Deterrence would involve beheading him this afternoon.

Really, my preferred punishment for him would be a sentence of 25 years working in a non-managerial, non-ownership hourly position in the quick-service restaurant or janitorial fields, earning not more than the Federal minimum.

You‘re in luck, because federal prisoners can be forced to work for even less

No, that's bad for us, as we would be on the hook to subsidize his upkeep. I want him to join the working poor. I'd accept him getting EBT or Section 8 as part of his sentence...maybe.

> Deterrence would involve beheading him this afternoon.

i think you missed the whole "justice" point there.

spending 25 year behind bars with 21+ yrs mandatory seems like enough to deter most people.

He won't do 25. He'll do ten, and it won't be at Devil's Island either.

I'm not sure that's a sufficiently bad outcome to deter the next crypto narcissist.

federal convictions are 85% minimum (though he can be pardoned, in theory)

I don't know that it will actually "deter" anyone, I think most criminals think they're not going to get caught, but I think it comes down to the much simpler "it's hard to commit more fraud when you're in prison".

I'm not going to say it's impossible, maybe he could be managing this big crypto empire from jail, but it would certainly be harder to do all that from prison.

professional criminals absolutely think about what’s getting prosecuted and how much hard time you’re looking at. It’s a business to them so it becomes just a part of the risk equation.

For the “isolation from society” i think it’s the least compelling part of lengthy incarceration. You can probably achieve the same effect with just house arrest and other such restrictions

They tried that with Sam Bankman Fried and he broke the terms of his house arrest almost immediately.

I believe he will immediately start new scams and rope in fool me twice grade investors and be very effective if he has a nice WFH environment instead of the filtered mail and computer with no network kind of an environment.

He probably is a higher risk of racking up 25 more years every 18 months than a shank specialist.

That's the thing; I think a lot of the violent offenders who steal money in prison are often just desperate people. They never had a lot of money, so they mug someone and steal the wallet and car of someone that they think is better off with the hope of actually having money. It's still wrong, I don't support it, but it's at least a much more sympathetic action.

People like Sam Bankman Fried are much harder for me to feel bad over. He was never struggling to pay rent or having to worry about not being able to afford groceries next month. He was already well off, and just decided to gamble with other (poorer) people's money because he wanted more money.

This means, to me, that this was a more cold and calculated thing, not something out of desperation or frustration, just greed. Robbing someone that you think is rich is bad. Robbing someone you think is poor is something supervillains do. If he's already been able to square that circle once, I see no reason that he wouldn't be able to do it again.

Forgive me for not crying over how he might actually have to pay consequences for his actions.

> I don't know that it will actually "deter" anyone…

I think there is probably a significant number of people who wouldn't normally be criminals, and thus aren't technically being "deterred", but would end up being just that little bit less scrupulous if they regularly see prominent examples of criminal behavior going unpunished.