Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely yes. Maddens me when the media do this. They described WeWork scammer as some sort of wacky fun hippy guy. He's now running around freely, at it again. FFS.
Focus on the victims. Estimates are that 1 million customers lost $8 billion. Undoubtedly some lost their life savings and are suffering as a result. Find them and tell their stories. This whiz kid will seem a lot less cute then. No one should care that Sequoia Capital was defrauded. The customers deserve much more sympathy.
Or contrast this to Elizabeth Holmes, who got the 'evil bitch' treatment instead of the 'wunderkind' treatment when she fell from grace. You can see the pattern clearly in the photos, during the height of the Theranos debacle pictures of her were always as unattractive as possible, in harsh lighting. Meanwhile we SBF only gets fresh-faced boy photos, they all look like his publicist chose them to make him look as unthreatening as possible. It's crazy the degree to which the media treats him with kid gloves.
The child worship of VC & IT is a long time example of “anchoring”on the tiny number of prodigies who beat the odds to succeed. Entrepreneurs who have survived a failed startup (or two) or the near-death experience of an established company are more likely to succeed. Note the careers of those who survived Sun and Oracle from the challenges circa 1990....
So true. There is a weird "babyfication" of all these scumbag white collar criminals. Watch that Madoff documentary for a different approach, white washing the middle class "proper" Madoff brokerage firm employees who could never have known about the massive fraud that was propping up their loss making business for over a decade with the "working class criminals" on the 17th floor below. Class and race intersectionality.
The reality is that SBF stole more money than most criminals incarcerated in 25 US states today combined. But he plays League of Legends and his parents went to Stanford so it must be someone elses fault and anyway he was always a bit mischeivous.
Great piece. So true. And yes, Holmes is portrayed as this evil woman and Fried is portrayed as this nerdy kid. As if he could be so smart but not know what he was doing was a crime.
Strikes me that Molly and many others are the folks trying to say, “But wait a minute...this doesn’t work, but it would if...” only to be left relatively unheard by the rush of the runaway train that is Web3.
So true. There is a weird "babyfication" of all these scumbag white collar criminals. Watch that Madoff documentary for a different approach, white washing the middle class "proper" Madoff brokerage firm employees who could never have known about the massive fraud that was propping up their loss making business for over a decade with the "working class criminals" on the 17th floor below. Class and race intersectionality.
The reality is that SBF stole more money than most criminals incarcerated in 25 US states today combined. But he plays League of Legends and his parents went to Stanford so it must be someone elses fault and anyway he was always a bit mischeivous.
I think they are one thing heavily overlooked in this ftx downfall that I find completely mind boggling.
Like how do you run an off market stock exchange without having the SEC kick your door in? And should companies have the right to sue crypto exchanges for fraud if they're promising investors access to companies securities. Also how many are getting/ were getting offered vs the total stock amount of some companies.
I haven't seen anyone write an unbiased piece about this stuff. But SBF dis do a piece with Forbes peddling people to buy them so that was all money that got stolen from investors.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely yes. Maddens me when the media do this. They described WeWork scammer as some sort of wacky fun hippy guy. He's now running around freely, at it again. FFS.
Focus on the victims. Estimates are that 1 million customers lost $8 billion. Undoubtedly some lost their life savings and are suffering as a result. Find them and tell their stories. This whiz kid will seem a lot less cute then. No one should care that Sequoia Capital was defrauded. The customers deserve much more sympathy.
Or contrast this to Elizabeth Holmes, who got the 'evil bitch' treatment instead of the 'wunderkind' treatment when she fell from grace. You can see the pattern clearly in the photos, during the height of the Theranos debacle pictures of her were always as unattractive as possible, in harsh lighting. Meanwhile we SBF only gets fresh-faced boy photos, they all look like his publicist chose them to make him look as unthreatening as possible. It's crazy the degree to which the media treats him with kid gloves.
The child worship of VC & IT is a long time example of “anchoring”on the tiny number of prodigies who beat the odds to succeed. Entrepreneurs who have survived a failed startup (or two) or the near-death experience of an established company are more likely to succeed. Note the careers of those who survived Sun and Oracle from the challenges circa 1990....
So true. There is a weird "babyfication" of all these scumbag white collar criminals. Watch that Madoff documentary for a different approach, white washing the middle class "proper" Madoff brokerage firm employees who could never have known about the massive fraud that was propping up their loss making business for over a decade with the "working class criminals" on the 17th floor below. Class and race intersectionality.
The reality is that SBF stole more money than most criminals incarcerated in 25 US states today combined. But he plays League of Legends and his parents went to Stanford so it must be someone elses fault and anyway he was always a bit mischeivous.
Great piece. So true. And yes, Holmes is portrayed as this evil woman and Fried is portrayed as this nerdy kid. As if he could be so smart but not know what he was doing was a crime.
What fascinates me is how effectively the FTX story was encapsulated and spun to protect the momentum of Web3.
Thoughts on that in the second half of today’s article, Runaway Buts: https://open.substack.com/pub/johnwolpert/p/runaway-buts?r=1yad3e&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Strikes me that Molly and many others are the folks trying to say, “But wait a minute...this doesn’t work, but it would if...” only to be left relatively unheard by the rush of the runaway train that is Web3.
So true. There is a weird "babyfication" of all these scumbag white collar criminals. Watch that Madoff documentary for a different approach, white washing the middle class "proper" Madoff brokerage firm employees who could never have known about the massive fraud that was propping up their loss making business for over a decade with the "working class criminals" on the 17th floor below. Class and race intersectionality.
The reality is that SBF stole more money than most criminals incarcerated in 25 US states today combined. But he plays League of Legends and his parents went to Stanford so it must be someone elses fault and anyway he was always a bit mischeivous.
Hi Molly,
Can you write an article on tokenized stocks?
I think they are one thing heavily overlooked in this ftx downfall that I find completely mind boggling.
Like how do you run an off market stock exchange without having the SEC kick your door in? And should companies have the right to sue crypto exchanges for fraud if they're promising investors access to companies securities. Also how many are getting/ were getting offered vs the total stock amount of some companies.
I haven't seen anyone write an unbiased piece about this stuff. But SBF dis do a piece with Forbes peddling people to buy them so that was all money that got stolen from investors.