And this bollock was hailed as a genius and ran a multi-billion dollar business? FTXs 'balance sheet' - this is what SBF has been sending to prospective investors hoping for a bailout www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/ywbudf/ftxs_balance_sheet_this_is_what_sbf_has_been/ Matt Levine's description of this is glorious: But then there is the “Hidden, poorly internally labeled ‘fiat@’ account,” with a balance of negative $8 billion. I don’t actually think that you’re supposed to subtract that number from net equity — though I do not know how this balance sheet is supposed to work! — but it doesn’t matter. [...] You cannot apply ordinary arithmetic to numbers in a cell labeled “HIDDEN POORLY INTERNALLY LABELED ACCOUNT.” The result of adding or subtracting those numbers with ordinary numbers is not a number; it is prison. -------------------- In an interview Matt Levine did with SBF a few months back, where SBF was describing his business model and Matt said to him something like "so what you've just said to me is 'I'm in the Ponzi business, and its going pretty good'"
I think I fixed it. Let me know... but let me copy the important part: Look at line 23. Same as the thread title.
From the "box interview": SBF: You start with a company that builds a box, and in practice this box, they probably dress it up to look like a life-changing, you know, world-altering protocol that's gonna replace all the big banks in 38 days or whatever. Maybe for now actually ignore what it does, or pretend it does literally nothing, it's just a box. [...] And then this protocol issues a token. We'll call it, whatever, X token, and X token promises that anything cool that happens because of this box is gonna ultimately be usable by, you know, governance vote of holders of the X tokens. [...] And of course so far we haven't exactly given a compelling reason for why there ever would be any proceeds from this box, but, I don't know, you know, maybe there will be, so that's sort of where you start. [...] X token has some market cap, right. It's probably not zero. Well, let's say it's, you know, $20 million market cap. And a bunch of... Levine: Wait wait wait. From, like, first principles it should be zero, but okay. SBF: Uh, sure, okay, I-- I-- completely reasonable comment. Levine: [laughing] Thank you. Like, I mean, like, that's not quite true but I'm like, when you describe it in this totally cynical way it sounds like it should be zero. But go on. SBF: ...describe it this way, you might think [...] it should be worth like $180 or something market cap for like that, you know, that effort that you put into it. In the world that we're in, if you do this, everyone's gonna be like, ooh, box token, maybe it's cool. Have you bought any box token? You know, that's gonna appear on Twitter and it'll have a $20 million market cap. [...] all these, like, sophisticated firms are like, huh, that's interesting, like, if the total amount of money in the box is $100 million, then it's gonna yield $16 million this year in X tokens being given out for it. That's a 16% return. That's pretty good. We'll put a little bit more in, right? And, and maybe that, that happens until there are 200 million dollars in the box. So, you know, sophisticated traders and/or people on crypto Twitter or, or other sort of similar parties go and, and put $200 million in the box collectively, and they start taking these X tokens for it, right, and now all of a sudden everyone's like, wow, people just decided to put $200 million in the box. This is a pretty cool box, right, like, this, this is a valuable box, as demonstrated by all the money that people have apparently decided should be in the box, and who are we to say that they're wrong about that, like, you know, this is, I, I mean boxes can be great, look, I love boxes as much as the next guy, right? [others are laughing incredulously] And, and, and so what happens now? All of a sudden people are kind of recalibrating. It's like, well, $20 million, that's it? Like, that market cap for this box? And it's been like 48 hours and it already has $200 million, including from like sophisticated players in it. [...] Levine: I, I think of myself as, like, a fairly cynical person and... [SBF: "yup"] that was so much more cynical [crosstalk] than how I would have described farming. Like, you're just, like, "well, I'm in the Ponzi business and it's pretty good." [...] SBF: ...and it is sort of like real monetizable stuff in some senses, and, you know, at some point, like, if the world never decides that we're wrong about this in, like, a coordinated way, right, like, you're the kind of guy calling bullshit, saying no this thing's actually worthless, but in what sense are you right? ----------------------------- Also: https://newsletterhunt.com/emails/22983
Matt Levine's a great writer. I used to subscribe to "Money Stuff" but unfortunately he writes faster than I read. It's amazing.