#303 The Fall of Sam Bankman-Fried

Concerns over the financial health of FTX and its links to Alameda Research triggered, essentially, a run on the bank. ... Unfortunately, Bankman-Fried appears to have used customer assets that should have been safely stored there to fund risky investments through Alameda in a way that seems objectively shady and unethical.

COVID alone has caused several of my friends and former friends to say and do some spectacularly stupid things—and I haven't known what to do about that. However, my point is that I've been very surprised by much of this behavior, so perhaps I am a bad judge of character.

I have no idea who Sam Bankman-Fried was, or is, really. And this morning, I went back and listened to the interview I did with him, and even with the benefit of hindsight, I don't detect anything about him that strikes me as insincere. I don't have any retrospective spidey sense that makes that conversation appear suddenly in a new light.

Beyond the immediate financial harm he caused, Bankman-Fried has done great harm to the reputation of effective altruism. The revelation that the biggest donor in the E.A. universe was not what he seemed has produced bomb bursts of cynicism throughout tech and journalism.