Mess around, find out I guess!
Here's a reminder about the Sam Bankman-Fried saga, which began in 2022:
The former crypto mogul was released on a $250 MILLION bail in December 2022, one of the largest in history.
He will now serve 25 years in prison after being found guilty of fraud and money laundering in November 2023.
More from Axios:
Judge Lewis Kaplan chose a much harsher sentence for the disgraced crypto mogul than the defense's recommendation of five to seven years.
A lot of people think 25 years is far too little. After all, there are guys serving two decades for shaking fences and hitting cops at the Capitol on J6. SBF used his company FTX to defraud people out of BILLIONS OF DOLLARS and used his Ponzi/money-laundering scheme to heavily fund Democrat campaigns in an effort to be on the #RightSideOfHistory.
(Oh, nevermind, I think I just figured out why he's not in jail for life.)
- In a pre-sentencing tirade, Kaplan ripped the disgraced entrepreneur for his "apparent lack of any remorse."
- Kaplan referred during sentencing to conversations Bankman-Fried had with ex-Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, who also dated SBF on and off.
- "He knew it was wrong, he knew it was criminal, he regrets he made a very bad bet about the likelihood of getting caught," Kaplan said.
- The judge also roundly rejected the defense's claim that there was ultimately no loss to customers.
That might be the hardest legal sell ever.
"Yeah, he messed up, your honor, but what is money anyway?"
The defense has argued that SBF should be granted leniency because customers will be paid back the dollar-value of their holdings at the time the company declared bankruptcy.
Oh, okay, that makes defrauding people out of billions totally okay then?
I'll just leave ya with this little note about the mentality of people who like to play God:
Much has been made of Bankman-Fried's unique motivations as a business person. He presented himself as an Effective Altruist, someone who believed in donating lots of money to philanthropies that had strong evidence for their effectiveness.
- More specifically, he was a consequentialist. That is, he believed what made an action good or bad was the outcome of the action.
- (This is opposed to a deontologist, who believes that choices are inherently good or bad.)
SBF believed he could play with other people's money, make lots more, pay them all back, and do all sorts of good — such as preventing the next pandemic.
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