I think at least some people who buy cryptocurrency think they are investing in technology. They are confusing the non-governmental currency with the underlying enabling technology. People have used non-governmental currencies before but block chain makes it feasible to do it globally. Still, the concept is the same. It’s just some guy who prints slips of paper and a bunch of people agree to use it like money.
Well if he blew one assessment of Bankman-Fried, I’m not sure his assessment of him being “on the spectrum” is all that reliable.
Bitcoin would be deflationary even if no one ever lost access to a wallet; even if all 21 million BTC were forever available, the world’s supply of goods and services keeps increasing, thereby causing deflation against BTC.
Good point. Perhaps this has a bigger effect than lost keys.
No shit. For some reason you cut off the part where I said that he didn’t know him very well. It was interesting to me to be one degree of separation from the person. When you grow up with people you’re not at all surprised at how they turn out and others surprise you very much.
No longer living with parents:
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered Bankman-Fried’s bail revoked after prosecutors said he’d tried to harass a key witness in his fraud case last month when he showed a journalist her private writings and in January when he reached out to the general counsel for FTX with an encrypted communication.
It’s not clear from the article that he’s actually reported to jail yet. His lawyers have asked for a stay while the order is appealed.
The article has been updated, he’s clearly incarcerated. They request for a stay was denied. It described him handing his valuables off to this lawyer and getting handcuffed.
Then it said
Bankman Fried was sent for the night to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
His lawyer will probably appeal it, and he might be moved to another facility, but right now he’s in jail.
ETA: it’s weird when an article is seriously updated after it’s been commented on, I had a real WTF moment there.
Incredibly dumb for a defendant to tamper with witnesses. Stay away and let the attorneys handle the case.
He’s a disruptor.
Maybe. We only know of the cases where the tamperers get caught. Maybe vast numbers of cases are altered or dropped by successful tampering.
Tampering is probably far more effective when you’re a gang boss than when you’re a disgraced and spoiled white collar crook.
The notorious challenges of getting poor folks to testify against the endemic violence in their neighborhoods is a form of ambient tampering rather than explicit tampering. But it sure hampers the effective administration of justice. IOW, tampering works.
In my area there was this brash, arrogant councilman who installed spyware on the computer of anither council member and released that info to the public, thinking it was perfectly legal. It wasn’t. He went to prison for a year. Afterwards he went on trial again, and (brashly and arrogantly) tampered with the grand jury. This time he (literally) cried and begged not to be sent to prison again, saying he had learned his lesson and would never be heard from again. He spent a few months in prison for that. A few years later he fell out of a tree and died. (I’m posting mostly for the unexpected twist at the end.)
That first article says,
Trout was convicted in state court in Greenville March 31 on charges of attempting to influence a grand jury. A judge sentenced him to six months behind bars, but the defiant Trout was found not guilty of misconduct in office – a misdemeanor for which he could have served 10 years – and his lawyer said after the trial that with good conduct Trout might be free in three months.
A ten-year sentence for a misdemeanor? I thought misdemeanors had penalties of no more than one year.
Thanks for that one.
Before I clicked I desperately hoped he’d fallen out of the tree w a rope around his neck. Or was pushed out wearing said rope.
The more prosaic truth was still fine poetic justice. The world is a better place for his passing.
The article below said that he is heading to jail now, at one of the worst jails in the country.
I updated the title.
Sam Bankman-Fried used stolen customer funds to make more than $100m in campaign contributions ahead of the 2022 US midterm elections, federal prosecutors said on Monday in a new indictment filed against the founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
I don’t believe that’s true. Gold jewellery is more popular because it’s perceived as more valuable. The same applied to diamonds.
This is essentially a nature versus nurture debate, isn’t it? Do we consider precious metals valuable because our culture has decided they are, or is there also a genetic factor to it?
If lead were as rare as gold, would it be as valuable? I don’t think it would. It’s well documented that plenty of animals, including corvids and primates, are attracted to shiny objects. The theory is that they use them for mating displays, like they would with colorful plumage. Humans, as primates, are no different. We are inherently attracted to glittery things.
Now, do social and economic factors influence the relative value of gems and precious metals? Of course they do. When we finally get around to synthesizing diamonds at an industrial scale, their price will definitely drop through the floor. But even then, when diamonds cost the same as glass, we’ll still like having them around, because we think they’re pretty.
As for silver and coper versus gold, I can’t tell you. Copper is less shiny than the other two, so I bet it would always be less valuable. For gold versus silver, I guess technical and social factors might decide which is more valuable. Gold has the advantage of not tarnishing, which means that on average, its more glittery than silver is. That, along with being rarer, is probably why it’s more expensive.
In the end, fashions change, cultures change, economies change, but gold and silver jewelry is always popular, everywhere in the world. There’s got to be more to it than cultural and economic factors.