Gary Wang, Co-Founder of FTX, Questioning at Trial :

Q. Did you commit financial crimes while working at FTX?

A. Yes.

Q. What types of crimes did you commit?

A. Wire fraud, securities fraud, and commodities fraud.

Q. Did you commit these crimes by yourself or with other people?

A. With other people.

Q. Who were the main people you committed these crimes with?

A. Sam Bankman-Fried, Nishad Singh, and Caroline Ellison.

Q. You're talking about Alameda Research?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. We'll come back to it in a minute. When you say withdrew unlimited amounts of funds, whose funds are you talking about?

A. Those of customers.

Q. Let's talk about——sorry. And customers of what?

A. Customers of FTX.

Q. Mr. Wang, do you see any of the people you committed those crimes with in the courtroom today? You can stand up if you need to.

A. Yes.

Q. Who do you see?

A. Sam Bankman-Fried.

MR. ROOS: Let the record reflect the witness has identified the defendant.

Q. Mr. Wang, in general terms for now, what did you do with the defendant that was the wire fraud you were referring to?

A. We gave special privileges to Alameda Research on FTX, which allowed it to withdraw unlimited amounts of funds from the platform, and we lied about this to the public.

Q. When you say withdrew unlimited funds from the platform, what are you referring to?

A. It had the ability to, regardless of what was in the account, to withdraw unlimited amounts of money.

I’m really liking the distinct Nostr experience vs the Twitter experience. Occasionally I cross-post something on both, but my decision in recent weeks to treat them differently has been very rewarding.

Years ago, I used to post on certain forums. But as someone with a big Twitter following now, I am more self-conscious of what I post there these past few years. It’s like, I feel quite a responsibility before I send something out to 600k followers, rather than being able to treat it rather carefree like I would treat a forum in the old days. Of course, once in a while I get provoked by something or I share something random and funny for no reason, but not usually.

Since the community on Nostr is still smallish, it kind of rekindles that more carefree feeling of just posting, talking. And I post less about economics, which is my main Twitter silo.

And because I want open protocols like Nostr to succeed, I deliberately want to be here, posting. So it is a win-win; I try to add value but also it scratches an itch for me that hasn’t been scratched in a while.

Maybe if/when Nostr becomes large, it will recreate that sense of filtering that I have on Twitter. But I would still consider that a success, because it means Nostr succeeded and I at least got to experience a smaller social environment for another period of time.