This is a linkpost for https://www.semafor.com/article/12/07/2022/charity-money-launched-sam-bankman-frieds-empire
Found this reporting interesting. The entire financial operation was expressly set up by funding from top Effective Altruists. I think we previously saw EA as resembling a victim in this scenario, but I am curious how that understanding evolves at this moment as we learn more.
When Bankman-Fried and others like Mac Aulay tried to raise money for the idea from crypto investors outside the Effective Altruism movement, they weren’t taken seriously. Without backers inside Effective Altruism, it’s hard to imagine Bankman-Fried, a recent college grad, getting more than $100 million to play with at a crypto trading firm. And without Alameda, there never would have been an FTX.
The "project" was just to make a bunch of money on crypto; I don't see how the investors could justify that as a moral use of their capital. The entire industry runs on the expected losses of random less educated people, third world countries, refugees, black market vendors, and gambling addicts. Losses that come from unregulated manipulation of market value of tokens which have no real world value. Manipulation like that which SBF is now under investigation for. This is quite the stretch to say there were good intentions going in.