He’s a fraudster who was content evading justice in the Bahamas for years to come. Of course there is popular desire for retribution, even beyond that which exists and continues to build against crypto at large.
Seems to me that he made chart go up for no reason and everyone was perfectly happy with that, and when chart went down for the same reasons (i.e. fraud/no legitimate reason) then everyone is upset about it.
If people are upset about lesser offenses getting handled more aggressively, they should spend some time lobbying for lesser offenses to get handled less aggressively.
This is an absolute guess because I don't know, but I think a lot of it was average joe crypto-curious investors having their money stolen and then given to the smart financial firms who were on the winning side of his secret bad bets. There may also have been some pension fund involvement because they seem to be caught up in this stuff on a regular basis. (Because of the way bonuses work, managers can skim off the top by investing in known Ponzi schemes and taking the credit for the 20% returns. They know they're not going to have to pay those bonuses back when they're inevitably "surprised." This happened with Madoff and was a big contributor to his success.)
Also is it $10B in stolen deposits?! I seem to be coming across a $1-2B figure but admittedly haven't been following super closely.
Funds misappropriated by Alameda and spent on VC investments may ultimately have become people's salaries. Some politicians have announced their intention to donate an amount of money equal to SBF's contributions of customer funds, but it's unclear whether they mean "donate to my own 501(c)(3)" or "return to FTX to be paid to creditors" and the phrasing certainly sounds more like the former. Most of the funds were probably embezzled (you will hear these people say "loaned" I guess) by FTX/Alameda executives or lost as part of Alameda's trading operations. Recovery of trading losses is extremely unlikely, especially trading losses that occurred long before the bankruptcy on venues other than FTX. SBF and BlockFi are currently arguing that each of them should receive the $441 million of Robinhood shares that SBF purchased using customer funds. "Hackers" stole about $500 million of customer funds from FTX US and FTX Intl immediately following the bankruptcy, and these funds have (mostly?) made their way into RenBTC and been bridged to native BTC and sent to mixers.
Some FTX customers who withdrew funds as part of their normal operations will face clawbacks, and some other FTX customers such as Modulo Capital and @AlgodTrading who have essentially stolen from all other creditors will hopefully also face clawbacks, but the total amount recoverable this way is maybe $1-4 bn, and all of these people are creditors anyway, so giving the money to other creditors doesn't do anything to address the shortfall.
Then SBF allegedly moved those assets over to Alameda for risky trades, and also pulled some out to buy fancy houses.
The "billions destroyed" seems more likely to refer to the general "destruction" of nominal wealth which, I posit, wasn't real to begin with.
This is my honest read of the situation, you're welcome to disagree. I have no agenda, only an opinion.
We deny bail to serial killers to avoid putting lives at risk, not because they're extra guilty. There's no indication SBF is a danger to anyone around him, and the conditions of his bail include counseling in case he's a danger to himself. Maybe he does have a house in Argentina with a stack of unmarked bills, who knows, but that is that the bond and the ankle monitor are for.
I don’t believe in his guilt beyond even reasonable suspicion. I do think he is a flight risk. He is delusional enough to attempt it, and may have the hidden means by which to make it.
I'm totally game for working for a more equitable society where everyone gets to live in dignity even if they put their money into bad crypto exchanges though. Let's definitely do that, regardless of what happens in this case.
That it’s not a jail. Jails are tougher to get out of than ankle bracelets.
His parents are going to spend the rest of their lives fighting civil lawsuits, if not criminal cases of their own. Losing their home is a matter of time. It is difficult to even say to what degree their plight matters to him.
The love of a parent for their son. That's a benefit of doubt I'd need to see extraordinary evidence of sociopathy to discard.
It is, in fact, a $250M bail bond, people just have a very wrong mental model, based on a bad generalization from an already slightly wrong mental model of the terms when an arms-length bail agent provides surety to the court for the defendant, of what that means.
Are you familiar with the "please don't sneer" guideline?
I'd propose our discourse would be hobbled if we couldn't make comments like, "many people in this discussion have misconception X". But perhaps "very wrong mental model" was too many superlatives and "misunderstanding" would've been sufficient.
The guy stole billions from average people AND big time investors (he pissed on both buckets), he then proceeded to make such dumb mistakes that make him seem like it has a borderline mental issue, he also happens to be an absolute zero for charisma. How do you expect someone to sympathize with him, honestly?
What would you like to happen then?
He's not, and the perception that he is comes from a misunderstanding of the systems involved, which is why the descriptions of how this is supposedly special treatment or surprising tend to include as the foundation multiple layers of wrong assumptions about how bail works in general.
Do any of them deserve it?
This really seems to me like a Thursday in the criminal justice system, with every single step being scrutinized and cast into the worst possible light.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/judge-sbf-case-recuses-h...
He "stinks of corruption" in part because he's Jewish? How am I meant to interpret this as anything other than bigotry?