A personal statement on FTX

A personal statement on FTX — EA Forum 
 
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 by William_MacAskill Nov 12 2022 3 min read 144 291

 Community Philosophy FTX collapse FTX Foundation Future Fund Naive vs. sophisticated consequentialism Sam Bankman-Fried William MacAskill Frontpage This is a repost from a Twitter thread I made last night. It reads a little oddly when presented as a Forum post, but I wanted to have the content shared here for those not on Twitter. 

 This is a thread of my thoughts and feelings about the actions that led to FTX’s bankruptcy, and the enormous harm that was caused as a result, involving the likely loss of many thousands of innocent people’s savings.

 Based on publicly available information, it seems to me more likely than not that senior leadership at FTX used customer deposits to bail out Alameda, despite terms of service prohibiting this, and a (later deleted) tweet from Sam claiming customer deposits are never invested.

 Some places making the case for this view include this article from Wall Street Journal , this tweet from jonwu.eth ,   this article from Bloomberg (and follow on articles).

 I am not certain that this is what happened. I haven’t been in contact with anyone at FTX (other than those at Future Fund), except a short email to resign from my unpaid advisor role at Future Fund. If new information vindicates FTX, I will change my view and offer an apology.

 But if there was deception and misuse of funds, I am outraged, and I don’t know which emotion is stronger: my utter rage at Sam (and others?) for causing such harm to so many people, or my sadness and self-hatred for falling for this deception.

 I want to make it utterly clear: if those involved deceived others and engaged in fraud (whether illegal or not) that may cost many thousands of people their savings, they entirely abandoned the principles of the effective altruism community.

 If this is what happened, then I cannot in words convey how strongly I condemn what they did. I had put my trust in Sam, and if he lied and misused customer funds he betrayed me, just as he betrayed his customers, his employees, his investors, & the communities he was a part of.

 For years, the EA community has emphasised the importance of integrity, honesty, and the respect of common-sense moral constraints. If customer funds were misused, then Sam did not listen; he must have thought he was above such considerations.

 A clear-thinking EA should strongly oppose “ends justify the means” reasoning. I hope to write more soon about this. In the meantime, here are some links to writings produced over the years.

 These are some relevant sections from What We Owe The Future:

 
 

 

 

 Here is Toby Ord in The Precipice:

 

 Here is Holden Karnofsky:  https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/T975ydo3mx8onH3iS/ea-is-about-maximization-and-maximiza

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