The Nonlinear Library EA - "Going Infinite" - New book on FTX/SBF released today + my TL;DR by Nicky Pochinkov
Oct 4, 2023
04:25
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: "Going Infinite" - New book on FTX/SBF released today + my TL;DR, published by Nicky Pochinkov on October 4, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Just finished new book about FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried, launched today: "Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon" by Michael Lewis. The book itself is quite engaging and interesting, so I recommend it as a read.The book talks about:
Early life and general personality
Working at Jane Steet Capital
Early days at Alameda and the falling out
A refreshed alameda
The early FTX days and actions of Sam
Post-FTX days, and where did the money go?
The book talks a decent bit about effective altruists in both good and bad light.
Some particularly interesting anecdotes and information according to the book (contains "spoilers"):
In early Alameda days, they apparently lost track of (as in, didn't know where it went) $ millions of XRP tokens, and Sam was just like "ehh, who cares, there is like 80% chance will show up eventually, so we can just count it as 80% of the value". This + general disorganisation + risk taking really pissed off many of the first wave of EAs working there, and a bunch of people left. Eventually, they actually "found" the XRP: it was in some crypto exchange they were using, and some software bug meant it was not labelled correctly, so they had to email them about it.
Where did all the lost FTX money go? At FTX the lack of organisation was similar, but much larger in scale. Last chapter has napkin calculations with in-goings vs out-goings for FTX. (Edit: See this below). While they clearly spent and lost lots of money, some of the assets were just lost track of because didn't care to keep track because other assets were so large that these were not that important/urgent. So far "the debtors have recovered approximately 7 billion dollars in assets, and they anticipate further recoveries", which could be an additional approx $7.2Billion to still be found (which might be sold for less as much of it non-cash, but at least $2Billion?), not even including potential clawbacks like investment into Anthropic. A naive reading suggests there could have been enough to repay all the affected customers?
EDIT: here is the "napkin math" given in the book of combined FTX+Alameda ingoings and outgoings over the course of a few years. So the question in the final chapters of the book is accounting for the $6 Billion discrepancy. Clearly the customer funds were misused by Sam and Alameda, and the numbers are not to be taken at face value (for example, the profits at Alameda could be questioned), but possibly worth viewing at as a possible reference point for those interested in them but not willing to read the whole book:Money In:
Customer Deposits: $15 billion
Investment from Venture Capitalists: $2.3 billion
Alameda Training Profits: $2.5 billion
FTX Exchange Revenues: $2 billion
Net Outstanding Loans from Crypto Lenders (mainly Genesis and BlockFi): $1.5 billion
Original Sale of FTT: $35 million
Total Money In: $23 billion
Money Out:
Return to Customers During the November Run: $5 billion
Amount Paid Out to CZ: $1.4 billion (excluding $500 million worth of FTT and $80 million worth of BNB tokens)
Sam's Private Investments: $4.4 billion (with at least $300 million paid for using shares and FTX)
Loans to Sam: $1 billion (used for political and EA donations to avoid stock dividends)
Loans to Nishad: $543 million (for similar purposes)
Endorsement Deals: $500 million (potentially more, including cases where FTX paid endorsers with FTX stock)
Buying and Burning Their Exchange Token FTT: $600 million
Out Expenses (Salaries, Lunch, Bahamas Real Estate): $1 billion
Total Money Out: $14.443 Billion
After the Crash:
$3 billion on hand.
$450 million stolen in hack
Here are the largest manifold markets on FTX repayment I could find f...
Just finished new book about FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried, launched today: "Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon" by Michael Lewis. The book itself is quite engaging and interesting, so I recommend it as a read.The book talks about:
Early life and general personality
Working at Jane Steet Capital
Early days at Alameda and the falling out
A refreshed alameda
The early FTX days and actions of Sam
Post-FTX days, and where did the money go?
The book talks a decent bit about effective altruists in both good and bad light.
Some particularly interesting anecdotes and information according to the book (contains "spoilers"):
In early Alameda days, they apparently lost track of (as in, didn't know where it went) $ millions of XRP tokens, and Sam was just like "ehh, who cares, there is like 80% chance will show up eventually, so we can just count it as 80% of the value". This + general disorganisation + risk taking really pissed off many of the first wave of EAs working there, and a bunch of people left. Eventually, they actually "found" the XRP: it was in some crypto exchange they were using, and some software bug meant it was not labelled correctly, so they had to email them about it.
Where did all the lost FTX money go? At FTX the lack of organisation was similar, but much larger in scale. Last chapter has napkin calculations with in-goings vs out-goings for FTX. (Edit: See this below). While they clearly spent and lost lots of money, some of the assets were just lost track of because didn't care to keep track because other assets were so large that these were not that important/urgent. So far "the debtors have recovered approximately 7 billion dollars in assets, and they anticipate further recoveries", which could be an additional approx $7.2Billion to still be found (which might be sold for less as much of it non-cash, but at least $2Billion?), not even including potential clawbacks like investment into Anthropic. A naive reading suggests there could have been enough to repay all the affected customers?
EDIT: here is the "napkin math" given in the book of combined FTX+Alameda ingoings and outgoings over the course of a few years. So the question in the final chapters of the book is accounting for the $6 Billion discrepancy. Clearly the customer funds were misused by Sam and Alameda, and the numbers are not to be taken at face value (for example, the profits at Alameda could be questioned), but possibly worth viewing at as a possible reference point for those interested in them but not willing to read the whole book:Money In:
Customer Deposits: $15 billion
Investment from Venture Capitalists: $2.3 billion
Alameda Training Profits: $2.5 billion
FTX Exchange Revenues: $2 billion
Net Outstanding Loans from Crypto Lenders (mainly Genesis and BlockFi): $1.5 billion
Original Sale of FTT: $35 million
Total Money In: $23 billion
Money Out:
Return to Customers During the November Run: $5 billion
Amount Paid Out to CZ: $1.4 billion (excluding $500 million worth of FTT and $80 million worth of BNB tokens)
Sam's Private Investments: $4.4 billion (with at least $300 million paid for using shares and FTX)
Loans to Sam: $1 billion (used for political and EA donations to avoid stock dividends)
Loans to Nishad: $543 million (for similar purposes)
Endorsement Deals: $500 million (potentially more, including cases where FTX paid endorsers with FTX stock)
Buying and Burning Their Exchange Token FTT: $600 million
Out Expenses (Salaries, Lunch, Bahamas Real Estate): $1 billion
Total Money Out: $14.443 Billion
After the Crash:
$3 billion on hand.
$450 million stolen in hack
Here are the largest manifold markets on FTX repayment I could find f...