SBF only had paper wealth. His political donations totaled tens of millions (iirc). On this scale that's a rounding error.

To paraphrase Chris Rock, SBF was rich, but Charlie Munger is wealthy.

He was a highly privileged kid, son of Stanford professors / attorneys, worked for Jane Street, raised a couple billion in capital and would have stayed a billionaire if he just hadn't stolen from his customers. FTX by itself was worth billions without the degenerate Alameda trading strategies being deployed against their own clients.

Problem is Alameda was needed by FTX as a market maker.

Alameda was over 50% of the trades and often the counterparty of the others.

It is a scam in the end, FTX will die without Alameda.

This debate makes zero sense. You are both arguing where some extremely binary line is placed in society. If this how you all think about everything?

A really cynical view of the world is that the rags to riches story is something the power structure tolerates because it 1) brings in a little fresh blood to replace families that self destruct and to give them something else to gossip about and 2) the token successes are an opiate for the masses. The moment they lose all hope head will roll. Most days I try not to think this way but some days it’s difficult to avoid.

Someone else said the problem was that SBF stole from his customers. And while it’s true that this is often sufficient to bring you down, it’s often only when you steal from the powerful that the wheels of justice turn so swiftly. He’s being made an example.

> only when you steal from the powerful that the wheels of justice turn so swiftly

SBF stole nothing meaningful from anyone powerful.

He did something worse: he embarrassed them.

> he embarrassed them

Who is “them”? There is no serious power embarrassed by FTX. The seriously powerful never got close enough to be tarnished.

I think the closest you'd get is Larry David, Kevin O'Leary, and Tom Brady. Wealthy but definitely not anyone of serious power or consequence.

That may be true, but perception matters, and a lot of virtual ink has been spent on his political ties, donations, contributions to regulation, and meetings with government officials, all the way up to the White House.

Powerful people are acting quickly to publicly distance themselves from him.

> acting quickly to publicly distance themselves from him

The point being they’re making and keeping that distance. This conspiracy theory, that SBF is facing consequences only because he sort of maybe embarrassed Ricchetti, has no legs to stand on.

That's a strawman. The quote you disputed was:

> only when you steal from the powerful that the wheels of justice turn so swiftly

Not:

> only when you steal from the powerful that the wheels of justice turn [at all]

And certainly not:

> SBF is facing consequences only because ...

Sure, I’ll dispute that, too. Crypto is a hated industry. FTX blew up loudly, fascinatingly, and then SBF basically admitted guilt in multiple public forums. None of this went unexpectedly quickly. Many of the people proposing the current conspiracy were, weeks ago, claiming he would skate away free.

To the degree powerful people were embarrassed by him, it was in the Bahamas. Not here. Not at all.

I don't want to argue over the semantics of the word "embarrassed". Perhaps we can both agree that, whatever your (or their) personal feelings about the issue, it has objectively resulted in a lot of negative press coverage.

And that (even if only because of the negative coverage) powerful people are taking steps (like returning millions of dollars) to distance themselves from him.

And finally that, whether it's the motive or not, swift prosecution is an effective way for officials to distance themselves.

The rest is speculation, but not crazy.

Sequoia wasc embarrassed enough to delete their fulsome hagiography of SBF. not to mention the 200 mill or so underscore of their fawning "i love this founder!!" vote of confidence in him.

Drawing the attention of the masses to the game also makes them nervous, even if not embarrassed.

Well SBF pissed off too many wealthier people and was too obvious in his infinite money scam.

Munger at least has proved himself many times and has the history to show it.

Poor comparison.

He made other rich people lose money, that’s a no no.

He robbed other rich people, cancels it out.