I doubt there was any time in his career where all the accounts were fully legit and he could have cashed out. There would always have been some investors who hadn't got the returns they expected and would have gone digging.
Valuations don’t mean much until the money changes hands, typically with the asset holder losing.
Short answer is they're (their stock is) worth as much as people are willing to pay.
“Do not count on the gratitude of deeds done for people in the past, you must make them grateful for things you will do for them in the future.”
- Mario Puzo, Omerta.
which means SBF won't be able to read it
If you read the article, all it says it that he's going to jail for the completely legal act of publishing correspondence that was sent to him. He hasn't been sentenced or convicted or anything. The judge just doesn't like him.
Theoretically, you deny bail to people who are flight risks.
...from the private diaries of his ex-girlfriend and former business partner who is now testifying against him, making this the latest in a long series of failed attempts at witness tampering, a federal crime in its own right. It's also what has turned out to be the last straw with a judge who has up to this point been astonishingly tolerant with all the other ways Bankman-Fried has tried to screw around with the remarkably lenient terms of his former bail agreement.
… "in order to intimidate a witness in the case".
Clearly the judge didn't consider it "completely legal", presumably based on 18 U.S.C. § 1512[0] which says the following may result in a fine or imprisonment (edited for brevity):
(b) Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to—
(1) influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding;
(2) cause or induce any person to—
(A) withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other object, from an official proceeding;
...
(d) Whoever intentionally harasses another person and thereby hinders, delays, prevents, or dissuades any person from—
(1) attending or testifying in an official proceeding;
hah no. The billionaire claim was bull used to promote himself and his businesses. I wouldn't be surprised if a detailed accounting showed that he has never had a positive liquidation value for FTX and Alameda at any point in time.
It's a common problem people have in reasoning about fraudsters-- there is a tendency to only peel back one layer of fraud and get caught because the fraud continues all the way down. :)
Granted, but as we have seen with these exit scams you don't need to be operating a cash or crypto positive business in order to run off with people's funds.
All of these leaks and loans etc... were likely him siphoning funds if/when he was eventually caught. I still think it takes a certain kind of crook to setup shop in the Bahamas, purchase an immensely ostentatious home, make your sexual proclivities known to the World while splashing money around to make politicians make favourable legislation for your crooked business, stream yourself playing video games while doing pitches to VCs and getting them, all while talking about effective altruism and guaranteed yield and none of that has to do with being business savvy and everything to do with be a grifter.
He is like Razzlekhan's bf, he had a golden ticket with billions in BTC and could have just woke up and left to Russia or Belarus (and eventually Turkey where all the Oligarchs are now buying up sea-side Villas given the distressed Lira) where he could have even been chummy with Putin given how he evaded the US intelligence community: instead the two were out buying Playstations with walmart gift cards and making shitty rap videos on youtube and got pinched when they left a copy of the private keys on a cloud server!
But the kind of grifters who are able to say "this is good enough" don't tend to find themselves atop such a gigantic scheme to begin with... they scam off a few million dollars and fade silently into the night.
Call me cynical and conspiratorial, but I expect that the camera glitches are being set up as we speak. The sleepy guards being scheduled. The one photo of "his body" being generated. On the bright side, at least SBF isn't tall enough to simply stand up if he were to "kill himself" in his cell by hanging.
What gives me optimism is that if this is done, we can at least have some visibility into his accounts.
Even assuming it's true that Epstein didn't take his own life, SBF holds nowhere near the level of significance to justify such actions. The matters he's been associated with pale in comparison to Epstein and the potential political fallout is extremely minor in comparison.
The grim, yet in all probability accurate, reality is that confronting the prospect of spending numerous decades incarcerated is an exceedingly tough pill to swallow, particularly for individuals who've enjoyed rather comfortable existences and anticipated its continuation.
If, by any chance, we find SBF in a cell dead it's significantly more probable that this is the underlying cause.
“Bankman-Fried contributed more than $70 million to election campaigns in less than 18 months, placing him among the nation’s top political donors. He personally gave at least $40 million to politicians and political action committees ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, mostly to Democrats and liberal-leaning groups, making him the second overall top donor to Democrats, only behind George Soros, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.”
https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donatio...
Should you hold the view that politicians are entirely self-serving and akin to human cockroaches, there's minimal justification for endorsing him or expending even an iota of political capital on him moving forward. Conversely, there's ample incentive to distance oneself from him at present while fervently attempting to retain possession of the funds he has already contributed.
Formerly an asset, he has now transformed into nothing more than a liability that can be side-stepped by just feigning ignorance and maintaining distance.
Yep, even with their omertà vows, that's what finally got the New York mob to start turning on each other. Nobody, even those street-hardened guys, wanted to spend decades or the rest of his life in prison, so they started cooperating with prosecutors.
Can someone give me a link to a single, concise article that explains this whole thing from the beginning?
That about sums it up.
I think some people just want/enjoy/need to play the game regardless of what the score is.
Or [0]...
This is peak HN, as is the bulk of the top post, you guys are entirely clueless and refuse to see anything that detracts from your own insular narrative(s). Seriously, if you think SBF was a conman, which he is, thenyou should really take a dose of reality and see what pillars SV and big tech as a whole is built on. it really is no differnt than that of Mega corps, Wall Street and Banks.
He and his ex-gf worked at Jane Street, and are part of a SV elite in-class, they (but specifically SBF) were already living the high-life before they even knew what Cryptocurrencies were. That was probably never thier goal, they probably sought relevance in a World that was curated and manicured for them, only to find out that this space will eat you up and ridicule you to no end if you suck at it mercilessly: I speak from experience as a founder in this space.
Sidenote: I'm glad it was downvoted as I know it struck a nerve and serve dit's intended purpose; but I'm also really starting to feel I am becoming a sort Tech-Diogenes around here, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad seeing as how I know how is fate ended.
I reckoned he'd escape some how being let off on some technicality of some prosecutor not following due diligence.