It is probably just a coincidence, but it's darkly funny how well this lines up with the strategy described in a rather infamous LessWrong post. The title is "Solutions to the Altruist's burden: the Quantum Billionaire Trick", but you probably know it by a different name. The author is one Roko Mijic.

Not forever. He'd have nothing soon enough.

Isn't that just the right thing to do, statistically? Vegas has been operating profitably this way for decades.

>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.

Practically speaking I think everyone involved would've had a good incentive to brush it off behind closed doors and not rock the boat. Crypto is entirely based on vibes (there are very few - if any - legitimate applications) and rocking the boat would cause losses across the entire industry.

He went to jail because his autism wouldn't allow him to be duplicitous like a CEO doing evil things has to be and he attracted too much negative attention.

There are not.

If you know of other SBFs, please name them so that we can call for their investigation and prosecution.

You know, it only just now occurs to me to wonder if the blackjack story is the public sanitized version of "how I got $24k because I'm not allowed to tell you the real version"

What this version of the FedEx story doesn't mention is that Fred was already stiffing his pilots on their salaries. Taking the last money in the company and deciding that the best use for it was the blackjack table in Vegas and not paying his employees ... worked well, but it was a gamble, let's be clear, not a calculated decision - like you say, not the decision of a "great genius". It goes a different way, and you have "FedEx founder decides to go gambling, leaving his employees without paychecks".

Lol, tether, bitfinex are examples that came to mind. A lot of the OG crypto instutions got to where they are by "faking it till they made it" long enough to actually make it.

Does no one still remember that tether continually stalled audits FOR YEARS in the face of increasing scrutiny?

Correct. Companies go bust all the time, for market timing reasons that are mostly out of their control. But going bust is different from going bust and stealing billions.

Whether by negligence or intent, FTX was arranged so that they couldn't go bust without stealing.

But that’s precisely what I mean. How many companies had similarly sketchy situations, cleaned up their act and nobody ever noticed?

That number isn’t 0

Fraud is only called fraud if you get caught and defraud the wrong people. Corporation-on-consumer fraud is generally OK and a lot of businesses we consider "legitimate" do it as standard practice. Fraud against investors and "the rich" can still be papered over and forgotten if everyone ends up richer in the end. SBF just got unlucky.

Or hide it better?