There seems to be some confusion around the following sentence: “Essentially, if you received money from an FTX entity in the debtor group anytime on or after approximately August 11, 2022, the bankruptcy process will probably ask you, at some point, to pay all or part of that money back.” 

Some clarifications: 

FTX Foundation, Inc. (the nonprofit corporation) is not currently in the debtor group. At least some FTXFF grantees received their funding from this nonprofit corporation, so this sentence doesn’t apply to them (yet – it could be added later).

It’s worth checking what entity you received your funding from. We believe that some grantees received funding from Alameda Research, North Dimension or other entities that are in the debtor group.

When I say “the bankruptcy process will probably ask you, at some point, to pay all or part of that money back” I mean, you are at least likely to receive a demand letter from the lawyers representing the debtor group. It costs next to nothing for the lawyers to send out demand letters, so a small grant amount isn’t necessarily protective against receiving a letter like that.  

If you do receive a demand letter, at that point you will have options about whether and how to engage in a negotiation process with the debtors’ lawyers. If you don’t come to a resolution, the claim could go to formal litigation. The likelihood of this depends on a number of factors, including the amount of money at play. Keep in mind, this is probably years in the future; a lot can happen in the bankruptcy case (and in the world) between now and then. 

Post is now up here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/o8B9kCkwteSqZg9zc/thoughts-on-legal-concerns-surrounding-the-ftx-situation 

(links to more resources including the explainer in the post)

Hi! I'm Open Phil's managing counsel, and put out a post on this subject (with links to resources) here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/o8B9kCkwteSqZg9zc/thoughts-on-legal-concerns-surrounding-the-ftx-situation 

It'll be an explainer about how US clawbacks work, yes. 

(and mandatory disclaimer: it'll be an explanation of legal context but not legal advice) 

Update that I don't think I'm going to be able to meet the timeline I set myself and have a product I think is worth sharing. Given that this is a holiday weekend it might be hard to find good advisors who are willing to work on this before Monday, but I'm going to try. 

Thanks! Updated. 

Quick response to comments about potential clawbacks: OP expects to put out an explainer about clawbacks tomorrow. It'll be written by our outside counsel and probably won't contain much in the way of specifics, but I think generally FTX grantees should avoid spending additional $$ on legal advice about this just yet.

Also, please don't take this as evidence that we expect clawbacks to happen, just that we know it's an issue of community concern. 

Thanks! 

Yea, I probably could've done a better job differentiating what I think people would get out of guard/reserve service vs. active duty. I absolutely would not expect the cultural absorption to happen in the guard/reserve; probably not even if you took a year-long mob. It really was a years-long process. 

I agree that the national security knowledge is overrated, and tried to convey that - I think your Peace Corps analogy is spot on.

It'd be awesome if you wrote a post on warrant officer careers - nobody seems to know WTF warrants do, myself included! 

I didn't join right out of college - I joined after law school. I took a few years off between college and law school, so I was 27 when I joined. It wasn't weird for me but that might be in large part because I joined the JAG Corps, which required a law degree, so most people I was in training with were around my age. 

I've known other people who joined later than the standard age, and they mostly did really well. It probably helped that respect for your elders is one of those more traditional values that is somewhat a part of military culture. 

I did do airborne school when I was 33. I was one of the oldest, if not the oldest person in my class. No issues at all - though maybe hitting my body that hard at 33 was more ache-inducing than it would have been in my 20s. 

I asked someone else who has more experience in the national guard than I do to jump in and answer this. I will say that I'm not sure that joining the guard will be much added protection against going out-of-state. My husband was guard, and got mobilized to Iraq in 2004-2005, and ended up resigning his commission when it looked like that was going to happen again in 2007-ish. Also guard often helps other states when they need disaster relief.