I’m hiding in Bahamas, I’m a desperate man
SBF finally arrested for the crimes he has spent weeks openly admitting to in the press for some reason:
Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday after United States prosecutors filed criminal charges, according to a statement by the government of the Bahamas.
“SBF’s arrest followed receipt of formal notification from the United States that it has filed criminal charges against SBF and is likely to request his extradition,” the statement said.
One of my favorite details about SBF is that he cultivated the reputation of someone who led an ascetic existence devoted solely to Effective Altruism while he was living like this:
The palatial compound known as Albany is not your typical tropical paradise. The 600-acre property, located on the Bahamian island of New Providence, attracted the likes of Tiger Woods and Justin Timberlake for its grand opening in 2010, and homes sell for tens of millions of dollars. There is an 18-hole golf course designed by Ernie Els, a 71-slip mega yacht marina and eleven closed-to-the-public restaurants. Wealthy residents can gaze at a perfect replica of Arturo Di Modica’s “Charging Bull” statue and send their children to a boarding and day school spread across two campuses. Albany likes to call itself a “private community.”
Albany is the type of place where, if you show up to its front entrance in a taxi and ask if you can come in, the guard replies with a smirk and tells your driver, “You should know better.” It’s the type of place where if you station yourself a bit down the road to take some pictures of the sign, an unmarked car shows up within minutes to ask what you’re doing.
It’s also where Sam Bankman-Fried—a man who once told an interviewer, “I’m not that much of a consumer, exactly”—calls home. The disgraced head of FTX moved there in 2021 when Hong Kong became too hot to run an apparent international cryptocurrency casino. He lives in a $30 million penthouse in the compound’s seaside Orchid residence, where he and nine confidants ran a Bernie Madoff-like empire, living a pampered life where employees ordered toenail clippers on-demand.
As a general rule, I would avoid theories of altruism that conveniently require you to accrue large amounts of money and property first.