Caroline Ellison testified that Bankman-Fried told her customer funds were “a good source of capital.”
"
Knowing when that was said in the timeline would help the reader. I'm still unsure when Ellison realized SBF was fine with stealing from customers. Later in this excerpt it was mentioned the CZ buyout was the first time it was done in a large scale, to her knowledge. Not exactly the same thing, but maybe then? Probably should be stated here.
"
He gave himself, with typically improvised precision, a 5% chance of becoming President someday
"
The great thing about numbers is they can really highlight the absurdity of some beliefs. It turns what might be called aspiration (I might be president someday) into a delusion (I have a 1 in 20 chance of being president).
"
in practice he knew that the power of money trumped any democratic institution.
"
So that seems to be a fair assumption. But, by corollary, it looks like he thought his odds of making more than Bloomberg money (which didn't win the presidency) and instead making Musk money (which did), and thus become president, were also 1 out of 20. Also, pretty sure no one can use the word "trump" as a verb now without considering the double meaning.
“fell into five categories:”
Why not call them the five “in”s?
Indeterminate and Illiquid investments
Intangible philanthropy
Immeasurable marketing
Interfering politics
Ineffectual trading and money management
“
the source of the strangely laudatory title of Lewis’ book, “Going Infinite.”
“
Had he called it “Feeling Infinite,” it may have been more appropriate for SBF. Likely would be a very different book.
“
a famed white technology and cryptocurrency founder with a large jewfro of curly black hair uses a long lever to push a detailed globe of the Earth showing continents and oceans off a tall cliff while wearing an ftx t-shirt
“
Ah, AI, don't you know a stick without a fulcrum is just a stick and not a lever? Also, if you are in the AI-is-theft camp, can anyone use it? Even ironically like this? I'm guessing DZM purposely didn't try to tweak prompts so SBF would be actually using the stick as a lever, so as to show how AI fails without extreme handholding.
“
they “got it done” with $1.2 million of customer funds,
“
$1.2 billion
“
Ellison testified that this was the first time such a large single block of money was drawn from customer funds
“
This is the first really interesting insight I've gotten in a long time. I thought I knew almost all the details, but the fact that the buyout from CZ was the first large use of customer funds (that Ellison was aware of) is fascinating. It's the move that seemed the most personal, the most about ego and emotion, “an antagonistic obsession,” and thus the least borne from supposedly dispassionate, analytical risk calculations. It was likely the catalyst and point of no return, in one. And no doubt once he convinced himself this was actually a calculated and sensible move, all the rest would be even easier to convince himself. Really worth more exploring. It's the “inciting incident” that ends Act 1, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-act_structure, if you will.
“
The allusion was an attempt to lay blame for FTX’s collapse on CZ’s liquidation of FTT tokens, which helped topple Bankman-Fried’s house of cards.
“
There it is, the liquidation of FTT, end of Act 2. The culmination of a character arc towards hubris and conviction of himself as savior of the world against perceived foes like CZ. Of course, Act 3 would be the real conviction, but against SBF. To make it tidy and show his reversal to humility and regret in this third act, a “rosebud” moment if you will, would help a script, but be unfair to real events. Rather, something more subtle, like a lack of confidence finally showing, a mini Rosebud maybe. Honestly, even Rosebud being a (slight spoiler?) deathbed thing for Kane/Hearst was fairly subtle, and probably necessary, as Hearst himself likely didn't do anything that tangibly reversed in his lifetime. People rarely do.
“
he now know
“
we now know
“
leaked to the New York Times by Bankman-Fried’s in the attempt
“
Bankman-Fried in the attempt
“
in part through his romantic hold on her
“
This was teased, but not mentioned again / clarified in this section. How was the romantic hold involved, specifically?
“
The idea of FTX creating this huge venture fund … that made customer funds a necessary part of the equation
FTX customers continues to partly underwrite the employment of the ex-wife of the man who converted Sam Bankman-Fried to Effective Altruism.
“
FTX customers continue to. Regardless, awesome point.
“
was no inherently
“
was not inherently
“
of future earnings
, not present revenue
“
of future earning, not present revenue
“
complicating attempts to repay depositors.
“
May not need spelling out, but I would, how diverting customer funds into Illiquid investments is particularly bad. E.g. “More importantly, it would make it impossible to use those funds to pay FTX users trying to withdraw before the collapse. Using the funds for anything other than its communicated purpose was already wrong. All customer funds should have simply been kept in safe storage, most of it “cold” storage, not connected to the internet until needed. But this Illiquidity, and thus inability to retrieve fast enough in case of a “bank run,” though FTX is very much not a bank, made this misuse even more egregious.”
have the outline of a man using his wealth to replace one CEO/lover with another
“
Also, awesome point. And not very smart. You're supposed to use family for fraud, not ex-lovers. Clearly he had a huge head to think he had enough charm to keep his lovers in line, and this huge head was so up his own ass, he could not see his own dick was getting in the way. Please do not use this as an AI image prompt.
“
Slack message send by
“
sent by
“
July 29. Two months later came the true deluge, though: a series of 5 payments totaling $100 million on September 19, and seven transfers totaling $250 million, on September 25th and 26t of 2022.
“
29th, 19th, 26th.
“
Though far smaller in dollar terms than the half-billion funneled to Bankman-Fried’s allies at Anthropic, a total of $5 million given to a Bay Area nonprofit called the Center for Applied Rationality reveals even more of the ideological commitments that drove him.
“
I don't know. After reading this section, I can't help but think these specific philanthropy donations are more “end note” than “main” book content.
A) This misuse is about 1/100th the monetary size of all misuses in other sections. You imagine the scale of it would matter. Wouldn't be surprised if it felt like pocket change to SBF.
B) SBF doesn't read. Is he really that up on who speaks at the conferences being held at the property of the organization getting his ill-gotten pocket change? It's fascinating the connection to white supremacy, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had no clue. Ex-lover in previous section is Asian. The most powerful people at FTX, who later testified against him, included a woman and several non-white men. Is that because he wanted to exploit them? He wanted to be the white(r) supreme? Or is it more likely because he went to MIT and lived in California, which are all pretty diverse, and while he might be blind about his privilege, nonetheless had no problem with dating and working with minorities, or for that matter trading Kimchi premiums? I think the latter. The bigger point is the better one: The guy just helps those close to him, and almost certainly with the intention of quid pro quo benefits for himself.
C) It feels like an astonishing bit of detective work that beguiled the detective enough to getting gumshoehorned in. It's appalling the associations, but it's a bit of trying to get it both ways. One way: He really believes in this stuff and it's repellant if you look deeply, and he has, so he believes in repellent stuff. The other way: He doesn't really believe in this stuff, never looks too deeply at any of it beyond as an excuse for his actions, it's just his social group, and he wants to keep his friends. The latter, which is typical cronyism and self-centered behavior, explains all the other bigger expenditures. The former isn't necessary, nor fits, but definitely might fit for a lot of the people mentioned. They just aren't the topic of the book.
I'd still keep as End Note, if it is clear that SBF probably didn't know all the implications, because then it nicely nips in the bud any “yeah his intentions were wrong, but it all went to a good cause” thinking. Then again, maybe DZM can make it clear SBF knew about the problematic parts, the racism, the Eugenics, in which case, let's hear it.
“
$2 million send directly
“
sent
“
In a July of 2024
“
In July
“
uncanny photograph
“
That pic is perfect. Needs to be in the book, in color (unless ridiculous cost, then black and white, but have a second pic with a blow up of his face). Never seen before. A thousand words. Or at least, with respect to the woman on his shoulder, these words: “Wow Sammy darling, you don't just get the alpha, you ARE the alpha! We are but eight score young blondes and brunettes. We need you, Sammy baby. Can you not squeeze us into your polycule?“
“
“probably, the most connected person I’ve ever met,”
“
Just five or ten years earlier, considering the proximity of the Bahamas to the Virgin Islands, I can imagine an alternate timeline where instead of this Kives guy, SBF meets Jeffery Epstein. Had he, SBF's convictions might not have mattered. Maybe could have made it on his 1 in 20 shot. There are “connections” and then there are Epstein “I could hate you and still would protect you, as we're all going down otherwise” connections. Those kind of trump all others.
Thanks for the thoughts re: CFAR. I think my rejoinder is that the book is substantially about all the people and movements *around* Sam who both guided and enabled his crimes, and benefitted from the veil of deception around him. CFAR is *deeply* tied to the broader EA/Rat scene, which isn't quite driven home in this draft, but basically their ideas played a big role in underwriting SBF's narrative as a "genius," so the scale of the financing doesn't limit their culpability. And as later chapters will articulate in more detail, eugenics is pretty deeply tied to these ideas in turn - it's not so much a question of whether SBF was personally aware of those connections, as unearthing them as part of a broader analysis of the entire movement, of which SBF was for years held up as an exemplar.
"Turning aspiration into delusion" is a great analysis of the numbers game here, I might steal it.
Unfortunately it's not clear when Bankman-Fried expressed the sentiment about user money as capital to Ellison, her testimony didn't fix it on a timeline. But it was truly general practice, they included customer funds in a lot of spending scenarios they gamed out.
"
Caroline Ellison testified that Bankman-Fried told her customer funds were “a good source of capital.”
"
Knowing when that was said in the timeline would help the reader. I'm still unsure when Ellison realized SBF was fine with stealing from customers. Later in this excerpt it was mentioned the CZ buyout was the first time it was done in a large scale, to her knowledge. Not exactly the same thing, but maybe then? Probably should be stated here.
"
He gave himself, with typically improvised precision, a 5% chance of becoming President someday
"
The great thing about numbers is they can really highlight the absurdity of some beliefs. It turns what might be called aspiration (I might be president someday) into a delusion (I have a 1 in 20 chance of being president).
"
in practice he knew that the power of money trumped any democratic institution.
"
So that seems to be a fair assumption. But, by corollary, it looks like he thought his odds of making more than Bloomberg money (which didn't win the presidency) and instead making Musk money (which did), and thus become president, were also 1 out of 20. Also, pretty sure no one can use the word "trump" as a verb now without considering the double meaning.
“fell into five categories:”
Why not call them the five “in”s?
Indeterminate and Illiquid investments
Intangible philanthropy
Immeasurable marketing
Interfering politics
Ineffectual trading and money management
“
the source of the strangely laudatory title of Lewis’ book, “Going Infinite.”
“
Had he called it “Feeling Infinite,” it may have been more appropriate for SBF. Likely would be a very different book.
“
a famed white technology and cryptocurrency founder with a large jewfro of curly black hair uses a long lever to push a detailed globe of the Earth showing continents and oceans off a tall cliff while wearing an ftx t-shirt
“
Ah, AI, don't you know a stick without a fulcrum is just a stick and not a lever? Also, if you are in the AI-is-theft camp, can anyone use it? Even ironically like this? I'm guessing DZM purposely didn't try to tweak prompts so SBF would be actually using the stick as a lever, so as to show how AI fails without extreme handholding.
“
they “got it done” with $1.2 million of customer funds,
“
$1.2 billion
“
Ellison testified that this was the first time such a large single block of money was drawn from customer funds
“
This is the first really interesting insight I've gotten in a long time. I thought I knew almost all the details, but the fact that the buyout from CZ was the first large use of customer funds (that Ellison was aware of) is fascinating. It's the move that seemed the most personal, the most about ego and emotion, “an antagonistic obsession,” and thus the least borne from supposedly dispassionate, analytical risk calculations. It was likely the catalyst and point of no return, in one. And no doubt once he convinced himself this was actually a calculated and sensible move, all the rest would be even easier to convince himself. Really worth more exploring. It's the “inciting incident” that ends Act 1, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-act_structure, if you will.
“
The allusion was an attempt to lay blame for FTX’s collapse on CZ’s liquidation of FTT tokens, which helped topple Bankman-Fried’s house of cards.
“
There it is, the liquidation of FTT, end of Act 2. The culmination of a character arc towards hubris and conviction of himself as savior of the world against perceived foes like CZ. Of course, Act 3 would be the real conviction, but against SBF. To make it tidy and show his reversal to humility and regret in this third act, a “rosebud” moment if you will, would help a script, but be unfair to real events. Rather, something more subtle, like a lack of confidence finally showing, a mini Rosebud maybe. Honestly, even Rosebud being a (slight spoiler?) deathbed thing for Kane/Hearst was fairly subtle, and probably necessary, as Hearst himself likely didn't do anything that tangibly reversed in his lifetime. People rarely do.
“
he now know
“
we now know
“
leaked to the New York Times by Bankman-Fried’s in the attempt
“
Bankman-Fried in the attempt
“
in part through his romantic hold on her
“
This was teased, but not mentioned again / clarified in this section. How was the romantic hold involved, specifically?
“
The idea of FTX creating this huge venture fund … that made customer funds a necessary part of the equation
“
Anyone else reading this section and thinking Tether and their recent venture fund? Tether, of course, being one of SBF's favorite crypto projects. I definitely hope for some of this in the book: https://protos.com/was-tether-at-the-center-of-sam-bankman-frieds-empire/ https://medium.com/chainargos/usdt-on-tron-ftx-wtf-is-really-happening-ef0cb807019a
“
who claimed by this time claimed to barely
“
who claimed by this time to barely
“
FTX customers continues to partly underwrite the employment of the ex-wife of the man who converted Sam Bankman-Fried to Effective Altruism.
“
FTX customers continue to. Regardless, awesome point.
“
was no inherently
“
was not inherently
“
of future earnings
, not present revenue
“
of future earning, not present revenue
“
complicating attempts to repay depositors.
“
May not need spelling out, but I would, how diverting customer funds into Illiquid investments is particularly bad. E.g. “More importantly, it would make it impossible to use those funds to pay FTX users trying to withdraw before the collapse. Using the funds for anything other than its communicated purpose was already wrong. All customer funds should have simply been kept in safe storage, most of it “cold” storage, not connected to the internet until needed. But this Illiquidity, and thus inability to retrieve fast enough in case of a “bank run,” though FTX is very much not a bank, made this misuse even more egregious.”
“
have the outline of a man using his wealth to replace one CEO/lover with another
“
Also, awesome point. And not very smart. You're supposed to use family for fraud, not ex-lovers. Clearly he had a huge head to think he had enough charm to keep his lovers in line, and this huge head was so up his own ass, he could not see his own dick was getting in the way. Please do not use this as an AI image prompt.
“
Slack message send by
“
sent by
“
July 29. Two months later came the true deluge, though: a series of 5 payments totaling $100 million on September 19, and seven transfers totaling $250 million, on September 25th and 26t of 2022.
“
29th, 19th, 26th.
“
Though far smaller in dollar terms than the half-billion funneled to Bankman-Fried’s allies at Anthropic, a total of $5 million given to a Bay Area nonprofit called the Center for Applied Rationality reveals even more of the ideological commitments that drove him.
“
I don't know. After reading this section, I can't help but think these specific philanthropy donations are more “end note” than “main” book content.
A) This misuse is about 1/100th the monetary size of all misuses in other sections. You imagine the scale of it would matter. Wouldn't be surprised if it felt like pocket change to SBF.
B) SBF doesn't read. Is he really that up on who speaks at the conferences being held at the property of the organization getting his ill-gotten pocket change? It's fascinating the connection to white supremacy, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had no clue. Ex-lover in previous section is Asian. The most powerful people at FTX, who later testified against him, included a woman and several non-white men. Is that because he wanted to exploit them? He wanted to be the white(r) supreme? Or is it more likely because he went to MIT and lived in California, which are all pretty diverse, and while he might be blind about his privilege, nonetheless had no problem with dating and working with minorities, or for that matter trading Kimchi premiums? I think the latter. The bigger point is the better one: The guy just helps those close to him, and almost certainly with the intention of quid pro quo benefits for himself.
C) It feels like an astonishing bit of detective work that beguiled the detective enough to getting gumshoehorned in. It's appalling the associations, but it's a bit of trying to get it both ways. One way: He really believes in this stuff and it's repellant if you look deeply, and he has, so he believes in repellent stuff. The other way: He doesn't really believe in this stuff, never looks too deeply at any of it beyond as an excuse for his actions, it's just his social group, and he wants to keep his friends. The latter, which is typical cronyism and self-centered behavior, explains all the other bigger expenditures. The former isn't necessary, nor fits, but definitely might fit for a lot of the people mentioned. They just aren't the topic of the book.
I'd still keep as End Note, if it is clear that SBF probably didn't know all the implications, because then it nicely nips in the bud any “yeah his intentions were wrong, but it all went to a good cause” thinking. Then again, maybe DZM can make it clear SBF knew about the problematic parts, the racism, the Eugenics, in which case, let's hear it.
“
$2 million send directly
“
sent
“
In a July of 2024
“
In July
“
uncanny photograph
“
That pic is perfect. Needs to be in the book, in color (unless ridiculous cost, then black and white, but have a second pic with a blow up of his face). Never seen before. A thousand words. Or at least, with respect to the woman on his shoulder, these words: “Wow Sammy darling, you don't just get the alpha, you ARE the alpha! We are but eight score young blondes and brunettes. We need you, Sammy baby. Can you not squeeze us into your polycule?“
“
“probably, the most connected person I’ve ever met,”
“
Just five or ten years earlier, considering the proximity of the Bahamas to the Virgin Islands, I can imagine an alternate timeline where instead of this Kives guy, SBF meets Jeffery Epstein. Had he, SBF's convictions might not have mattered. Maybe could have made it on his 1 in 20 shot. There are “connections” and then there are Epstein “I could hate you and still would protect you, as we're all going down otherwise” connections. Those kind of trump all others.
Thanks for the thoughts re: CFAR. I think my rejoinder is that the book is substantially about all the people and movements *around* Sam who both guided and enabled his crimes, and benefitted from the veil of deception around him. CFAR is *deeply* tied to the broader EA/Rat scene, which isn't quite driven home in this draft, but basically their ideas played a big role in underwriting SBF's narrative as a "genius," so the scale of the financing doesn't limit their culpability. And as later chapters will articulate in more detail, eugenics is pretty deeply tied to these ideas in turn - it's not so much a question of whether SBF was personally aware of those connections, as unearthing them as part of a broader analysis of the entire movement, of which SBF was for years held up as an exemplar.
"Turning aspiration into delusion" is a great analysis of the numbers game here, I might steal it.
Unfortunately it's not clear when Bankman-Fried expressed the sentiment about user money as capital to Ellison, her testimony didn't fix it on a timeline. But it was truly general practice, they included customer funds in a lot of spending scenarios they gamed out.