Top all-time · #1810
Molly White
Personal blog · newsletter.mollywhite.neteconomicspolitics
Molly White writes Citation Needed, a personal blog at newsletter.mollywhite.net about economics and politics. Since 2022, 43 different Hacker News readers have linked it 50 times, most often “Review: Michael Lewis's Going Infinite”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Citation Needed features critical coverage of the cryptocurrency industry and of issues in the broader technology world. It is independently published by Molly White, and entirely supported by readers like you.
Most-linked posts?
- Review: Michael Lewis's Going Infinite4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-10-04
- The Oasis “counter-hack” and the centralization of DeFi3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-02-26
- Andreessen Horowitz wants you to keep buying crypto3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-05-09
- Worldcoin: A solution in search of its problem3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-07-29
- The Venture Capitalist's Dilemma2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-03-20
- /s/the-ftx-files2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-11-03
- FTX – The Fraud Was in the Code2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-10-10
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-11-17
- The Sam Bankman-Fried empire crumbled. What does it mean? (part two)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-11-10
- Everything SBF is doing is in singular pursuit of not going to jail2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-12-08
What Hacker News says?
> I wasn't following the case closely enough, but did the prosecution have access to Alameda source code, or was it only FTX? This blog post [0] contains screenshots of git commits that were used as evidence in the trial. It only shows commits to FTX's source code, so I don't know if the prosecution also had access to Alameda's source code. Given how obviously incriminating those snippets are, I don't think SBF real…
Comment linking /p/the-fraud-was-in-the-code
on “Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty on all charges”Submitted The Sam Bankman-Fried empire crumbled. What happened? as a story · 261 points
HN discussionMolly White had excellent writeups for the entire trial. She even did excellent multi-hour livestreams going over her notes for the portion of the trial where she was physically present at the courtroom. https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/s/the-ftx-files
Comment linking /s/the-ftx-files
on “Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty on all charges”Submitted The Sam Bankman-Fried empire crumbled. What does it mean? (part two) as a story · 37 points
HN discussionRE: Where the money went - The customer's money was used for the following purposes: 1. To pay for Alameda's (Sam Bankman Fried's hedge fund) and FTX's loses 2. Invest in venture capital and make acquisitions 3. Political donations 4. Charitable donations 5. Luxury real-estate, boats, etc. 6. "loans" (i.e. transfer of stolen funds) to FTX's top executives RE: Intent - Intent was easy to prove. All of Sam Bankman-Fri…
Comment linking /s/the-ftx-files
on “Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty on all charges”Submitted Sam Bankman-Fried's jail conditions offer a glimpse at systemic failure as a story · 12 points
HN discussionhttps://newsletter.mollywhite.net/
Comment linking /
on “Exec who cleaned up Enron calls FTX mess 'unprecedented'”Submitted Andreessen Horowitz wants you to keep buying crypto as a story · 10 points
HN discussionThe incomparable Molly White has put together a contagion flow chart, which she is updating regularly: https://www.mollywhite.net/etc/ftx-contagion See also her explanatory newsletter https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/
Comment linking /
on “Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse”Submitted Effective Obfuscation as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThere is a part two available here with more opinion/analysis: https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/ftx-analysis
Comment linking /p/ftx-analysis
on “The Sam Bankman-Fried empire crumbled. What happened?”Submitted In 2022, Web3 went just great as a story · 5 points
HN discussionMolly White points out [0] that they seem to have gotten awfully vague about what they store, emphasizing in some contexts that the hashes on the chain are all that technically HAVE to be retained (and encouraging the assumption that those themselves are rigorously impossible to extrapolate personal information from)— but also insinuating to people at en-Orb-ment that they need to opt in to letting the company store…
Comment linking /p/worldcoin-a-solution-in-search-of
on “Police Raid Worldcoin Warehouse in Nairobi”Submitted Narrative over Numbers: Andreessen Horowitz's State of Crypto Report as a story · 4 points
HN discussion"Everything Sam Bankman-Fried is doing is in singular pursuit of not going to jail" -- https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/everything-sam-bankman-f...
Comment linking /p/everything-sam-bankman-fried-is-doing
on “SBF scheduled to testify tomorrow at US House hearing on FTX collapse”Submitted Everything SBF is doing is in singular pursuit of not going to jail as a story · 4 points
HN discussionMolly White also wrote a review of this book: https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/review-michael-lewiss-go... The book exists in a strange space where it was mostly written before SBF's downfall (FTX collapsing and SBF fraud charges).
Comment linking /p/review-michael-lewiss-going-infinite
on “Zvi Mowshowitz's Book Review: Going Infinite [Long Read on Sam Bankman-Fried]”Submitted The Stones Left Unturned at Sam Bankman-Fried's Trial as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttps://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/ftx-explainer
Comment linking /p/ftx-explainer
on “Ask HN: What the heck happened to FTX? (ELI5)”Submitted What's up with Sam Bankman-Fried's defense? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionhttps://twitter.com/innercitypress/status/171246193042463149... This guy has been doing amazing work of live blogging the trial if you want to follow along. The biggest revelation that I found out that wasn't in Michael Lewis' book is that alameda got preferential trading treatment from FTX the exchange. Molly White has also been doing great work of doing daily summaries. https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/the-ftx-…
Comment linking /p/the-ftx-trial-day-six
on “She's the star witness against Sam Bankman-Fried. Her testimony was explosive”Submitted The FTX trial, day eleven: Off the record as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI just read a similar review: https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/review-michael-lewiss-go... > Far from providing an incisive inside view into a historic collapse that saw billions of dollars go up in flames at the expense of multitudes of people who were financially ruined, Lewis has still produced the hero story he originally set out to write. By the end of Lewis’s first ever conversation with Bankman-Fried, he w…
Comment linking /p/review-michael-lewiss-going-infinite
on “Falling Out of Love with Michael Lewis: Complicated Demands of Business Writing”Submitted FTX – The Fraud Was in the Code as a story · 3 points
HN discussionDepending on your interests there are a lot of blogs out there. Beautiful Public Data ( https://www.beautifulpublicdata.com/ ) is one of my best finds. Others I read via RSS include: Wladimir Palant's blog 'Almost Secure' https://palant.info/articles/ Ctrl.blog https://www.ctrl.blog/ Troy Hunt's blog https://www.troyhunt.com/ Molly White's newsletter https://newsletter.mollywhite.net
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Websites you check regularly (except socials)”Submitted Worldcoin: A solution in search of its problem as a story · 3 points
HN discussionMore in detail here: https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/oasis-defi-centralizatio...
Comment linking /p/oasis-defi-centralization
on “Jump Crypto Just Counter-Exploited the Wormhole Hacker for $140M”Submitted Narrative over Numbers as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Feedly Launches Strikebreaking as a Service as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Venture Capitalist's Dilemma as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
