<story><title>FTX&apos;s collapse strands scientists</title><url>https://www.science.org/content/article/crypto-company-s-collapse-strands-scientists</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>trompetenaccoun</author><text>&amp;quot;Watchers of the cryptospace&amp;quot; had been critical of FTX since its inception out of seemingly nowhere. SBF is not a crypto guy despite being presented as such in the mainstream. He&amp;#x27;s a trader and even in trading he&amp;#x27;s only been in cryptocurrencies five years or so, prior to that is was trading more traditional assets like ETFs.&lt;p&gt;I agree with you regarding regular people having no clue and no way to vet donors but keep in mind most folks on HN are part of this. The public knows what they get from news pieces they read, written by journalists who also don&amp;#x27;t have a clue. SBF was treated as the king of crypto by the mainstream for whatever reason. Talked to a lot of politicians too and spoke out in favor of regulation. Probably tried to sacrifice what he didn&amp;#x27;t care about anyway (actually decentralized chains) in order to present himself has a crypto person regulators can work with, all while committing fraud. Gary Gensler is supposed to have had private meetings with him several times. Curious how the agency who&amp;#x27;s supposed to regulate these exchanges never actually does and is even completely oblivious to multi billion dollar theft until the whole thing implodes. Meanwhile parties accept huge donations from Bankman-Fried and the SEC goes after smaller crypto projects that aren&amp;#x27;t even certain to be their jurisdiction.</text></item><item><author>skycatcher</author><text>The comments saying the lesson here is that recipients of donations like non-profits and foundations should be vetting their donors better seem unreasonable to me.&lt;p&gt;If FTX investors, customers, and watchers of the crypto space did not catch what FTX and SBF were doing until the shit hit the fan, what kind of due diligence can we reasonably expect of these recipients that would’ve alerted them to something being wrong here?&lt;p&gt;And consider that the number of donors for most institutions would be much larger than the number of companies FTX investors would’ve had to keep an eye on.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brindlejim</author><text>I love how the crypto community has decided that SBF is &amp;quot;not a crypto guy&amp;quot; now that he&amp;#x27;s done crimes.&lt;p&gt;And he&amp;#x27;s somehow &amp;quot;establishment&amp;quot; because he gave to political parties, and Democrat because we&amp;#x27;re ignoring the GOP contributions.&lt;p&gt;SBF was more of a crypto guy than 99% of crypto. And he was way more crypto than he was establishment.&lt;p&gt;And the problems in crypto that his actions highlighted (centralization, fraud, lack of consumer protections) cannot be waved away with &amp;quot;no true scotsman&amp;quot; arguments.&lt;p&gt;He&amp;#x27;s your boy. Own it or the industry will not correct its own deep, ongoing mistakes, currently being made by entities like Binance.</text></comment>
<story><title>FTX&apos;s collapse strands scientists</title><url>https://www.science.org/content/article/crypto-company-s-collapse-strands-scientists</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>trompetenaccoun</author><text>&amp;quot;Watchers of the cryptospace&amp;quot; had been critical of FTX since its inception out of seemingly nowhere. SBF is not a crypto guy despite being presented as such in the mainstream. He&amp;#x27;s a trader and even in trading he&amp;#x27;s only been in cryptocurrencies five years or so, prior to that is was trading more traditional assets like ETFs.&lt;p&gt;I agree with you regarding regular people having no clue and no way to vet donors but keep in mind most folks on HN are part of this. The public knows what they get from news pieces they read, written by journalists who also don&amp;#x27;t have a clue. SBF was treated as the king of crypto by the mainstream for whatever reason. Talked to a lot of politicians too and spoke out in favor of regulation. Probably tried to sacrifice what he didn&amp;#x27;t care about anyway (actually decentralized chains) in order to present himself has a crypto person regulators can work with, all while committing fraud. Gary Gensler is supposed to have had private meetings with him several times. Curious how the agency who&amp;#x27;s supposed to regulate these exchanges never actually does and is even completely oblivious to multi billion dollar theft until the whole thing implodes. Meanwhile parties accept huge donations from Bankman-Fried and the SEC goes after smaller crypto projects that aren&amp;#x27;t even certain to be their jurisdiction.</text></item><item><author>skycatcher</author><text>The comments saying the lesson here is that recipients of donations like non-profits and foundations should be vetting their donors better seem unreasonable to me.&lt;p&gt;If FTX investors, customers, and watchers of the crypto space did not catch what FTX and SBF were doing until the shit hit the fan, what kind of due diligence can we reasonably expect of these recipients that would’ve alerted them to something being wrong here?&lt;p&gt;And consider that the number of donors for most institutions would be much larger than the number of companies FTX investors would’ve had to keep an eye on.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>comte7092</author><text>&amp;gt;he&amp;#x27;s only been in cryptocurrencies five years or so&lt;p&gt;Crypto has only seriously been around for 10-15 years. This is somewhat like saying “he’s only been a react dev for 5 years”</text></comment>