SBF's effective altruism and rationalism considered an aggravating circumstance in sentencing - eviltoast
Sam Bankman-Fried wants only six years for his "victimless" crime
www.citationneeded.news
Sam Bankman-Fried maintains that his crimes were victimless and resulted in zero losses, and therefore warrant only six years of imprisonment. Prosecutors argue that 40–50 years are justified.

For thursday’s sentencing the us government indicated they would be happy with a 40-50 prison sentence, and in the list of reasons they cite there’s this gem:

  1. Bankman-Fried’s effective altruism and own statements about risk suggest he would be likely to commit another fraud if he determined it had high enough “expected value”. They point to Caroline Ellison’s testimony in which she said that Bankman-Fried had expressed to her that he would “be happy to flip a coin, if it came up tails and the world was destroyed, as long as if it came up heads the world would be like more than twice as good”. They also point to Bankman-Fried’s “own ‘calculations’” described in his sentencing memo, in which he says his life now has negative expected value. “Such a calculus will inevitably lead him to trying again,” they write.

Turns out making it a point of pride that you have the morality of an anime villain does not endear you to prosecutors, who knew.

Bonus: SBF’s lawyers’ list of assertions for asking for a shorter sentence includes this hilarious bit reasoning:

They argue that Bankman-Fried would not reoffend, for reasons including that “he would sooner suffer than bring disrepute to any philanthropic movement.”

  • Warren Christmas@mastodon.me.uk
    2·
    9 months ago

    @Architeuthis

    “Almost all of the letters lamented the likelihood that victims will not be able to enjoy the gains on their crypto assets, as the bankruptcy proceedings are likely to pay out claims in dollars based on the price of Bitcoin and other assets on the date of bankruptcy ($16,871, in Bitcoin’s case) rather than their prices today (around $70,000, or over four times as much)” oh no what a shame

    • mountainriver@awful.systemsEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      Your honor, My client caused no damages.

      As clearly seen in the impact statements the only thing that was lost was crypto currencies and as they state they would have been held on to if not lost. By holding on to the crypto currencies, the victims shows a common delusion in the crypto sphere, namely that crypto has value. In all certainty they would have held on until said crypto was lost, stolen or had collapsed. The true expected value was zero.