'Partner-Swapping, Pills...' NY Post Investigates Sam Bankman-Fried's 'FTX Party House' (nypost.com) 56
Are we missing some clarifying details in the saga of Sam Bankman-Fried? The New York Post seems to think so, writing among other things, that inside a glamorous Bahamas penthouse, 10 roommates became "a group of financial renegades that dropped speed, blithely swapped in and out of relationships with one another, and watched their boss play video games while pitching for a billion-dollar investment."
And they all lived together at "Albany, Bahamas, home to the swanky $40 million digs" used by cryptocurrency giant FTX & "the $15 billion company that went recently belly up amid allegations of fraud and mismanagement" according to accounts of staffers who lived and worked there. Led by disgraced CEO and co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, a 30-year-old Californian known as SBF, the group pulled all-nighters while high on amphetamines at their retreat"; which boasted six bedrooms, two elevators, manicured grounds, a golf course and a boat basin packed with super yachts.
"The feeling was that they were treating Albany like a frat house," a well-heeled Bahamian local told The Post.....
"Stimulants when you wake up, sleeping pills if you need them when you sleep" that was the formula for FTX's success, according to a tweet from Bankman-Fried....
"He gave money for this, money for that," a restaurateur in Nassau told The Post. "I don't know if he is a great fellow with bad management." Asked what the Albany locals are saying about the implosion of FTX, the high-society source responded: "Nothing. They're embarrassed."
"The feeling was that they were treating Albany like a frat house," a well-heeled Bahamian local told The Post.....
"Stimulants when you wake up, sleeping pills if you need them when you sleep" that was the formula for FTX's success, according to a tweet from Bankman-Fried....
"He gave money for this, money for that," a restaurateur in Nassau told The Post. "I don't know if he is a great fellow with bad management." Asked what the Albany locals are saying about the implosion of FTX, the high-society source responded: "Nothing. They're embarrassed."
Useless article. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Useless article. (Score:4, Funny)
BUT CrYpTo!!!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What? Are you somehow suggesting that the New York Post is not a respectable publisher of well-researched, serious and authoritative journalism? Surely not!
Re: (Score:1)
Well, I only read the National Enquirer for the articles.
Re: Useless article. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Useless article. (Score:2)
EFF things up.
I see what you did there.
Re: Useless article. (Score:1)
Partner-swapping pills (Score:2)
Unicode (Score:5, Insightful)
At least if you copy-paste useless celebrity articles, make sure that you fix all the unicode characters correctly.
Re: Unicode (Score:1)
Who knows what they were up to (Score:5, Funny)
There were multiple individuals living together. God knows what they were up to in there Susan. I bet they were even smoking marijuana cigarettes. Reefers
Re: (Score:2)
There were multiple individuals living together. God knows what they were up to in there Susan. I bet they were even smoking marijuana cigarettes. Reefers
And figuring how to separate millions of dollars from people while putting on a show of legitimacy.
Re: (Score:2)
Worse than that. They were vegetarians. I'm not making this up.
Re: (Score:2)
Cue the bong rip.
When you have to villify someone... (Score:2, Insightful)
In this case they do not have to villify (Score:3, Insightful)
The complete loss of the business, fraud, and forthcoming criminal charges should take care of that. This article is in fact worse; the NYPost like its UK equivalent, the Daily Mail, is half tabloid and half provocative actually useful newspaper that covers articles which everyone else is afraid to report. Sadly this means that sometimes in order to get to a mention of something important, you have to wade through celebrity news and titillation like this one (normies love polyamory and think the weird-looki
Re:In this case they do not have to villify (Score:4, Interesting)
...like its UK equivalent, the Daily Mail, is ...half provocative actually useful newspaper that covers articles which everyone else is afraid to report.
So nothing like the Daily Mail then? The Daily Mail has only ever matched reality by coincidence.
Re: (Score:2)
A "half provocative actually useful newspaper"?
You could use it for getting the fireplace started or cleaning the windows, I guess.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
All you have to do is look at the source, New York Post. It's a tabloid owned by Fox.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a tabloid owned by Fox.
At this point, isn't that really everything they own -- tabloids?
(And yes, I know they own the WSJ and Fox "News".)
Re: (Score:1)
Meanwhile, all the rest of the newspapers are curiously not interested in the world's biggest scammer who by coincidence shoveled mountains of cash to the Democrat party. But look over there, a squirrel!
Re: (Score:1)
People here are uninterested as well, as they downvote anyone who mentions that interesting fact.
Re: When you have to villify someone... (Score:2)
Re: When you have to villify someone... (Score:2)
I see this all the time it's just part of human nature. People that are mentally insecure need to jump in and pass harsh judgment openly and in public on the offender.
But really mentally what they're doing is self-praising their own lifestyle through a reverse lens upon which all of their bad things in life don't exist and are beyond reproach.
Oddly people with a clear conscience don't need to do this. Instead it seems to be some kind of reverse confession where they are cleansed by denouncing others.
Re: (Score:2)
huh (Score:1)
Translation (Score:1, Interesting)
SBF dumped a lot of money into legitimately philanthropic stuff
"legitimately philanthropic stuff" == bribe.
Which is why he's not in prison, nor will he be, despite FTX being worse than Enron.
Re: (Score:2)
FTX is a hilarious fucking pile of steaming bullshit, but at the end of the day, there's nothing illegal about an unregulated entity asking people to give them their money... and then those people doing so, and then that person mismanaging it to all hell.
Police will be all over this looking for evidence of fraud, and if they find some, he'll go to jail. If they don't, he won't. And it won't have anything to do with your
Re: Translation (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Are you suggesting that these clowns are not criminals of opportunity, preying on idiots too stupid to know crypto is a sham?
Absolutely. Define what crime you think was committed. Cite the statute and caselaw suporting your interpretation of it.
Now, predators? I'm completely on-board with that description.
Sounds like an Elon Musk defense.
Ya, fuck accurate non-hyperbolic descriptions, amirite?
Dial that shit up to 11, or you're on the other team!
Re: (Score:1)
When the press has to resort to ad hominem level attacks like "drugs" and "orgies", you know they've lost every other credible argument.
First, calling the New York Post the "press" is really stretching the definition.
Second, it's a statement of fact corroborated by people who were there. It goes to show the mentality and character of the people involved and how it lead to the failure of FTX. If you're spending your time doing drugs and having orgies, you don't have time to think about or manage your business.
Re: (Score:2)
Lemme tell you about *all of Wall St*.......and pretty much every CEO ever.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. I don't think any of that is illegal.
Asking people to hand you their money isn't illegal either. If they hand their life savings over to scam artists it's their problem.
Re: (Score:2)
When the press has to resort to ad hominem level attacks like "drugs" and "orgies", you know they've lost every other credible argument.
I thought that this was positive coverage. Basically: "Although he pissed billions of dollars up the wall on pretend money, some of it was not wasted"
Oh so they were acting like wealthy people (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What rule do you think didn't apply to him?
The drugs? 60% of this country does drugs.
Re: (Score:2)
As I moved up the ranks and started hanging out with wealthier and wealthier people I quickly discovered what's described here is how many wealthy people behave. I would end up at cocktail parties and when you walked in it was there's weed in the garage, beer in the back, wine on the table, the ladies at the counter have pills, Rob has coke. People would disappear all the time then pop up a half hour later, obviously redressed. Am I saying this is all wealthy people, hell no, but there's a decent size chunk that just like to party.
The same sentiment is also true of the so-called working class. (Though here in New Orleans it's socially acceptable to be buzzed, high, tripping, rolling, dripping, or even occasionally sober. Maybe this less true elsewhere.) In my experience it's the middle management class who don't share their party favors or hide them behind a prescription.
Re: (Score:2)
As I moved up the ranks and started hanging out with wealthier and wealthier people I quickly discovered what's described here is how many wealthy people behave. I would end up at cocktail parties and when you walked in it was there's weed in the garage, beer in the back, wine on the table, the ladies at the counter have pills, Rob has coke. People would disappear all the time then pop up a half hour later, obviously redressed. Am I saying this is all wealthy people, hell no, but there's a decent size chunk that just like to party.
I suspect that wealthy people are largely the same as everyone else in that aspect, but once you get a certain level of wealth you're now able to indulge on a different level.
Well, newish wealthy anyway, you get into the folks with inter-generational wealth and I suspect things can get very weird.
Social Deviant! (Score:2)
Re:Scary (Score:2)
The kind of stuff they were doing is scary. It's a threat to the order of society. And from the article I quote:
On an island paradise of moneyed traditionalists, SBF and some of his employees led a life allegedly fueled by drugs, vegetarian food...
We can't have the vegetarian food miscreants! It will ruin us all!
Partner swapping,drug abuse, wild goings on... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
I mean this isn't how you want to imagine a corporation handling billions of dollars being run... But anyone who thinks this kind of behavior is unfathomable definitely didn't go to college.
Maybe don't trust unregulated corporations run by 20-something year old neolibertarians out of Stanford.
These are the fuckers buying the blood of 18 year olds so that they can live forever.
"Embarrassed" (Score:4, Insightful)
Asked what the Albany locals are saying about the implosion of FTX, the high-society source responded: "Nothing. They're embarrassed."
They're "embarrassed" because it brings scrutiny and shame to their community. They're not "embarrassed" people lost their money or that the company is a failure.
It was the same thing with Bernie Madoff. The Jewish community was "embarrassed" because of the attention and shame he brought to them, not that the money was lost.
It's like that pro-life Christian dad who's glad his son, who murdered five people, isn't gay [imgur.com].
'Evidence' appears (Score:2)
Yep, soon as you do something bad, who you live with, and who fucks you, is part of the problem.
Why is this gutter journalism on Slashdot?
Please stop using three letter acronym for this cr (Score:2)
Please stop using his three letter acronym. This practice AFAIK comes from the free/open source software community and was generally given as a sign of respect and endearment to significant contributors and important leaders.
Wood-nymph addict Sam is none of those things and does not deserve such a nickname of honor. FFS stop calling him that and use whatever colorful language you want instead, it would all be more fitting.
The first to call out FTX's smoke and mirrors (Score:2)
"In an interview with Keith McCullough of Hedgeye more than two weeks ago, Cohodes, a trader and prolific short seller, was calling out Bankman-Fried. This is well before news broke of FTX’s implosion, which is what makes Cohodes remarks so impressive—since he absolutely tore into FTX and SBF."
https://jjmilt.substack.com/p/meet-the-man-who-called-out-ftxs [substack.com]
There's video at the above link, and more from Cohodes around the web.
Will Slashdot ever fix their DB character encoding (Score:1)
There's always another Boo.com (Score:1)
Just read the headline quickly (Score:2)
If you read the headline quickly and try to make sense of "Party swapping pills" "partners swapping pills" - you get the image of pensioners partying hard where Mertyl takes Beni's blood pressure medicine and Beni takes Merty's Gout medicine . . .
OK. Maybe that DOESN'T make a lot more sense, but it's closer to amusing than depressing . . .