Ah. Good. I have remained pretty blissfully ignorant of what was happening in the trial. I’d just see the headlines, have a nice microburst of schadenfreude and move on.
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So was he, apparently.
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Showing, yet again, that just about the only crime that a rich, connected person can be convicted for is ripping off other rich, connected people.
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They only took 4 hours to deliberate! For a white collar financial crime trial that is very fast. There must have been no disagreement. It took the judge two hours to just deliver the instructions
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I just read John Lanchesters review of both books which was odd as he didn’t hate Michael Lewis’s (he knew him I think might have been part of his unusual willingness to find any virtue in trying to find good in the shit) alone among anyone I’ve read. The reason I mention this is that he claimed crypto bros always hated him as not one of them. Also his parents have long been worried/terrified by his amoral behaviour and lack of empathy which he freely admits.
Thiel and Andreesen (to pick two semi random black holes of duplicitous evil) are never so unguarded about their complete lack of care for others.
Aside from this Lanchester has a pretty good track record as a journalist of financial shenanigans over many years.
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Well, you can’t pass up the free lunch!
ETA: (Every time I’ve served on jury duty, the courts provided and paid for lunch.)
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How come the price of bitcoin is still 35k? Either there’s value in it somewhere, or … there’s more scamming to be had. Hmmm…I wonder which one it is.
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It’s a standing wave, like Jupiter’s Great Red Spot — a gigantic viscous pyramid scheme that collapses at the same rate new suckers arrive
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The Great Red Spot storm on Jupiter is rotating faster and shrinking, so as far as metaphors go, not bad.
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Madoff got 150 years.
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I don’t know whether those will be more fun (because the press don’t have to do the “innocent until proven guilty” dance) or less fun (now that he realizes “incriminate yourself and answer prosecutor’s questions with gibberish” isn’t a winning strategy)
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That’s one bit I’ve been wondering about - did he steal from rich people, or from middle-class people but on an industrial scale? Do we have a breakdown on those numbers, e.g. how many accounts were stolen from?
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I love Elizabeth Lopatto’s writing on this trial, particularly when she described the prosecutor’s performance.
Unfortunately for him, the cross-examination was conducted by Sassoon, who looks like someone who uses “summer” as a verb, and often appears deceptively timid, with her hands held close to her chest. In her cross, she simply unhinged her jaw and ate Bankman-Fried.
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Several articles covering the trial noted the reactions of the jurors during SBF’s testimony, and, tbh, I’m surprised that it took 4 hours.
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apparently, quite a number of different people. nine million by estimates
many not even americans
probably its collapse was too big to ignore, already too late to bail out, and maybe not important enough in the economy to bother protecting
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“This trial revealed Bankman-Fried’s father was in 17 Signal group chats associated with FTX, including the “small group chat” that was attempting to stave off FTX’s impending collapse. Joseph Bankman was mentioned in witness testimony about Bankman-Fried’s meetings with Bahamian regulators. Should the second trial take place, there is the possibility for further embarrassment.”
Disclaimer: I once was an extra in the background of a traing video for corporate lawyers, which obviously qualifies me to comment on a legal system I’m intimately au fait with from watching Petrocelli as a kid.
So my legal opinion on this is that dad should be worried about ending up in the dock himself and cut a deal while he still can.
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Nine million definitely qualifies as “industrial scale”.
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I imagine if you, I, among other readers here comprised the jury, it would’ve only taken 4 minutes 
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I might’ve stuck around for the free lunch.
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