I’ve helped set up the Atlas Fellowship, a program that researches talent search and scholarships for exceptional students.
Previously, I ran EA Funds and the Center on Long-Term Risk. My background is in medicine (BMed) and economics (MSc). See my LinkedIn.
You can best reach me at jonas@atlasfellowship.org.
I appreciate honest and direct feedback.
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, opinions are my own, not my employer's. (I think this is generally how everyone uses the EA Forum; others who don't have such a disclaimer likely think about it similarly.)
I recall feeling most worried about hacks resulting in loss of customer funds, including funds not lent out for margin trading. I was also worried about risky investments or trades resulting in depleting cash reservers that could be used to make up for hacking losses.
I don't think I ever generated the thought "customer monies need to be segregated, and they might not be", primarily because at the time I wasn't familiar with financial regulations.
E.g. in 2023 I ran across an article written in ~2018 that commented an SIPC payout in a case of a broker co-mingling customer funds with an associated trading firm. If I had read that article in 2021, I would have probably suspected FTX of doing this.
A 10-15% annual risk of startup failure is not alarming, but a comparable risk of it losing customer funds is. Your comment prompted me to actually check my prediction logs, and I made the following edit to my original comment:
- predicting a 10% annual risk of FTX collapsing with
FTX investors and the Future Fund (though not customers)FTX investors, the Future Fund, and possibly customers losing all of their money,
- [edit: I checked my prediction logs and I actually did predict a 10% annual risk of loss of customer funds in November 2021, though I lowered that to 5% in March 2022. Note that I predicted hacks and investment losses, but not fraud.]
I don't think so, because:
That said, I'm aware that some people (not including myself) closely monitored the balance sheet issue and subsequent FTT liquidations, and withdrew their full balances a couple days before the collapse.
I think this is excellent criticism!