Really effective altruism and the human fund
This story always ends the same way but somehow that never makes a difference to the next time it’s told:
Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, his parents and senior executives of the failed cryptocurrency exchange bought at least 19 properties worth nearly $121 million in the Bahamas over the past two years, official property records show.
Most of FTX’s purchases were luxury beachfront homes, including seven condominiums in an expensive resort community called Albany, costing almost $72 million. The deeds show these properties, bought by a unit of FTX, were to be used as “residence for key personnel” of the company. Reuters could not determine who lived in the apartments.
The documents for another home with beach access in Old Fort Bay — a gated community that was once home to a British colonial fort built in the 1700s to protect against pirates — show Bankman-Fried’s parents, Stanford University law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, as signatories. The property, one of the documents dated June 15 said, is for use as a “vacation home.”
When asked by Reuters why the couple decided to buy a vacation home in the Bahamas and how it was paid for — whether in cash, with a mortgage or by a third party such as FTX — a spokesman for the professors said only that Bankman and Fried had been trying to return the property to FTX.
“Since before the bankruptcy proceedings, Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried have been seeking to return the deed to the company and are awaiting further instructions,” the spokesperson said, declining to elaborate.
While it is known that FTX and its employees bought real estate in the Bahamas, where it established its headquarters in September last year, the property records seen by Reuters show for the first time the scale of their buying spree and the intended use of some of the real estate.
Not to be petty or anything, but if I know anything about the Stanford Law School — and I do — SBF’s parents are pulling down a combined income of around one million per year from their faculty sinecures, not counting “consulting” for FTX (wink wink) and the like.
But it’s the spirit of the age I suppose.