6 ms·

Maximizing FTX Recoveries – Management and committee meeting [pdf]

55 points by aorist 4y ago

jzymbaluk 4y ago
65 billion? That feels like an absurdly high number. The scale of these companies are mind-boggling
- kasey_junk 4y ago
  That’s just a limit in their risk system not a judgement of any real scale. Better to read it as “infinity” because the point of the setting was to remove any real limit.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
wolverine876 4y ago
[PDF]
chedoku 4y ago
Is it a screenshot from a smart contract? Why $65,355,999,994?
- golem14 4y ago
  maybe related to 2^16?
  - oh_sigh 4y ago
    It is suspiciously close to 65536*1e6. Can't explain why it is $6 short though
    - tromp 4y ago
      No; it's close to 65356e6, not 65536e6 (3rd decimal is 3 not 5). Could be misreporting though...
      - quickthrower2 4y ago
        “If we are going down, lets nerd snipe while we do!”
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    C'mon, this is serious money; you're off by a couple orders of magnitude: 2^36 = 68,719,476,736 Which doesn't explain it. Maybe the subtracted $3 billion in other debts? Got to watch every penny, you know.
    - Retric 4y ago
      It’s really close to 2^16 * 1 million - 6$. 65,535,999,994 vs $65,355,999,994 No idea where the -6$ comes from or if the 535 vs 355 was intended.
    - epgui 4y ago
      That’s actually the exact same order of magnitude, FYI.
      - mkl 4y ago
        2^16 = 65536.
    - mrbungie 4y ago
      You're asumming the final number id managed by a sole number. Maybe there a "size" value and a "quantity" value. An example would be a float representing the final magnitude over the base magnitude (i.e. thousands of dollars), and the base quantity of thosands of dollars an unsinged 16bit integer. It would be a commonly considered weird approach (you could/should use Decimal types for money), but hey, the final number is strangely near to be such a typical number (2^16). PS: Like a sibling suggested, other hypothesis is that maybe it was something akin to a bare napkin calculation/decision made by humans (with human errors) eventually digitalized.
      - wolverine876 4y ago
        > It would be a commonly considered weird approach (you could/should use Decimal types for money) Money? Cryptocurrencies are way beyond that.
dgrin91 4y ago
Does anyone know what the AWS environment mentioned here is? It doesn't really make sense for it to be Amazon AWS, or am I just overthinking it?
- rockemsockem 4y ago
  Amazon AWS, the new ATM machine :)
- fragmede 4y ago
  You're overthinking it and in fact AWS has a bunch of security stuff (HSM, secure enclave, etc) that makes it extra attractive. For reference, Stripe (which isn't FTX but it's Fintech and handles large amounts of money) uses AWS for their environment. If you're asking if there's some secret hidden AWS region FTX was using, why would they bother? The known special region, GovCloud, is a couple years behind the other regions in features. Also from what's been publicly revealed, FTX isn't exactly the shining example of the finest possible engineering. https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/stripe/ https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/stripe/
thinkingkong 4y ago
I suspect that this limit was just the Max value of whatever number format they were using was. The chances of it not really being 65536 are fairly low. Its just too coincidental.
- crazygringo 4y ago
  Except it's not 65536 -- it's 65356. (I just verified in the PDF.) Which actually makes me wonder if somebody fat-fingered it and meant to type 65536 by hand and got it wrong. Which given everything we've found out about the sloppiness there, would seem quite apropos. Normally I wouldn't think so, but the trailing "999994" also just seems so strangely floating point-derived... but who even knows.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    65536 requires 17-bits. So maybe they tried the one-too-large number, failed, and assumed they transposed something.
  - thinkingkong 4y ago
    Well at least someone in this chain of information is dyslexic.
hgsgm 4y ago
Where is that number? I only see $65B
- xyst 4y ago
  look at page 18 on the pdf, it shows a screenshot of configuration which states the "borrow" property is set to "65355999994"
- kccqzy 4y ago
  The eighteenth page of the PDF.
Centigonal 4y ago
hahahaha holy shit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34373113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34373113
- Kranar 4y ago
  The author of that comment was incorrect though. Page 18 of the PDF shows that it was an arbitrarily hardcoded number encoded in a BigDecimal, has nothing to do with 16 bit integers. Furthermore the limit was 65*3*55... whereas the max 16-bit unsigned integer is 65*5*35, so the digits don't even match up. It's a cool hypothesis, and perhaps the person who hardcoded that number was even inspired by 2^16 - 1 in some way, but as the replies point out it doesn't really make much sense beyond an odd curiosity.
  - Centigonal 4y ago
    I didn't catch the 65355 vs. 65535 thing. That just raises more questions...
anigbrowl 4y ago
Bet he wishes he'd stuck with 32-bit unsigned integers
mr90210 4y ago
When your programmer is also a thief. const FTX_LIMIT = Infinity;
jvans 4y ago
Someone find the memo from sbf demanding a switch to 128 bit longs
- chedoku 4y ago
  He said sorry.
Imnimo 4y ago
Has someone tried just getting SBF into a Twitter Space and asking him what the significance of this particular number is?
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  Nobody on Twitter had any good ideas. However Jon Callas suggested it might be a Singapore phone number, which was the best suggestion I saw ;) I even called it (it’s one digit too long) and got an error message.
ftxbro 4y ago
So people are guessing what the number is from, I will guess too. I never really worked at ftx you guys. It's a work of parody etc. > be me > new employee at ftx bahamas office > sbf is busy in dc doing effective altruism > polycule ppl just got text from him > tfw not in polycule > sbf got a text from caroline > we have to double alameda's credit line again > guess that's my job now > open excel spreadsheet > they are planning to convert it to python soon > find "borrow" column > dozens of accounts have millions of dollars of credit > find the alameda borrow entry > feels goodman.jpg > 32678000000e-3 > wtf is that > it's 32678000000 mils divided by a thousand > a mil is a tenth of a cent, it's finance jargon used by exchanges > the e-3 at the end is scientific notation to divide by a thousand > $32,678,000 > they've been doubling it by hand while high on stimulants > last time they mixed up the 6 and 7 > bigbraintime.png > i can just put parentheses around it and multiply by two > leave it like that in the excel cell > 32678000000e-3 > (32678000000-3)*2 > sbf texted again he says we solved caroline's problem > success.png > $65,355,999,994
dang 4y ago
Submitted title was "Alameda Research's borrowing limit from FTX was $65,355,999,994", which broke the site guidelines (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

55 points by aorist 4y ago

jzymbaluk 4y ago

65 billion? That feels like an absurdly high number. The scale of these companies are mind-boggling

kasey_junk 4y ago
That’s just a limit in their risk system not a judgement of any real scale. Better to read it as “infinity” because the point of the setting was to remove any real limit.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

wolverine876 4y ago

[PDF]

chedoku 4y ago

Is it a screenshot from a smart contract? Why $65,355,999,994?

golem14 4y ago
maybe related to 2^16?
- oh_sigh 4y ago
  It is suspiciously close to 65536*1e6. Can't explain why it is $6 short though
  - tromp 4y ago
    No; it's close to 65356e6, not 65536e6 (3rd decimal is 3 not 5). Could be misreporting though...
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
      “If we are going down, lets nerd snipe while we do!”
- wolverine876 4y ago
  C'mon, this is serious money; you're off by a couple orders of magnitude: 2^36 = 68,719,476,736 Which doesn't explain it. Maybe the subtracted $3 billion in other debts? Got to watch every penny, you know.
  - Retric 4y ago
    It’s really close to 2^16 * 1 million - 6$. 65,535,999,994 vs $65,355,999,994 No idea where the -6$ comes from or if the 535 vs 355 was intended.
  - epgui 4y ago
    That’s actually the exact same order of magnitude, FYI.
    - mkl 4y ago
      2^16 = 65536.
  - mrbungie 4y ago
    You're asumming the final number id managed by a sole number. Maybe there a "size" value and a "quantity" value. An example would be a float representing the final magnitude over the base magnitude (i.e. thousands of dollars), and the base quantity of thosands of dollars an unsinged 16bit integer. It would be a commonly considered weird approach (you could/should use Decimal types for money), but hey, the final number is strangely near to be such a typical number (2^16). PS: Like a sibling suggested, other hypothesis is that maybe it was something akin to a bare napkin calculation/decision made by humans (with human errors) eventually digitalized.
    - wolverine876 4y ago
      > It would be a commonly considered weird approach (you could/should use Decimal types for money) Money? Cryptocurrencies are way beyond that.

dgrin91 4y ago

Does anyone know what the AWS environment mentioned here is? It doesn't really make sense for it to be Amazon AWS, or am I just overthinking it?

rockemsockem 4y ago
Amazon AWS, the new ATM machine :)
fragmede 4y ago
You're overthinking it and in fact AWS has a bunch of security stuff (HSM, secure enclave, etc) that makes it extra attractive. For reference, Stripe (which isn't FTX but it's Fintech and handles large amounts of money) uses AWS for their environment. If you're asking if there's some secret hidden AWS region FTX was using, why would they bother? The known special region, GovCloud, is a couple years behind the other regions in features. Also from what's been publicly revealed, FTX isn't exactly the shining example of the finest possible engineering. https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/stripe/ https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/stripe/

thinkingkong 4y ago

I suspect that this limit was just the Max value of whatever number format they were using was. The chances of it not really being 65536 are fairly low. Its just too coincidental.

crazygringo 4y ago
Except it's not 65536 -- it's 65356. (I just verified in the PDF.) Which actually makes me wonder if somebody fat-fingered it and meant to type 65536 by hand and got it wrong. Which given everything we've found out about the sloppiness there, would seem quite apropos. Normally I wouldn't think so, but the trailing "999994" also just seems so strangely floating point-derived... but who even knows.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  65536 requires 17-bits. So maybe they tried the one-too-large number, failed, and assumed they transposed something.
- thinkingkong 4y ago
  Well at least someone in this chain of information is dyslexic.

hgsgm 4y ago

Where is that number? I only see $65B

xyst 4y ago
look at page 18 on the pdf, it shows a screenshot of configuration which states the "borrow" property is set to "65355999994"
kccqzy 4y ago
The eighteenth page of the PDF.

Centigonal 4y ago

hahahaha holy shit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34373113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34373113

Kranar 4y ago
The author of that comment was incorrect though. Page 18 of the PDF shows that it was an arbitrarily hardcoded number encoded in a BigDecimal, has nothing to do with 16 bit integers. Furthermore the limit was 65*3*55... whereas the max 16-bit unsigned integer is 65*5*35, so the digits don't even match up. It's a cool hypothesis, and perhaps the person who hardcoded that number was even inspired by 2^16 - 1 in some way, but as the replies point out it doesn't really make much sense beyond an odd curiosity.
- Centigonal 4y ago
  I didn't catch the 65355 vs. 65535 thing. That just raises more questions...

anigbrowl 4y ago

Bet he wishes he'd stuck with 32-bit unsigned integers

mr90210 4y ago

When your programmer is also a thief. const FTX_LIMIT = Infinity;

jvans 4y ago

Someone find the memo from sbf demanding a switch to 128 bit longs

chedoku 4y ago
He said sorry.

Imnimo 4y ago

Has someone tried just getting SBF into a Twitter Space and asking him what the significance of this particular number is?

matthewdgreen 4y ago
Nobody on Twitter had any good ideas. However Jon Callas suggested it might be a Singapore phone number, which was the best suggestion I saw ;) I even called it (it’s one digit too long) and got an error message.

ftxbro 4y ago

So people are guessing what the number is from, I will guess too. I never really worked at ftx you guys. It's a work of parody etc. > be me > new employee at ftx bahamas office > sbf is busy in dc doing effective altruism > polycule ppl just got text from him > tfw not in polycule > sbf got a text from caroline > we have to double alameda's credit line again > guess that's my job now > open excel spreadsheet > they are planning to convert it to python soon > find "borrow" column > dozens of accounts have millions of dollars of credit > find the alameda borrow entry > feels goodman.jpg > 32678000000e-3 > wtf is that > it's 32678000000 mils divided by a thousand > a mil is a tenth of a cent, it's finance jargon used by exchanges > the e-3 at the end is scientific notation to divide by a thousand > $32,678,000 > they've been doubling it by hand while high on stimulants > last time they mixed up the 6 and 7 > bigbraintime.png > i can just put parentheses around it and multiply by two > leave it like that in the excel cell > 32678000000e-3 > (32678000000-3)*2 > sbf texted again he says we solved caroline's problem > success.png > $65,355,999,994

dang 4y ago

Submitted title was "Alameda Research's borrowing limit from FTX was $65,355,999,994", which broke the site guidelines (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]