Are you a troubled billionaire? Why not try to come out as a Republican and turn entirely on the public complaints about the “woke agenda”?exactly Sam Bankman-Freed According to newly published notes by cryptocurrency fraudsters after FTX’s Shocking Crash in 2022.
SBF is scheduled to be sentenced later this month after being found guilty of fraud for siphoning billions of dollars from his cryptocurrency exchange last year.Federal prosecutors want SBF payout 40-50 years in prisonaccording to a legal filing released Friday. But within the same document are some absolutely fascinating Google Docs comments made by SBF himself.
The document adds a note at the top that reads, “These are random, possibly bad ideas that have not been reviewed; confidential.” But they ended up in the hands of prosecutors anyway, according to the filing on Friday. is labeled Exhibit C.
SBF wrote that he was supposed to appear on Tucker Carlson’s show (misspelled “Carlsen”), which at the time was Fox News’ most popular show. Carlson fired in April 2023 There are his own web show on X.
The SBF also floated the idea of a “counter-woke agenda,” using a right-wing phrase that is difficult to define. Essentially, anything American conservatives dislike can be labeled “woke,” from beer to baseball teams.
Ideas also include a friendly interview with his biographer, Michael Lewis, or posting a Twitter poll on what to do. The SBF also believes that coming out as “pro-crypto, pro-freedom” might be a wise move. Again, he seems to really want to be a Republican, as you can see in the full note below.
Before FTX collapsed, SBF spent years marketing itself as a left-leaning philanthropist who didn’t care about material things. The notes help us understand SBF’s thought process, with the cryptocurrency “genius” including a series of buzzwords in his brainstorming documents that suggest he has a completely new brand.
SBF’s about-face shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone paying attention in late 2022, as he tested the waters with a few different public relations tactics, like the bumbling boy genius routine he tried out in an interview with the New York Times with Andrew Ross-Sorkin. SBF actually tried some of the ideas in these notes, including noting that he would Secretly giving money to Republicans.
SBF isn’t the first in the tech world to come up with “anti-woke” ideas to rally defenders. Elon Musk has made exactly the same shift in recent years. But rarely does the public see a brainstorming document that lays it all out so cynically. Well done, young genius.