The Securities and Exchange Commission just issued a criminal complaint against Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, but the complaint’s main character is not them, but Sam Bankman-Fried. I’ll call him “Sam” since his name is so cumbersome. Thirty-year-old Sam stole $8 billion from his customers with the help of Ellison and Wang. To do it he set up two companies, Alameda and FTX. He and Wang owned 100% of Alameda, which meant any money that went to Alameda went to them. He got some 90 investors to provide $2 billion for shares in FTX, the intake pipe for the money. FTX operated out of the Bahamas. Its business was to take customer money and operate like a brokerage. The customer sent in money to buy various kinds of cryptocurrency, that is, to phantom assets some persuasive person created that are worthless except to resell to someone else later. When the customer did resell, the money went into his FTX account, and could withdraw it at any time. FTX was like a bank, except with accounts useful only for trading crypto.
Another argument I don't mention in the essay above is that a Christian cannot disbelieve in retribution and believe in the standard substitutionary atonement theory of Christ that Anselm wrote of in his 1098 "Cur Deus Homo?" https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cur_Deus_Homo. As Joe Bayly put it in 1977 in Eternity magazine:
"The penalty is removed by our Lord Christ's action in taking it upon himself on the cross. His death was as our substitute. A penalty always results from the violation of law, and that penalty is always borne. It may be borne by the sinner or it may be borne by Christ. It may be borne by the criminal or it may be borne by the victim and by society. But in a moral universe, the penalty is borne; it must be borne.
Retribution is at the heart of our Lord Christ's redemptive work. The sentence imposed by God upon me was death; Christ fulfilled the sentence, bore the punishment, and therefore I am pardoned."
Another argument I don't mention in the essay above is that a Christian cannot disbelieve in retribution and believe in the standard substitutionary atonement theory of Christ that Anselm wrote of in his 1098 "Cur Deus Homo?" https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cur_Deus_Homo. As Joe Bayly put it in 1977 in Eternity magazine:
"The penalty is removed by our Lord Christ's action in taking it upon himself on the cross. His death was as our substitute. A penalty always results from the violation of law, and that penalty is always borne. It may be borne by the sinner or it may be borne by Christ. It may be borne by the criminal or it may be borne by the victim and by society. But in a moral universe, the penalty is borne; it must be borne.
Retribution is at the heart of our Lord Christ's redemptive work. The sentence imposed by God upon me was death; Christ fulfilled the sentence, bore the punishment, and therefore I am pardoned."