Andrew Ross Sorkin gave him softball after softball
NYTimes continues to embarass themselves but George Stephanopoulos killed it on GMA
GMA interview was 2 hours reduced to 10 minutes
SBF was also on a 2 hour twitter spaces afterwards
Media has a very variable way to deal with this obvious fraud and crime
Strategy here is: cop to criminal negligence in order to avoid more serious charge of fraud
Wants to avoid image of Bernie Madoff in the press
He wants to succeed muddying the waters - so prosecutors can give him a plea deal so he doesn’t get sent away for life
Such narcissistic fraudsters think they can talk their way out of everything - because they have
Before this he was portraying himself as the smartest guy in the room - now he’s a babe in the woods
Hard to believe when he loaned himself a billion dollars of the company money
SBF and Trump through the lens of the media
2016 Trump violated every rule of left liberal western media - in election they were proven wrong - 50+% of the country had a very different view of the person
So they doubled down and wanted to control the narrative and power
SBF went to perfect elite private high school - then perfect elite universities - MIT - parents went to elite institutions of america - Stanford - so they are in political left - wrapped himself in effective altruism - all the stuff people on the left have bought into
So now they refuse to underwrite this kid - its eating your own tail - because it would be admitting they were wrong
He manipulated them 1st time by making them think he’s like them
Now its to protect himself
Enormous financial fraud that millions of people lost money in - and media is missing accountability
Health establishment wants amnesty - atlantic magazine was willing to give it to them - media and institutions want authority but if they get it wrong they don’t want to be held accountable
Propublica/Vox/Semaphore etc all paid off by him
When there is institutional rot mice will come out to look for cheese - if not him, it would have been someone else
Prescribed legal prescription drugs using patches on their body
There is too much evidence of sophisticated behavior here to accept narrative of simpleton
Alameda had backdoors
Intentionality to hire people like Caroline Ellison
Who wasn’t hired: No board, no CFO
He is more sophisticated
Saying it had to happen excuses too much - he courted regulators, he donated to politicians, he courted the media
Only an insider could have pulled this off at scale -
Gensler is intertwined to the parents - parents bundled money to Elizabeth Warren - he is clearly a sophisticated con
Not a single reporter or a regulator thought to dig in - he said every thing they wanted to believe
Replace him with a random kid from public high school or public school - they don’t have the elite patina
So its not a crypto problem, its an elitism problem
He monetized his parents’ life work
People have been confused to think that opposite of liberal is republican or conservative, the opposite of liberal is illiberal - its to be puritanical, intolerant
If you are an elite you get to make the rules
No one in the media asked any questions about Alameda or FTX - no disgruntled employees? Not a single person came out - because the elites gave him a hall pass and he paid a lot of hush money
Media, regulators and VCs (capital allocators) failed to do due diligence or put in governance
SEC not only didn’t regulate him but he was in the room with them trying to craft regulations
CZ pulled out his funds and is being framed maybe not in the best light
FTX culpability
Semaphore is trying to frame it as a run on the bank - like its not his fault - they were not a bank
Margin accounts typically allow 30-35-50% tops
This token could not have got more than 5-10%
His collateral was no good
Alameda had auto liquidation turned off
David Z Morris coindesk article is quite good
John Carreyrou exposed Theranos but no one could have done it with FTX?
Bulk of responsibility rests with who
Investors
Regulators
Journalists
NYTimes and Semaphore should also apologize - when they make a mistake they never admit it
You are on your own now as a consumer - consumers have to become extremely literate and trust their own process for figuring out the truth
Media coverage
Xi Jinping is very powerful
Newsom had 10 pages of exceptions for his political donors for his lockdowns
Gretchen Whitmers, Tony Fauci etc all imposed lockdowns - when did they repent or disavow lockdowns
OpenAI
ChatGPT
Table read of Chamath, Sacks, JCal script talking about ChatGPT
Model takes only 200G of space - can fit on your iPhone
knowledge workers replaced
kids can get homework done
code can get written
real estate insurance sales people
copy writers
customer support
100K startups are going to emerge
Bubble will form
Next hype cycle in SV will be this generative AI thing
This will disrupt the search box
Google started the onebox
Is there an entirely new model here that disrupts search
Andreesen tech VC vs journalist example is amazing
SaaS will be replaced by MaaS - Models as a Service
Models are still imprecise - so last 1-2% of getting it perfect will be important
Inference and Training
These model companies might need to go vertical - like tumor finding startups getting a hospital so they can get proprietary data
SaaS slowdown
Salesforce huge slowdown - net new ARR dropped 2-3rd from previous quarter
Comments