my impression of prosecutors is that they are a narcissist bunch who are in that role because tough-on-crime reputation they earn by putting ppl in prison gives them a leg up in future political career. so more publicity a case gets and less resources the defendant has, more attractive the case is to prosecutors i would think.
State attorneys general and district attorney offices are much, much more mired in politics than the comparable Federal offices. The former are more often staging points for moving up the political ladder; whereas the Federal positions are more often filled by career legal lifers, and act as staging points for moving to the private sector, to judicial appointments, or retirement.
That said, the SEC, which AFAIU would normally take the lead, is poorly staffed. The SEC leans heavily on automation, intimidation, and rapid plea deals in order to avoid resource intensive investigations and prosecutions; much more so than run-of-the-mill criminal cases that more immediately can benefit from the huge staffs at the FBI, ATF, DoJ, etc. So when prosecution and a prerequisite comprehensive investigation is clearly warranted and necessary, there seems to be considerable inconsistency in process and outcome. And that's before accounting for the fact that financial crimes can be very difficult to prove at trial, both factually and legally--just ask Donald Trump or the Church of Scientology, white whales renowned for beating countless financial related prosecutions and civil suits.
> That said, the SEC, which AFAIU would normally take the lead
The SEC only has civil enforcement authority, ie lawsuits. Criminal complaints must be referred to DOJ. They also tend to be much less creative than Justice at finding jurisdiction over non-US entities.
The entire reason crypto companies incorporate outside the US is to avoid SEC jurisdiction. But crimes against US persons are crimes wherever the company is located.
But still the SEC is usually in the lead initially, before referral to the DoJ, and thus the SEC would be the gatekeeper and pace setter, especially this early on. They're in the best position to begin gathering and analyzing evidence, afterall, as well as determining impact and priority. (But please correct me if I'm wrong. The closest I've ever been to such types of investigations is hearing war stories from a law professor who had worked either at the IRS, or at the DoJ on some cases referred from the IRS. Other than that, I just follow the news and interesting legal cases.)
Perhaps the DoJ has already starting formally looking at FTX, et al, on their own. OTOH, I actually had never heard of FTX or Bankman-Fried before recently, and honestly still don't get what the hubbub is about. I'm skeptical how impactful the collapse truly is, beyond the rarified world of crypto enthusiasts, wealthy tech investors, etc. And given that its overseas, I really wouldn't expect (either pragmatically or idealistically) the SEC or DoJ to rapidly shift significant resources and attention to FTX; certainly not on the order of days or weeks.
The SEC collects billions of dollars in fines every year, typically with several individual fines of over $100M.
While some actions (like a minor player doing thousands of dollars in insider trading) may be paint-by-numbers, my impression is that substantial resources go into the types of investigations that can lead to massive settlements.
Although, in a case like FTX, it’s hard to get blood from a stone.
They’ll be able to rake back some of the paid-out funds though. Should be able to pay some big fines/penalties.
I suspect something similar is going on with the quadriga bankruptcy in Canada. CRA (Canadian IRS) did an audit and shared its results with the creditors’ lawyers months ago but nobody has heard anything about it yet: they probably didn’t like the penalties they’re being asked to pay.
virtuoso? i'd settle for ability to think and learn. i have been surprised by someone hired as senior software engineer - two levels above me - struggle to understand simple multithreading and synchronization concepts even when provided with an article that gives comprehensive overview of the OS's scheduler.
> I've seen bike lanes added to roads, and almost no one is happy. There's always idiot drivers and bikers and every now and then someone gets hurt or killed.
which is why we should allow only bikes and public transport in large cities.
i've always wondered why "Sent from my xxxxx" lines are tacked on. are those intended to blame poorly composed messages and typos on bad typing experience provided by mobile devices?
Or it's just a cheap ad or for the user to show off; after all they bought an expensive iDevice and not sime cheap Android. Or a little bit of everything's.
Sent from my Oh-MeGaphone SE with the official Firefox app
I don't know what the current state of thermophotovoltaics are but maybe that's one way to go about it. Or maybe the temps are too low for that. Not sure.
UPDATE: Papers about geothermal source temperatures refer to tempratures up to 180°C. The thermal battery article above refer to TPV setups that use 1400°C source and efforts are being made to push temps to 2400°C for higher efficiency.
and this is part of why i think cryptocurrencies should have died before large number of people wasted their money on it. for the average user without the time/knowledge/patience to handle cryptos "properly", the choice is between losing money while handling this shit yourself or losing money while trusting someone else to do it right.
Its an entirely free market. Just because one person doesn't understand the tech and loses his money doesn't mean that everyone else shouldn't be allowed to use it either.
Even if you don't buy into the crypto vision (I don't), a digital-only currency that isn't tied to any nation-state does deserve to exist.
It’s fine for a few people to play with such a system. The issue if it’s absolutely clear crypto is incapable of widespread adoption or just about anything else people hype it up as, then it shouldn’t be hyped as if that stuff is a possibility.
I could never tell how much was incompetence vs fraud, but either way without the hype vastly fewer suckers would be holding the bag right now. The crypto ecosystem has been just been terrible for just about everyone and things are far from over.
The people holding the bag right now mostly got in because of the allure of quick profits. And if they didn't sell even after making incredible (paper) returns, they have their own greed to blame.
Bitcoin was $6,000 in March 2020. It hit $63,000 in April 2021. And if you didn't sell that top, it hit $67,000 again in November 2021.
Even now, it has dropped less than Netflix, a supposed bluechip.
I don't know what's the scam in this - you had plenty of entry opportunities and plenty of exit opportunities. The underlying system itself still works exactly as described.
I lost nothing, but I can empathies with people who are screwed.
It’s not that Bitcoin or any alt coin has X paper value right now, it’s nobody can get out without someone else getting stuck holding the bag. The underlying system is predatory because mining isn’t free so it’s a negative sum game where people have already cashed out.
I remember being saddened when it was less than 1/1,000th isn’t current value I realized how many suckers where lining up for the fleecing. I briefly thought the odds are very good it’s going sky high, but I didn’t want to be part of someone losing their retirement when things eventually fell apart.
> nobody can get out without someone else getting stuck holding the bag
That's true for practically every asset class. If you sold your Netflix stock at $600, someone had to buy it at $600 as well. And now they're out of $430.
There's a losing counterparty in every winning trade.
No, this is false. With stocks, the holder can get paid in dividends. With real estate, you gain value from actually using the land. A bond is actually a form of credit. Et cetera. Which other assets are you thinking of?
Edit: You must be conflating it with the funny money private stocks and their buybacks that a lot of startups have. Those are obviously a gamble, they're not really "investments" for most participants. It's no surprise that the same type of companies tried to go deep into ICOs a few years ago which are like the crypto equivalent of a bogus penny stock.
> There's a losing counterparty in every winning trade
the counterparties are equal in every trade; any winning takes place afterward in the future
and if one party is selling a publicly traded security or commodity at a loss, that doesn't mean it wasn't a good investment, it means it was bought at a fair price and conditions changed
Wait a minute. You decided not to invest early, despite expecting it to be massively profitable because you were worried about the morality of allowing less competent people to try the same thing in future? Are you sure that's really the truth and you weren't just too hesitant and now you regret missing out so you've gone all salty?
Almost, I wasn't worried about people trying to time the market. I was worried for the suckers who actually believed the hype.
Look morality is only meaningful when it comes at a cost. I sincerely hope you are discouraged from scamming, robbing, kidnapping etc because you think it’s wrong rather than insufficient gain to be worth the effort.
they said odds were good, but maybe they're not much of a gambler. and sounds like they views cryptocurrencies as being something akin to scammy MLM or Ponzi scheme rather than an investment.
i haven't bought any myself. i just enjoy reading tech and economics stories in general so i've been reading about cryptocurrencies since 2013 or so. but i don't intend to buy any unless one fulfills some need i have better than other solutions. and i certainly don't intend to hold onto any if i can help it.
Crypto tokens are absolutely a scammy MLM or ponzi scheme. They're not investments. No profit is derived from the token itself, no one is holding bitcoins to do useful work with them. The value comes entirely from speculation and from miners pumping the price so they can recoup their investment in mining equipment and energy costs. They're also not "currencies", they function incredibly poorly for that purpose.
> That doesn’t absolve the con artist for running one though
Who are you going to prosecute in this case? The developers of Ethereum who are making a digital peer2peer smart contract system and have no interest in running a ponzi scheme?
Are you going to arrest Bram Cohen for inventing Bittorrent for what happens on it? What about the people behind Tor?
In the case of a literal Ponzi scheme it is pretty obvious who to prosecute. In the blockchain space many players have figured out ways to avoid being prosecuted for their schemes (many of which are little more than outright scams), but that doesn’t make what they’re doing ethical
You missed my point, they're building a decentralised smart contract system, there's nothing in the Ethereum smart contract code that says you must build a ponzi.
> The people holding the bag right now mostly got in because of the allure of quick profits. And if they didn't sell even after making incredible (paper) returns, they have their own greed to blame.
The market adapts to make secure access more convenient. The best solution devised so far is hardware wallets, which mostly insulate someone from hacks emanating from their computing device being compromised.
i'm not sure why people keep thinking that there is a hard limit to number of bitcoins that can be mined when the network can be updated to allow more coins to be mined.
the few ivy league graduates i've worked with were idiots with no original thought who constantly needed handholding. they were good at parroting other people's opinions & ideas and at schmoozing with the boss so maybe those are the good ideas that students at their school had.
Tesla has a culture of working 21/7 and sleeping at the factory. this is just typical asshatery from a ceo who gets paid millions while jerking off at the factory 24/7 and expects his employees to put in the same hours. the sooner Tesla goes bankrupt the better.
