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| There comes a moment in the development of a new technology when the hype is so common it passes for common sense. Lawyers, accountants and regulators are nowhere to be found. Investors insist entrepreneurs take their money. The world trembles on the brink of change. |
| 在一项新技术的发展过程中，总会出现这样的时刻：大肆宣传实在太普遍，以至于被当作常识。看不到律师、会计师和监管机构的身影。投资者执意要创业者拿走他们的钱。世界在变革的边缘颤抖。 |
| For dot-coms, the moment was 1999. For artificial intelligence, it was just over nine months ago. For cryptocurrency, it was 2017. |
| 对于网络公司来说，这个时刻是1999年。对于人工智能来说，这是九个多月前的事情。对于加密货币来说，是2017年。 |
| Six years ago, Sam Bankman-Fried knew little about alternative currencies. But he correctly bet there were huge opportunities in grabbing a tiny piece of millions of crypto trades. In the blink of an eye, he was lauded as being worth $23 billion. Only Mark Zuckerberg had accumulated so much wealth so young. |
| 六年前，山姆·班克曼-弗里德对替代货币知之甚少。但他准确地预测到，在数以百万计的加密货币交易中，只抓到一小部分，就能获得巨大的商机。转眼间，他的身价就高达230亿美元，令人啧啧称道。只有马克·扎克伯格在这么年轻就积累了这么多财富。 |
| The Facebook co-founder has his critics, but he looks like Thomas Edison next to Mr. Bankman-Fried. After a speedy trial in Manhattan federal court, the onetime crypto king, now 31, was convicted on Thursday of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy involving his companies FTX and Alameda Research. |
| 扎克伯格这位Facebook的联合创始人饱受批评，但和班克曼-弗里德相比，他就好比托马斯·爱迪生。经过曼哈顿联邦法院的快速审判，周四，现年31岁的班克曼-弗里德，这位曾经的加密货币之王被判犯有七项欺诈和共谋罪，这些罪名也涉及他的公司FTX和阿拉米达研究公司。 |
| Mr. Bankman-Fried once partied with stars and big shots, doled out fortunes in looted funds to politicians and himself, was acclaimed as the next Warren Buffett, employed his friends and made them rich for a while, was courted by the news media that printed his most banal comments. For a time, everyone loved Sam Bankman-Fried — with the apparent exception of Sam Bankman-Fried. |
| 班克曼-弗里德曾与明星和大人物过从甚密，把掠夺来的财富分配给政治人士和自己，被誉为下一个沃伦·巴菲特，他雇用自己的朋友，让他们暴富一时，新闻媒体也曾向他大献殷勤，刊登他最平庸的言论。一时间，人人都喜欢山姆·班克曼-弗里德——显然除了山姆·班克曼-弗里德自己。 |
| “I am, and for most of my adult life have been, sad.” That plaintive statement appears at the end of testimony Mr. Bankman-Fried had hoped to give Congress last winter before his arrest scuttled his plans. He was onto something. |
| “我很悲伤，而且在我成年后的大部分时间里都很悲伤。”去年冬天，班克曼-弗里德在他本希望向国会提交的证词最后，发表了这段哀痛的声明，随后被捕打乱了他的计划，但这段话说出了一些真相。 |
| In photographs from his heyday, Mr. Bankman-Fried always looked awkward, embarrassed and as if he would rather be playing a video game, even when Gisele Bündchen had an arm around him. Everyone kept insisting he was off-the-charts brilliant, the entrepreneur who would create the future. Maybe he knew better. |
| 在全盛时期的照片中，班克曼-弗里德总是显得尴尬、难堪，就好像他更愿意去打电子游戏，即使是在吉赛尔·邦辰搂着他的时候也是如此。每个人都坚持认为他非常聪明，是一个能够创造未来的企业家。也许他自己才更清楚是不是这样。 |
| As journalists — and now prosecutors — have made clear, FTX and Alameda were run by a group of hapless young people who did not have the required skills, maturity or patience. Those who actually had a moral compass and sensed something was wrong soon peeled off, leaving a core crew who drifted — or perhaps dived — into trouble. |
| 正如记者们——现在还有检察官们——明确指出的那样，FTX和阿拉米达是由一群不幸的年轻人经营的，他们没有必要的技能、成熟或耐心。那些真正有道德底线，并且意识到有什么事情不对劲的人很快就离开了，留下的核心团队随波逐流地陷入了麻烦——或者可能是一头扎进了麻烦。 |
| “When I started working at Alameda, I don’t think I would have believed you if you told me I would be sending false balance sheets to our lenders or taking customer money, but over time it was something I became more comfortable with,” Caroline Ellison, Mr. Bankman-Fried’s colleague and sometime girlfriend, testified during the trial. |
| “当我开始在阿拉米达工作时，如果你告诉我，我会向我们的贷款人发送虚假的资产负债表，或者拿走客户的钱，我想我是不会相信的，但随着时间的推移，我对这些事情变得越来越适应，”班克曼-弗里德的同事和前女友卡罗琳·埃里森在审判中作证说。 |
| When Ms. Ellison started working at Alameda, something called the blockchain was going to transform everything, somehow. Silicon Valley poured billions into crypto, seeking out those like Mr. Bankman-Fried who got in early and appeared smart. |
| 当埃里森开始在阿拉米达工作时，一种叫做区块链的东西正以某种方式改变一切。硅谷向加密货币领域投入了数十亿美元，寻找像班克曼-弗里德这样入行早、看起来很聪明的人。 |
| Sequoia Capital, a top venture firm that has funded Apple, Airbnb, Instagram and WhatsApp, all but begged Mr. Bankman-Fried to take its money during the mad rush when crypto was shiny and new. The FTX founder did. Sequoia then commissioned a very long celebration of Mr. Bankman-Fried by Adam Fisher, a longtime Silicon Valley writer who fell hard for the man whose fans called him S.B.F. |
| 红杉资本是一家顶级风险投资公司，曾为苹果、Airbnb、Instagram和WhatsApp提供过资金，在加密货币刚刚兴起的疯狂热潮中，它几乎是在恳求班克曼-弗里德接受它的资金。于是这位FTX的创始人接受了。红杉随后委托资深硅谷作家亚当·费舍尔为班克曼-弗里德撰写了一份长篇赞美报道。费舍尔深深爱上了被粉丝称为SBF的班克曼-弗里德。 |
| “After my interview with S.B.F., I was convinced: I was talking to a future trillionaire,” Mr. Fisher wrote. He added: “The FTX competitive advantage? Ethical behavior.” |
| “采访完SBF后，我确信：我正在和一位未来的亿万富翁交谈，”费舍尔写道。他又补充说：“FTX的竞争优势是什么？符合伦理的行为。” |
| Less than two months after the interview was published, FTX collapsed. Sequoia put a note at the top of the story saying this was an “unexpected turn of events.” It later took the story down and wrote off its $214 million investment in the exchange. Sequoia and Mr. Fisher declined to comment. |
| 采访发表后不到两个月，FTX就崩溃了。红杉资本在这篇报道的开头写了一句话，说这是一个“意想不到的转折”。它后来撤下了这篇报道，并冲销了对FTX2.14亿美元的投资。红杉资本和费舍尔拒绝就本文置评。 |
| The central myth of Silicon Valley is that techies are here to save the world. If they get insanely rich in the process, well, that only proves how great their idea was in the first place. |
| 硅谷的核心神话是，技术人员是来拯救世界的。如果他们在这个过程中赚了大钱，那只能证明他们的想法最初是多么伟大。 |
| This was the appeal of Elizabeth Holmes and her blood-testing company, Theranos. She was young, female and attractive, which looked good on the covers of magazines. But the notion that really propelled her to fame and fortune was that she was a sort of high-tech Florence Nightingale, working all night to refine medical technology that would improve people’s health. (The truth was that her technology didn’t work and placed customers at risk by giving them unreliable results.) |
| 这就是伊丽莎白·霍姆斯和她的血液检测公司Theranos的魅力所在。她年轻、十足女人味、迷人，在杂志封面上显得很好看。但真正让她名利双收的那个概念是：她是高科技版本的弗洛伦斯·南丁格尔，夜以继日地改进医疗技术，以改善人们的健康。（事实是，她的技术并不奏效，给客户提供了不可靠的诊断结果，从而使他们面临风险。） |
| FTX allowed people to bet on cryptocurrencies. It was, in essence, a casino. It is difficult for even the most sympathetic journalist to portray a casino as a savior of humanity, so the focus of the stories was always on Mr. Bankman-Fried himself. |
| FTX允许人们押注加密货币。从本质上讲，这是一个赌场。即使是最富有同情心的记者，也很难把赌场描绘成人类的救世主，所以这些报道始终是聚焦在班克曼-弗里德本人身上。 |
| He calculated the odds on everything — he thought there was a 5 percent chance he would become president of the United States. He figured he would help humanity by making a fortune and then giving it all away, a philosophy known as effective altruism. The details didn’t matter. As a fawning Forbes profile put it in 2021: “He’s a mercenary, dedicated to making as much money as possible (he doesn’t really care how) solely so he can give it away (he doesn’t really know to whom, or when).” |
| 他会计算每件事的概率——他认为自己有5%的机会成为美国总统。他认为自己可以通过赚大钱然后把钱全部捐出去来帮助人类，这是一种被称为有效利他主义的哲学。细节不重要。正如2021年，《福布斯》在一篇吹捧他的人物特写中所说：“他是个重利的人，一心要尽量多赚钱（他不在乎怎么赚），只是为了把钱捐出去（他并不知道什么时候捐、捐给谁）。” |
| During the trial, it emerged that Mr. Bankman-Fried had spent $15 million on private plane travel. He never did much to disguise the fact that he lived with some of his FTX pals in a $35 million penthouse. The question of whether these young people should be sleeping on the beach instead of living the high life if they were truly following the doctrine of effective altruism never seemed to get asked. |
| 庭审期间揭示的一个信息是，班克曼-弗里德在私人飞机旅行上花费了1500万美元。他从未刻意掩饰自己和一些FTX朋友住在一套价值3500万美元的顶层公寓里的事实。如果这些年轻人真奉行有效利他主义的教义，他们是否应该睡在海滩上，而不是过着奢华的生活，这个问题似乎从来没有人问过。 |
| Bankman-Fried was happiest when playing video games, which he did as often as he could. Even as he talked to Sequoia over Zoom about his grand plans to make a financial super-app inside FTX and therefore obliterate every bank in the world, he was playing League of Legends. |
| 班克曼-弗里德在玩电子游戏时最开心，他一有时间就玩游戏。就在他通过Zoom与红杉讨论他的宏伟计划——在FTX内部开发一款金融超级应用，从而消灭世界上所有的银行——的时候，他还在玩《英雄联盟》。 |
| Again and again, he conveyed his contempt for what he was doing, and he seemed to implore the authorities to take a closer look at his companies. Take, for instance, this statement he made in August 2021 in one of his many interviews: “If there’s anything we’re doing that a regulator doesn’t want, you don’t have to sue us. Just reach out and tell us what you want.” |
| 他一次又一次地表达了对自己所作所为的蔑视，他似乎在恳求当局对他的公司进行更仔细的调查。例如，他在2021年8月的一次采访中说：“如果我们做了监管机构不希望看到的事情，你不必起诉我们。只要联系我们，告诉我们你想要什么。” |
| The magic of starting a company just as a boom is beginning is that the bar is low. When Sequoia was looking for a crypto exchange to invest in, FTX was “Goldilocks-perfect,” according to its profile. One big reason: “There was no concerted effort to skirt the law.” Hard to find a bar much lower than that. |
| 在繁荣刚刚开始的时候，创办公司的神奇之处在于门槛很低。根据其简介，当红杉资本寻找一个加密币交易所进行投资时，FTX“恰到好处地完美”。一个重要原因是：“没有任何规避法律的协同努力。”很难找到比这更低的标准了。 |
| Bankman-Fried tried to warn everyone. |
| 班克曼-弗里德曾试图对所有人发出警告。 |
| “By number of Ponzi schemes, there are way more in crypto, kinda per capita, than in other places,” he told The Financial Times in May 2022. |
| 他在2022年5月对英国《金融时报》表示：“按庞氏骗局的数量计算，加密货币领域的庞氏骗局数量，就是按人均吧，比其他领域多得多。” |
| It didn’t matter. Investors, customers, journalists all saw the genius they were told was there. And if they had the slightest doubt, Bankman-Fried had an ace: His parents were Stanford law professors. |
| 没关系。投资者、客户、记者都看到了他们被告知的天才。如果他们有丝毫怀疑，班克曼-弗里德还有一张王牌：他的父母都是斯坦福大学的法学教授。 |
| “He has two parents that are compliance lawyers,” said “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary, who was both a promotional spokesperson for FTX and an investor in it. “If there is ever a place I can be and I am not going to get in trouble, it is going to be at FTX.” |
| “他的父母都是合规律师，”真人秀《创智赢家》(Shark Tank)主持人凯文·奥利里说。奥利里既是FTX的宣传发言人，也是该公司的投资者。“如果有一个地方我可以去，而且不会惹上麻烦，那就是FTX。” |
| O’Leary may not have known that Joseph Bankman, a tax law specialist and clinical psychologist, and Barbara Fried, a professor emeritus at Stanford Law School, had their attention elsewhere. According to a lawsuit filed by the bankrupt FTX, their son gave them, through FTX, a $16 million home in the Bahamas, $10 million in cash and many other things. Lawyers for the couple called the claims “completely false.” |
| 奥利里可能不知道，这对父母——税法专家兼临床心理学家约瑟夫·班克曼和斯坦福大学法学院荣休教授芭芭拉·弗里德——已经把注意力转移到了别的地方。根据破产的FTX提起的诉讼，他们的儿子通过FTX给了他们一套价值1600万美元的巴哈马住宅，1000万美元的现金和许多其他东西。这对夫妇的律师称这些说法“完全不实”。 |
| In that glowing Sequoia profile, Mr. Bankman-Fried said: “I’m very skeptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that.” He didn’t like movies, either. |
| 在红杉那篇热情洋溢的简介中，班克曼-弗里德说：“我对书非常怀疑。我不想说任何书都不值一读，但这的确离我的想法非常接近了。”他也不喜欢电影。 |
| It’s impossible to read the sad saga of Mr. Bankman-Fried without thinking he, and many of those around him, would have been better off if they had spent less time at math camp and more time in English class. Sometimes in books, the characters find their moral compass; in the best books, the reader does, too. |
| 读到班克曼-弗里德的悲惨故事时，你不可能不想到，如果班克曼-弗里德和他身边的许多人少花点时间在数学夏令营上，多花点时间在英语课上，他们的下场会好很多。在有些书里，人物会找到自己的道德指南针；在读最好的书时，读者们也能找到。 |
| As I read about Mr. Bankman-Fried, the historical drama “A Man for All Seasons,” once a staple for high school students, kept coming to mind. It’s about a man who knows right from wrong and a man who doesn’t. Richard Rich is a little like Mr. Bankman-Fried: a young man with huge ambitions and no scruples. He begs Thomas More for a place at court. More tells Rich he would be a good teacher. |
| 读到班克曼-弗里德的故事时，我的脑海里不断浮现出一部历史片《日月精忠》(A Man for All Seasons)，那曾是高中生必看的作品，讲的是一个明辨是非的男人和一个不辨是非的男人的故事。片中的理查德·里奇有点像班克曼-弗里德——一个野心勃勃、毫无顾忌的年轻人。他恳求托马斯·莫尔在宫廷里给他一个位置。莫尔告诉里奇，他可以当一个好老师。 |
| Who would know if I were a good teacher? Rich asks scornfully. |
| 如果我做一个好老师，那会有谁知道呢？里奇轻蔑地问。 |
| “You, your pupils, your friends, God,” More replies. “Not a bad public, that.” |
| “你、你的学生、你的朋友、上帝，”莫尔回答。“这不算少了。” |
| Rich rejects the quiet life, betrays More and is rewarded with a post in Wales. Viewers are given to understand that he loses his soul. Mr. Bankman-Fried rejected the quiet life, betrayed nearly everyone he knew — and ended up with neither wealth nor Wales. |
| 里奇拒绝了平静的生活，背叛了莫尔，得到了威尔士的一个职位。观众可以感觉到他失去了灵魂。班克曼-弗里德拒绝平静的生活，背叛了几乎所有他认识的人，最终既没有得到财富，也没有得到威尔士的职位。 |
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