On his first day in court, SBF arrived in front of potential jurors with a new look—and mostly focused on his laptop. https://t.co/qC5b5b1z3Z
— Fast Company (@FastCompany) October 3, 2023
Of course the ongoing House speakership chaos is more Serious, but allow me my petty obsessions…
… The cofounder and former CEO of FTX arrived for jury selection with his trademark curly hair cut in a close-cropped style. He also wore a dark suit, white shirt, and tie. Bankman-Fried is being jailed in Brooklyn during his trial after his bail was revoked this summer. He arrived at the courthouse late—“I’m told we can thank the delay to what’s happening in the other courtroom nearby,” Judge Kaplan said in court, evidently referring to the Trump civil trial at a courthouse a block away.
Almost immediately upon entering the courtroom and taking a seat between his two lead lawyers, Bankman-Fried began typing and scrolling on an internet-disabled laptop, occasionally speaking with his lawyers or scratching his head, but mostly focusing on the computer. His screen wasn’t visible from where I was seated, but he appeared to be taking notes…
Prosecutor Nicolas Roos said on Tuesday that “the government never made any plea offers” in the case, a clear explanation for why Bankman-Fried is going to trial instead of pleading out, a risky move for a defendant. About nine in ten federal criminal defendants plead guilty, according to Pew ResearchCenter analysis of federal statistics, while only 0.4% are acquitted at trial.
Bankman-Fried is charged with seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to FTX, his cryptocurrency exchange, and Alameda Research, his crypto hedge fund, and several former FTX and Alameda executives are expected to testify against him. He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial is expected to last six weeks.
For much of the day, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan was giving a master class on how not to let anyone out of jury duty. If jurors said they were unable to assess the case impartially, they were dismissed without much questioning. Anyone else? They’d best get ready for some contentious lawyering—giving a preview of how Judge Kaplan will run the high-profile trial…
The potential jurors’ responses also gave a sense of how familiar they were with cryptocurrency—and of the handful who’d dealt directly with it, most weren’t fans. Three had lost money because of it…
“I had an investment in cryptocurrency and I did lose a lot, and my twin brother lost a lot more than me, and it almost ruined him,” one man said.
When another potential juror said “I don’t actually still understand how cryptocurrency works,” Judge Kaplan responded: “You probably have a lot of company in this courtroom.”
Judge Kaplan said he expected to complete jury selection Wednesday morning, with opening arguments to follow.
I just want to remind everyone going into this week that Sam Bankman-Fried is not a kid or a boy or a cherubic golden child lost in the woods. He's a 31 year old man facing 7 felony charges as part of a multi-billion-dollar alleged fraud.
— Jacob Silverman ???? (@SilvermanJacob) October 1, 2023
Some basic SBF facts for pundits
4 people have already pled guilty to the FTX fraud
SBF is a grown ass man
it’s a financial fraud that involves crypto not a crypto case
he’s basically confessed to fraud in multiple interviews
he attempted witness tampering and intimidation
— Sean Tuffy (@SMTuffy) October 3, 2023
🚨 BREAKING: Former FTX spokesman Kevin O’Leary stated that all "crypto cowboys" will soon be gone.
He specifically mentioned CZ, SBF, Binance, and Coinbase, stating they all have "arrows in their backs" via a Coindesk interview.
Is this FUD, or is it time for a new… pic.twitter.com/tVKXB7b7IE
— BlockNews.com (@blocknewsdotcom) October 3, 2023
This you, Kev?
Now we know why Kevin O’Leary likes SBF so much. He was paid nearly $1 million per hour to shill for Sam. All time grifter. pic.twitter.com/3TVllNBXjb
— Coffeezilla (@coffeebreak_YT) October 3, 2023
In case anyone was still wondering why SBF hung onto his childish hair-halo, here’s a courtroom sketch of his new lewk…
Getting the sense that the SBF, Trump, DeSantis, Hunter Biden, and Taylor Swift story lines are going to converge in the season finale where they discover the identity of the murderer. https://t.co/ZuFzgA8Z4p
— Florida Dad (@FloridadadD) October 3, 2023
Alison Rose
I appreciate that tweet from Jacob Silverman. SBF has a baby face and it seems like some people have thought of him as just a kid who got in over his head or whatever.
Jay
It’s a “Chef’s Kiss” that SBF hired Kevin O’Leary as his shill.
Another Scott
Made me look… CoinTelegraph.com (from August):
Sounds like a variation of TIFG’s “disclaimer”. These guys think that they can say and do whatever they want without consequences, simply by claiming there’s some loophole or other.
It’s well past time for these defenses to be stripped away.
Meanwhile, one for Betty Cracker … Phys.org:
Cheers,
Scott.
Punchy
This Speakership move to boot Pelosi from her office whilst she attends a god damn funeral is 8 ways of shitshow. It’s a dick move on steroids. Whatever small level of respect a few House Dems might have had for a few moderate Rs is surely gone-zo. DEFCON 1 level of toxicity and animosity….
japa21
@Another Scott: They are being spotted in a lot of places in Illinois. Apparently there is an invasive species of snail showing up and it happens to be their favorite food.
HumboldtBlue
Comment on Twitter.
“They should nominate Trump for speaker, speaker of the big house.”
Jeffro
@Punchy: I wouldn’t put it past the Speaker Emeritus to put her stuff on a cart and shrug and go, “well, as long as I’m kicking Republicans in the junk, it’s all good”
Jackie
In other great news buried under other great news:
unctuous
I just can’t muster much sympathy for people who were “ruined” (jump you fuckers!) by their crypto investments.
Nobody understands cryptocurrency because its a scam. Tulip bulbs and underpants gnomes. It never made sense because it can’t and it wasn’t supposed to. It’s an investment mcguffin.
Two kinds of fools put their money in it: the fools who couldn’t figure out it was supposed to be a scam, and the fools who knew it was a scam but thought they would ride the fraud high and cash out before the crooks running it rugpulled everyone else.
RevRick
Have you read the articles in the NYT and Washington Post about the falling life expectancy of the poor and those without college degrees? One of the horrifying data points was that it’s possible to travel from Virginia to Louisiana and then up to Kansas without leaving a county where the life expectancy doesn’t exceed what it was when Jimmy Carter was President! Another was that rural areas and small towns used to be healthier than urban areas, but now you’re far more likely to enjoy a longer life if you live in a city!
Steve in the ATL
I’ve been busy getting hammered on Carménère in the LATAM lounge at the Santiago airport, and apparently I missed a bunch of news. ¡Qué pena!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
anybody feeling petty like me?
Jackie
@Steve in the ATL: You haven’t missed a thing!
Oh wait! There’s this! Eta:
Does this mean she’s stepped away from her governorship?
cain
Don’t feel bad for Kevin:
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1709374648230551592
dude is still attacking Democrats.
unctuous
@RevRick: So many white people will shoot holes in the bottom of their own lifeboat just as long as when the boat sinks Those Other People drown first.
unctuous
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That honestly looks like mange.
Shalimar
I have been focused on the House all day and we have had maybe a thousand comments about it. It’s good to have a different petty obsession to talk about at this point.
Jackie
@cain: Are we feeling bad about Loser Kevin?
cain
@Jackie: not I. He thinks he is throwing shade at Dems but nope.
unctuous
Does anyone else mentally transpose SBF to SFB? As in, Stupid Fucking Bastard?
RevRick
@unctuous: That is certainly one factor, along with deaths of despair, but the biggest reasons lowering life expectancy in these areas is a rise in chronic diseases like diabetes, liver and kidney diseases.
RevRick
@Jackie: I’ve felt bad about him since he was first elected.
Ohio Mom
It’s not that I think of SBF as anything but an adult, but weren’t his fancy-pants lawyer parents somehow involved, maybe as investors? It didn’t occur to them that their son was skating on very thin ice?
Yeah, I’m not the first person to wonder about this.
I did lots of things in my twenties that might not have been the wisest choices, and on the rare occasions my mother somehow caught wind, she made her opinion known. Obviously, the stakes in my misadventures were a lot lower.
Jackie
@unctuous: Every damn time. I don’t give a hoot about SBF. Always enjoy piling on SFB!
Redshift
Loving the last line in the tweet from that crypto news account:
So a crypto business expert says all the other crypto companies are going to collapse, and they are only two possibilities: either it’s false, or they’ll need a new crypto companies that definitely won’t be massive frauds this time.
Shalimar
@unctuous: Add drug addicts to the crypto list, because one of the few actual uses were buying drugs on the dark web. Though most of the drug addicts also fall into one of your kinds of fools too, seeing a way to make a profit that paid for their habits.
Jackie
@RevRick: “Bad” isn’t the adjective I use…
But I’m not a Rev😉
wjca
Fixed that for you.
HumboldtBlue
@Jackie:
I was laughing at the that comment on Twitter earlier.
Frankensteinbeck
@unctuous:
So constantly that only you pointing it out just now made me realize they are different. I have been relying on context clues and negotiating mild confusion in conversations until now.
Ken
Yes, but not as investors. They were the recipients of large gifts, including a $16 million mansion and additional millions in cash, and FTX and/or Alameda made large donations (again in the millions) to their employer, Stanford (source).
wjca
He’s right . . . provided you stipulate that we include every single crypto currency needs to go. All of them. Without exception.
It comes down to this. The only purposes for crypto are
Not that these are mutually exclusive.
C Stars
@Ohio Mom: There was a profile of his parents in the recent New Yorker. They do not believe he is guilty and seem to think of this as some big misunderstanding. His mother is an academic who specializes in legal ethics and his dad is a lawyer who wrote policy that closed the loopholes allowing wealthy people to avoid paying taxes. So it’s pretty ironic that they have this massive blind spot when it comes to their son.
HumboldtBlue
Cinnamon toast crunch.
catclub
OPM
Alison Rose
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Listen…when it comes to TIFG, my answer is this.
JaySinWA
@wjca: Sorry, you missed one. Intentional or not Crypto is a way to subvert electrical energy production into none productive waste. As to who benefits from that, there are a lot of suspects.
Alison Rose
@HumboldtBlue: OMG I can never make it through those things without laughing to the point of tears.
HumboldtBlue
@unctuous:
Ablaut reduplication also plays a role in how we process those letters. SFB is more natural to our vocal patterns than SBF.
@Alison Rose:
I feel that.
Jackie
I think I’m going to 🤮
Alison Rose
Oh man, how did I miss this??
Balloon Juice’s own Adam “Salty” Schiff!
HumboldtBlue
Baseball is fun.
Playoff baseball, particularly Red October baseball, is extraordinary.
12 more wins.
Jackie
Multiple victims shot at active shooting incident at Baltimore college!
C Stars
@Jackie: According to AP, no life-threatening injuries. Please let that remain the case…
Cameron
@Another Scott: A month or two ago a manatee was spotted in Chesapeake Bay.
Roger Moore
@unctuous:
I have a lot of sympathy for the first kind of fool. Lots of people don’t understand how money, markets, and the economy work, and they are frequent targets for fraudsters. We’ve spent the past few hundred years regulating the financial system to protect neophytes, because we’re all better off when “he was a sucker” is not a legal defense for fraud. The whole point of crypto- like many techbro inventions- is to call existing things by new names and pretend that means the law doesn’t apply to them. We shouldn’t let Uber pretend it isn’t a taxi service, AirBNB pretend it isn’t a hotel, or cryptocurrency pretend it isn’t a security.
HumboldtBlue
Let’s cut the shit… Randy Rainbow interviews Kevin McCarthy.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@unctuous:
I see SBF and think “small block Ford”, which is an acronym that the Ford community uses for the 221 through 351W engines. I have one (351W) in our Mustang so…
wjca
To my mind, an AirBNB is a small motel. But that’s admittedly nitpicking.
A cryptocurrency clearly is not a security. Simply put, there is NO security in evidence in it. Another distinguishing feature, compared to traditional securities fraud, is that when it collapses you don’t even have something to substitute for the TP you can no longer afford.
Alison Rose
@HumboldtBlue: “If he lasts one year” LOLLLLL
sxjames
@unctuous:
Yes, I do the mental transpose, but to me SFB means “Sh*t for Brains”
Chetan Murthy
i’m quite sure that they’re only two types of people in crypto: knaves and fools. Now obviously maybe there is evidence that SBF is a fool. I Have an opened mind and would be able to assess that possibility impartially. Can I be on the jury?
Alison Rose
@Chetan Murthy: I’m gonna use “knaves and fools” to replace “ladies and gentlemen”. Much more fun and gender-inclusive!
Hob
@C Stars: They are heavily implicated, and they profited personally from his operation in ways that no intelligent person with their level of inside knowledge could have failed to find suspicious. Nothing they say about this is credible.
Chetan Murthy
@Alison Rose: “There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.”
gene108
@RevRick:
I think a lot of this is related to the rise in obesity.
Obesity seems like an issue we ignore as a large scale structural problem with people’s access to healthy foods, cost of fruits and vegetables, what’s in prepackaged foods, and the decline of cooking (like myself) in households.
I think weight gain and loss are looked at a personal choice and not something structural issues can also contribute to.
Ivan X
@Anne Laurie, have you read Zeke Faux’s recently published Number Go Up? It’s super!
gene108
@HumboldtBlue:
The full 14:28 Bad Lip Reading dub of the House vote to elect McCarthy Speaker. Worth watching the whole.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HBA7MA3qBM4&pp=ygUPYmFkIGxpcCByZWFkaW5n
Anne Laurie
@Chetan Murthy: Related: God punishes all knaves and fools… but the fools, first.
gene108
@Chetan Murthy:
Doesn’t matter what business SBF would’ve gone in to. His co-mingling of business and personal money would’ve landed him in deep shit sooner or later.
A crypto exchange just increased the dollar value of the trouble he’d get himself into.
SBF’s defrauding investors isn’t a direct function of running a crypto exchange. It’s due to terrible internal controls, co-mingling money between FTX, the Alameda hedge fund, and personal use.
FTX and Alameda might’ve gone tits up when the value of crypto currency crashed, investors might’ve lost boatloads of money, but he’d largely be able to walk away from the mess if he had better basic business practices. Investors are supposed to understand the risk involved in any investment.
Chetan Murthy
@gene108: Before he was into crypto, he was a trader at Jane Street Capital (IIRC). To be a trader at a brokerage firm, I’m pretty sure you have to pass various exams set by the SEC — get your license and such. In the body of knowledge you have to master, for sure it covers what you noted. He knew these things long before he started FTX. Long before.
gene108
@Chetan Murthy:
Yeah, he knew better but was an arrogant snot.
karen marie
@Punchy: What?!
What a bunch of tiny dicks:
piratedan
@karen marie: yeah, one of the first acts of the speaker pro tempore is to address this national travesty.
his party caucus is a hot mess and this is on “the agenda”.
I’m sure that this action will have the desired effect of re-engaging in bipartisianship that they decried in the previous speaker’s ouster… considering he blamed the Dems for not caving to his altering to a previously agreed upon deal.
I understand that we’re supposed to be adults and “move-on” and “be pragmatic” and not rise to the bait…. my issue is that this is ALL that they do. There’s no good faith, they don’t honor agreements and they don’t speak to any truth….
karen marie
@Ohio Mom: His mother is a professor in ethics!
Chetan Murthy
@piratedan:
adults understand that the only stable solution to the prisoners dilemma is tit-for-tat. It is imperative that we not move on and that we punish the bastards, so that they will stop acting like bastards.
wjca
All adolescents rebel against their parents. (Although most grow up and get over it, so it’s no longer their primary motivation in life.)
Tony Jay
@gene108:
I’m frigging dying over here. 😂
Hard to pick a fave line, but the roll-call was inspired.
Chetan Murthy
@karen marie: Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. When it comes to ethics …..
[ok, ok, a joke]
I think his parents are in this up to their necks, and are going to count on being lawyers to get away with it.
smike
@gene108:
Thanks, that’s hilarious!
NotMax
::yawn::
Cannot muster the slightest scintilla of caring about the topic of the post.
Anne Laurie
Not yet, but I want to! (I did post a news extract, when it first came out.) Since I don’t like long-form reading on screens, I’m steeling myself to pay for the hardcover…
montanareddog
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: that picture reminds of me of when Darth Vader took off his helmet in, I think, “The Empire Strikes Back”
Hangö Kex
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66990984
Now what?
Suburban Mom
@gene108: Speaking of systemic issues about 200 US rural hospitals have closed since 2005. And people who live in rural areas need to travel farther to get health. None of this is good.
Baud
@Suburban Mom:
How many of those in states that haven’t expanded Medicaid?
Suburban Mom
@Baud: Seven.
Baud
@Suburban Mom:
Thanks. I’m surprised since big states like Texas and Florida and Georgia are on the list of non-expansion states.
ETA: Your status starts at 2005. I wonder how many hospitals the Bush recession knocked out.
Frankensteinbeck
@RevRick:
When you fuck yourself over to punish someone else, you die of something that would otherwise be treated. Those sound like the kinds of things that get managed with better health care and generally addressing poverty better.
Princess
@Jackie: I don’t ever want to read another sentence in my life that has the words “Kristen Sinema” “Kari Lake,” and “potential three-way” in it, and you know he wrote it that way on purpose.
Baud
@Princess:
Swing state or swinger state?
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@gene108: Another contributor is lack of the opportunity for exercise. I’m not immune to the idea of living in some picturesque rural location but unless you live near a rail trail or something or do work that requires a lot of physical activity it’s tough to get out there for a run or bike ride or even just a leisurely walk. Most rural highways have no room for anything but cars. It’s taking your life into your own hands to walk or bike them.
In cities there are sidewalks and if the DC area is any indication, increasingly there’s a lot more dedicated space for bicycles than there used to be. Makes it a lot easier and safer to get out and get your 10,000 steps in.
Matt McIrvin
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I keep thinking that “SBF” is one of our many derogatory three-letter abbreviations for Donald Trump and I can’t remember what it stands for. Probably because it’s close to “SFB”.
Suburban Mom
@Baud: Sorry – need more coffee. It is seven of the top ten, not seven in total. Texas, Georgia, and Florida are in the top ten, and so is California.
Baud
@Suburban Mom:
Thanks.
California makes sense given it’s size.
The other problem besides the lack of Medicare expansion in several states is that hedge funds have been buying hospitals and doing what hedge funds do to things they buy.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Shit for brains.
Tony Jay
@Hangö Kex:
The majority party appoints an interim speaker whose job it is to organise the large vats of water, jelly and organic custard into which prospective candidates for the Speakership will be dipped to gauge their weight and potential witchiness.
After that it’s a free-for-all as the successful not-witches battle it out with salt-crust helmets and piranhas-on-sticks in the Frederick H. Gillett Memorial Room until such a time as only one of them remains capable of pressing the Big Red Button that deactivates the explosive leashes strapped around each candidate’s neck.
Fairly standard bureaucratic procedure across most advanced democracies as I understand it.
TS
@Jackie:
It means, like all the other GOP grifters who profess to hate government, she is looking for a sinecure within the very government that she hates.
trnc
@C Stars:
Really? Did he stop halfway through a paragraph and that’s what got implemented?
Kayla Rudbek
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: I was just about to add this. I felt safer biking in rural Ireland, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands than I would biking in rural America these days, even with a language barrier and the Europeans thinking that we were German.
Salty Sam .
HEY! I resemble that remark!
Baud
Ken
@Tony Jay: Do I detect a hint of jealously? The UK’s system of having 3000 people who have paid ten pounds to the Tory Party select a new Prime Minister every three months is admittedly not as exciting.
Tony Jay
@Ken:
Oh, that’s the old fashioned way. Now a bunch of Tory MPs line up inside the closest public toilet and ‘elect’ whichever one of them can squeeze their qualifications through the smallest glory hole.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
A modern twist to the traditional method of selecting leaders based on whether they could pull a sword out of a rock.
Ivan X
@Anne Laurie: I blazed through it. Be a capitalist consumer who supports our modern oligarchs, open an Amazon card when you buy it and pay with the signup bonus!
I actually find reading long form on screens much more tolerable and less eyestrainy if I set my e-book app to display white text on a black screen, but I suspect I am in a small minority.
Uncle Cosmo
I prefer to think of him as Sham Bankster-Fraud, when I think of his crapto-currencied arse at all. YMMV
Uncle Cosmo
Fixed that even better for you both!
H-Bob
@wjca: a security is an investment of money made with the expectation of a profit to come through the efforts of someone other than the investor.
@gene108: Don’t forget smoking.