For thursday’s sentencing the us government indicated they would be happy with a 40-50 prison sentence, and in the list of reasons they cite there’s this gem:
- Bankman-Fried’s effective altruism and own statements about risk suggest he would be likely to commit another fraud if he determined it had high enough “expected value”. They point to Caroline Ellison’s testimony in which she said that Bankman-Fried had expressed to her that he would “be happy to flip a coin, if it came up tails and the world was destroyed, as long as if it came up heads the world would be like more than twice as good”. They also point to Bankman-Fried’s “own ‘calculations’” described in his sentencing memo, in which he says his life now has negative expected value. “Such a calculus will inevitably lead him to trying again,” they write.
Turns out making it a point of pride that you have the morality of an anime villain does not endear you to prosecutors, who knew.
Bonus: SBF’s lawyers’ list of assertions for asking for a shorter sentence includes this hilarious bit reasoning:
They argue that Bankman-Fried would not reoffend, for reasons including that “he would sooner suffer than bring disrepute to any philanthropic movement.”
Huh? This is so absurdly self-aggrandizing that I struggle to comprehend what he’s even saying. What did he imagine “our sins” were, and how did getting imprisoned absolve them?
That confused me as well. Is he having a crisis or an episode fueled by some religios ideas?
I know nothing about this and have only seen some extremely obnoxious cryptobros on Twitter, but my guess of the narrative is that it would operate on SBF paving the way for them via doing crypto, where crypto is seen as rebellious against a rules-based, above board, banking order that’s trying to shut them out, keep them submissive and down, out of the game, etc.