Sam Bankman-Fried might not be the last crypto criminal

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/4/23945602/sam-bankman-fried-guilty-verdict-ftx-crypto-industry-impact

by ourmandave • 3 years ago

27 121 3 years ago

theverge.com

jrm47• 3 years ago

Might?

Oh, there are definitely more coming. Or there need to be, and I say this as someone who generally believes in crypto.

Please, lets get the ball rolling here.

timbit423• 3 years ago

Yes, this is a dumb headline. Crime will continue to be with humanity for a long time.

telepathy38• 3 years ago

Nobody could ever successfully explain to me the lawful utility of crypto at all.

capableweb• 3 years ago

Atomic Transfers.

telepathy38• 3 years ago

I assume you're being sarcastic but I kind of hope you're not

KptMarchewa2• 3 years ago

The bigger fool theory.

jongjong10• 3 years ago

You fell for the most basic narrative of the fiat schemers who are destroying our society and manufacturing artificial inequality on a massive scale. Do you want to be ruled by criminals, be surrounded by crazy people? If not, then you see the utility of crypto.

The utility of crypto is to enable a fair, functioning society. That is literally, the most important utility of all.

telepathy38• 3 years ago

How does crypto help with that?

olalonde13• 3 years ago

Cryptography or cryptocurrency?

telepathy38• 3 years ago

Let's say the top 100 coins by market cap. What's the lawful utility of their existence?

peyton• 3 years ago

It’s not a bad idea to have trailblazers exploring a parallel financial system. Once mature, it may help us solve problems humanity has encountered repeatedly. Global financial crises have a history of toppling governments and provoking conflicts; a neutral system could serve as a release valve instead of fighting over who gets to play policeman. In the far future, adopting a dual-currency model may be preferable for whichever nation hosts the world’s reserve currency.

telepathy38• 3 years ago

This is the standard Web3 type delusions of grandeur that hypes everyone up. Developers don't have a say in such matters. They're not policymakers. Wrong profession.

StanislavPetrov5• 3 years ago

Sending money to people internationally without the blessing, permission or fees of your government or central bank is the primary utility. It is simply astounding to me that otherwise intelligent people can't understand this simple and incredibly useful function.

If I want to send $10 to my cousin in Brazil or Madagascar, how do I do that exactly without crypto? Sending him $10 in litecoin takes a few minutes to process through the blockchain, and costs just a few cents in processing fees. What is the alternative, especially if he doesn't a bank account or ready access to a bank? Paying high fees to Moneygram or Western Union, waiting an extended period of time and undergoing an onerous KYC process that often ends up in your funds being returned or rejected from many foreign countries?

If you are wealthy, live in the United States, have a bank account, no interest in privacy, and are looking to send and/or receive money from other wealthy people from the United States who also have bank accounts and don't have any interest in privacy, then crypto holds no allure.

telepathy38• 3 years ago

"without the blessing, permission or fees of your government or central bank"

= "unlawful"

We're looking for lawful use cases that cant' be done with a regular database

CPLX2• 3 years ago

without the blessing, permission or fees of your government

That’s not lawful.

There’s no use of crypto that isn’t gambling or the evasion of laws.

There’s probably a few unjust money transfer laws out there in the world. So you could make a case that the specific special use case of evading those is legitimate.

The rest is just crime.

Ridj48dhsnsh4• 3 years ago

There is little to no lawful utility.

The value of crypto has always been in its ability to take the power to control the financial freedom of individuals away from government and put it back in the hands of people.

Whether you agree that is a good thing or not, depends on your political views towards authoritarian governments.

telepathy38• 3 years ago

The value of crypto has always been some fringe act of futile civil disobedience? Yikes

robbywashere_3• 3 years ago

"I don't need privacy i have nothing to hide"

robbywashere_3• 3 years ago

The uncensorable transmission or store of value anonymously/pseudonymously; is pretty close to the promise of the original whitepaper. But with something like the evm, there is much more.

akoboldfrying6• 3 years ago

As a lower bound, it's at least as useful as other things that people regard as valuable mostly because, historically, people have regarded it as valuable. Gold is in this category -- but so would be Awesomium, a substance I just made up but which myself and my associates are certain is gonna be the Next Big Thing, so get in now before it gets big, YOLO!

If you trust institutions like banks, tax departments and reserve banks, and transacting with them is easy and cheap, the value of crypto as a medium of exchange is very low. This is how the majority of people feel in the developed world, though whether this is rational (given things like the fact a government can just unilaterally change the rules by printing, or burning, a bunch of money) is disputed. To the extent you don't trust these institutions, or they make transacting hard, the value of alternatives, like cash notes and coins, barter, or crypto increases.

telepathy38• 3 years ago

Inventing tech to circumvent law is obviously "unlawful"

jrm47• 3 years ago

Nor need they?

"Legality" isn't a prerequisite to utility, even utility that can be good for the world?

I believe that the presence of "exchange of value outside of government control" is potentially a valuable thing even if it can be used for bad. I believe the same about free speech and encryption.

telepathy38• 3 years ago

It's a prerequisite for the vast majority of law abiding people. Not everyone is a fringe crypto activist willing to take legal risks.

RestlessMind4• 3 years ago

1. Store of wealth for ordinary people in badly governed countries (Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka) - provably beyond the control of any government, easy to conceal, easy to transfer. See real examples of how individuals are using it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095

2. Store of wealth for countries who do not want to keep their reserves in other countries fiat currencies. Gold is one alternative and Bitcoin is a good second option.

3. International settlements - if Pakistan wants to buy cheap oil from Iran, what currency do they transact it? Neither one wants to keep each other's currency on their hand because of a low level of trust. USD/EUR was one alternative but it is increasingly weaponized and anyway one cannot buy Iranian oil with it. That leaves only Gold, which is too hard to transport.

Happy to engage further if you want to discuss in good faith.

telepathy38• 3 years ago

1. Badly governed countries still have laws you are required to obey - regardless of your opinion. 2. Beanie babies would be the only third option. There is no 4th option. 3. They could use beanie babies.

ookblah• 3 years ago

do kwon next

jongjong10• 3 years ago

It's quite clear to me that much of the current crypto industry was set up for scandal. Literally only scam projects have been allowed to gain any exposure whatsoever. There are tons of great projects that you don't know exist. I bet almost every popular project today is headed by scammers and whoever orchestrated this whole thing holds them on a tight leash.

leashless3• 3 years ago

Yeah truth in this.

Mattereum.com/land is a legally acceptable way of doing fast transfers of real estate. Also works for gold bars etc.

Wow it’s hard to get any airtime.

You’d think “we’ve built the core tech for a global electronic exchange for the world’s largest asset class” would be easy to get publicity for but no.

jongjong10• 3 years ago

Interesting because I also worked on a real estate + crypto project and the social media algorithms suppressed us big time. There must be thousands of such projects by now being censored.

telepathy38• 3 years ago

This is the jurisdiction of courts, not some shady blockchain

brucethemoose2• 3 years ago

AI World is the same right now, but more aimed at VCs.

Most of the cool projects outside of FAANG are, like, lone starving devs aggregating stuff, or sometimes a research paper that kept on hacking at their repo.

Many of the projects getting investor money are startups with fancy web pages full of promises that look strikingly similar to crypto hustles. Maybe they have another SOTA huggingface finetune that probably has some lies in the card.

paulgb• 3 years ago

In some cases, it’s the same people moved on to a new hustle. Sometimes I’ll google a scammy crypto project that raised $xx million in VC money during the boom times, and more often than not they’re an AI company now.

telepathy38• 3 years ago

Well AI has actual utility and new functionality. Unlike crypto.

Ridj48dhsnsh4• 3 years ago

whoever orchestrated this whole thing holds them on a tight leash

What makes you think there is coordination rather than natural incentives that drive individuals to act in similar ways?

jongjong10• 3 years ago

Because I worked there and literally witnessed founders going from "I will do whatever it takes to change the world" to "I will do whatever it takes to waste as much money as possible." from one month to the next around 2017.

KptMarchewa2• 3 years ago

Just follow Molly White on https://web3isgoinggreat.com/

spondylosaurus2• 3 years ago

Considering how long she's been running the Web3 Is Going Great project (at least since 2021, if not longer?), it must be kind of wild to be in a position where you can truly say "I told you so" about all these collapsing houses of cards. Especially when so many other people turned a blind eye or didn't see them coming.

seattle_spring• 3 years ago

Holy shit, I just read the most recent articles for ~30 minutes. Must have read 30 or 40 headlines and thought that covered a year. I only made it to September of this year.

accountinhn• 3 years ago

I haven't been following what's happening in crypto and was generally aware it was bad, but the last 3 months (that is how far I scrolled down) seems bad than I anticipated. The number of security issues, money stolen, and number of fraudulent cases is unbelievable. How are people still invested in this?

olalonde13• 3 years ago

It was even worse before. MtGox failed in 2014 and it had an even bigger market share than FTX. Almost all the issues are related to centralized services and projects, not issues with the blockchain technology itself.

zen928• 3 years ago

Great resource, thanks for sharing.

StanislavPetrov5• 3 years ago

"Bernie Madoff might not be the last Wall Street criminal".

m3kw9• 3 years ago

There is already more crypto criminal the millisecond sbf was convicted

th0masfrancis• 3 years ago

Very true

robbywashere_3• 3 years ago

The industry has repeatedly and intentionally been kept on the fringes. Yes, this will happen again and again. Look where the exchange was operating out of? Sure the outlines on capital gains tax came swiftly, but regulatory framework has been crickets.

al_borland• 3 years ago

The only way there won't be more crypto crimes are if crypto no longer exists. Where there is money to be made, there will be crime. Crypto has attracted all the people looking to get rich quick, which happens to overlap a lot with those looking to work on the edge of the law to maximize profits.

timbit423• 3 years ago

This is also true of fiat currencies and capitalism in general.

resolutebat• 3 years ago

The most mindboggling thing is that Tether is still alive and printing, and that nobody associated with it has gone to jail. Alameda was apparently also an early and large Tether customer.

RestlessMind4• 3 years ago

Federal Reserve inadvertently bailed out Tether - they now earn 4-5% on billions of USD deposited with them for more than a year. Enough to plug the hole they might have been in.

rsynnott2• 3 years ago

And the winner of the Nobel Prize for Stating the Obvious goes to...

Sam Bankman-Fried might not be the last crypto criminal

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