Charity Boosted by Sam Bankman-Fried Tries to Offload $20M Mansion
A charity tied to effective altruism—a movement that preaches doing the most good with as much money as you can get—has listed a $20 million mansion for sale, just months after being ordered to return a $26.8 million donation to victims of incarcerated crypto-criminal Sam Bankman-Fried. The sale, first reported by The Telegraph, comes as the group’s British arm, Effective Ventures UK, is shutting down amid an investigation by a government charity commission.
This humiliating turn stems from the movement’s entanglement with the biggest financial fraud of the century and its drift towards delusional decadence fueled by the notion it must save future humans from existential threats like genocidal artificial super-intelligence—their favorite fixation.
The property in question, Wytham Abbey, is a 15th century manor house located in the rolling hills outside of Oxford, England—a hub of effective altruism organizations and the place where the movement was founded in 2012 by two philosophers.