Posted by meetpateltech 9/2/2025
[1]https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-tells-investor-not...
Now he's in AI investments.
A fascinating investor. I just finished re-reading Microserfs. The buzzwords may have changed between 1993 and 2025, but the human behaviors certainly have not.
people don't even remember the era before the current brands. like the time a bell offshoot almost crashed canada because they siphoned all the telephone money into bad routers.
On a long enough timeframe, the open source models will catch up to the proprietary models and inference providers will beat these proprietary companies on price.
Right, but parent didn't say anything about an all-in bet, just double-or-nothing on a positive EV bet.
Frankly, I'd repeatedly bet on a positive EV bet too; it's a guaranteed win if you're allowed to go on for as long as you want to.
Things working out in the end doesn't make what he did not a crime at the time. He was a common paper hanger, albeit with billions instead.
Morally speaking, no. Practically speaking, it does. He would not have seen jail time.
It's literally exactly what Shkreli got 7 years for, even after repaying investors. If you defraud money from someone and put it back before they find out, it's still a crime. Fraud is about intent more than anything else, and they proved it for SBF.
"what do you call a rouge trader that makes money?"
"Managing director"
If someone makes money on time, everything is forgiven. Money blinds us.
Some who take on unreasonable risk will be among the most successful people alive. Most will lose eventually, long before you hear about them if they keep too many taking crazy risks.
Who is a great genius, and is who is just winning at "The Martingale entrepreneurial strategy"?
Filipinos have a more predictable low-loss version of this call Paluwagan.
It's not just about surviving a downtown and unforseen circumstances with some luck (like the sibling talking about FedEx barely making it). Tesla, for example, was famously extremely close to bankruptcy.
But SBF got into the situation he was in due to his egregious fraud. The accounting at FTX was a criminal joke, with multiple sets of books, bypassable controls, outright fake numbers. My guess is that if SBF had survived that particular BTC downturn that his extreme hubris and willingness to commit fraud would have eventually done him in - downturns always happen at some point, and his brazenness in his criminal enterprise showed no signs of learning from mistakes.
Sure, all hugely successful companies have a ton of luck involved. But I think it's a mistake to pretend that SBF was just done in by bad timing, or that all companies do what he did. His empire collapse was pretty inevitable IMO if you look at what a clown show FTX was under the covers.
Does no one still remember that tether continually stalled audits FOR YEARS in the face of increasing scrutiny?
Whether by negligence or intent, FTX was arranged so that they couldn't go bust without stealing.
That number isn’t 0
Hindsight says, don't do fraud.
We should all try to remember this the next time we vote to cut taxes on billionaires.
That applies to individuals, but it probably also applies to companies. We're in an AI boom? Raise some money while it's easy.
I got the impression that some people were reselling access and adding layers of fees to profit from the hype.
More importantly, we should ask who will be left holding the bag when this bubble bursts. For now, investors are getting their money back through acquisitions. Founders with desirable, traditional credentials are doing well, as are early employees at large AI startups who are cashing out on the secondary market. It appears the late-stage employees will be the ones who lose the most.
My feeble uncle isn't allowed to buy a single lightbulb in his state yet , but burning terawatts for useless porn generators is where we are investing our engineering efforts.