Should I feel vindictive? Or is it healthy to forget about it and move on? I'm not sure.
Evolutionarily, the emergence of an economy with capital at modern-day scales are so new that we haven't had time to really adjust emotionally. It kind of reminds me of the various birds on previously untouched-by-humanity islands that had no fear of humans and would just sit there and allow a human to club them to death, until their species went extinct. They had no time evolutionarily to develop an innate (emotional) fear of humans.
Physical violence/robbery on the other hand is a long-standing human tradition, and something we are hardwired to react to emotionally (Amygdala vs. PFC, etc). We can of course override our Amygdalas with our PFCs to some extent (in the medium to long-term), but the "gut reaction" core is still there.
Another possible reason (for me at least) is that ethically I have a lot of inner turmoil over violent punishments (which physical incarceration absolutely is IMHO) for nonviolent crimes. Of course reality is much more grayscale than that given that crimes like SBFs could leave a family destitute and starving, which is violence-adjacent if not outrightly violent. A violent sentence for a violent crime intuitively feels a lot more "let the punishment fit the crime" than a violent sentence for a nonviolent crime.
Anyway, I don't have answers, but throwing some speculation onto the pile.
I'm also pretty distant from a mugging that might happen today, but I find myself getting angry about it, so that also seems to contradict the theory that it's about distance (though to be clear, I largely agree with you and I suspect distance is going to be a factor for most or maybe the vast majority of people).
However, I do know that people can feel very ashamed from scams like phishing attacks and caller scams.
Maybe that's not really "anger," but it kind of feels and seems like it
For me the deep insult that causes anger is if this is intentional, this is a person, they willfully did this of sound mind. Perhaps why a Madoff might make someone angry, but not SBF. In my view, SBF was a step or two removed from a big "too big too fail" 2008 bank that offered an interest rate to account holders by making investments with some risk. It seems to me SBF was operating along similar lines, 8% interest rate if I recall, but his intent wasn't to steal so much as illegally hide risk and hope for the best - and in his case, he was small enough to fail.
Versus someone calling you specifically to cause harm, especially when they can comprehend the harm they are intending to inflict, in your example.
I think we adjusted, but we just apply broader context. No one would recommend going all-in on FTX with your life savings. Likely no one involved is really poor and this affected his life strongly. People lost money for their retirement retro vehicle, it's fairly easy to adjust to that.
This not saying it's ok, but its annoyance in effects mostly or should be(I think likely there are may be people, who put too much money, but then again internet financial advisory board all appears and says: HA! Told ya not to do it!).
I don't know what your financial situation is but I'm not rich, and it is extremely painful to look at ETH trading at above $3000 and realizing my rainy day fund has been stolen by criminal nincompoops.
My personal values dictate that I be significantly more careful with money when it is someone else's money. Even if you gave me $20 to get you a Burrito, I'll get you the best deal, tip the minimum, and give you your exact change. I'd even give you a few cents more just in case because I don't want to be owing you anything.
So when a group of people behaves irresponsibly with people's money it boils my blood. He deserves every jail year he got, just on the hubris alone.
I don't want to rub on your wound but you need to take some responsibility as well. You knew crypto was risky. You knew many exchanges have scammed and went under, taking their customer's funds with them. It's arguable that every crypto exchange is shady and it's inevitable that every single one them will fall.
You should also blame the laws because exchanges and most crypto are clearly securities. But our law makers have been slow to respond and have probably been paid off by crypto money.
In fact, the same crypto bros argue that they should NOT be regulated.
When you get mugged you have no choice on what is happening. The actions are being forced physically on you. With FTX We chose to go that way so it somehow feels like we are as much to blame as SBF (and to be honest, we are).
Especially when prior to FTX's collapse, numerous other crypto exchanges were turning out to be scams or going under, and even back then there was plenty of evidence that crypto was being used and manipulated by nation-states and criminal organizations? And it was practically a meme that crypto was full of shysters and scams?
Comparing putting your money into a too-good-to-be-true crypto hedge fund is nothing like "a bank manager stealing money to pay off his gambling debts." I won't name a culpability breakdown but there is no way you have 0% responsibility here.
US ones are. Shady ass casinos in the Bahamas like what SBF was running aren't though. Exchanges like Coinbase have been operating in the US under heavy US regulations for over a decade, and have never had anything close to a solvency issue. It's absolutely ridiculous that SBF was getting invited to basically write US policy despite FTX not even being a US based exchange.
If I invested it in crypto? I would value it at zero for the rest of eternity.
What is strange about it? Losing money through investment risk is part of the deal when you invest, losing money because the fund manager decides to steal it is not part of the deal.
But there is still a difference between risk and fraud.
Risk would be if joe random tells you he'll "invest" your money in lottery tickets and then give you a 10% return if he wins or nothing if the "investment" goes bad.
Fraud is when he tells you that, but takes your money and buys himself some stuff.
Either way you lost all your money but in the second case you can sue the guy for fraud. In the first case he did as promised and lost the money but you only have yourself to blame for doing a dumb investment.
That's not the whole picture though. If I invest in some risky stock (or even what I thought was not a risky one) and it tanks, sure I feel bad but it's part of the deal so it's ok.
But if I invest in something risky and I lose the money not through investment risk but simply because the fund manager outright stole my money, I'd be very angry.
Not literally true - completely innocent people do get victimized - but there’s certainly a reason for the expression.
I'm starting to think that these organizations need to be regulated as banks, stat.
Banks have steadily become less and less fraudulent over the last century.
Crypto exchanges have also steadily become less fraudulent, but still carry a much larger risk than the financial institutions to which people have become accustomed.
That is what a lot of people have been saying for a very long time now!
I don't mean this in a way to blame the victims of the crypto fraudsters, merely to explain the somewhat exasperated responses by people who feel like they've been trying to warn people who have been ignoring them.
> I'm starting to think that these organizations need to be regulated as banks, stat.
I mean, why do you think they don't want to be regulated and brag that they aren't? To make you more money?
Granted, I haven’t seen any scientific evidence to suggest that a lack of money causes a lack of ability to reason (and thus a lack of responsibility for one’s own actions) but my own anecdotal experience does suggest it
In the other, you could be left for dead in an alley in Oakland.
That is very crass. Tell that to someone who lost a big chunk of their savings. "Just numbers in a database" indeed.
Would you say the same if a pension fund ran with your retirement, since it is invested in some stock index, most likely in previous metals, and probably a slice in crypto?
I doubt those who think that in the end victims are partly responsible as there are things they could have done differently, would change their mind.
Remember, the claim isn’t that the traditional finance world is without problems but rather that people who deliberately seek out high-risk investments do share some responsibility when those fail. Someone who trusted Enron’s public audit reports was more comprehensively failed than someone who sought out a company specifically incorporated in the Bahamas to avoid compliance with US regulations!
It’s the next level of risk up from people who buy stocks because the price is going up without checking the fundamentals. If all you do is hang around with other people hyping the same thing, it’s really easy to focus on the “number goes up” part and not want to be the person spoiling the party by asking about value.
Who were these hypothetical savers putting their money in a safe place?
Few people should have been unaware of the risks they were taking by investing in crypto.
Certainly not saying they deserve to be defrauded, but I am saying they took obvious risks and then got burned by those risks.
"The very first Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, collapsed in 2014". Different reason, similar outcome.
And Bitcoin was down 2/3 from peak when FTX collapsed. Close to losing it all. And enough doomsayers to know any gambler was running that risk.
And countless prior examples in lots of markets showing that speculation in risky assets is very risky!
You often don't know the specifics of why something is risky, so even if a particular outcome was unlikely, that doesn't mean an investment was "savings".
so, yes, someone who is hungry and stealing bread is the same as someone who is full and stealing bread should get the same punishment.
If anything, I feel like you should share your story to protect others, especially during times when crypto is peaking (like now) and others are tempted to jump in: use exchanges to buy/sell and get out, store your keys on a cold storage device, and transfer out fiat ASAP.
Money doesn't come from nowhere. For every dollar you make on crypto, somone loses a dollar. All these BS coins do is shuffle wealth from the unlucky gamblers to the lucky ones. Go spend your money at a casino instead.
If that's not true of the stock market, why would that be true of crypto?
There is no company behind crypto currencies that holders get ownership of. There is no product or service to drive profits. There are no dividends, voting power, or anything that gives inherent value to the coins. It's all pure speculation. Just money getting shifted around among the holders - with exchanges taking a cut off the top of each transaction.
In this case though, FTX had their own token FTT that gave people that owned it voting rights in FTX and "staking rewards" aka dividends. It's not worth anything today due to the fraud that SBF perpetrated, but that sure smells a awful lot like a stock to me.
Day traders are gamblers.
Cryptocurrencies will _never_ pay dividends, because they are based purely on speculation. These things are absolutely not the same. Cryptocurrencies only provide gambling.
(Or I did until the SEC said they weren't allowed to do that anymore because they didn't give me enough disclaimer that they might lose my money.)
You're locking up your crypto for this for some period of time, which means you lose liquidity to get gains. During that period of time the coin can crash and you're out of that money.
For stocks, you don't need to lose liquidity to get dividends. For companies generating profit, they don't necessarily need to be parasitic to generate those profits. It's possible to generate profits while also providing value for users.
Take for instance Venmo and the ability to get funds from your wallet into your bank instantly. Venmo is taking risk by doing so, the banks are taking risk to do so. They charge you a fee for this risk. You want your money faster, and they want their risk covered. They're going to eat some amount of fraud by providing this service, but the cost of providing it should cover the fraud cost and offer a small profit. It's mutually beneficial and optional (regular bank transfers are slower, but free).
Lots of SaaS products are similar. They offer a product businesses need, at a lower cost than the businesses would have to pay to build/run it themselves.
Those are profitable things that are just services, like crypto, but businesses also build things that have physical value, like houses, undersea communication cables, etc.
If people stop trading crypto, all value is immediately gone.
That's a bit of a straw man, as no one claimed they are. "Gambling" is often not a nondeterministic game of chance, either. For example, when I go to a casino and play poker, I'm still gambling, even though there's plenty of determinism and strategy to go along with the elements of chance.
You buying the stock raised the price of the stock. Google uses the stock as compensation. The higher the price, the easier they can hire, and the less cash they need to offer to employees while still being attractive.
really? how can that be true?
Companies IPO and sell shares. The company gets paid by people who want to own shares. The company IPOs and sells 1000 shares at $50 each, gaining them $50k which they can then use to buy a new whatever. Then, in a market like NYSE, other people can buy and sell stock. If I think the stock is undervalued I offer to buy 1 from someone at $55. that person gives me 1 stock, I give them $55, netting them $5. The company is not involved in this transaction and does not get anything from that specific transaction.
Now that the price is at $55, the company could decide to sell additional stock, now at $55 instead of $50, but that's a separate event from the transaction that happened previously. So the company does benefit from the stock price being high, but not directly off each transaction.
I've omitted all the details, but I think that's enough to get the gist of it.
In general, the only times a company gets money when you buy shares are if you participate in an IPO, or if an already-public company decides to offer more shares for sale in order to raise some money, and you buy some of those shares. (There are exceptions, but retail investors like you and me usually don't get invited to participate in those deals, though.) The vast majority of shares that trade hands on the markets every day are not owned by the company whose name is next to the ticker symbol.
HN/VC is NOT the traditional way for companies to raise money.
Buying outside a IPO is called the secondary market. If nobody could buy a share in the secondary market, the stock is almost worthless. Just like your private company with one round of funding and shares. If you can't sell them, they aren't worth much.
Because the inherent value includes things we know about such as the assets the company has, but it also includes the speculative future earnings which we can't be sure about.
And sometimes some people just need the cash, and are willing to sell at a discount.
Network effect, security, are some of the reasons.
Yes, and in doing so you've managed to blissfully ignore all the speculation and outright gambling that goes on in the stock market.
I'm not a crypto defender; I think it's mostly useless and a waste of people's time and money. But let's not paint a big rosy picture of the rest of our financial system. That's just not where the truth lies.
Take Apple or Coca Cola for example: They have well established lines of products and lines of business. You know people will keep buying iPhones and MacBooks and AirPods and whatever else Apple makes. You know people will keep buying Coca Cola drinks forever and ever.
The popular blockchains do not create any intrinsic value (Looking at Bitcoin and Ethereum). They are heavy and cumbersome and can't handle planetary scale. Some blockchain solutions promise secure, fee-less transfers (for example IOTA and NANO). In my opinion, those blockchains at least partially implement the true promise of Crypto that, if successful, would be able to replace the existing financial system which is extremely wasteful.
Just think about how much money it costs to implement FIAT: You have to print it, which is very expensive (both notes and coins). You then have to move it around using heavy armored vehicles. You have to secure it in extremely expensive vaults. You then need to keep securing it across the entire vertical: Every business that takes cash has to deal with theft, securing the cash, fake notes, etc. Even credit cards are very expensive to maintain. Cards have to be printed & mailed out all the time. It's all plastic, and it all ends up in landfills. The inks are toxic, as are the metals in the chips. The equipment required to process cards is expensive, breaks and needs to be replaced, is annoying, slow, ridden with fraud and theft and chargebacks and a host of other issues.
I implemented EMV and 3D-Secure for card processing, a few years ago. I also implemented cash processing equipment. It ALL sucks. You have no idea how Crypto is a breath of fresh air compared to those crappy standards and mechanisms that take an insane amount of time and money and bureaucracy to implement and maintain.
A really good blockchain that does secure, fee-less transactions in less than a second and can handle planetary scale, now that is the holy grail! You don't need equipment, you already have a phone. The merchants get their money instantly, and they are done, that's it. They have their money. Done. They need to pay their vendors? They pay them, done! They could even instantly pay their vendors at the moment of sale. Can you imagine how revolutionary that is? how this completely changes the game for commerce?
The entire crypto world has been held back by greedy assholes, tens of thousands of scammers (how many ICOs and rug pulls have screwed countless users?!), governments, government bodies and banks, and unregulated companies that behave irresponsibly with customer funds (for example FTX and BlockFi). Leadership that lacks vision and initiative (Any 1st world country that accepts crypto and leads with it, would make its citizens rich, by definition, on a planetary scale).
But their stock price is (mostly) independent of that. It is indeed true that at least with short-term trading, your gain is someone's loss, and vice versa. There is a difference between cryptocurrency and companies, but there is little difference between trading in cryptocurrency, and trading in traditional company stocks.
What's your opinion of Solana?
-Money laundering becomes impossible to prevent when no entity has control over identity verification of the users.
-All transactions are public, so normal users who won't be trying to lie about their identity lose all financial privacy.
-Undoing transactions due to fraud or simple error becomes extremely cumbersome and ultimately requires re-centralization of authority that crypto supposedly was created to avoid.
It's no surprise. After all, these politicians and the owners of such outlets are likely to be a little guilty of ripping people off a few thousand here and there as well...
From your link: "Victims may help decide on the punishment for the person who harm them. They often get answers and an apology. Offenders might receive reduced sentences." -- how about increased sentences because of how the victim feels? No, it's all about going easier on offenders. All the authorities involved are pushing victims to "go easy" on offenders aka bullying, victimizing them once again.
Someone, not a thief, hopefully filled the seat in the master's program Donovan was eligible for.
* That HiddenBrain story was about a VA conviction for felony grand larceny for stealing a bike whose value exceeded the grand larceny threshold ($1000). In that case the victim (an English guy who supported the UK equivalent) emphatically did consent to restorative justice approach and expected a non-custodial conviction could be quickly expunged, but the VA system doesn't work that way. So all his intervention effectively did was spare jail time to the thief, but not all the other consequences.
* Compare to the 2021 Oakland, CA gang-related freeway shooting death of 23mo toddler Jasper Wu [0] in a rolling gunbattle between two rival gangs (one of them using an AR-15) on highway I-880 at 2:07pm in the afternoon, Wu was hit in the head by a stray 7.62mm rifle bullet in the rear of his mother's car. Three accused were charged with murder (one since had charges dropped), but then 4/2023 [1], new incoming DA Pamela Price, in the name of restorative justice, wrote an internal memo of her intention to "bring balance back to sentencing and reduce recidivism"- by not allowing prosecutors to "file or require defendants plead to sentencing enhancements." Not adding the special circumstances charge would drastically reduce any likely sentences, and exclude a life sentence (Price points out that she did add the gang-enhancer, but not the special circumstances charge) [3]. The victim's family were not consulted before Price's decision, and objected. [2] Price sent a series of emails to members of the Asian American community and county supervisors. In one, she claims "certain vocal members of the local Chinese community and media including reporter Dion Lim... misled the public." In another email one week later, Price addresses "Chinese communities" calling many "misinformed" and blamed [them] for "spreading misinformation."
The matter is pretty politically divisive in the East Bay [3]. DA Price refuses to budge on this and there is currently in 2024 a major recall effort against her [4].
These two cases are pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum to each other. They also show how politicized the actions of an elected DA can be, depending on the mood of the electorate that put them in office. They also show that DAs can completely disregard the victim's/family's wishes.
[0]: ABC7News 12/2022: Jasper Wu case timeline: A 13-month investigation into Oakland freeway shooting death of toddler https://abc7news.com/jasper-wu-oakland-freeway-shooting-todd...
[1]: 3/2023 Jasper Wu's family voices concerns over murder suspects' possible shorter sentences https://abc7news.com/jasper-wu-alameda-county-district-attor...
[2]: 4/2023 After meeting with DA Price, Jasper Wu's family is still worried they won't get 'justice' https://abc7news.com/alameda-county-district-attorney-pamela...
[3]: 6/2023 Jasper Wu case: murder suspects appear in court, charges reduced in toddler's slaying https://www.ktvu.com/news/jasper-wu-case-murder-suspects-app...
[4[: Alameda County DA Pamela Price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Price
Someone who steals food does time in jail.
I think not letting anger factor into it is good, but we also have to make sure the deterrence is there to prevent the inevitable future SBF.
How can you be giddy about a human being locked in a cage for 25 years? Would you be giddy if he were being flogged, or hanged? As long as there has been recording, flogging and hangings were common punishments and usually defended as "justice has been done." Incarceration really isn't far from medieval punishments.
I'm by no means suggesting that nothing should be done, and maybe 25 years in prison is a just sentence (that's debatable, but for moving forward let's assume it is), but it still leaves me with a sick feeling. I just can't relate whatsoever with feeling "giddy" over it.
Said human is responsible for the financial ruin of thousands of people. It's entirely likely that some small portion of those people committed suicide.
White collar criminals, especially those as pedigreed as SBF, are rarely held accountable for their actions. The maximum sentence was 110 years so he got off pretty lightly here and it's entirely possible he serves less than 25 years for good behavior.
So yeah, I'm excited to see an at least somewhat positive outcome here. A criminal was held accountable for their actions.
Eg, Andy Bernstein got charged $200, scaled down to FAANG engineer salary for insider trading. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39838351
How many hours, days, weeks, months, and years did he steal from the people who bought crypto in FTX? Most of them were workers, using their wages (which means trading their working hours for money) to buy crypto. How many years of their time did he lose?
If there was real justice in the world, they'd take the amount of money he lost, divide it by the average hourly rate of the account holders, convert that to years, and then make him serve each and every single one.
Where do you see GP arguing that we should treat petty criminals as badly as we do?
And he's almost guaranteed to serve a smaller portion of that time for "good behavior".
that's a pretty extreme strawman of my position. Don't you think there's some spectrum between 25 years of prison time and no punishment? And if you don't, then how would you feel about flogging or hanging as I mentioned above? Does it seem odd to you for someone to feel sick about a public hanging in the town square, even if the person is guilty of the crime?
That isn’t the range at hand. SBF got something between what prosecutor and defender asked and much lower than theoretical max.
Max: 110y
Procecutor: 40-50y
Defender: 6.5y
Actual: 25yI think the kind of person who would see this sentence and think "eh, no big deal if that happens to me" would probably still not be fazed if he got a significantly longer sentence.
The guy is a massive fraudster who not only cost thousands of people their savings, but - maybe even worse - he did significant damage to crypto finance reputation.
He was an already wealthy entrepreneur who could’ve at any point chosen not to be a massive fraud. Actions have consequences. Good riddance.
I think it's awful to have positive, happy feelings when bad things happen to other people, even when those people deserve it. I'm not saying I'm totally immune to feelings like that, but I try to work on my attitude. These sorts of feelings are a stain on one's soul (for lack of a better word, as I'm not religious).
Sincere question: in your ideal world, what would be done in this case?
I, too, am dubious that 25 entire years serves justice. On the other hand, many victims' entire life savings wiped out, hard-working people impoverished. How do we deter or redeem, here?
To answer my own question, in an ideal world, SBF would voluntarily work every day to pay everyone back.
Great question, and very hard. I don't really have a concrete answer, but generally speaking in my ideal world justice would focus on restoration to the victims. I concede that we may need some aspect of "punishment" to serve as a deterrent, but I think that punishment should benefit the victims, not the state. For example, stole $10k from somebody? Pay them back $25k. There should be no victimless crimes IMHO, and if "society" is the "victim" we should approach that one very skeptically and there should be very clear causation. For example, a dad who takes a few hits on a cannabis joint before bed is not "harming society" even though that has been the justification for draconian drug laws for decades.
I also fully concede that real life is going to be a lot messier and more nuanced than what I've captured, and that such a system would require a large mindshift from society in addition to just systemic reform. It may take a while to get there.
Disclaimer: If I actually had any ability to influence this I would want to spend a lot more time stuyding it and examining current research/science, and it's quite possible my opinion would adjust based on evidence.
I'm conflicted on whether incapacitation should continue only until rehabilitation is achieved, or also until restoration is completed.
Prison is just a really blunt instrument for incapacitation, and sentences are a really blunt way to predict how long it would take to be rehabilitated.
This is pretty interesting. If a person could be anesthetized for the entire sentence and then revived at the end of their period of incapacity, would that be acceptable?
What types of rehabilitation activities would you suggest for SBF during incapacitation? Would it include job training for an alternative career since he is unlikely to be allowed a fiduciary role in the future? As I understood it, he had a great talent in video gaming.
I don't know enough about SBF's crime, which is very complex. But for white collar crime in general that isn't wanton indiscriminate violence, imprisonment seems like it is inherently punitive and thus wasteful, unless it's in a place that is highly focused on rehabilitation (education, therapy, etc).
Like having to stay in a special room without other people who might be victimized? That seems more humane than wearing restraints all the time.
I don’t think they were meaning incapacitation as in rendered unconscious.
At worst, he works for the rest of his life with his wages heavily garnished. If he holds investments, he'd be required to liquidate and surrender some percentage of them periodically.
Of course, someone in his position could just live off his parents and not play ball. So you'd need a contingency for that. Maybe prison still does have a place, but only for people who refuse to even try to make amends for what they did?
Some are worse than others, and we have laws, and punishments, etc.
But I believe there is no morality to seeking pain in others; even if you believe they deserve it. It will not raise you up, so to speak.
The same reason why the bigger the company, the more the public lets them get away with.
> With a violent mugging encounter, you are blameless
I was mugged a decade or so ago, and while I was certainly angry with the people who mugged me, I also punished myself a bit: I shouldn't have been walking down that particular street at 2am; I'd had a bit to drink and should have called a car. Or I should have been paying more attention to my surroundings; maybe I would have seen them early enough to get away, etc.
The point isn't whether or not the thoughts I had were rational. I don't think the type of crime matters; victims always have plenty of room to assign some blame to themselves, or at least second-guess their actions.
wrt outcome, it seems physical crimes are almost inconsequential in monetary damage compared to "white collar" crimes
I can't help but think of that clint eastwood line:
"It's a hell of a thing, killin' a man. Take away all he's got, and all he's ever gonna have."
I think physical damage, and also the psychological damage of violence has a permanence compared to money and property "damage"...
Not to make light of anything, but you can always get more stuff. (and over my lifetime I've noticed stuff has been easier to get)
I think there are millions of poor people in the world who would very much disagree with that statement. But I'd hope they'd still agree that their stuff isn't worth their lives.
SBF and Elizabeth Holmes deserve their sentences.
Instead, we should see it as lost/ruined human potential. What is worse, violently robbing one bank of $10k, or “peacefully” robbing a massive number of people for billions of dollars?
I sure as hell know what I think, and it’s absolutely not in line with SBF’s sentence. He should rot in Ryker’s with people who have, unfortunately, done less harm but still found their way there.
Many people are in prison for doing less harm and for longer sentences than many white collar criminals.
Scammers deal many times the damage economically than shady car sales man
That is only true if you define 'made whole' as giving back each customer the amount of money denominated in USD that they deposited with FTX. That is super convenient for FTX, which has benefited from the spike in BTC value, but not for the customer. To really be made whole, they would need to get back exactly what they deposited. 1 BTC in? 1 BTC out.
It doesn't make SBF less of a criminal but it does make the victims less victimised.
Is that not just victim blaming? This was not an investment gone bad, this was stolen funds. It would be one thing if they lost all their money because BTC value dropped to zero. But SBF stole the money.
Often a victim of a crime could have taken different actions that would have prevented their victimization. That doesn't necessarily make it their fault, or even assign some portion of the blame to them. It's just a fact of circumstance.
A decade or so ago I was mugged by three men while walking home from a bar on a deserted, poorly-lit stretch of street at 2am on a Tuesday morning. It wasn't my fault that it happened, but I could have made other -- better -- choices leading up to that which would have prevented it from happening to me. We can argue whether or not it would have been reasonable to expect me to make those better decisions given my circumstances before getting mugged, but those are still the facts on the ground. I did not need to be walking home; I could have called a car or taken a bus instead. I did not need to be there, at that time, with my judgment, reaction time, and situational awareness impaired. This is about outcomes, not blame.
If I were looking to make some money and had a choice between buying conventional stocks or buying crypto, I'd hopefully consider the risks beforehand. By now I think it's fair to assume that most people who might buy crypto should have heard about a variety of scams, fraud, and outright theft that have occurred in the crypto space. All other things being equal (they're not, but let's say they are), a decision to buy stocks vs. crypto should take into account the expectation that there's a higher risk of losing the money to a scam when buying crypto. Again, that doesn't make it the crypto-buyer's fault when the person/company holding the crypto wallet for them steals it. But it's true that the crypto-buyer could have made different -- better -- decisions up front to avoid the possibility of that outcome.
If I run about in the road and someone runs me down, I may be the victim of driver, but also my own stupidity.
Suffering the consequences of one's own decisions doesn't automatically infer victim hood by someone else entirely.
They ran about in the road.
And the very next reply says these are unregulated schemes. So what does the USG's opinion on BTC have to do with FTX's obligation to return the assets deposited with it, or whether their renumeration constitutes 'making customers whole'?
Given that the USG is the only entity that could legally require these customers be made whole, it has everything to do with it. Depositing US dollars into a FTX account is easy: the government believes in the value of the dollar and will want customers to get back the same number of dollars they put in. A court can and might order FTX's current custodians to do their best to make that happen.
But if a customer didn't give FTX any dollars, but gave them BTC? The USG has no obligation to recognize those Bitcoins as having any particular value, or even any value whatsoever. In fact the government may be incentivized to value BTC deposited at zero, because doing so might free up more dollars to compensate people who deposited dollars, assuming there isn't enough to compensate everyone fully.
Fiduciary amounts are in $. Yes if you deposited 1 BTC expect the equivalent value at the time of your deposit
You might expect to only get the USD equivalent back, but not for one minute does that make you whole. A lot of money was in fact stolen.
Ignoring bitcoin entirely for a second, I might deposit $1000 in an (unregulated, let's say) investment account. Later that amount -- unrealized, of course -- goes up to $2000. But it turns out it was all a scam and the investment manager ran away with the money. I might think I'm entitled to the full $2000, even though that may have just been a number the fraudster typed into a database, not representing anything real. Or I might argue that making me whole means also compensating me for the lost opportunity cost of keeping the money somewhere else where I could have made, say, 10% in that time. Or I might just recognize that I was duped, there was no investment, my $1000 never actually grew, and that's all I'm entitled to getting back.
It seems like the government is interested in all the benefits of treating it as a security and none of the protections that people deserve
Definitely move on, this case had some external closure where most hurts in life don't.
However you feel about it is the right way to feel about it. Everyone copes with things differently. Regardless, it would appear some type of justice has been done in this case.
I'm actually surprised the sentence is this low. This is Bernie Madoff territory.
This doesn't get you your money back. It doesn't even necessarily make you feel better so what's the point? This gets into the philosophy of a criminal justice system.
The noble idea behind the criminal justice system is to be restorative. The offender is to be reformed so they don't repeat their crimes and can become productive members of society. This is why we push for things like education in prison, access to mental health treatment and so on. It's for our collective good. Unfortunately, the criminal justice system in the US is predominantly retributive. We punish to make ourselves feel better. There is a ton of evidence of this and it lays bare other societal issues (eg racial disparity in sentencing).
One big argument is whether heavy sentences prevent others from committing crimes. This has been used to justify, for example, three strikes laws and 10+ year sentences for mere drug possession at the height of the war on drugs. None of this works. Such crimes are the result of over-policing, up-charging by prosecutors and material conditions.
But where it actually works is with rich people. Why? Because you fine a company or a rich person and that becomes the cost of doing business. It's factored in. But depriving the wealthy of their liberty is something the wealthy want to desperately avoid.
Case in point: the Sackler family, who are hugely responsible for the opiod epidemic by knowingly lying about the addictiveness of Oxycontin. If I had my way, the Sacklers would have every asset they own seized and they would all spend the rest of their lives in a prison cell.
Put SBF's sentence in context: this Californian man was sentenced to 10 years for carjacking and robbing a gas station with a BB gun [1]. That's roughly half of SBF's sentence. Who do you think has done more societal harm?
[1]: https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/los-angeles-man-sentenc...
The harm you received was mostly financial, so the healthy way to recover is also mostly financial.
How about if you chose going to 2) knowing very well that muggings are a real possibility and you should probably not go there?
it might not be "fair", but forgiveness is healthier for you
And yet, the damage is done. Feels of anger and vengeance are withdrawals from your balance of available happiness and they don’t actually affect the end result. The money’s gone. Mourn it, accept it, and move on.
I’d totally forgive anyone for wishing bad things on him if he destroyed their investment. It’s better to forgive, but sometimes that’s asking a bit much.
Hilariously with crypto, that's not necessarily true, for better or worse. The change in valuation of underlying crypto assets means that customers can sometimes be made "whole" - meaning they get back the value in USD they put in, but not including inflation and interest, so they're still poorer than they would be, but at least not out the whole amount. It's still not resolved, but it's possible creditors in Mt Gox will be made whole. 1 BTC was worth $760 when Mt Gox went down. Today 1 BTC is around $70k, meaning they have almost $10 billion in BTC with which to pay back creditors.
SBF's crime is a lot smaller in comparison.