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Scott Alexander on Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX and Effective Altruism

astralcodexten.substack.com

I made this a top level post because I think people here might want to discuss it but you can remove it if it doesn't meet your standards.

Edit: removed my opinion of Scott from the body

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It doesn't matter that you personally don't know what is is. What matters is what the money guys care about. All the FTX money is gone. All these bloated charities are going to have to make cuts.

Not only charities. There are aftershocks through all crypto-system, and a lot of people that aren't affected directly are re-evaluating their stance towards crypto, which may lead to affecting even more people (imagine a major bank planning to invest in crypto - but then deciding to stay away - that'd probably lead to some reallocation of resources, somebody not getting a promotion, somebody fired maybe...)

Examples: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-14/ftx-fiasco-sparks-billions-of-dollars-of-outflows-from-exchanges https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-15/ftx-latest-regulators-discuss-questioning-bankman-fried-in-us

It's way beyond just FTX customers and EA charities.

Yes, but this is perfectly consistent with FTX being a Ponzi scheme all along. It was never an important thing for humanity, some people were just duped into believing it was.