> Go on breaking the law until you get a favorable judge/Congress. Nobody is going to jail (we don't really do that anymore), you might pay a fine.

Binance, FTX, BitMex, Silk Road founders all went to jail - it’s a huge coin flip.

> Binance, FTX, BitMex, Silk Road founders all went to jail

BitMex didn't go to jail, they all got probation/ankle tag, for not running a clean money org (allegedly no KYC, registering US accounts from offshore, etc.). CZ got caught in the US anti-China panic that also saw the TikTok ban pass Congress with nearly 80(!) votes in the Senate. Silk Road: drug trafficking.

FTX is the closest analog, but by all accounts they did not run a clean operation. What I have read of their operation would have been grounds for charging even if they were trading legal securities.

Seems the through line is if your main business is illegal, you need to run it as if it were going to be legalized tomorrow.

Sam Bankman Fried wasn't jailed for running FTX. He was jailed for conducting fraud. Silk Road wasn't a registered company at all. It was downright criminal.

Now they’re getting out of jail with a few donations

IIRC, the Binance founder simply paid Trump off and got a pardon, with Trump himself admitting afterwards that he 'didn't know who the guy was'. So, the assertion that there are no real consequences anymore for 0.1% continues to hold.

Kalshi hired Donald Trump Jr as a strategic advisor with a salary reported to be around $300,000 per year. Recently there was a meeting between him and various State Attorneys General, where the message was back off prediction markets. Not too long after that other areas of the Trump Admin sent a letter basically saying the same thing.

And so the circuit courts coming to very different conclusions from the 9th circuit represents the inherent political corruption involved in the court system.

Circuit splits get resolved at the Supreme Court and I would make a prediction that it isnt a coin flip, probably more of a safe bet.

It was a different time.

offering services illegally is one thing, defrauding investors in Ponzi schemes is different

Silk Road was running an online marketplace for heroin and hitmen. That is not the same as Uber pushing the boundaries on what a "taxi" is, and you obviously know that. FTX was a ponzi scheme and that is the one financial crime they will still put you in jail for. It's the exception that proves parent comment's rule

This has been true in the opposite case too.

e.g. make as much money as possible while you have a favorable judge/Congress/President b/c you assume the ability to make money will go away once the next regime is in power.

I mean, you wrote it as of there was an alternative pf these companies not trying to make as much money as possible.

What kind of society do you get when the positive EV play is to always break the law first, litigate later?

If you're in the USA, you can see for yourself by looking out the window. It's not great!

Quite a few people (and countries) subscribe to the “it isn’t a war crime the first time” model.

A broken one, evidently.

Fortunes were made long before venture capitalists and governments got involved in (crypto)currencies. Even larger fortunes were prevented by legislation crafted by the banking cartel over many decades, pushed through with the help of their lobbyists in DC.

Existing legislation favors the haves, not the could-haves. And many people go to jail every year for breaking rules that big banks get a slap on the wrist for. Money laundering, terror financing, fraud,... Name a major bank and I'll list you some crimes no one ever spent a day in prison for. But that's fine because they have a license.

Not just breaking the log: use your VC funding to both build your product and buy your politicians. The asymmetry is basically that our politicians are way cheaper than market demand, like they're communists in north korea and just border guards who can get bought off with some contraband.