, bad news is you're stuck with me and I speak very little Farsi, good news is even after the decline I still have $2mm in stolen Bitcoin."

No prosecutor wants to see the big fish run away to Russia. Would Israel extradite him? That's not even that bad a country to live in.

That mysterious hack which took an unknown sum of money certainly sounds like somebody stashing funds away, and it strongly indicates Bankman-Fried or one of his two co-founders. If it was Bankman-Fried, it's surprising that he stuck around so long and didn't run. But he may have believed he could spoof his way out of trouble and that any arrest would be far in the future.

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