Here’s how I view it. When we get hurt, emotions rise and sometimes people want to see others suffer. There’s just this human instinct that wants to beat the crap out of those who we feel have wronged us.
But logic tells us that if we stop and think about it, there’s a better way. War is expensive and unnecessary. Especially when people make mistakes, we don’t need to beat the crap out of them forever.
Instead, when dealing with a financial crime, logic says that the correct way to handle it is to have the person pay back the money with interest. If they can’t pay it back, at least they can work the rest of their life trying.
Humans may feel if it can’t be paid back, then we need to pay the person back with suffering. But I don’t think that has any place in the modern world. There’s enough money to go around, and while it sucks to lose it, times like this can teach us the importance of investing in the things that really matter, the things that money can’t buy.
If I had lost money in this, I would be very upset. But I should hope I wouldn’t try to take revenge.
I think revenge is not a good choice because first, you don’t actually get anything from it. It doesn’t even feel better. But secondly, he can’t work on repaying the debt. Honestly, it’s unlikely that anyone could make the money back. But what can’t be made, I should hope we could forgive.
Ultimately, the guy has something to give society. He was trying to do something that we all agree is good - run a good crypto business to help us all. But we all make mistakes and do things we shouldn’t do. So I think when failure happens we have to help him do his best to pay back what he can. What he can’t, I think it’s best to forgive, because we can’t fix the world by hurting people.
Ultimately, I see him as human. So we need to accept that we all fail. So we need to either work on preventive measures, or alternatively accept that it was a risk that didn’t pan out.
But unless he’s a danger to society, I don’t see how we can feel like we are growing as a society if we stoop to wanton destruction of his life.
So yeah I think he should have the chance to try to give back as much as he can.
The money is being recovered due to the heroic efforts of the people put in charge of of FTX following SBF’s incarceration.
Due to the increase in cryptocurrency prices all deposits should be made whole.
SBF deserves prison because he committed crimes. If someone stealing $50 from your wallet is a crime certainly stealing from thousands of people is a crime. And if $50 is bad surely $5B is worse.
Letting him out would be like saying it’s ok to steal, it’s ok to lie, cheat, embezzle.
If we were to let him out we should let every single person out of prison because surely everyone deserves forgiveness.
And if we apply one set of rules to the rich and powerful and another set to the poor or lacking in privilege and influence, we’re incapable of enforcing justice at all and should give up the pretense.
In conclusion, freeing SBF would be a tragic miscarriage of justice and would make mockery of our entire criminal justice system.