Tag: Bitcoin
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No snappy conclusions
Tiffany gives a short report on Sammy’s actual testimony. After many years of conquering everyone he wants to conquer, many years of confidently promising the world and delivering shit, he ends up mumbling a hundred versions of “I don’t remember”. I can’t think of any snappy conclusions based on Professional Criminal personality traits. This is…
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If you’re doing it that way…
In Laura Shin’s reporting on Sammy’s testimony, she describes a setup for monitoring accounts. Sammy had one “trading engine” for running the bets in his betting parlor, and another “risk engine” for checking the bets against account limits for each customer. He claimed that the “risk engine” was slow in responding when the bets hit…
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Ledgers all the way
Tiffany also has a Substack column, which she doesn’t use as heavily as Twitter and Youtube. She does put some documents there. This one is especially informative. It’s a document Sammy wrote to her, outlining part of his defense strategy. It’s crystal clear, not fuzzy at all. Good old double-entry bookkeeping, familiar to an old…
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Nonrandom note
Just one extremely nonrandom note on the Sam Old Subject. I have considerable sympathy for Sammy’s associates, especially Singh and Wang. I HAVE GALACTICALLY INFINITE NEGATIVE SYMPATHY FOR THE INVESTORS AND CUSTOMERS. THEY KNEW EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE GETTING INTO. IF YOU WANT YOUR MONEY TO BE SAFE OR ‘RING FENCED’, YOU PUT YOUR MONEY…
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Poignant
Nishad Singh’s testimony focuses sharply on a point I’ve been making since 2014. Nishad admired and respected Sammy UNTIL Sammy instructed him to write dishonest code. Nerds do a terrible job of judging personalities and social strategies because we don’t have personalities or social skills. BUT: When you instruct a programmer to write dishonest code,…
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Even more useless logic
Via Protos: Sammy’s lawyers are trying every tool in the box, which is their job. Now they’ve filed a motion for mistrial because Sammy hasn’t been able to get his “required” dose of Adderall, allegedly needed to fix his alleged ADHD. Also via Protos: Sammy hasn’t bothered to show the symptoms of ADHD during the…
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More thanks for advice
Continuing in thanks for good advice mode…. Noticed this while browsing Substack. The Bob Brinker financial advising firm is still around and still advising, and now it’s recommending Series I bonds again. Brinker retired a long time ago and died earlier this year; the firm is carried on by his successors. Back in 2001 I…
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Doesn’t hit the main point
A bitcoin lover interviews a bitcoin realist. Kudos to both of them for conducting a civil and informative interview. Important question around minute 12: No, there’s nothing interesting at the core. There’s no “technology” at the core. It’s just an array, which is a universal part of every computer program. The bitcoin array is an…
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Hmm…
Interesting admission in CoinDesk’s live coverage of the Sammy trial and other bitcoin-related events. A lobbyist who helps bitcoin companies deal with regulation said: The regulators have shut down the major banks who served the crypto industry, and placed strong restrictions on other banks. If you can’t work with a bank you can’t succeed in…
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Just curious
I noted in reports about Sammy’s trial that Programmer Wang used the Py randomizer to generate the official daily trading volume. As an old Pythoner I was curious to see what was happening. Here’s the trick as shown and analyzed by BitMEX. The code is dense and “one-liner” to make it harder to read, unlike…
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Blood is thicker
Michael Lewis’s defense of Sammy is so obviously bizarre that even Saagar and Krystal could see it! One of the commenters hits an important point: If SBF was a Nigerian scammer, I’m certain Michael Lewis would have a drastically different take. He’s not the only one who still defended SBF. These people saw him like…
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Wrong foot
The prosecution in Sammy’s trial started out with an immediate error. Their first witness was a commodities trader specializing in cocoa beans. He put 100k into Sammy’s swindle and then was SHOCKEDSHOCKEDSHOCKED that the 100k disappeared. This plays right into the defense argument that the suckers should have known better. The argument isn’t valid for…
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As predicted
A year ago I noted that Michael Lewis was writing a book on Sammy. = = = = = START REPRINT: Lewis is famous for The Big Short about the 2008 “crisis”, and he also wrote a disgusting celebration of the 2020 “virus” genocide, hymning the godlike virtues of Demon Fauci and Demon Mecher. Ankler…
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Metawait 2
I’m deeply enjoying the failure of bitcoin. Fine vintage Schadenfreude**. One of the podcasters mentioned that mining one Bitcoin now costs $45k, but the coin only sells for $26k, with no hope of ever rising again to a profitable level. Wait! Why didn’t I think of this before? Nvidia makes the processors that grind up…
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Metawait!
Listening as usual to old FBI radio shows in my bedtime playlist, grumping as usual about the audacious fakery of the stories. At one point near the end, Special Agent Taylor always slaps his forehead. “Wait! Why didn’t I think of this before? Let’s check those phone records again.” The real FBI never realizes things…
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