So if I understand you correctly, some techies in the lw and ea communities have put some money in there and due to the strong increase of crypto prices, the worth of their crypto assets had increased a lot. Now that a lot of it is dust in the wind, these people have lost a lot, but if it had only grown from a small-ish amount, they are not really worse off than they would have been with conservative investements, right?
I am asking because I still don’t fully understand posts like this. I think I understand the “job security” part and also would understand if it was about the monetary loss to important EA causes, both because SBF gave money to EA. But the text explicitly mentions “personal savings” even before job security, and does not explicitly mention EA causes.
Ah, misunderstood “people in the community”, and answered for a much larger community of rationalist and adjacent techies.
I don’t really follow the EA side of things that closely (I support the stated mission behind the name, but it seems to have become rather cultish on many topics). I presume the post you reference is mostly about Sam Bankman-Fried and his circle—he’s the CEO/founder for FTX, and also a fairly vocal/visible EA … Participant? Donor? Unsure of exact descriptor, but I can imagine that many in that group are afraid for him and his loss of wealth (and loss of status due to seemingly bad behavior), as well as many of them being personally invested in that particular branch of crypto.
So if I understand you correctly, some techies in the lw and ea communities have put some money in there and due to the strong increase of crypto prices, the worth of their crypto assets had increased a lot. Now that a lot of it is dust in the wind, these people have lost a lot, but if it had only grown from a small-ish amount, they are not really worse off than they would have been with conservative investements, right?
I am asking because I still don’t fully understand posts like this. I think I understand the “job security” part and also would understand if it was about the monetary loss to important EA causes, both because SBF gave money to EA. But the text explicitly mentions “personal savings” even before job security, and does not explicitly mention EA causes.
Ah, misunderstood “people in the community”, and answered for a much larger community of rationalist and adjacent techies.
I don’t really follow the EA side of things that closely (I support the stated mission behind the name, but it seems to have become rather cultish on many topics). I presume the post you reference is mostly about Sam Bankman-Fried and his circle—he’s the CEO/founder for FTX, and also a fairly vocal/visible EA … Participant? Donor? Unsure of exact descriptor, but I can imagine that many in that group are afraid for him and his loss of wealth (and loss of status due to seemingly bad behavior), as well as many of them being personally invested in that particular branch of crypto.