Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested

I find it disappointing that he tries to use EA as a shield (p 17, "As a believer in the Effective Altruism movement, my primary goal has never been personal enrichment; I'm motivated by a commitment to help bring happiness and alleviate suffering for others.") This is in the context of denying that he has billions of dollars stashed away. If he really cared about bringing happiness and alleviating suffering, why would he further tarnish the EA community's reputation by associating himself with it in testimony before Congress?

Yep. The only bit I'm qualified to assess is that he uses the phrase 'chalk full' instead of 'chock fill'. He should have read more books.

Anyone whose Guidelines sentence would be de facto life -- and could easily be looking at 30+ years -- is a potential flight risk in my book.

Likewise. At some point I had looked into using FTX for crypto. I didn't because it raised several red flags for me, but let me share my recollections about the historical ToS, fwiw:

Wayne, I see in another post you aren't sure what about its terms of service was violated. I can't pull up the historical ToS, and I'm not sure if they changed, but back when I looked into using it, I specifically looked for language that they were keeping the funds safe and not lending them out and I found that language. If the language somehow wasn't completely airtight, it was at least sure as hell deceptive, because I was specifically looking for it, carefully reading it, and believed I found it. I was not interested in any tokens providing interest, so it's also not right to (as per your post on another thread) suggest that investors should have known better because where did they think the interest was coming from. The tokens bearing interest were a separate product, as it were, and I don't even remember seeing anything about interest. Probably the majority of users were only looking for a place to transfer money to and buy bitcoin, nothing fancier like staking. I do recall coming across instructions to wire to Alameda and saying hell no and stopping right there. I only regret not making the connection between "red flag for me" -> "red flag for EA". I did not know about the EA connection until much later (or I might have trusted Alameda).

 Allegedly made risky bets.  I think there is very real possibility the money was just stolen and siphoned into the underworld

I read it. (It's here.) 

Doesn't really change my views that much. Maybe I'm 45 - 55 for mistake-fraud now, from 50-50. There's no smoking gun documents or communications in the complaint. It's possible they are hiding the ball, at this point. Perhaps they have a fragile witness who they don't want to expose to public scrutiny. (Caroline Ellison or one of the other high level executives seem like the most likely candidates.) But I don't see proof  beyond a reasonable doubt that this is fraud. 

The key thing to note is that, legally, Sam's subjective intent (and not whether customers were harmed or felt deceived)  is what ultimately matters. I think it also matters morally, though of course extreme negligence is immoral too. There are a lot of troubling circumstantial allegations made -- e.g., the fact that customer deposits were in some cases going directly into Alameda-controlled accounts, while Sam was promising folks that the two entities were separate and that customer accounts were segregated -- but unless the prosecution can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Sam intentionally committed fraud, they should lose their case. (Does not mean they actually WILL lose their case, as in cases such as this, with so much public pressure, juries are quick to condemn even if the evidence is insufficient.) I can see an early-stage startup putting funds into the wrong bank account simply because it was convenient, and then forgetting about it later when it was convenient to forget about it. That's not fraud. That's negligence and incompetence. 

I still think the very fact that the feds filed charges is significant evidence that fraud was committed. But without hearing Sam's side of the story, it's really hard to say, from these relatively-barebones complaints, that there is clear evidence of fraud. Sam will likely have explanations for all the decisions made, e.g., the special coding for Alameda's margin ("We felt Alameda was a safe counterparty, and important to the business, and would have given the same treatment to any similarly-situated customer."). Until I hear that evidence -- or see CLEAR evidence of fraud --  it's hard to assess the relatively general allegations made in this complaint. 

An example of clear evidence of fraud would be something like this in the coplaint: "In August 2022, Bankman-Fried, realizing that Alameda's creditors were demanding more collateral, wrote to his team members: 'I don't care what the terms of service say, and I don't care what we promised investors and customers. Send the money to Alameda immediately, so we can solve their balance sheet problem. And don't tell anyone about this.' "

Instead this complaint has reasonable circumstantial evidence of guilt but nothing that, to me, leaps out as clear and convincing evidence of fraud. Of course, the prosecution will have much more time to develop their case. But if the complaint is all they have, I think they are going to have trouble winning this case. (I should add; the complaint is rarely all a prosecutor has, and I still think that SDNY probably would not have brought this case without something strong, e.g., a cooperating witness who can testify about agreements to lie to investors. Remembering the base rate of conviction, 90+%, is pretty important here.) 

PS I'm curious. What was your take? I have a defendant bias, as someone who has done criminal defense work. Do you think I'm missing some smoking gun in this complaint that, at this point, shows that the prosecution has a very strong case? Fraud cases are very hard to prove, in my experience, even pursuant to the civil burden of proof.