The Tucker Carlson Show - Ryan Salame： Facing Prison for Donating to Trump, His Journey With SBF, & Why the Banks Hate Crypto

00:00:00.000 So I feel like kind of an idiot as someone who is watching from afar this case that I, it never really occurred to me that the way it was prosecuted would be determined by politics. 0.96

00:00:11.160 But of course, because the justice system is inherently political now, it's openly political and we're in an election year where Trump is running. 0.58

00:00:18.560 So I was interested to note in reading about it and in our breakfast that we just had that you were not indicted and you're about to go away for seven and a half years to federal prison, but not for financial crimes, fundamentally for campaign finance violations.

00:00:34.940 And so in one sentence, let me tell you the overview from my perspective.

00:00:38.900 Correct me if I'm wrong.

00:00:39.860 Here you have Sam Bankman-Fried, who's in prison for a long time, but he's not been charged with any campaign finance violations.

00:00:47.460 He gave it to Democrats.

00:00:49.100 He helped get Biden elected.

00:00:50.340 You gave to Republicans and you're going away on campaign finance violations.

00:00:56.260 Is that?

00:00:56.620 That's correct.

00:00:57.440 That's correct.

00:00:58.620 Okay.

00:01:09.560 Welcome to the Tucker Carlson show.

00:01:11.240 We bring you stories that have not been showcased anywhere else.

00:01:15.240 And they're not censored, of course, because we're not gatekeepers.

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00:01:23.740 Check out all of our content at TuckerCarlson.com.

00:01:26.940 Here's the episode.

00:01:27.600 So I initially assumed that the Justice Department was not sort of a political organization.

00:01:34.200 And, you know, because I was new to D.C.

00:01:35.520 I hadn't been around that much.

00:01:36.860 And you grew up in this country, correct?

00:01:37.960 I grew up in this country.

00:01:38.900 And, you know, you try to have faith in the system.

00:01:41.180 You try to have faith in how it all shakes out.

00:01:43.220 Been there.

00:01:43.520 I'm now realizing that it is incredibly political.

00:01:47.040 But you're not going to prison for making up a fake cryptocurrency or defrauding investors?

00:01:52.140 No, in fact, the Justice Department has sort of specifically noted and stated that they know I was not aware of the central fraud.

00:01:59.100 So they introduced some evidence, some testimony during Sam's case that showed right up until the last minute Caroline Ellison was lying to me and to the rest of sort of people at FTX and Alameda about funds being stolen.

00:02:12.120 So, I mean, again, I'm coming at this as a non-finance person, just as a reader of the news.

00:02:19.620 But I thought the crime at FTX was defrauding a million investors, using investor funds for things like real estate.

00:02:26.860 Right.

00:02:27.100 Completely agree that that is the crime that occurred.

00:02:29.500 That's the crime.

00:02:30.080 But that's not what you're going to prison for.

00:02:32.060 Correct.

00:02:32.700 They, you know, in uncovering that crime, they manufactured a lot of other crimes and intent behind them that was just not there and never existed.

00:02:40.140 So the two things that I've pled guilty to are operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and campaign finance fraud.

00:02:47.840 The reality is the campaign finance fraud is everything that they wanted.

00:02:51.520 And then they sort of found some other things to lay at my feet and put pressure on me with.

00:02:56.840 So let's just go through them.

00:02:58.880 What can you describe what the first crime is?

00:03:01.600 Yeah.

00:03:01.840 So you need a money transmitting license to operate a money transmitting business in the United States.

00:03:07.640 And what is money transmitting?

00:03:09.220 Is it moving money from one place to another?

00:03:10.620 Moving, yeah.

00:03:11.240 Essentially moving money one place to another.

00:03:13.740 I actually, when I arrived at Alameda, I went to our lawyers and questioned whether we needed money transmitting licenses or not.

00:03:20.760 Because I had just been at a company that had money transmitting licenses.

00:03:24.800 So I knew of these licenses and where they were relevant.

00:03:28.020 And I got very specific legal instruction from, you know, good lawyers that we did not need money transmitting licenses.

00:03:34.640 And those licenses are bestowed by the federal government, I assume.

00:03:37.720 Yeah, that's correct.

00:03:38.340 And state governments as well.

00:03:39.820 Okay.

00:03:42.260 Okay.

00:03:43.100 So that's one, you're running and not getting a license, a government license to move money from one place to another.

00:03:49.680 Correct.

00:03:50.020 Though I will note that the company that I ran was, we didn't touch U.S. customers.

00:03:53.440 There was a separate U.S. division that did touch U.S. customers and they had money transmitting licenses.

00:03:59.960 Okay.

00:04:00.400 So how could you be indicted for that?

00:04:05.400 I mean, it's a great, great question.

00:04:08.180 Certainly, even if we needed MTLs, I was not a lawyer.

00:04:11.640 I sought legal advice.

00:04:14.440 You know, the lawyers that sort of ran the company, ran regulation, ran the licensing, noted that this was their responsibility.

00:04:22.880 But it has been laid at my feet.

00:04:25.980 So you're accused of not getting a U.S. government license to move the money of non-U.S. citizens.

00:04:34.460 Correct.

00:04:36.220 How can that be a crime?

00:04:38.360 I've yet to have a lawyer explain to me why we needed MTL licenses.

00:04:43.880 Okay.

00:04:45.020 All right.

00:04:46.900 Interesting.

00:04:48.360 This is just sort of blowing my mind.

00:04:50.060 I mean, even when I was considering doing this interview, I was thinking, well, FTX, bad, fraud, bad.

00:04:54.920 We did a whole documentary on why FTX committed fraud and why they're bad, which I still think.

00:04:59.740 And I just didn't know that you weren't charged for any of those crimes.

00:05:06.140 And I don't think that most people reading the news coverage of your pleas would understand, like if you're just following Bloomberg News or Reuters, would understand that you were never charged with the crimes that FTX is famous for.

00:05:20.900 Yeah, that's correct.

00:05:21.860 I think, and, you know, that's a big part of why I'm here and why we're talking about it.

00:05:26.140 Okay.

00:05:26.460 But, you know, there's a lot of misconception around many aspects of the case.

00:05:31.460 Well, but this isn't in the realm of opinion.

00:05:33.460 These are just the facts, publicly available facts, like what you were indicted for, what you pled to, what you're being sentenced for.

00:05:40.380 Like those aren't opinions, those are verifiable facts.

00:05:43.660 Yeah, that's correct.

00:05:44.280 And none of these charges are in any way defrauding any individual or taking money from them or stealing from them.

00:05:50.460 You know, I had 98-ish percent of my net worth on the platform.

00:05:54.680 If I thought Sam was stealing money, I would not have left all my money on FTX.

00:05:59.860 It wouldn't make any sense.

00:06:01.380 Okay.

00:06:01.920 So that's, you committed a crime that doesn't seem to be a crime, logically, but whatever.

00:06:08.120 And then there are the campaign finance violations.

00:06:10.440 The campaign finance violations are because I borrowed money from Alameda, which was Sam's company that he owned.

00:06:17.820 Private company, no investors, all just lent money.

00:06:20.480 But I borrowed money, and then I went and did a lot of things with that money.

00:06:23.380 And one of the big things I did was get involved in political contributions.

00:06:27.000 Right.

00:06:27.660 But, you know, I also bought like a house with that money.

00:06:30.800 I lived off that money.

00:06:31.920 So the real story there is when I decided to get involved in politics and take a lot of money off of the FTX platform, I again went to our legal counsel and I said, look, I'm going to sell off a large chunk of the money that I have on the platform.

00:06:46.520 This is various crypto tokens.

00:06:48.140 This is, I think I had some equity I was looking at selling.

00:06:50.440 I was going to cash out, essentially.

00:06:51.800 And the lawyers advise that that is not the way to do it.

00:06:55.940 The proper way to do it would be to borrow the money against these holdings.

00:07:00.260 It's a tax advantageous strategy.

00:07:02.660 It's not a crime.

00:07:03.500 It's how most people borrow when they have sort of a large pool of equity.

00:07:08.920 It's how a lot of prominent people get money out.

00:07:11.920 I would say right around 100%, actually.

00:07:14.600 Yeah.

00:07:14.900 Well, the lawyers advise it.

00:07:16.140 You know, you go to lawyers.

00:07:17.040 Because you don't want to get hit on the gains, because, correct?

00:07:19.780 Correct.

00:07:20.420 It will eventually be taxed.

00:07:22.140 Right.

00:07:22.500 But you've got a low basis on this stuff.

00:07:25.620 You know?

00:07:26.000 Right.

00:07:26.360 You took possession of these assets when they were worth much less than they're worth now.

00:07:30.840 Correct.

00:07:31.640 And so you borrow against it to cash out.

00:07:33.720 Correct.

00:07:34.180 And then I use a bunch of that money to get involved in the political system.

00:07:37.680 But even before we get to that, I just want to confirm that that is not, not only is that not unusual, that is the standard for people in your position.

00:07:45.700 Correct.

00:07:45.900 I happen to know that.

00:07:47.580 Yeah, yeah.

00:07:48.140 And accountants advise it.

00:07:49.460 Lawyers advise it.

00:07:50.120 I mean, it is, you know, what you're told to do.

00:07:52.560 That is 100% true.

00:07:54.080 Yeah.

00:07:54.380 Whether you agree with our system, our tax system, it doesn't even matter.

00:07:57.080 That is what everybody does.

00:07:59.280 Legitimate people.

00:08:00.660 So, okay.

00:08:02.140 So then, but the problem that you ran into arose from the fact that you used some of that money to give political campaign contributions.

00:08:07.980 Correct.

00:08:08.600 Okay.

00:08:08.880 So what did that consist of?

00:08:10.220 I believe in total, I donated about 20 to 30 million throughout the cycle.

00:08:16.160 To Republican candidates.

00:08:18.260 Okay.

00:08:18.940 So anywhere from your PACs to individual donations to specific candidates up to the, I think it was 2,800 limit.

00:08:27.500 And what percentage of that money went to Republicans?

00:08:32.740 100% of the money I gave went to Republicans.

00:08:34.780 I've always been a Republican.

00:08:38.060 Yeah.

00:08:38.500 It's just the party that makes the most sense for a plethora of reasons at this point.

00:08:43.000 Right.

00:08:43.320 But it's consistent with your beliefs.

00:08:45.000 It's consistent with my beliefs.

00:08:45.820 It's rare to be, I think, young in tech and a Republican.

00:08:49.940 So it's a lot of why I, you know, got involved.

00:08:52.980 But yes.

00:08:54.940 At the same time, Sam Bankman-Fried famously was contributing to politicians as well.

00:08:59.840 Correct.

00:09:00.500 He was running.

00:09:01.440 Yeah.

00:09:01.560 He was giving primarily to Democrats, though he was doing some dark to Republicans as well.

00:09:06.740 How much did he give to Democrats?

00:09:09.320 I don't remember the exact numbers.

00:09:11.000 I want to say we're close to 60 to 70 million in total.

00:09:13.580 Wow.

00:09:14.320 Yeah.

00:09:14.480 Okay.

00:09:14.900 So one of the biggest donors in the cycle.

00:09:16.320 I think he was second or third.

00:09:17.420 Yeah.

00:09:18.200 In the 2020 cycle.

00:09:19.460 That's correct.

00:09:21.040 And he has not been indicted for campaign finance violations?

00:09:24.300 That's correct.

00:09:24.960 He was not indicted on the campaign finance violations.

00:09:27.600 Only two of us got in trouble for campaign finance.

00:09:30.000 And that was Nishad Singh, who was part of the central fraud, and myself.

00:09:34.480 Hmm.

00:09:35.420 So he gave, publicly anyway, to Democrats.

00:09:39.540 You gave to Republicans much less, but you get indicted he doesn't.

00:09:43.120 That's correct.

00:09:44.960 Hmm.

00:09:45.600 How do you think that works?

00:09:47.820 You know, I don't understand how all of this works anymore.

00:09:51.440 So I don't know what to say to that.

00:09:54.240 But it's strange, especially since, you know, he was the central political figure.

00:10:00.500 Sort of.

00:10:00.760 This is, yeah.

00:10:07.520 Huh.

00:10:11.440 What was your crime, exactly?

00:10:13.520 My crime was, they accused me of being a straw donor for Sam Bagman-Farid.

00:10:17.880 So I was only doing, I was taking his money and spreading it out because it was borrowed from Alameda.

00:10:25.120 But it was your money, though.

00:10:26.880 Well, it was borrowed against my money.

00:10:28.620 And it would have been my money had I not gone to the lawyers and asked them the appropriate way to take money out.

00:10:34.200 Yes.

00:10:34.420 Okay.

00:10:36.160 So, I mean, is that, I'm just confused by the concept a little bit.

00:10:43.440 If I, you know, if my net worth is mostly borrowed, which is in the case, that's true for a lot of people.

00:10:51.120 Yep.

00:10:51.360 But, and I donate to a political campaign, is that a straw contribution?

00:10:56.120 It was in this case.

00:10:58.200 It was considered a straw contribution.

00:10:59.640 Have you ever heard of that before?

00:11:01.180 No.

00:11:01.820 No.

00:11:02.000 I mean, the sort of, the thing I have to wrap my head around, there has to be a why, right?

00:11:07.200 You have to ask why for anything.

00:11:09.000 I don't know why I would make something a crime that didn't need to be, right?

00:11:14.280 It doesn't.

00:11:14.980 What does that mean?

00:11:15.500 Like, if I had just sold off my crypto and contributed the way I initially wanted to and planned to, there is no crime.

00:11:24.100 But because I sort of went, listened, and borrowed the money the way I was advised to, they've now turned it into a straw donor scheme.

00:11:33.460 So, it doesn't seem to make any sense, these charges, actually?

00:11:39.100 Yes, I would agree with the fact that they don't.

00:11:42.240 And I was, you know, I was very close to going to trial.

00:11:44.700 The government comes up with creative ways to get you to not go to trial, and they came up with a very smart way to get me to avoid trial.

00:11:51.800 Which was what?

00:11:53.260 They told me that if I pled guilty to these two crimes, they would not pursue my loved ones and looking at anything that they had done or investigating them.

00:12:03.140 Your loved ones?

00:12:04.480 Yeah.

00:12:05.120 The mother of my child.

00:12:08.220 Is she a criminal? 0.99

00:12:09.780 No.

00:12:10.360 No, absolutely not.

00:12:11.260 But, I mean, you know, as well as I did, an investigation can destroy your life regardless of whether you're innocent or guilty.

00:12:18.020 So, they threatened the mother of your child in order to get you to plead to things that were not self-evidently crimes?

00:12:24.700 Correct.

00:12:25.540 What did your lawyers say?

00:12:27.200 My lawyers were pretty surprised by it.

00:12:29.260 They said this inducement was incredibly strong.

00:12:31.720 Not something that they had ever done when they were prosecutors and not something that they had expected.

00:12:39.600 You know, they said it's up to me.

00:12:41.660 I mean, they present all the information to you.

00:12:43.480 It's a very odd process.

00:12:44.600 For anyone who's never gone through an investigation, which I assume is most people, you never speak directly to the prosecutors.

00:12:49.680 It's all through lawyers who then give you sort of a readout of what's going on, you know, and they lay out your options, right?

00:12:57.000 So, if I went to trial, it was a jury in New York.

00:13:01.540 I'm a Republican, heterosexual, white male, had accumulated a fair bit of money.

00:13:07.020 The jury's not going to love me already.

00:13:09.740 Did the lawyers tell you that?

00:13:11.060 Yeah.

00:13:11.380 They lay that out.

00:13:12.540 You know, the lawyers will tell you that even if you're completely innocent, it is hard to win at trial.

00:13:17.220 The government has all of the-

00:13:18.980 Because of your demographic profile?

00:13:20.660 Demographic profile, and the government controls the entire narrative.

00:13:23.440 You know, people are scared.

00:13:24.380 No one's going to get up and testify in my defense.

00:13:26.140 They're scared that the government's going to go after them if they do.

00:13:29.060 You know, this is a big problem I had with Sam Bankman-Fried's trial.

00:13:31.980 I'm not saying he's innocent by far, but, you know, I watched it and thought, had I, you know, if I'd been on the defense for him, a lot of that stuff was just not accurate the way they were describing it.

00:13:41.680 But no one got up to counter any of the government's narrative because then, you know, you get threatened with more time in prison.

00:13:48.920 Like, you say one wrong thing on the stand in defense of someone, and they will get you for perjury, or your lawyers will tell you this.

00:13:55.560 So, I flirted with the idea of being on the defense for Sam, not because I thought he was innocent of everything, you know, that they accused, but there was no one up there providing a counter-narrative to this narrative that the government had spun up.

00:14:10.820 And that's not how the justice is supposed to work.

00:14:13.860 So, I note this to my lawyers, and the lawyers, you know, said you could face an extra 10 years for doing that.

00:14:18.880 Like, do you really want to sort of risk that?

00:14:22.120 You know, it was clear Sam was going to lose, ultimately, and I'm not saying that's wrong, but it's not the way the system's supposed to work.

00:14:30.760 You know, the government hands get out of jail free cards if you parrot the narrative that they want, and then, you know, everyone who would provide any counterpoint is frightened.

00:14:41.060 It's just, that's not justice.

00:14:44.700 It's an odd version of it.

00:14:46.800 It's not an American version of it.

00:14:48.460 It's not the point of our whole American system on it.

00:14:52.420 You know, trial's also going to be 10 to, I think it was 8, 10, 12 million dollars.

00:14:57.780 Most of my money was gone, locked up on FTX.

00:15:00.280 So, you know, I was operating from substantially less means than I had before.

00:15:05.500 You know, I don't know how anyone, I don't know how anyone does it.

00:15:08.860 And you can't just go out and get a job.

00:15:10.900 No, can't go out and get a job.

00:15:12.220 I mean, I'm not going to make 10 million dollars overnight to defend myself.

00:15:15.340 So, you know, and the inducement, I think, was the ultimate decision maker.

00:15:20.460 Putting the mother of your child in prison. 0.99

00:15:22.180 Right.

00:15:22.820 I mean, you can get me to plead guilty to anything if that's on the table.

00:15:25.980 So your lawyers were explicit with you about that?

00:15:28.360 They were explicit.

00:15:29.120 Yeah.

00:15:29.500 Yeah.

00:15:29.680 I mean, they explained, the government's careful, right?

00:15:32.500 I mean, I'll say that I think today or tomorrow I'm going to file an appeal to my guilty plea.

00:15:39.160 Um, because the, the government has now continued to pursue, uh, the mother of my child, despite, uh, saying that they wouldn't if I pled guilty.

00:15:49.980 So I'm going to use that in an attempt and appeal.

00:15:53.120 Wait, so they got you to plead by threatening the person you love, um, with indictment.

00:16:00.120 And, and so you pled on the basis of their promise that they would not indict her.

00:16:06.060 Correct.

00:16:06.860 Not even not indict, not investigate.

00:16:08.520 They would drop the investigation or any investigation into her if I pled.

00:16:12.980 What did she do wrong?

00:16:14.920 We, uh, we are not married currently.

00:16:18.360 Um, and we shared finances.

00:16:20.360 And, uh, so they're accusing her of also a campaign finance fraud violation, um, because our finances are commingled and intermixed.

00:16:28.420 Huh.

00:16:30.760 So, um, so your lawyers told you if you do this, you're basically doing it for the mother of your child.

00:16:37.220 Um, she will not be hassled.

00:16:42.060 They'll leave her alone. 1.00

00:16:43.280 That's correct.

00:16:43.820 I mean, and they went further than that.

00:16:45.020 They sort of put her, her case into cold storage, um, which, you know, they, they didn't have her, um, plead the fifth during times as she should have.

00:16:53.120 She's also going through a sort of difficult divorce proceeding. 0.67

00:16:55.520 Which is why you're not married.

00:16:56.540 Which is why we're not married.

00:16:57.660 So, um, you know, she should have pled the fifth during things for that.

00:17:01.580 Everyone thought the investigation was dropped into her because of this inducement. 1.00

00:17:05.920 And then what happened?

00:17:07.120 Uh, and then we found out, uh, I don't know, a few months ago that it is not.

00:17:11.960 Um, they have continued to pursue investigating her.

00:17:14.940 They don't acknowledge the inducement as being real, um, and they're going to charge her.

00:17:19.680 The inducement being their promise not to do this.

00:17:24.200 Correct.

00:17:24.520 On the basis of which you pled guilty.

00:17:26.620 Correct.

00:17:27.100 To crimes that are not actually crimes.

00:17:29.260 Correct.

00:17:29.920 Right.

00:17:30.380 And then, so they said they wouldn't hassle her.

00:17:32.420 And then once you pled, they indicted her anyway. 0.85

00:17:35.020 Correct.

00:17:35.380 Well, yeah, a year, what, a year later, year and a half later.

00:17:37.860 Why do you think they did that?

00:17:40.760 I don't know.

00:17:41.580 It doesn't make any sense to me.

00:17:43.000 So, I mean, just if you zoom out a little bit, if you lie to a federal agent, that's

00:17:47.340 a felony.

00:17:48.260 Yes.

00:17:49.220 But if a federal prosecutor lies to you, it's fine.

00:17:52.960 That's correct.

00:17:53.660 Um, and I think they know the public narrative around FTX is so terrible, you know, the,

00:17:57.400 the, they control the narrative, right?

00:17:59.120 No one talks to the media more than the prosecutors and the government, even though they sort of

00:18:03.340 lock people up on the other side.

00:18:04.640 If they talk to the media, the government sort of controls the narrative publicly, right?

00:18:08.560 So they know how bad the FTX story is and how little the public wants to even think

00:18:12.940 about any aspect of it anymore.

00:18:14.280 Um, so I think that emboldens them to just sort of do whatever they want.

00:18:19.860 How much did you spend on lawyers in this process?

00:18:22.280 I've spent five or six million in totals so far.

00:18:25.600 On lawyers?

00:18:26.420 Correct.

00:18:27.240 So those lawyers made five or six million dollars from you?

00:18:29.740 Correct.

00:18:30.840 And yet they brokered what seems like the worst plea deal, like in the history of plea deals.

00:18:35.880 Yeah.

00:18:36.380 I mean, they sort of counted as a victory.

00:18:38.360 I wasn't charged with the central fraud.

00:18:40.580 They counted it as a victory.

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00:19:57.900 Was there any suggestion that you could be charged with a central fraud?

00:20:15.640 No.

00:20:16.400 In which case, I would, just being honest with you, I would have much less sympathy because, you know, if you're involved in a fraud that defrauds a million people, like, that's on you.

00:20:23.960 No, no, a lot of the government, or a lot of, sorry, not a lot of the government, a lot of people just think everyone at FTX is involved in the fraud, right?

00:20:30.840 There's this public idea that 100% of the employees, the people at the company must have known, and everyone should go to prison.

00:20:37.460 Yeah, people feel that way for sure.

00:20:39.260 Yeah.

00:20:40.400 But there's no hint of that in your case.

00:20:43.680 There's the opposite.

00:20:44.580 There's literally Caroline Ellison, who was sort of the central to this entire thing, saying we lied to Ryan right up until the last moment.

00:20:51.840 This came up in SBF's trial.

00:20:54.180 There's messages related to it of me messaging her.

00:20:56.820 Caroline Ellison was the girlfriend of Sam Bankman-Fried.

00:20:59.980 Yeah, and the CEO of Alameda Researcher.

00:21:01.740 Right.

00:21:02.060 He put her in, yeah.

00:21:02.700 How, is she in prison?

00:21:04.060 She's not yet.

00:21:04.960 She's a cooperator with the government.

00:21:06.620 She's potentially going to get no jail time. 1.00

00:21:09.140 No jail time.

00:21:09.920 But we don't know yet.

00:21:10.960 It's up to Judge Kaplan.

00:21:11.760 But there's no, oh, Judge Kaplan.

00:21:14.000 Yeah.

00:21:14.100 So there's no question that she was involved and had knowledge of the fraud.

00:21:20.220 Correct.

00:21:20.660 Correct.

00:21:20.860 She gave a interview sort of to the company, you know, right after it collapsed, noting that it was her, Gary, Nishan, Sam that has sort of orchestrated this large theft or use of customer funds in an inappropriate way.

00:21:34.260 Okay, but she's, as far as you know, not going to prison.

00:21:38.040 You're going to prison soon.

00:21:39.280 Correct.

00:21:39.820 For seven and a half years.

00:21:41.200 Correct.

00:21:42.100 And no one's even claiming you were part of the fraud.

00:21:45.120 But this chick, who has admitted being part of the fraud, is not facing prison.

00:21:50.440 We don't, she might go sometime.

00:21:51.860 She's certainly not going.

00:21:53.460 As of right now.

00:21:54.180 As of right now.

00:21:54.760 Correct.

00:21:55.720 What do you think of that?

00:21:58.040 You know, I don't know what to think of it.

00:22:00.840 You've reached some level of Zen acceptance here.

00:22:03.140 You sort of, you enter this twilight zone in the whole process, you know, where like reality isn't a thing anymore and you either cope with it or you go mad.

00:22:10.520 So, coping with it.

00:22:14.180 Now, what about, so Sam Bankman-Fried, so you just listed the officers of the company.

00:22:20.640 But Sam Bankman-Fried was heavily involved with his parents, both attorneys.

00:22:25.620 One's an ethics professor, I believe.

00:22:27.300 Correct.

00:22:28.780 Who seemed remarkably sleazy on the, I'm just judging from the emails that came to light.

00:22:34.200 Greedy.

00:22:35.480 Pushing for more money, more real estate, whatever.

00:22:37.880 And then his brother, Gabe.

00:22:39.840 Have any of them pled guilty to anything?

00:22:43.280 No, no one else was charged outside of the central floor and myself and now, you know, Michelle.

00:22:50.060 So, none of the Bankman-Fried family has faced any legal consequences from this.

00:22:55.040 That's correct.

00:22:55.640 Or any of the lawyers that advised a substantial amount of this.

00:22:58.760 I mean, in both of my fact patterns, the lawyers were heavily, heavily involved. 0.59

00:23:02.680 You know, they make, I forget if it was my lawyer that said it, but it's, he said you can't go ask your lawyer if you can shoot someone in the head, have them say yes, and then shoot them.

00:23:11.000 Right?

00:23:11.260 That's not a defensive, you can't say the lawyer told me I could do this, so I did it.

00:23:15.240 But I don't know what the point of the lawyer is then, right?

00:23:18.600 If I go to the lawyer and say, is this sort of MTL legal, or is this campaign finance thing we're doing legal, and they say yes, you know, what am I just supposed to be a lawyer?

00:23:29.060 Like, this is their purpose.

00:23:30.140 This is the whole reason I, you know, you go to them, or you talk to them, or you ask them these questions.

00:23:34.560 So, it's frustrating to be in trouble for things that you genuinely try to do legally, and feel like you went the route you were supposed to, to do them legally.

00:23:44.660 Also, I mean, if you, you know, if you're getting indicted for not having a U.S. government license to transfer the funds to people who are not U.S. citizens outside of the United States, like, that's insane.

00:23:57.460 Like, who would ever imagine that you would be indicted for that?

00:24:00.580 That's correct.

00:24:01.120 Yeah, I couldn't imagine.

00:24:03.380 I mean, could I, I don't know, could the FBI arrest a driver in Abu Dhabi for not having a U.S. driver's license?

00:24:09.740 Like, I think at this point, the government just does whatever it wants anywhere in the world.

00:24:14.660 I think you're onto something.

00:24:16.400 I think you're getting warmer there, Ryan.

00:24:18.760 Wow.

00:24:19.620 Okay, so just, because it's just very interesting who gets punished in this, and I'll just confess my ignorance once again.

00:24:26.820 You know, I read SBFs getting 25 years in prison.

00:24:30.120 That's a long, that's a hard time.

00:24:31.620 I feel bad for anybody facing 25 years in prison, but it's like kind of case closed, right?

00:24:36.360 At that point, justice has been done.

00:24:39.380 But I don't see how his family escaped indictment.

00:24:42.920 I don't get that.

00:24:44.660 Yeah, I mean, I don't want more people in prison.

00:24:47.140 I'm not saying you do, but I mean.

00:24:48.520 I don't know how a lot of people sort of avoided this, and I don't know how I ended up in the hot seat.

00:24:55.020 You know, it's the Republican donations, for sure, at this point.

00:24:58.980 But it's very strange and disheartening.

00:25:01.900 So what did the lawyers tell, because seven and a half years, I don't want to rub it in.

00:25:06.100 I feel so sad for you, but that, you know, that's real.

00:25:08.960 You know, it's not six weeks in the drunk tank.

00:25:10.800 No, that's correct.

00:25:11.740 And it is more time than even the prosecutors requested.

00:25:15.020 So the prosecutors push for five to seven years.

00:25:18.320 We push for 18 months.

00:25:20.020 The sort of standard playbook is typically, you know, they'll split that down the middle.

00:25:25.540 Seven and a half years is more than anyone asked for.

00:25:27.960 How did you wind up with that?

00:25:29.160 You know, the judge read me a whole statement.

00:25:33.880 He sort of indicated—

00:25:35.380 Can you tell us who the judge was?

00:25:36.320 It was Judge Kaplan.

00:25:37.200 He had just finished with Trump's, I think, the Gino Carroll case.

00:25:41.120 I think that was a week after.

00:25:43.220 You know, he spent the first half of the comments to me talking about how he disliked Citizens United.

00:25:47.600 So I knew I was in trouble at that point.

00:25:49.880 What did—were you involved in the Citizens United decision?

00:25:53.160 No, no.

00:25:53.640 And it's legal, to be clear.

00:25:56.560 So once it started there, though, I knew we were off to—

00:25:59.120 Citizens United is a Supreme Court decision.

00:26:01.200 Correct.

00:26:01.760 You did not argue that before the Supreme Court.

00:26:03.920 Correct.

00:26:04.700 You didn't work for Citizens United.

00:26:06.640 Correct.

00:26:07.420 What does that have to do with you?

00:26:09.040 That's the beginning of, you know, him talking to me.

00:26:11.480 He goes into a lengthy discussion about how America is losing faith in its political system.

00:26:16.640 You know what he was trying to say.

00:26:19.700 Who is this guy?

00:26:21.380 He's a judge.

00:26:22.160 He's been on the bench a long time, Judge Kaplan.

00:26:24.880 I know this is all I know about him.

00:26:26.920 You know, throughout the plea process, they—you know, my lawyers told me what Kaplan really cares about is acceptance of responsibility.

00:26:35.460 If you want to minimize the amount of time that you're going to serve, the most important thing is to just get up, take responsibility, own it, describe how you were responsible, apologize, say you'll do better going forward.

00:26:47.320 So we didn't sort of—that's all I did.

00:26:49.280 I made this whole, you know, apology speech and everything, and I'm genuinely sorry for all the customers of FTX.

00:26:55.620 So there's not nothing there.

00:26:58.180 You know, it's a real—you know, what happened to them is horrific and haunts me daily.

00:27:03.040 But, you know, in front of—that's sort of—the whole speech we put together was geared toward that, but Kaplan sort of grabbed all these things that just weren't true and started listing them off to me, right?

00:27:15.000 So he said, I ran to the Bahamian regulators to save myself.

00:27:18.700 That's not true.

00:27:19.360 The Bahamian regulators emailed Sam and I asking what was going on.

00:27:23.180 Sam was busy with the collapse of the company, so I got on with the regulators and told them what I was learning about in real time.

00:27:28.920 But sort of the judge spinned it that I ran to the Bahamian regulators to save myself.

00:27:35.360 I did manage to withdraw some money from FTX.

00:27:40.100 It was before I knew that it was going to be filed bankruptcy, so everyone else is withdrawing.

00:27:45.680 I also withdrew a little bit, just enough to cover legal fees because I had no money in the bank.

00:27:49.800 He twisted that as me sort of getting out before all the customers.

00:27:54.140 I think he said, you know, your point was to hell with the customers.

00:27:57.000 I'll save myself.

00:27:57.860 May I ask, you weren't charged with that?

00:28:00.460 Correct.

00:28:01.520 That has nothing to do with the charges you pled to.

00:28:06.420 That's correct.

00:28:07.660 So that's like saying, you know, you were drunk at a dinner party three years ago and I found you obnoxious, therefore more jail time for you.

00:28:13.600 Like, what does that have to do with the crime?

00:28:16.220 Yeah, the whole thing was odd.

00:28:18.960 The whole experience.

00:28:19.540 That's insane.

00:28:20.560 And he said this in open court?

00:28:22.060 Yeah, this was his final statement to me as he, you know, was about to tell me that I was going to do seven and a half years.

00:28:28.860 You know, he described me as part of the mastermind behind this campaign finance fraud scheme that we were all involved in, you know, which is crazy.

00:28:37.500 I don't know.

00:28:39.100 It's tough to stay.

00:28:39.800 I mean, you stand there, you're listening to this.

00:28:41.200 You can't say anything.

00:28:42.680 Why?

00:28:43.720 It's the court.

00:28:44.460 You know, you're in the courtroom.

00:28:45.360 You're there to listen.

00:28:46.500 And then he gives a judgment.

00:28:47.440 You have to feign respect for people, Judge Kaplan.

00:28:49.880 Of course.

00:28:50.220 Yeah.

00:28:50.420 I don't.

00:28:50.960 I have no respect.

00:28:51.880 Yeah.

00:28:52.100 Sorry.

00:28:53.780 Wow.

00:28:54.780 So your, but your lawyer sounds like did not prepare you for this at all.

00:28:58.820 No, the lawyers expect, I mean, they do, the maximum was 10.

00:29:02.540 It was zero to 10.

00:29:03.560 It's up to the judge almost indiscriminately what they want to do.

00:29:06.460 But the standard procedure here would have been to basically split the time we requested and the time the prosecutors requested.

00:29:12.480 And at worst, what the prosecutors requested.

00:29:15.600 It's almost unheard of to go above even what the prosecutors want.

00:29:21.260 Did your lawyers apologize to you?

00:29:23.460 No, they don't.

00:29:24.580 They don't apologize.

00:29:25.140 I mean, they always, they're always caveating their statements, right?

00:29:27.900 It's always, it could go this way.

00:29:29.240 It could go that way.

00:29:29.980 This isn't an exact science.

00:29:32.360 Were any of the lawyers at FTX charged with anything?

00:29:35.140 No.

00:29:36.440 Really?

00:29:37.320 It almost sounds like a system designed by and for the benefit of lawyers.

00:29:41.620 I'm just kind of throwing that out there.

00:29:42.580 It is 100% a system designed for and to benefit the lawyers.

00:29:45.920 I mean, all of it is.

00:29:47.480 You know, the bankruptcy team's about to take a billion dollars in fees for a company that has enough money to pay back customers.

00:29:55.140 That doesn't mean Sam did nothing wrong.

00:29:57.200 But there is enough money in this whole system to pay back customers 120% and would have been even more.

00:30:03.340 Had a number of sort of more intelligent things been done.

00:30:08.060 But the lawyers got to the trough first and just stole the money themselves.

00:30:11.480 They take it.

00:30:12.360 I mean, they keep describing this massive, massive organization with no accountants, no nothing.

00:30:17.940 I mean, that wasn't true.

00:30:18.980 There was a whole accounting department.

00:30:20.520 The accounting department was hiring more people.

00:30:22.820 I mean, the company's only three years old, was only three years old, and just had meteoric growth from basically the beginning.

00:30:28.800 So hiring people was a catch-up, you know, every week you try to hire someone, you got to interview them, they got to come, you know, you're now a week behind in work.

00:30:36.900 There was an attempt by every department that I was aware of and involved in to hire good people and build out real systems.

00:30:44.120 But you're describing the aftermath and like how do we make the investors whole, this whole scandal is predicated on the fact that investors were defrauded.

00:30:52.500 They lost their money because the money was misused.

00:30:56.220 That's the core allegation.

00:30:57.740 That's the crime, right?

00:30:58.560 Right.

00:30:59.480 So the injured party is the investors.

00:31:03.980 Correct.

00:31:04.440 Or the users of FTX who had their funds on there.

00:31:07.400 Right.

00:31:08.220 Yeah.

00:31:08.360 But the people whose money was taken by FTX for it, okay.

00:31:11.780 But the lawyers wind up with a billion dollars?

00:31:15.140 Yeah.

00:31:15.460 And then all of the individuals, lawyers that we've hired.

00:31:18.960 But why would they get a billion dollars?

00:31:22.540 In bankruptcy, the lawyers typically make out, the bankruptcy lawyers make out phenomenally well.

00:31:27.740 You know, they kind of have indiscriminate ability to do whatever they want.

00:31:34.220 You're acting like that's normal.

00:31:35.740 This sounds like a disease.

00:31:37.300 Bankruptcy law is wildly horrific. 0.99

00:31:39.360 And it benefits just the parasites, the lawyers. 0.99

00:31:44.460 Correct. 0.99

00:31:44.960 And they also have the power to intimidate a lot of people.

00:31:47.480 I mean, a lot of people aren't speaking up about the FTX situation because they're still waiting to settle with the bankruptcy estate.

00:31:53.500 And so the bankruptcy lawyers in conjunction with the government keep everyone silent.

00:32:02.040 And by the way, as you just said, no lawyers were indicted.

00:32:06.220 So like all the hyenas are on the same team, it feels like.

00:32:09.120 Yeah.

00:32:09.560 It's a systemic issue that, you know, I don't know how it gets addressed.

00:32:15.380 So how involved, again, my knowledge of this is just purely from stupid wire stories on it, but how involved was Sam Bankman-Fried's family in this? 0.94

00:32:27.060 Very involved. 0.97

00:32:28.480 His mother was only involved on the political side.

00:32:31.580 How was she involved in the political side?

00:32:32.980 She ran her own political organization. 0.99

00:32:34.720 I think it was called Mind the Gap.

00:32:37.580 And then his father was involved in the company, was part of hiring lawyers, was part of advising on tax treatment.

00:32:44.920 You know, yeah, his father was heavily involved.

00:32:47.800 So the mother was using FTX money to help Democratic politicians. 1.00

00:32:51.120 Correct.

00:32:53.260 But that's not a campaign finance violation.

00:32:58.480 I don't know what you want me to say.

00:33:00.120 It's just, it's so, it's just great.

00:33:07.660 Just parenthetically, it's just one of those stories, and I've seen so many in 30 years, where you have these perceptions because you don't really know anything beyond what, you know, you saw in a headline or in the first four graphs of the New York Times story.

00:33:19.340 And then when you press a little bit into the details, it's something totally different from what you thought it was or what you were told it was.

00:33:25.980 And it's like a complete scam that benefits the same people, always.

00:33:31.020 You know, the lawyers, the Democratic donors, the Democratic politicians, and the people.

00:33:36.200 And, you know, a tragedy like this, tragedy for the investors, is hijacked by these institutions for political reasons.

00:33:44.220 I mean, that's what I see after talking to you this morning.

00:33:47.360 Yeah, it's, yeah.

00:33:48.720 No, it's terrible to be a part of.

00:33:50.680 I mean, you're losing everything at once, and then, you know, this whole narrative is being spun up around you that you have no real control over.

00:33:59.540 And then it just becomes your reality, or you go crazy.

00:34:05.160 Well, I'd probably go crazy, I'd say.

00:34:07.700 Yeah, I'm bordering on it.

00:34:09.440 I think you are.

00:34:10.680 You're following my ex-posts.

00:34:11.700 I'm right on the edge of sanity, yeah.

00:34:14.520 So, and tell me, and then I want to ask about your life and how you wound up in all of this, but Gabe Bankman-Fried, who's he?

00:34:22.540 Sam's younger brother.

00:34:23.560 Yeah.

00:34:23.840 And he was actually the one who introduced me to getting really involved in politics.

00:34:29.360 He was running a pandemic prevention initiative that was actually, it was a decent idea. 0.82

00:34:35.920 You know, COVID was ridiculous.

00:34:38.400 The shutdowns were insane. 0.98

00:34:39.680 The whole way it was handled was wild and not great.

00:34:43.600 But what we saw was, like, a single, you know, thing created anywhere in the world will just spread everywhere, and we are clearly not prepared for anything of the matter.

00:34:52.680 So a real biosecurity threat, the government's not prepared for.

00:34:56.540 Yeah.

00:34:57.200 And, you know, COVID was, I think, a joke, and I'm sorry to anyone that lost anyone, but for a global pandemic, COVID was as light as it's going to get.

00:35:04.240 But that doesn't mean there's not the potential, you know, for an actual bioweapon.

00:35:07.700 That's for sure.

00:35:08.200 And so his initiative was to sort of put in place preparations for that now, get testing of future vaccines now, create sort of, you know, ways in the United States, not externally, to prevent these sorts of things going forward.

00:35:25.240 That seems like a fine idea.

00:35:26.400 It was a brilliant idea.

00:35:27.120 There was hundreds of millions of dollars of unspent COVID dollars that were just sitting out there.

00:35:30.920 This was a great use for them.

00:35:32.560 You know, they'd already been allocated.

00:35:33.580 It's not new spending.

00:35:34.400 It was a brilliant idea.

00:35:36.680 And it really, to me, it was very, it was real altruism.

00:35:40.420 You know, there's a lot of people that do a lot of fake altruism.

00:35:43.200 Like, this was a great idea.

00:35:44.980 So this is actually what drove a lot of my Republican giving.

00:35:48.700 He sort of got me excited about helping with this from the Republican side.

00:35:53.640 So, and then that was all twisted.

00:35:55.100 I mean, that was all turned into, I was only giving to push crypto policy in the United States, which is just not the case at all.

00:36:01.960 Oh, was he political?

00:36:05.160 Yes.

00:36:05.700 Yeah, yeah.

00:36:06.040 He had a whole team.

00:36:06.760 There was, we had, like, there was a massive team of strategists, of campaign finance experts, of everything, lawyers.

00:36:13.680 Was he a partisan?

00:36:15.860 Um, no one's, not really.

00:36:18.320 They're associated with the Democratic Party, I think, because he was because of his mother.

00:36:21.620 But they're just strategists.

00:36:23.560 Was the mother partisan, do you think?

00:36:24.960 Yeah.

00:36:25.580 Yes.

00:36:26.440 Yeah.

00:36:26.800 Pretty liberal.

00:36:27.840 Yes.

00:36:28.760 Yeah.

00:36:28.980 I mean, they're West Coast, Stanford, you know.

00:36:30.900 Yeah.

00:36:31.180 Yeah.

00:36:31.960 And just, I've never met Sam Bankman-Fried, but I look at that guy, I'm like, you've got liberal parents.

00:36:36.840 Yeah.

00:36:37.100 There's no doubt about it.

00:36:37.460 Yeah, for sure.

00:36:38.080 There's no doubt about it.

00:36:40.020 Um, okay.

00:36:41.760 Amazing.

00:36:42.440 How did, how did you get involved?

00:36:44.020 What's your background?

00:36:44.740 How did you get involved in this?

00:36:46.660 Uh, the whole company, you mean?

00:36:47.760 Yeah.

00:36:48.140 Yeah.

00:36:48.340 So I started at Ernst & Young as a tax accountant at a college.

00:36:52.820 Um.

00:36:53.220 Really?

00:36:53.660 Yeah.

00:36:54.040 Yeah, yeah.

00:36:54.360 I, I got incredibly excited about Bitcoin early.

00:36:58.500 Um, I.

00:36:59.640 But you were a tax accountant?

00:37:00.860 I was a tax accountant at Ernst & Young, yeah.

00:37:03.200 Wow.

00:37:03.600 That seems like a very non-zany job. 1.00

00:37:07.340 Polar opposite, really.

00:37:08.720 Yeah.

00:37:09.400 Yeah.

00:37:10.300 Um, no, I went to UMass Amherst and then fell into accounting there because I was good

00:37:15.120 at it.

00:37:15.460 And then, you know, fell into the job at EY because I had sort of, I work hard and push

00:37:22.700 myself forward.

00:37:23.700 Um, yeah.

00:37:25.020 So I, I, but I found and discovered Bitcoin and I fell in love with it.

00:37:27.920 I thought it was one of the coolest things I'd ever discovered.

00:37:30.240 Um, I thought, you know, in a world where trusting people doesn't always work out as

00:37:35.900 I've learned, uh, trusting math does work and the whole system's built on math working.

00:37:40.520 So I thought it was amazing.

00:37:41.780 I mean, it's a global transfer network that works as long as math works, that can't be

00:37:45.240 sort of perverted in its base core.

00:37:48.620 Brilliant.

00:37:49.220 I thought it was incredible.

00:37:50.180 Um, so I started publicly talking about it on LinkedIn.

00:37:52.180 This was the time that LinkedIn was becoming a big deal.

00:37:54.500 Um, and a crypto company in Boston that needed an accountant, uh, found me and asked me if

00:37:59.880 I'd go work for them.

00:38:01.360 What, what company?

00:38:02.380 Circle.

00:38:02.880 So they run USDC now, um, which is a stable coin.

00:38:06.580 Uh, they're one of the sort of older stable coin companies.

00:38:09.700 Um, and they were one of the original companies to have an app that you could buy Bitcoin, like

00:38:13.900 a sort of Venmo.

00:38:15.240 Yes.

00:38:15.460 But that was, I think, 15 or 16.

00:38:18.740 So you go to work for them as an accountant?

00:38:20.320 Um, uh, I go to work to them as someone who's bridging the trading desk and the accountants.

00:38:25.560 So the accountants have no idea what the traders are doing because they don't really understand

00:38:28.820 crypto or sort of, uh, looking at the network very well or the exchange data.

00:38:33.300 And then, you know, the traders don't want to deal with the accountants because they're

00:38:36.520 making a boatload of money trading.

00:38:38.560 No one cares.

00:38:39.140 Of course.

00:38:39.900 Everyone makes fun of accountants.

00:38:41.060 Right.

00:38:41.220 So I bridged the gap between those two.

00:38:43.160 Uh, I helped them sort of reproduce a full record of transactions that had happened starting

00:38:47.960 in January.

00:38:49.220 Um, it was an absolutely insane amount of work.

00:38:51.360 Um, but the trading desk was pleased because then they could pass audit.

00:38:54.720 Um, and they brought me on the trading desk full-time.

00:38:57.460 Hmm.

00:38:58.100 In Boston.

00:38:58.760 In Boston.

00:38:59.360 Yep.

00:38:59.600 And then they moved me to Hong Kong because it's, uh, crypto markets are 24-7.

00:39:03.860 So they moved me to Hong Kong to, uh, sort of run the, not run the desk, but work on

00:39:08.460 the desk overnight.

00:39:09.100 Um, and that's where I eventually met Sam.

00:39:12.920 Huh.

00:39:13.800 What, what, how'd you meet Sam Bankman-Fried?

00:39:16.060 Sam was at a conference, um, and he was, it was just Alameda Research at the time.

00:39:21.260 And he was, Alameda Research was headlining the conference with an exchange called Binance,

00:39:25.560 which is the biggest crypto exchange.

00:39:27.640 And no one had really heard of Alameda, but for Binance to be willing to headline a conference

00:39:32.140 with these people, they had to be a big deal, right?

00:39:35.180 Because Binance is not going to let some small, irrelevant firm headline a conference with

00:39:39.700 them.

00:39:40.560 Um, and so I saw Sam speaking on stage.

00:39:43.080 I got a meeting with him, um, and just, you know, I knew he was going to be successful.

00:39:48.000 What'd you think of him?

00:39:49.640 He's, I mean, he's brilliant.

00:39:50.980 Um, he, you know, he's autistic, sort of very autistic.

00:39:55.520 Um, but all he wanted to do was work.

00:39:57.680 What does that mean, autistic?

00:39:59.360 He, um, social situations are harder for him than the average person.

00:40:04.380 Um, he doesn't sort of, I think he doesn't have an emotional spectrum that most people

00:40:09.000 have.

00:40:09.640 Yes.

00:40:10.180 Um, he, you know, eye contacts, difficult, uh, things like that.

00:40:14.560 Sort of the, the, the human elements of the world don't make a lot of sense.

00:40:17.840 The internet, digital, uh, you know, money-making math world is all that makes sense to him.

00:40:24.640 And you said he's a hard worker.

00:40:26.460 24-7.

00:40:27.320 Slept on a beanbag.

00:40:28.580 You know, we used to have to tell him to go shower because he would start to smell.

00:40:31.520 We would buy him new shoes when they'd wear out.

00:40:34.420 You know, the, the interesting thing-

00:40:35.440 How did he respond when you told me he had to take a shower because he stunk?

00:40:39.040 He's fine.

00:40:39.620 He, he knew he couldn't do these other things and sort of, you know, people took over.

00:40:44.600 There was almost like a-

00:40:45.480 Really?

00:40:46.080 Like a brotherly feeling for, you feel a little bad for him when you meet him.

00:40:49.420 Yeah.

00:40:49.600 Um, initially, just because you know, you know, it can't be easy living like that.

00:40:54.200 Uh, you know, you're brilliant in one world, but you don't understand-

00:40:57.420 Did he forget to take a shower?

00:40:58.880 Just didn't care.

00:41:01.820 Interesting.

00:41:02.580 Yeah.

00:41:03.160 He, all he wanted to do was work 24-7, 365.

00:41:06.060 It's, it's like he needed it to keep going.

00:41:08.120 Privacy is not an option.

00:41:09.760 It's a human necessity.

00:41:11.460 It's at the core of freedom.

00:41:13.000 No privacy, no freedom.

00:41:15.760 If you can't have privacy, you are owned by someone else.

00:41:19.800 You're a slave.

00:41:21.120 And so the question is, who has in 2024 more privacy? 0.98

00:41:25.240 The average American or the average North Korean? 0.53

00:41:28.440 Well, unfortunately, because of technology, in many ways, the answer is the average North

00:41:33.040 Korean has more privacy. 0.50

00:41:35.020 The average North Korean is being monitored less than you are.

00:41:38.560 And the reason is really simple.

00:41:39.840 Well, you're carrying around a phone and a laptop and the government and big tech can

00:41:45.340 and do track both of them endlessly.

00:41:48.860 Again and again, we've seen that companies and governments are not afraid to use the data

00:41:52.560 they glean from you to manipulate you.

00:41:55.660 What you purchase, what you think, even how you vote, maybe especially how you vote.

00:42:00.260 So how do you get your privacy back?

00:42:01.820 Well, we use a product called a VPN, a virtual private network.

00:42:06.920 And the one we use is called ExpressVPN.

00:42:10.160 ExpressVPN reroutes 100% of our internet activity through secure encrypted channels.

00:42:15.880 That means that no one has access to our online activity.

00:42:19.920 The original promise of the internet was freedom.

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00:42:27.480 You don't have that now.

00:42:28.740 But ExpressVPN gives it back to you.

00:42:32.420 Go to expressvpn.com slash Tucker today to get an extra three months free.

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00:42:47.260 Did you get, once again, I've never met him, but watching video of him, he seems like he's on Adderall or something.

00:43:10.220 He seems impaired by pharmaceuticals in some way.

00:43:13.120 Yeah, he had a very strong antidepressant patch.

00:43:16.280 I believe it was called an MSAM patch that he would put on his shoulder.

00:43:23.280 And then there was Adderall around the office, modafinil around the office.

00:43:28.260 What's modafinil?

00:43:29.160 It's like a kind of like an Adderall, slightly different Adderall.

00:43:31.660 I think it was used by like war pilots to stay awake or something like that.

00:43:38.980 Yeah, there was a ton of that stuff.

00:43:41.140 It's very common in the tech world.

00:43:43.780 A lot of, you know, most of, I would say most of the generation sub-30 has a bunch of friends that need Adderall to operate.

00:43:50.860 You know, there was a time when it was handed out like candy by doctors.

00:43:55.560 I mean, they're still attempting to put most kids on Adderall, I think, that show any sort of inability to sit and focus 24-7.

00:44:04.060 So Adderall is, if you've sort of worked in companies in the tech world, Adderall just doesn't seem strange.

00:44:10.740 I'm not saying it's a good thing.

00:44:12.180 It just is.

00:44:12.880 It's math.

00:44:13.180 I mean, it's chemically indistinguishable from math.

00:44:15.360 Yeah, but they gave it to kids. 0.93

00:44:16.460 I mean, they were giving it to everyone.

00:44:17.860 When I was younger, they tried to put me on Adderall.

00:44:19.600 And my parents, thankfully, were like, no, he's just a little boy.

00:44:24.300 You know, he's just got energy because he's a boy.

00:44:27.580 But it has all kinds of effects on the brain that, you know, some are positive, you know, more mental acuity, focus, sharpness, all that stuff, energy.

00:44:39.560 But some of them are very bad over time.

00:44:43.260 Yeah.

00:44:43.500 Did you notice the effects?

00:44:44.980 I didn't.

00:44:45.380 I've maybe taken it once or twice.

00:44:46.820 No, but in the office, if you're working in a world where people are, you know, everyone's on speed all the time, people get jumpy, paranoid, have trouble maintaining focus paradoxically.

00:44:56.940 Yeah, I don't know if I know.

00:44:58.780 I mean, Sam was always odd since the moment I met him.

00:45:01.120 So maybe he had sort of had a long-term use of it.

00:45:04.480 But no, I don't think I noticed that.

00:45:06.900 I mean, there was so much work.

00:45:08.480 There wasn't a lot of, like, communicating around the office.

00:45:10.380 It was just sort of 24-7 jamming keyboards, answering things online.

00:45:14.780 I mean, we always, at every minute in time for a year, I had 80 hours worth of work that could be done.

00:45:21.500 Wow.

00:45:22.120 I mean, it was, you know, it's a 24-7 market.

00:45:25.080 You got someone like Sam was working 24-7.

00:45:27.560 You can't hire fast enough.

00:45:30.360 The people you do hire get burnt out immediately or, you know, decide they don't like it.

00:45:34.380 If you take time out of your day to hire, there's now a pile of work that's piled up that you haven't done.

00:45:39.680 And, yeah, I mean, there was a couple months early on being there that I don't think I saw daylight.

00:45:45.720 You know, I'd leave in the dark and come back in the dark seven days a week.

00:45:50.000 It was fun, though.

00:45:51.140 You're building, like, a phenomenal, amazing company in this cutting-edge industry.

00:45:55.920 The market's taking off, so people are, you know, getting wealthy.

00:45:59.160 Yeah.

00:45:59.740 It was fun.

00:46:00.500 I didn't even think of it.

00:46:02.180 I'd look at the calendar and say, oh, my God, you know, 60 days have gone by.

00:46:07.600 So what about him, when you saw him on stage, made you want to meet him?

00:46:12.520 He was speaking honestly.

00:46:14.140 So a lot of people, when they present, I mean, you don't know this because you seem very honest on stage,

00:46:18.600 but a lot of people, when they talk on stage, don't tell the truth.

00:46:21.440 They sort of parrot.

00:46:21.780 That's for sure.

00:46:22.580 That's for sure.

00:46:23.440 They parrot this narrative that isn't real if you're actually in the industry.

00:46:26.400 So you go to these crypto conferences and people get up and say these ridiculous things you know aren't true.

00:46:31.000 So Sam got up there and told the truth.

00:46:33.480 He said, you know, this company's good.

00:46:35.220 This company's product doesn't actually work.

00:46:37.540 Yada, yada, yada.

00:46:38.480 He would just say that up on stage, and I thought this is great.

00:46:42.460 Well, I agree with that.

00:46:43.060 That is great.

00:46:43.740 Yeah.

00:46:44.680 So you go meet him.

00:46:47.180 He hires you?

00:46:48.700 He was reluctant to hire me because I was, I think, at the time, more useful for him at Circle.

00:46:54.820 So I was still at Circle.

00:46:56.260 We were doing some OTC trading with his OTC desk.

00:46:59.760 But I eventually...

00:47:00.420 What's OTC?

00:47:01.000 Over-the-counter trading.

00:47:02.020 Yeah.

00:47:02.740 It's just large blocks that don't hit the exchange.

00:47:05.720 You just lock in a price.

00:47:06.880 You message someone and say, hey, I want to buy 100 Bitcoin, sell 100 Bitcoin.

00:47:09.940 They give you a price.

00:47:10.940 You agree or don't agree.

00:47:12.420 And then it moves to settlement.

00:47:14.180 That's what I was doing at Circle.

00:47:15.500 And then I eventually got Sam to hire me to run that at Alameda.

00:47:19.760 I had also purchased a lot of his FTT token, which I think helped.

00:47:23.460 So he had launched a token for the exchange he was going to build called FTX.

00:47:27.680 Sent it out to see if people wanted to invest in it.

00:47:30.400 And I was...

00:47:31.840 I purchased a large quantity of it.

00:47:33.620 How much?

00:47:35.160 I...

00:47:36.080 God.

00:47:36.980 It's like 6 million tokens maybe at the time.

00:47:40.020 At what valuation?

00:47:41.360 5 cents.

00:47:41.960 Where'd you get the money?

00:47:44.880 I'd made...

00:47:45.520 Well, I just held crypto for a while.

00:47:47.900 And I'd made good money at Circle as well.

00:47:50.180 So...

00:47:50.740 So you get hired by Sam.

00:47:54.120 Yep.

00:47:54.560 To do what?

00:47:55.320 And where do you go?

00:47:56.260 So I'm in Hong Kong.

00:47:57.620 He had recently moved to Hong Kong.

00:47:59.180 I get hired to run the over the OTC desk for him.

00:48:03.600 And that's what I did.

00:48:06.160 For how long?

00:48:07.720 My job constantly changed there.

00:48:09.800 So I think I probably ran the OTC desk.

00:48:12.840 And I had...

00:48:13.400 You know, at a startup, you pick up as many jobs as you can.

00:48:16.420 Right?

00:48:16.560 So sort of anything that's lacking, you try to help out with.

00:48:19.220 So I ran the OTC desk.

00:48:21.080 But I was also helping, you know, get customers on FTX.

00:48:23.840 Customer support for FTX when people had issues.

00:48:27.340 You know, I was involved on the banking side because I had the relationships.

00:48:31.300 You know, a lot of these nerd-type characters don't speak to people well.

00:48:35.180 And I did speak to people well.

00:48:37.060 So I took over a lot of the relationship-based work.

00:48:39.960 You were the designated talker in the office?

00:48:41.260 Yeah, yeah.

00:48:41.760 I was sort of polar opposite of all these people.

00:48:46.060 Yeah.

00:48:46.480 So I took over a lot of those responsibilities.

00:48:47.900 I worked...

00:48:48.460 I was about a year in that position.

00:48:50.520 And then I was totally burnt out.

00:48:53.420 I'd made a lot of money with FTT going up.

00:48:57.220 And so that was the first time I went and tried to quit or sent in a resignation letter.

00:49:02.900 And what happened?

00:49:03.540 Um, Sam sent me back this sort of incredible letter about how he didn't want me to go.

00:49:09.080 I could do whatever I wanted, basically.

00:49:11.040 You know, if I'm working too much, drop some of the responsibilities.

00:49:14.580 Um, I told him, no, I was still leaving.

00:49:17.460 But then I went in to have a meeting with Caroline, actually.

00:49:19.660 And she started crying that I was leaving.

00:49:22.160 And it, I don't know.

00:49:23.560 It was very sad.

00:49:24.600 You know, she was working 24-7.

00:49:26.040 I think she knew if I left, she was going to have to take over all my work. 1.00

00:49:28.980 I'd never seen her cry before.

00:49:30.340 And so she started crying.

00:49:32.080 I said, fine, you know what?

00:49:32.600 If you can stay and do this, I can pull it together and stay and do this.

00:49:36.740 So I didn't leave in 2019.

00:49:38.700 Um, I tried to cut back my, the work.

00:49:41.040 You've had some time to replay this in your, in your head.

00:49:43.060 Oh, God.

00:49:44.280 I'm sorry.

00:49:46.880 Yeah.

00:49:47.820 Yeah.

00:49:49.180 All of it.

00:49:49.820 Um, yeah, I tried to pare back the work I was doing, but it's hard, you know, it's, if

00:49:56.120 you care about something, it's hard to, to do less.

00:49:59.420 Um, you know, you know, things are being dropped.

00:50:01.860 You don't want them to be dropped.

00:50:03.080 So you, you know, try to do them.

00:50:06.160 Um, yeah.

00:50:09.040 What was Caroline Ellison like?

00:50:11.460 She's an interesting person, you know, the, what are they all like?

00:50:15.040 So first off, the effective altruism, which we haven't touched on yet.

00:50:17.680 It is this very like Silicon Valley, West coast, elite parent concept that you, this

00:50:26.100 group of people have that they're smart enough to solve basically all the world's problems.

00:50:30.180 And the best thing you can do with your life is work as hard as possible to give all the

00:50:34.260 money away, which on paper doesn't sound terrible, but there's a lot of things on paper that don't

00:50:38.580 sound terrible that are in the real world, like socialism, for instance.

00:50:42.280 Yes.

00:50:42.680 Um, so that's the EAs and that was the center core of the company.

00:50:47.380 That was Sam, Caroline, Gary, Nishad were effective altruists.

00:50:50.720 And that's what drove everything in the company.

00:50:52.840 That was the center nucleus.

00:50:54.140 Sounds like a religion.

00:50:55.640 Cult.

00:50:56.360 Cult, religion. 0.53

00:50:57.660 Yeah.

00:50:58.140 Very much so.

00:50:59.280 So work as hard as you can to make money in order to give it away.

00:51:04.200 Yes.

00:51:04.680 To these big brainy ideas that, you know, AI or pandemic was, I guess, one of them.

00:51:12.360 But not to the housekeeper.

00:51:14.200 Correct.

00:51:15.020 Correct.

00:51:15.280 I don't even know if they value individual life that much, to be honest with you.

00:51:20.420 It's a weird, the effective altruist thing was weird.

00:51:22.720 I hated it.

00:51:24.700 Why?

00:51:25.180 Aren't you a good person?

00:51:26.720 Yeah.

00:51:27.080 Yeah.

00:51:27.520 Yeah.

00:51:27.780 But there's no one's smart enough to solve all the world's problems.

00:51:30.640 And the moment you think you are, you're the problem, not the solution.

00:51:33.780 Yeah.

00:51:33.920 That is deep.

00:51:35.020 And probably nothing truer has been uttered today.

00:51:38.800 Right.

00:51:38.960 That is absolutely right.

00:51:40.080 The moment you think you are, you are the problem.

00:51:42.980 So how did it manifest itself, this effective altruism?

00:51:46.340 Well, you always knew it was the sort of guiding light of the company.

00:51:49.280 And you, if you weren't an effective altruist, you were never on the inside, really.

00:51:52.500 Right.

00:51:52.700 Like it was, they were sort of in charge of everything.

00:51:55.460 Um, and, you know, you sort of orbited around, everyone else orbited around them, um, I guess

00:52:02.720 is, is how to describe it.

00:52:04.020 And would they talk about it?

00:52:05.740 They would, um, a little bit.

00:52:07.440 If you were there at like 2 a.m. or something, um, you know, they would be having a conversation

00:52:11.180 about it.

00:52:12.520 Um, yeah.

00:52:14.140 They love talking about like weird, weird things like that.

00:52:16.940 Like AI taking over the world or all those sort of things.

00:52:20.800 Were they for AI taking over the world?

00:52:22.520 They were, uh, well, so there's different factions of EA, I learned.

00:52:26.280 Uh, some are concerned about it.

00:52:28.420 Some are welcoming it, um, and want it to happen sooner.

00:52:31.940 Um, yeah, I do, yeah.

00:52:35.740 But the core idea is were the elect, were the elite, were the people smart enough to fix the

00:52:42.000 world's problems?

00:52:43.060 Correct.

00:52:44.260 Um, how are they going to, what problems are they going to fix and how are they going to

00:52:47.400 fix them?

00:52:48.660 It's a great question.

00:52:49.460 So AI came up and was a big one a lot.

00:52:51.600 Um, you know, Caroline had this nutty, you never know, it's true if they're saying these

00:52:58.120 things or they're just saying them to hear themselves say them.

00:53:00.980 But she had this thing where she was convinced AI was going to take over the world and it

00:53:05.920 was best to appease the AI lords now.

00:53:09.200 So in the future, they won't kill you when they kill off all the rest of the humans.

00:53:13.240 Um, so this is things she'd say, like, who are the AI lords?

00:53:17.900 I don't know.

00:53:18.660 I, you, you're talking about someone that avoided this as much as possible, but I was

00:53:21.480 just occasionally sitting there.

00:53:22.740 I mean, really, uh, yeah.

00:53:27.080 So this is a theology, obviously.

00:53:29.140 Yeah, it's a cult.

00:53:29.740 I think cult is the only way to describe it, really.

00:53:32.040 So you have to appease the AI lords so they don't kill you while they're killing everybody 1.00

00:53:38.500 else.

00:53:38.880 This is one of the nutty things that they would come up with.

00:53:41.080 Yeah.

00:53:41.580 Did, did SBF agree with that?

00:53:43.640 Do you think?

00:53:45.340 I don't, he was definitely EA.

00:53:47.220 He was a, this extreme effective altruist.

00:53:49.420 I don't know how he felt specifically about some of the weirder AI things.

00:53:54.580 Um, was he in a personal relationship with Caroline Ellison?

00:53:58.320 Yes, it was very, it was kept very quiet for a long time.

00:54:02.940 Um, but then, you know, I knew her roommate at the time and he told me, um, that they are

00:54:08.100 in a relationship, but it's like not a relationship like what you were thinking of.

00:54:15.160 I mean, these are people that only cared about working.

00:54:18.100 Um, you know, no one's going on dates or having like long Sunday mornings in bed.

00:54:22.600 Yeah.

00:54:22.900 None of that stuff.

00:54:24.060 I, it was, she had an infatuation with powerful men.

00:54:27.440 And she blogged about it a lot.

00:54:29.300 Um, she always wanted to be around powerful men.

00:54:32.760 And so I think she saw Sam as a powerful man.

00:54:35.860 Um, he was a powerful man.

00:54:37.760 Yeah.

00:54:38.080 Yeah.

00:54:38.540 And so she wanted to be around that.

00:54:40.480 She liked, she, one thing we bonded over, I love the musical Hamilton.

00:54:44.380 I don't really like musicals, but I think that they just did a phenomenal, I don't know

00:54:47.260 if you've seen it.

00:54:47.980 No.

00:54:48.360 No, it's Hamilton's great.

00:54:49.340 They did a phenomenal job with it.

00:54:50.540 And she always used to quote that she just wanted to be in the room where it happens,

00:54:54.140 which was like this Aaron Burr scene.

00:54:55.920 You know, he's singing, I want to be in the room where it happens.

00:54:58.500 Um, and so that she always identified with that.

00:55:01.260 She just wanted to be in the room where the important decisions were being made.

00:55:04.700 Oh.

00:55:05.380 Was she a power worshiper? 0.98

00:55:06.540 Yeah.

00:55:06.780 She was a power worshiper and very open about it.

00:55:09.560 Really?

00:55:10.180 Yeah.

00:55:10.840 Like I'm a power worshiper?

00:55:12.020 She blogged about it all the time.

00:55:13.820 She would write these sort of blogs online.

00:55:16.740 They were public, they were part of, uh, SPF's trial case.

00:55:20.380 And so, I mean, the, you know, Daily Mail among, you know, other, the lower forms of the

00:55:25.980 media ecosystem, you know, made a big deal out of the sex lives of everyone at FTX. 0.78

00:55:30.800 They're like living in communally, it's group sex or. 0.83

00:55:33.480 No, no, there's no way.

00:55:34.620 I mean, I didn't live with them, but I knew these, there's no way. 0.96

00:55:37.980 No way that they were having crazy group sex. 0.82

00:55:40.860 No. 0.98

00:55:41.440 No, I, I think the Amish were probably having more fun than what was going on in that penthouse.

00:55:45.540 Good.

00:55:45.980 Well, you're making me feel better because I, I don't want to be catty about it, but

00:55:49.060 you did see some of the players and you're thinking they should not be mating.

00:55:52.100 No.

00:55:52.420 Yeah.

00:55:52.740 Yeah.

00:55:53.040 I mean, I think part of, part of being this sort of West coast, you know, enlightened

00:55:57.740 thing is like polyamory is an okay idea, right?

00:56:01.020 They try to wrap themselves up into that because that's the cool sort of elite, intelligent

00:56:05.780 thing to feel.

00:56:06.800 Yes.

00:56:07.140 But none of that was going on there.

00:56:09.580 A lot of them had monogamous relationships.

00:56:11.540 They did all door.

00:56:12.300 There were about eight people, I think in the, in that penthouse.

00:56:16.300 But no.

00:56:18.060 You know, the media grabbed all sorts of fun headlines because that's what it does and

00:56:21.500 runs with them.

00:56:22.260 I mean, that's what media is now, right?

00:56:24.060 It's just grabbing.

00:56:25.120 Totally.

00:56:25.640 Yeah.

00:56:25.820 The headlines, you know, a lot of the story and I, I want to caveat this with a ton of

00:56:31.500 people got hurt, lost their life saves, over a million people.

00:56:34.520 These are normal people who don't have a lot of money, who are trusting it all in FTX.

00:56:39.020 Yeah.

00:56:39.180 So I want to caveat with everything I'm saying here, you know, what FTX did and what happened

00:56:43.040 to people is horrific.

00:56:45.100 And I have to live with that every day, but a lot of the story has just completely been

00:56:48.960 fabricated or, or made up.

00:56:51.180 Did you ever go to the penthouse where they all lived?

00:56:53.200 Yeah.

00:56:53.840 So Sam, I was first in the Bahamas, so we didn't get to the second time I tried to

00:56:57.600 quit, which was 21.

00:56:59.580 I finally said, look, I'm finished.

00:57:01.120 I'm working too hard again.

00:57:02.740 I have some money.

00:57:03.600 I'm going to go enjoy my life.

00:57:04.560 I'm 27, I think at the time.

00:57:08.000 You know, I was in Hong Kong at the time and I was, I was like, I'm done.

00:57:12.180 And, you know, I keep blaming the lawyers, but again, I go to the lawyers and I tell them

00:57:15.880 I'm done.

00:57:17.340 And they said, well, can you do us a favor?

00:57:19.660 Um, you know, we know you still care about the company, which is true, but, you know,

00:57:24.300 the Bahamas had recently launched the DARE Act, uh, which was a, you know, sort of a revolutionary

00:57:28.880 digital asset regulatory framework.

00:57:31.380 Um, it was a better jurisdiction than a lot of the sort of other jurisdictions that do that.

00:57:35.520 It's not considered an A plus, but it's not, you know, sort of a terrible jurisdiction.

00:57:40.480 Right.

00:57:40.580 Um, you know, they have a real regulatory body.

00:57:43.420 It's not as sophisticated as, you know, a European country or the U.S. or Japan, but

00:57:47.840 it's not nothing.

00:57:49.040 Um, but the CEO needs to live in the country to be regulated there.

00:57:53.720 And at the time there was absolutely no way Sam was moving the company to the Bahamas.

00:57:58.740 So, um.

00:57:59.640 Why?

00:58:00.560 We can't, it's an island nation.

00:58:01.960 It has strong sort of, you know, they don't want you importing labor.

00:58:05.240 They want you hiring locally.

00:58:06.660 There's not a lot of housing.

00:58:08.580 It's a, it's an island, um, small island, small island.

00:58:12.780 It's, you know, there's not 24 seven food options.

00:58:15.180 There's not, there's none of the infrastructure in place to run an actual large international

00:58:21.080 organization out of, out of the Bahamas.

00:58:23.440 It was impossible.

00:58:25.080 It was always going to be impossible, but that was not the plan.

00:58:27.740 The plan was I was going to go there, run a small sort of shop.

00:58:31.940 I hired, you know, some local people, uh, did some philanthropy there, went through the

00:58:36.380 regulatory process, um, in the Bahamas.

00:58:39.440 What's that like?

00:58:40.760 It was fine.

00:58:41.400 So we were working with the regulators to sort of educate them as well.

00:58:44.120 They were eager to really understand and learn about the technology and they were slowly

00:58:48.140 adapting and building out the framework.

00:58:49.940 Um, but it was, it felt real.

00:58:51.660 It wasn't just sort of, you know, this rubber stamp.

00:58:54.220 Like they wanted to know what was going on, how it was being operated, what the different

00:58:57.940 components of crypto were, how it was changing.

00:59:01.440 Um, you know, it's seen, I think to the world is like this fake sort of place in regulatory

00:59:07.580 environment, but didn't feel that way, um, at all.

00:59:10.160 Like, you know, we were educating, they were putting in place standards.

00:59:13.420 They were trying to make them workable, but also monitor.

00:59:17.400 Um, but I'm only there, I'm there about two months and I'm basically, I'm quasi retired.

00:59:21.780 I'm working like two hours a day, you know, we're doing the philanthropy stuff.

00:59:25.880 I'm getting it all settled there, but everyone else is in Hong Kong running the company during,

00:59:30.680 you know, business hours there.

00:59:32.360 Um, I'm free and I'm having fun.

00:59:35.060 It was a great place to live.

00:59:36.480 I was in a beautiful community.

00:59:38.680 Um, yeah, it was great.

00:59:40.520 And then two months later, Sam visits.

00:59:43.000 And I'm sorry, I should have asked what, and what's your job title at this point?

00:59:46.060 I'm CEO of FTX Digital Markets, which is the Bahamian subsidiary.

00:59:49.800 Um, titles didn't have a lot of meaning.

00:59:51.780 At FTX in Alameda.

00:59:54.420 Um, they were kind of tossed around like candy, to be honest.

00:59:56.820 It was all, you either, you work hard or you don't, your title doesn't matter.

00:59:59.700 Um, you know, as I write a laundry list of regrets, um, accepting a title that had no actual,

01:00:05.680 an important title that had no actual real meaning at the time is, is one of them, uh, for sure.

01:00:11.940 Um, but Sam visits, uh, and decides to move the entire company there.

01:00:16.940 Um, basically overnight.

01:00:18.800 He wants to import hundreds of people from all over the world, um, into the Bahamas to 0.98

01:00:24.020 build out a headquarters there.

01:00:26.320 Um, I tell him it's not possible.

01:00:29.360 People aren't, first off, people aren't going to be happy, right?

01:00:31.180 These are people leaving cities, vibrant cities.

01:00:33.240 They're, most of them are young.

01:00:35.200 Uh, some did have families, but you know, they want a social setting where they can go

01:00:38.860 out to a nightclub or go out and meet people at whatever they do.

01:00:42.700 The Bahamas is quiet.

01:00:43.960 It's, you're not going to get that.

01:00:45.740 Um, so you're going to get, they call it island fever.

01:00:47.540 Um, so I told Sam, it's impossible to move the company there.

01:00:51.800 Nothing was ever impossible in Sam's mind.

01:00:53.840 You know, it was just like, let's get it done.

01:00:55.560 Um, and so all of a sudden I'm back to working 24 seven.

01:00:58.720 Only now I'm working in like the real world.

01:01:01.160 We're buying condos to house people in.

01:01:03.840 We're, you know, bringing in people to cook 24 seven.

01:01:07.280 So there was food available.

01:01:08.320 We're modifying the structure of buildings to house more employees.

01:01:13.280 Um, yeah, I just, it became mayhem.

01:01:15.620 How much do you think FTX spent on real estate in the Bahamas?

01:01:19.500 Uh, half a billion to maybe 750 million, million.

01:01:25.020 How could you spend $750 million in the Bahamas on real estate?

01:01:29.300 I mean, there, so there's two types of real estate.

01:01:31.720 Basically there's very little middle class in the Bahamas.

01:01:33.940 You have sort of this ultra wealthy section of the island, which is mostly people from

01:01:37.940 foreign countries avoiding taxes.

01:01:39.640 And then you have sort of the impoverished section, which is, um, downtown, which is

01:01:44.680 downtown, right?

01:01:46.140 Um, we couldn't put employees in downtown Nassau.

01:01:49.240 Um, and so the available housing was extremely limited.

01:01:52.100 Um, we also were worried about security, um, and food and all these various sort of things.

01:01:57.060 So we ended up pivoting towards one of these sort of large, very, um, wealthy areas called

01:02:03.320 Albany.

01:02:03.660 Um, they knew we were buyers of a lot, so they would up the price very quickly.

01:02:10.600 Um, I actually begged, at one point I begged Albany to stop selling Sam real estate.

01:02:15.360 Um, but they just obviously ignored me because they were making, you know, an insane amount

01:02:21.180 of money.

01:02:21.480 Um, but a house in Albany might be worth 40 or 50 million dollars.

01:02:25.960 40 or 50 million?

01:02:28.620 Yeah.

01:02:29.340 Yeah.

01:02:29.640 Condos were, I think, 15 to 30 million on average.

01:02:33.680 Oh, so it's just totally fake money at this point.

01:02:36.820 Like that FTX and Alameda are spending?

01:02:38.420 Yeah.

01:02:38.680 I mean, if you're spending 15 million dollars on a condo in the Bahamas, I mean, that's

01:02:43.320 just absurd.

01:02:44.140 Yes.

01:02:44.240 It's untethered from physical reality.

01:02:45.780 That should have been more of a red flag.

01:02:47.280 I mean, I can try to justify it.

01:02:48.720 There's not great justifications.

01:02:49.880 We made just so much money at Alameda when I was there.

01:02:54.100 I mean, we made unfathomable amounts of profit at Alameda, um, that relative to what we'd

01:03:01.120 made at the time that I was aware of, that didn't seem that crazy. 0.94

01:03:04.620 In hindsight now, it's absolutely effing ridiculous. 0.84

01:03:07.400 Excuse me. 0.82

01:03:08.080 Yeah.

01:03:08.320 But, you know, when you witness a company make two to three billion dollars in profit

01:03:12.880 in a year, it just didn't seem, you know, sorry, it shouldn't have been happening and

01:03:18.680 I didn't want the company in the Bahamas in the first place.

01:03:20.840 So there's that.

01:03:22.060 But it didn't seem crazy that that money was available to be spent.

01:03:26.840 On the basis of, like, what was, if you pardon a dumb question, what was the money for?

01:03:33.260 Like, what were you providing that you were making two billion in profit in a year?

01:03:38.040 Yeah, you were buying and selling crypto.

01:03:40.300 I mean, you know, you can look at some of the large hedge funds.

01:03:43.100 What, you know, what value does Ken Griffin provide?

01:03:46.140 You know, he's...

01:03:46.900 What value does Ken Griffin provide?

01:03:48.120 Well, he moves the Republican Party toward endless war.

01:03:50.860 I think that's...

01:03:51.900 I just meant his business.

01:03:52.780 Oh, I'm sorry.

01:03:53.540 I just meant his business.

01:03:54.300 As far as I'm concerned, Ken Griffin provides negative value to the world.

01:03:59.320 But the trading, the trading community makes...

01:04:00.860 I'm sure I'll be indicted at some point for saying that, but I think it...

01:04:03.760 The trading community makes a lot of money.

01:04:05.680 And, you know, what is the purpose of buying and selling all day long?

01:04:10.280 I don't know.

01:04:11.560 Yeah.

01:04:11.880 I mean, it does like...

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01:05:29.020 When I was a kid, liberals who have disliked my whole life, I'll just say that.

01:05:32.740 But they used to say, like, we live in a world where, you know, teachers and carpenters don't

01:05:37.720 make any money. 0.96

01:05:38.400 And I would go, shut up.

01:05:39.780 But now I'm sort of like a little bit more sympathetic to the idea that, I don't know, 0.76

01:05:44.760 your society should reward people who do useful things.

01:05:47.940 Yeah.

01:05:48.500 No, I'm not.

01:05:49.440 I'm not knocking that.

01:05:51.540 I'm with you.

01:05:52.340 But we were, the money was coming in.

01:05:54.720 Right.

01:05:54.880 And when you're in the middle of it, it's hard to ask the meta questions because you're in

01:05:58.480 the middle of it.

01:05:58.980 Right.

01:05:59.380 Yeah.

01:05:59.660 Right.

01:06:00.640 It's interesting, though.

01:06:02.200 So they, I mean, did you think it was weird that you were making that much money profit?

01:06:07.280 I mean, that's more than General Motors makes in profit.

01:06:09.260 In crypto, though, it's not uncommon.

01:06:11.140 You know, it had become the norm to be in the crypto industry and just see people become

01:06:14.900 phenomenally wealthy.

01:06:15.760 Um, so is it normal in the real world?

01:06:19.720 No.

01:06:20.320 But in crypto, you know, there are 16-year-olds that made $100 million off a lucky investment.

01:06:26.560 Um, there's so much money sloshing around in the crypto ecosystem all the time.

01:06:31.080 Yes.

01:06:31.920 That, no, it didn't, it didn't seem that crazy.

01:06:34.320 So I'm such a primitive person that I don't trust anything digital.

01:06:37.660 So if I made, you know, $100 million in crypto, whatever that is, I would immediately cash

01:06:43.340 out and buy, like, stuff.

01:06:45.380 Yeah.

01:06:46.000 What'd you do with the money that you made?

01:06:48.120 Basically, everyone kept it.

01:06:49.680 Um, so I had been given some advice that was very good advice and I didn't follow towards

01:06:53.900 the end.

01:06:54.320 But, you know, if you keep the money fake online, then you don't sort of get wrapped up in this

01:06:59.920 world of being wealthy.

01:07:01.960 Um, and so a lot of people just keep, you know, there are people that are like living in a

01:07:06.900 beanbag with $50 million in crypto.

01:07:10.040 Um, and it's sort of fake as long as you leave it in crypto.

01:07:13.140 So I left most of it in crypto for a long time.

01:07:15.340 Um, you know, 19, 20, 21, it was, wasn't until I moved to the Bahamas really that I

01:07:21.360 started to want to cash out and, you know, get more involved in real world things.

01:07:26.620 So what did you buy in the real world?

01:07:28.820 Yeah.

01:07:29.300 Um, I bought, uh, some restaurants.

01:07:31.540 So during COVID, I bought some restaurants back in the home, my hometown area.

01:07:35.300 Um, I knew some people in New England, in New England, the Berkshires, um, you know,

01:07:40.500 they were going to close.

01:07:41.320 I had friends that worked at them or family that worked at them, um, and wanted to support

01:07:45.780 the local ecosystem there.

01:07:47.280 That's kind of cool.

01:07:47.660 I bought some, well, yeah, now everyone, anyway.

01:07:50.520 Um, I bought some condos in the downtown as well because a lot of people were turning them

01:07:54.420 into Airbnbs, so people didn't have a place to live.

01:07:56.960 And it's a very small downtown.

01:07:58.040 It's like two blocks of a scenic town in Western Mass.

01:08:00.880 Um, but-

01:08:01.260 Airbnbs really wrecked the United States.

01:08:03.060 Yeah.

01:08:03.340 I can say.

01:08:03.880 Especially small town living area.

01:08:05.220 Especially small towns.

01:08:06.440 Yeah.

01:08:06.600 Um, but I kept them all apartments.

01:08:08.800 We fixed them up.

01:08:09.480 A lot of them were old buildings.

01:08:11.320 Um, I had a buddy that was super into SpaceX.

01:08:14.000 And so we bought some of the properties that were really close to, uh, the place in Texas

01:08:19.000 that Elon created.

01:08:20.200 And we're turning them into, you know, we just talked about, we're turning them into Airbnbs

01:08:23.460 for watching, uh, the SpaceX stuff, which was going pretty cool.

01:08:27.320 Wow.

01:08:28.180 Um, I had some rental properties in New Hampshire.

01:08:30.360 Um, I did buy, I bought a nice car because there was a, there's a race that you can do.

01:08:37.020 It's like a five day, it's called the Gumball.

01:08:39.240 Um, and a buddy of mine was doing it, but you had to have a nice car for it.

01:08:41.660 The Gumball still exists?

01:08:42.680 Yeah.

01:08:43.040 Yeah.

01:08:43.320 It was very cool.

01:08:43.840 Will you describe it for people who don't know what it is?

01:08:46.040 It's basically a luxury car race.

01:08:48.440 Across America.

01:08:49.200 Across America or across Europe.

01:08:51.160 Europe and all over.

01:08:52.180 They did Middle East last time, I think.

01:08:54.000 And, uh, yeah, you start in one area and for five days you drive to the next area and

01:08:58.560 then have some event with everyone else who's doing it.

01:09:00.980 Um, so we started in Canada and then drove down, uh, and the idea was to get down to Florida,

01:09:06.720 but, uh, Michelle and I stopped halfway through.

01:09:08.900 What kind of vehicle did you drive?

01:09:11.100 A Porsche. 0.99

01:09:11.940 I actually bought, here, you want to, I'm going to make myself sound real stupid right 0.99

01:09:15.080 now. 0.58

01:09:15.400 I accidentally bought an electric Porsche first.

01:09:18.260 So the Porsche Taycan, they don't say electric on it.

01:09:21.700 You know, most EV cars or electric cars, they say electric.

01:09:24.600 I stupidly bought an electric car, which you couldn't use for Gumball.

01:09:28.500 No, not for a road rally. 0.99

01:09:29.800 No, I know.

01:09:30.440 It doesn't, not a great look for me, but, and so I ended up with a 911 for the road rally.

01:09:34.700 Was it fun?

01:09:35.560 It was fun.

01:09:36.200 Yeah, it's fun.

01:09:36.920 I'm not, yeah, it's fun.

01:09:38.900 I don't know.

01:09:40.540 I'm not into luxury purchases as much as the world.

01:09:43.680 Apparently you're not.

01:09:44.140 If you're buying condos in the Berkshires and rental properties in New Hampshire, then you

01:09:48.100 don't, you didn't spend it on hookers and cocaine. 1.00

01:09:50.700 No.

01:09:51.280 No, I mean, we partied.

01:09:52.640 I, I, I had some fun.

01:09:53.980 I mean, that was another big problem for me.

01:09:55.620 I think like on the backdrop of the hyper EA nerds that never left the office, like I'd

01:10:00.120 go clubbing.

01:10:01.380 Um, you know, I would have a party and we'd drink and have fun.

01:10:04.360 So, um, I did send some, I spent money on having fun for sure.

01:10:09.340 Um, not hookers and cocaine, but. 0.96

01:10:11.460 But you're an accountant who started at Ernst & Young and you were on the zany edge of

01:10:17.940 the office.

01:10:19.100 Well, I was at Ernst & Young.

01:10:20.820 No, no, no.

01:10:21.260 At, at FTX.

01:10:22.760 It's like you were one of the more social people there.

01:10:25.020 Oh, but night and day.

01:10:27.180 I mean, I, I would be the most social person at the beginning.

01:10:29.480 So if the accountant is the craziest guy in your office, you've got a pretty subdued office.

01:10:33.180 Yeah.

01:10:33.340 It was just people that had this weird EA.

01:10:35.540 They were working 24 seven and then that was it.

01:10:39.200 Yeah.

01:10:39.980 Did you hang out with them at all?

01:10:41.660 A little bit.

01:10:42.400 I like to hang out with different types of people.

01:10:43.900 And so I would, I would hang out with them.

01:10:45.700 Um, Caroline used to do these things. 1.00

01:10:49.040 Um, God, I don't even know if I should admit this.

01:10:50.640 She would do these things called LARPs, live action role plays, where she would write these

01:10:55.400 scenes that were occurring and then she'd make a character list of different people and

01:10:59.920 she'd assign a different person like a role. 0.84

01:11:02.640 And your job was to sort of just flow around and figure out like what your objective was

01:11:07.180 in the game.

01:11:08.560 Um, it was weird, but it was kind of fun.

01:11:11.700 It was really amazing that Caroline could write these.

01:11:13.760 But fully clothed.

01:11:14.780 Yes.

01:11:15.120 Fully clothed.

01:11:15.980 Yeah.

01:11:16.160 And I was probably the only one drinking or like two of us were having a drink.

01:11:18.720 Like, wow, she would write live action role plays.

01:11:23.020 Like what?

01:11:23.420 Yeah.

01:11:23.560 Nothing I ever would have done in my life.

01:11:25.320 Did you ever, were you like the naughty nurse or like, how did you, what, what was your role?

01:11:28.600 No.

01:11:29.020 What was one of them?

01:11:30.440 Um, I don't even remember what they were.

01:11:32.880 I don't, like it was nutty.

01:11:35.520 It was weird, but I would do that.

01:11:36.700 That was like once or twice, you know, um, Sam would do these events at his apartment

01:11:41.560 where he would like cook the shittiest vegan food I've ever tasted in my life.

01:11:45.820 So I would do that once or twice.

01:11:47.420 Um, but it's just not my scene.

01:11:50.140 You know, they're playing board games and I don't know.

01:11:53.960 It's just not.

01:11:54.580 Sounds like the weirdest office culture ever.

01:11:56.800 It was bizarre.

01:11:57.760 I mean, it's a little tech world though.

01:11:59.560 I think the tech world is a little strange in that way.

01:12:02.440 Um, but this, having this EA component as well made it even weirder.

01:12:06.420 Um, yeah.

01:12:09.340 How did they treat, you said when you were describing effective altruism that they didn't care about

01:12:14.720 human life or people.

01:12:16.320 How did, how did you reach that conclusion?

01:12:18.840 Everything's EV or expected value.

01:12:20.740 And I want to blow my brains out every time I hear that now, but every decision is EV.

01:12:24.720 So what is the expected value of this situation?

01:12:27.640 Um, and I think actually.

01:12:28.700 What does that mean?

01:12:29.760 I think Kaplan touched on this a little bit during the sentencing with Sam.

01:12:32.960 Um, you know, it was if you could flip a coin and there's a 51% chance that, I don't know,

01:12:39.380 everyone lives happily forever or a 49% chance that everyone dies.

01:12:43.600 EV, flip the coin, right?

01:12:46.360 Like, whoa, that kind of, that's a very extreme, sorry, I'm like taking a very extreme example,

01:12:50.280 but it's constantly looking at.

01:12:51.860 Calculating the likelihood of benefit.

01:12:53.540 Correct.

01:12:54.260 Correct.

01:12:54.660 And making decisions based off that.

01:12:56.940 Um, and Sam did it for everything.

01:12:59.340 Um, you know, Michael Lewis touched on this a little in the book.

01:13:01.620 Um, yeah, Sam did it for everything.

01:13:04.680 It's not for running.

01:13:06.160 Yeah.

01:13:06.660 For running a company with proper structure, it's not terrible.

01:13:09.860 Like it's a good way to make some decisions.

01:13:11.660 For sure.

01:13:12.020 You can't run everything like that though.

01:13:13.760 Yeah.

01:13:13.920 No, it's important to calculate likelihood.

01:13:15.980 Right.

01:13:16.160 I think.

01:13:17.260 But I mean, the acid test for decency is how do you treat the people you, you know,

01:13:23.100 who are dependent on you, who you control your, you know, how do you treat your housekeeper?

01:13:26.100 Yeah.

01:13:26.820 And how do they do by that measure?

01:13:29.220 They just wouldn't interact with the housekeeper. 0.84

01:13:31.620 Would be the only method of, yeah, they're, yeah.

01:13:35.520 But I didn't really interact with like many people.

01:13:38.700 Like interaction wasn't their thing.

01:13:41.300 Did they, it's interesting because they're all politically liberal, obviously. 0.50

01:13:44.500 And the Bahamas is a poor majority black country.

01:13:47.180 Were they doing a lot to help the majority of poor people in the Bahamas?

01:13:51.840 No, I did a lot of philanthropy in the Bahamas when I was there.

01:13:54.780 So I think, you know, everything gets twisted with this terrible light now, but we were doing

01:13:59.280 a lot, you know, we did a toy drive during the holidays to some of the islands that were

01:14:03.300 hurt during Dorian.

01:14:04.260 I fell in love with the Bahamas.

01:14:05.420 I fell in love with the culture there, the people.

01:14:07.360 Nice people.

01:14:08.060 For sure.

01:14:08.460 Incredible people.

01:14:08.980 Incredible positive attitude.

01:14:10.540 Yeah.

01:14:10.740 You know, optimistic.

01:14:13.460 I loved everything about sort of being in the Bahamas.

01:14:16.060 Yes.

01:14:17.200 So I did some philanthropy work there, but the company really didn't do a lot there.

01:14:22.760 So there was an FTX foundation that was doing more in like the US that actually Joe, Sam's

01:14:30.560 father ran Joe Bankman.

01:14:31.660 Um, and then Sam had this sort of big brain EA stuff that he was focusing on as well, which

01:14:37.000 is your AI and AI climate.

01:14:39.260 Was that a big climate?

01:14:40.700 Climate wasn't because climate was getting enough attention.

01:14:44.120 So part of the EA thing was also very important things that weren't getting enough attention

01:14:48.140 and climate got a lot of attention.

01:14:50.060 So this was their explanation for why.

01:14:52.440 So AI, what else?

01:14:53.400 Like what were the other problems?

01:14:54.360 The pandemic sort of was rooted in that.

01:14:56.360 Yeah.

01:14:57.180 Those are the two that I remember.

01:14:59.260 Um, yeah.

01:15:00.780 Did you ever get the sense that they were helping anyone?

01:15:04.380 That's a good question.

01:15:05.800 Um, there was an issue.

01:15:10.260 So Nishad and Sam had an issue with, so if your idea is make as much money as possible

01:15:15.280 to give it all away, when do you start giving it all away?

01:15:18.900 Right?

01:15:20.020 And after all of your desires have been sated.

01:15:23.500 So Nishad thought, look, we've made enough money.

01:15:26.700 We've made a lot.

01:15:27.700 Let's start doing some of this actual EA stuff.

01:15:30.920 I think in Sam's mind, he hadn't even begun making money.

01:15:35.160 I know it sounds crazy.

01:15:36.720 It does.

01:15:37.400 So he's a billionaire, but he's not rich enough to actually give it away.

01:15:40.780 Correct.

01:15:41.260 I think he always, you know, we never celebrated milestones at the company.

01:15:44.920 Like when something was achieved, Sam treated it like it hadn't even begun.

01:15:48.800 There was no sense of achievement ever.

01:15:50.440 Um, you know, I would host some celebrations when amazing things happened and Sam would

01:15:54.540 reluctantly get involved for a few minutes.

01:15:56.360 But in Sam's dream world, you never, there was no celebrating.

01:15:59.800 Nothing was ever done enough.

01:16:02.240 Always more could be done.

01:16:04.160 Um, so, you know.

01:16:06.280 What kind of childhood did this guy have?

01:16:08.560 You know, his mother wrote a letter where she talked a little about how he doesn't feel

01:16:11.980 happiness.

01:16:12.480 She doesn't think he's ever felt or is capable of feeling happiness.

01:16:15.280 Um, I don't, I don't know.

01:16:18.240 Michael Lewis talked a little bit about his childhood.

01:16:20.300 I never talked to him about his childhood or anything like that.

01:16:22.640 Did you ever deal with his mother?

01:16:24.100 A little bit.

01:16:25.000 Um, we're, she's more similar to Sam, I think.

01:16:28.280 Like, I'm not the type of person she enjoys being around.

01:16:30.580 I don't want to sit down and have a four hour intellectual conversation where I try to

01:16:34.060 prove that I'm smarter than you.

01:16:35.540 That's not, you know, that's not my idea of a good time.

01:16:37.800 So, um, you know, we'd interact, but I think she didn't love social settings or like

01:16:43.660 at least someone like me.

01:16:45.100 Um, so not much.

01:16:47.760 She sounds awful.

01:16:50.500 Yeah.

01:16:51.600 I didn't know her that well.

01:16:53.300 Um, you know, it's, she's like an ethics professor and her son goes and does something like this.

01:17:01.640 I mean, you gotta, you gotta have a few question marks there.

01:17:05.240 Yeah, I think you do.

01:17:06.900 Um, a lot of this was playing out against the backdrop of the 2020 election.

01:17:11.780 Yep.

01:17:12.260 But, so what did, what do they think of Trump?

01:17:14.900 What do they think of Biden?

01:17:16.400 Um, his mother was very involved in getting Biden elected, I believe.

01:17:21.120 We'd heard, I'd heard stories about it.

01:17:23.340 Um, the, yeah, I think her, I think Mind the Gap did a lot and don't, I might be wrong.

01:17:30.320 I think Mind the Gap did a lot in Georgia that ultimately, um, flipped it blue for Biden.

01:17:35.500 Oh.

01:17:35.940 Um, so yeah, I think that's true.

01:17:40.160 Um, I'm not a hundred percent sure.

01:17:42.020 Mrs. Bankman freed the ethics professors using money. 1.00

01:17:45.760 I mean, cause she's not independently rich, right?

01:17:47.900 No, I don't, not, not what Sam was.

01:17:50.400 Right.

01:17:50.800 Um, did any of Sam's money go to that effort, do you think?

01:17:55.940 Yes.

01:17:56.340 Yeah.

01:17:56.680 I think Sam wired 10, 20, 10, 20 million, maybe more.

01:18:00.400 Hmm.

01:18:01.100 Hmm.

01:18:01.980 Interesting to get Biden elected, but he's not, he's not facing any campaign finance charges.

01:18:07.660 No, he didn't get hit with the campaign finance.

01:18:09.220 Oh, this story, man, you get into the details.

01:18:13.440 What did they think of Trump?

01:18:14.880 They did not like Trump.

01:18:16.820 Um, they had this wild idea to try to pay him off to not run.

01:18:21.600 Um, and I just said, I don't want to be a part of that.

01:18:23.580 Wait, what?

01:18:24.440 They, I think it's quote in some news.

01:18:26.900 Uh, they had this idea to try to pay him $5 billion to not run.

01:18:31.900 Um, who's they?

01:18:33.380 Him and his brother, Gabe.

01:18:34.660 And there, there was like more of these sort of EA political strategist people.

01:18:39.220 That would be, uh, election interference and bribery as far as I know.

01:18:43.640 Yeah.

01:18:44.100 I wasn't involved in it.

01:18:45.340 Are they facing charges for that?

01:18:46.760 No.

01:18:47.420 Oh, because I think in a, like a first world country, bribing people, um, in the political

01:18:54.600 system, including not to run would be a felony, like a major felony that would be subverting

01:18:59.260 democracy, I think would be the term we'd use.

01:19:01.220 Yeah.

01:19:01.400 That makes sense.

01:19:02.280 Yeah.

01:19:02.980 So, but no charges there.

01:19:04.960 Yeah.

01:19:05.500 Interesting.

01:19:05.920 Were you aware of that at the time?

01:19:07.760 Uh, I, it a briefly, it had come.

01:19:09.200 It had come up and I just said, I don't want to be a part of this.

01:19:11.240 Like I, please, I also wanted him to win, you know, so I'm not, yeah, I want him involved.

01:19:16.820 Did they know that you disagreed politically?

01:19:18.900 Yeah.

01:19:19.320 Yeah.

01:19:19.860 I mean, that was part of, you know, I don't want to make this out.

01:19:23.380 Like I had no association with them at all.

01:19:25.480 Like Gabe got me excited about the pandemic work.

01:19:28.160 Right.

01:19:28.400 And so I got involved on the, the pandemic work.

01:19:31.560 Um, yeah, that's not illegal.

01:19:34.660 Yeah.

01:19:35.160 But, um, so I was aware of some of the stuff that was going on, but not most of the behind

01:19:38.940 the scenes stuff, right?

01:19:39.780 I wasn't an EA.

01:19:40.760 I was never in the EA world.

01:19:42.360 I even sort of publicly mocked the EA.

01:19:45.020 So, um.

01:19:45.740 You really didn't like EA.

01:19:47.660 I didn't.

01:19:48.180 There were a few of us that really didn't.

01:19:49.720 Um, the only thing I liked about EA was it would bring workers in that worked 24 seven

01:19:55.500 because they had a higher purpose, like there was a higher purpose to why they were working.

01:19:58.800 And so they wouldn't get burned out as easily.

01:20:01.460 Um, so that was the only thing I liked when EA started working, they worked 24 seven, 365.

01:20:07.160 It's just the personality type seems so kind of classic early Bolshevik to me. 0.74

01:20:12.520 Yeah.

01:20:12.840 Yeah.

01:20:13.840 You know?

01:20:14.780 Yeah.

01:20:15.180 I mean, you're, you're, you're bringing about utopia in the world.

01:20:17.920 So actual people don't matter.

01:20:20.720 You're involved in something much larger than yourself.

01:20:23.220 So it gives purpose and a framework to your life.

01:20:26.340 Yeah.

01:20:26.780 It inspired.

01:20:27.580 I mean, the early Bolsheviks worked like animals. 0.91

01:20:29.660 I mean, they did to their great credit.

01:20:30.900 I mean, they were really hard workers.

01:20:32.940 Yeah.

01:20:33.280 And when it's written on paper, it doesn't sound as bad as it turns out.

01:20:36.000 No, right.

01:20:36.600 Well, that's exactly right.

01:20:37.680 As you noted, socialism doesn't say, you know, everyone, everyone's equal.

01:20:41.320 What's wrong with equality?

01:20:42.260 Nothing.

01:20:42.680 I mean, even Sam's whole thing, like on paper, it all sounded fine.

01:20:45.840 And in the end, millions of people lost all their money.

01:20:48.460 Right.

01:20:49.200 Right.

01:20:50.260 Better than the Ukraine famine. 0.82

01:20:51.880 But still, it's, it's a branch of the same tree.

01:20:54.900 So did Sam ever decide that he'd made enough money to start giving it away?

01:21:00.360 No, I don't think so.

01:21:01.580 I mean, there was, I think in his mind, well, sorry, let me caveat that.

01:21:04.760 In his mind, some of the political work he was doing was giving it away to these bigger initiatives.

01:21:10.440 Um, so I think that that was sort of a little bit, but no, not to the tune of what you'd

01:21:15.260 expect from someone who that's their ideology.

01:21:18.460 So it sounds like the Bankman Freed's helped get Joe Biden elected in 2020.

01:21:24.060 For sure.

01:21:25.020 I mean, Sam was one of the largest Democratic donors.

01:21:27.880 Hmm.

01:21:29.520 I, I'm, this is just, this whole conversation is just me trying to make you feel even worse

01:21:33.780 about what happened to you.

01:21:34.560 Yeah, thanks.

01:21:34.800 And I'm sorry.

01:21:35.260 I'm sorry.

01:21:36.100 I feel, no, I'm just shocked by it.

01:21:37.960 Actually, I shouldn't be, but they were definitive players in a, in a contested election that I

01:21:44.400 don't think for the record, once again, sorry, YouTube was legitimate.

01:21:47.760 I don't think that this is another example of how it was illegitimate, but whether you

01:21:52.120 believe the results or not, they were huge players in getting Joe Biden elected.

01:21:58.980 And you're the one who's facing prison for campaign finance violations.

01:22:03.700 Correct.

01:22:03.820 Yes.

01:22:04.040 I mean, that's just absolutely nuts.

01:22:09.920 Did, um, when they mentioned paying off Trump $5 billion not to run, do you, do you know if

01:22:17.440 anyone approached Trump or the campaign about this?

01:22:19.560 I don't know.

01:22:20.740 That's the, you never knew if they were just spitting out wacky ideas.

01:22:23.400 I mean, I think they also had this idea to buy like an island and try to make it like just

01:22:27.440 their laws and their rules.

01:22:28.940 You know, it's just like, they always had these crazy things.

01:22:32.400 You never knew which, how real something was or what was just this absurd idea.

01:22:35.180 What would their rules be on Bankman Freed Island?

01:22:37.600 I do not want to know.

01:22:40.440 Pretty weird, right?

01:22:41.500 Yeah.

01:22:41.840 Yeah.

01:22:42.380 Would it, he was vegan?

01:22:44.220 He was vegan.

01:22:45.040 Yep.

01:22:45.560 Um.

01:22:45.920 Why?

01:22:47.260 Uh, animal cruelty.

01:22:49.220 He didn't like the idea of an animal suffering or.

01:22:52.020 Yes.

01:22:52.740 Yeah.

01:22:53.500 I mean, that's something that I think is definitely, he's stayed vegan now, right?

01:22:56.820 He's slimming away to nothing in prison.

01:22:58.680 So, you know, a lot of people said his whole EA thing was fake.

01:23:01.740 Uh, at least the veganism I would say is real because now would be the time to drop the

01:23:05.180 stick if it wasn't.

01:23:05.800 Well, from your description, it sounds like the opposite of fake.

01:23:08.380 It sounds like a sincere, deeply held religious belief.

01:23:11.860 It sounds like a cult.

01:23:12.900 It sounds totally real.

01:23:13.900 Yeah.

01:23:14.060 Did you think it was real at the time?

01:23:15.620 I think it was real.

01:23:16.320 There's, I think, a public perception in the world it was all just a show that he put on

01:23:20.220 to try to raise more money.

01:23:21.520 But I, I don't believe that.

01:23:23.120 I think he genuinely.

01:23:24.560 One of the mysteries for me as a total outsider watching this, you know, from afar is how investors

01:23:32.140 could meet Sam Bankman Freed, who was like a child rocking back and forth, jumpy, stinky,

01:23:40.140 wearing cargo shorts and think, I need to give that guy money.

01:23:44.060 Yeah.

01:23:44.720 I mean, I can knock that.

01:23:45.820 I was enthralled by him when I met him.

01:23:47.820 I mean, there's something about, there's something about his work ethic, the way he describes

01:23:52.400 things.

01:23:52.820 He can sort of bring you in to, to the way he sees or feels about things.

01:23:56.880 Um, he had a track record for a long time of being very right about things.

01:24:00.860 Um, you know, there's this, there's this kind of world where there's like idealized sort

01:24:08.120 of central figures at companies.

01:24:09.920 Um, and they're either wildly successful or not, right?

01:24:14.420 Not his Sam Bankman Freed, Elizabeth Holmes is, is Elon Musk or, you know, Sam Altman or

01:24:19.660 Steve Jobs, right?

01:24:20.560 So there's this sort of central tech single person that you follow and have a lot of faith

01:24:26.620 in concept that pays off handsomely or it doesn't.

01:24:29.700 And it seems to really only go one way or the other.

01:24:33.820 So, um, I think everyone's trying to find that next Elon Musk.

01:24:37.500 And Sam had a ish vibe that it could be him.

01:24:40.820 That's such a smart analysis.

01:24:42.520 I don't, you know, not my world, but I just feel that you're absolutely right.

01:24:45.300 That a lot of these places are effectively cults of personality.

01:24:48.160 Yeah.

01:24:49.220 And, um, it does seem like a very collaborative business tech actually.

01:24:53.680 Yeah.

01:24:54.180 Yeah, that's right.

01:24:54.860 But in case after case, whether it's Zuckerberg or, or whomever, the old people you listed,

01:24:59.680 one person gets all the credit.

01:25:00.920 It does feel that way.

01:25:02.260 Yeah.

01:25:03.040 Yeah.

01:25:03.240 And it either goes well or, you know, it either goes too well or too, too poorly.

01:25:07.740 So when things started to fall apart, um, what was your reaction?

01:25:12.880 What was Carolyn Ellison's reaction?

01:25:14.980 What was Sam Bankman Freight's reaction?

01:25:16.680 Yeah.

01:25:16.920 So I had, I had resigned from the company in June.

01:25:21.000 Um, what year?

01:25:22.140 Of 22.

01:25:23.140 So before it collapsed, but a couple other people had just resigned.

01:25:26.300 Um, and I didn't, we didn't want the publicity of another.

01:25:29.260 Why did you resign?

01:25:30.340 I had tried to leave two years ago.

01:25:32.060 I mean, I, I'd moved to the Bahamas to get away from everyone and then everyone showed up.

01:25:36.800 Um, so I left the Bahamas for DC to get away from everyone again.

01:25:41.520 Um, so, and then the whole purpose of me being CEO is

01:25:44.840 because the CEO wasn't going to actually live there, but now Sam was living there.

01:25:48.840 So he could be the, you know, he was the actual person in charge.

01:25:52.940 He could be the CEO on paper if he was going to live there.

01:25:55.040 So, um, yeah, I mean, I was done again.

01:25:59.720 So you resign.

01:26:01.400 Did you, when you resigned, did you have any inkling that the company was in trouble?

01:26:04.600 No, no, it seemed, I mean, it's, look, it sounds crazy now.

01:26:08.940 It seemed impossible.

01:26:09.940 I mean, Sam was quoted in Forbes as worth $40 billion.

01:26:13.460 Um, I had watched Alameda make billions and billions of dollars.

01:26:17.140 FTX is a very good business that was making about a billion a year in revenue.

01:26:21.600 Um, Sam had launched multiple crypto projects that had taken off.

01:26:26.140 Um, you know, I, I got my first ever death threat when we wouldn't sell someone more pre-launched

01:26:33.960 token that Sam had just launched, right?

01:26:36.620 He was selling sort of early release of a token called maps, crazy token idea.

01:26:41.460 Um, and it was the idea.

01:26:43.500 It was maps, like your map, Google map service or whatever offline on the blockchain.

01:26:51.100 What?

01:26:51.720 Okay.

01:26:52.040 Yeah.

01:26:52.560 There's no more to say about that.

01:26:54.060 Everything you're thinking about that is a hundred percent.

01:26:56.180 Well, I don't even understand it.

01:26:57.760 What is that?

01:26:58.440 It's because it doesn't make any sense.

01:27:00.100 Okay.

01:27:00.820 Uh, Sam launches that is like selling it off to people.

01:27:04.020 And we told someone they couldn't buy anymore.

01:27:06.220 And some guy threatened to like kill my whole family if we wouldn't sell them.

01:27:09.720 I mean, this is how people were clamoring to be involved in anything SBF touched.

01:27:14.360 So, um, yeah, the idea that there would be significant financial troubles like this just seemed impossible.

01:27:22.040 I mean, in hindsight now, I understand, you know.

01:27:24.560 Because it was just so hot.

01:27:26.240 It was so hot.

01:27:26.940 There was so much.

01:27:27.380 I mean, everything, you know, I, Sam could have pulled a booger out and sold it to someone for a hundred million dollars.

01:27:32.020 I mean, it's, how interesting.

01:27:35.500 Human psychology never changes, does it?

01:27:37.540 No, it's repeated over and over and over again.

01:27:39.840 Yes, it really is.

01:27:40.340 Everything's the tulip craze.

01:27:41.860 Everything.

01:27:42.300 And it's just, but it's funny because Silicon Valley had this, you know, massive valuation bubble in 2000.

01:27:49.100 Webvan and e-toys and, you know, all these kind of ludicrous companies went under.

01:27:53.220 And people really suffered as a result.

01:27:55.580 And then it happens again.

01:27:57.060 Yeah.

01:27:57.840 15 years later.

01:27:59.340 Yeah.

01:27:59.640 I mean, crypto's, crypto's done a lot of these up and down.

01:28:02.460 So, it's not, it's not quite tulip in that it was up and then down.

01:28:04.780 Of course.

01:28:05.800 But I think Sam as a figurehead type person is going to happen again and again and again.

01:28:11.000 Interesting.

01:28:11.560 So, where were you when you realized the company was in actual trouble?

01:28:15.600 Um, I was at a Buccaneers game, uh, watching Tom Brady play in, um, in Florida.

01:28:24.200 And what, how'd you find out?

01:28:25.820 So, the balance sheet had leaked.

01:28:27.700 The sort of infinite balance sheet about a week before, I want to say, had leaked.

01:28:31.160 And it was Alameda's balance sheet.

01:28:33.280 Um, and what it showed was that Alameda had basically been borrowing from a ton of lenders with questionable assets.

01:28:40.380 So, they had a bunch of assets on their books that were tokens that Sam himself had created and then went out to lenders and they lent to him.

01:28:48.820 Now, when that broke, my first thought was, our lenders are screwed.

01:28:53.460 Well, that's, it's so funny. 0.94

01:28:54.820 You read my mind.

01:28:55.560 That's the first thing I was just thinking.

01:28:56.660 So, that's what I thought too.

01:28:57.520 You know, I don't know how much fault, like, everything was very transparent with the lenders.

01:29:02.320 There was no desire to, no one was hiding anything from the lenders.

01:29:05.960 They wanted to lend.

01:29:07.160 And, um, they had to keep showing new origination so they could show that they were growing.

01:29:11.500 You know, everyone talks in crypto like we're building this huge ecosystem, but everyone wants their share of the pie to be the largest, right?

01:29:17.880 You know, it's, um, Binance used to love to say, like, let's all pick each other up.

01:29:21.540 And then Binance would crush little companies so it could get bigger, right?

01:29:24.620 It's business.

01:29:25.220 It's, I'm not knocking it.

01:29:26.180 It's, but, um, the lenders wanted to be the largest lenders.

01:29:28.900 What kind of lenders when you say lenders?

01:29:30.820 Uh, Genesis, Celsius.

01:29:32.680 They're all bankrupt now, shockingly.

01:29:34.540 Um, Genesis, Celsius, BlockFi, uh, blockchain.com.

01:29:42.480 I'm missing a couple.

01:29:43.120 They're all crypto lenders.

01:29:44.620 Um, and they're all, yeah, they're all holding people's assets for them and then lending them out and providing a return.

01:29:50.520 Um, you know, this sort of collapse of over lending is also repeated itself over and over and over again, right?

01:29:59.060 Yeah.

01:29:59.220 Um, so the crypto industry was just a large microcosm of that.

01:30:02.580 But this balance sheet leaks that shows basically Genesis, but a couple other lenders had been lending.

01:30:07.260 I mean, I'm talking eight, 10, $15 billion to Alameda against what are, you know, inarguably questionable things to be lending against.

01:30:17.440 So my first thought is-

01:30:18.620 Paper maps on the blockchain.

01:30:19.760 Yeah, yeah.

01:30:20.180 You know, I, I made a joke.

01:30:21.640 It was like a ham sandwich.

01:30:22.640 You know, Alameda was like, look, we got a ham sandwich.

01:30:24.680 Can we borrow $15 billion?

01:30:26.480 Um, but they were doing it with other firms too.

01:30:28.980 So Three Arrows is another trading firm.

01:30:30.800 I mean, they weren't even preparing financials, it turns out.

01:30:33.180 They were just borrowing billions from these lenders.

01:30:35.140 Anyway, so this, I could go on forever with this, but the balance sheet leaks.

01:30:40.060 And my immediate reaction is not that FTX is in any trouble.

01:30:42.920 My immediate reaction is, oh, our lenders are in a lot of trouble for this.

01:30:47.640 Um, but then this sort of rumor starts to come out that, um, FTX doesn't have customer funds.

01:30:54.060 Like it's the, the balance sheet to some people somehow revealed that FTX didn't have the customer funds.

01:31:01.180 And I think a lot of that was driven by Binance, the sort of competitor, which was Sam's argument.

01:31:05.880 Um, but so I'm at the Buccaneers game.

01:31:09.360 I send this message that's been quoted now with like in Sam's trial, I send to Caroline,

01:31:14.260 hey, can FTX meet all the withdrawals?

01:31:16.600 Um, she doesn't tell me yes or no.

01:31:18.280 She testifies that she goes back and asks Sam whether to like be honest with me or not.

01:31:22.620 Um, so it's over, you know, it is very blurry in my mind.

01:31:26.600 How, sorry, just for a baseline, how old is she at this point? 1.00

01:31:30.240 30? 29? 30?

01:31:31.760 Everyone's, no one's older than that except the lawyers who were involved who were all adults and had, yeah.

01:31:37.980 But for them it's just pure profit.

01:31:39.760 Like they're off doing their lawyer crimes somewhere else,

01:31:43.520 but they just pocketed the money and they were never indicted or hassled by the FBI or anything.

01:31:47.220 I don't know the experience they've all had, um, but they're not in trouble.

01:31:52.980 Sorry, just, I can't keep hammering that enough.

01:31:55.920 It's, it's an interesting aspect of it.

01:31:57.640 There's a lot of documentaries coming out about FTX and that seems to be a central point

01:32:01.900 that a lot of them are focusing in on too.

01:32:03.700 That the lawyers skated.

01:32:06.160 Yeah, almost impossibly so given sort of public information.

01:32:10.860 Yeah.

01:32:11.320 You know, I thought it was weird.

01:32:12.960 I mean, I'm going to, I don't know what they're going to do to me now, but.

01:32:15.700 Yeah, you're going to prison, like, you know, whatever.

01:32:18.200 You know, I had almost thought the, the government and other people laid out the exact, my defense, right?

01:32:24.320 So like Dan Friedberg, the general counsel for Alameda put out his own statement saying that he was in charge of all regulatory affairs at Alameda.

01:32:32.300 Like that was in his words, um, that he stated that, uh, you know, the.

01:32:36.380 Where is, where is Friedberg in prison now?

01:32:38.720 No, he's not, he's not in charge of money.

01:32:40.520 Um, you know, the government noted I was worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.

01:32:46.440 So like, I'm just choosing to make this a crime.

01:32:49.760 Like I thought my defense had been laid out by other people in like an odd way, um, that no one seemed to care about.

01:32:58.020 But yeah, I get it.

01:32:59.520 So you're at the Bucks game, you text Carolyn, can we, can we, do we have the money?

01:33:07.420 Yeah.

01:33:07.640 Are these rumors true?

01:33:08.400 Yeah.

01:33:08.580 Basically.

01:33:09.360 Um, I don't remember, you know, it starts to become apparent they are.

01:33:13.560 I remember, uh, I think a day later, uh, his name is Zane Tackett.

01:33:18.180 He worked for FTX and he sends me like, dude, this is a complete effing joke.

01:33:22.620 There's zero money in the, uh, cold wallet, which is a crypto term for basically where all

01:33:27.080 of customers' money should be.

01:33:28.700 Um, you know, and I wrote him back something like, ha ha, that's not possible.

01:33:32.060 Like it's gotta be somewhere.

01:33:33.660 Um, and he was like, no dude, there's no, you know, all the customer's money is, is not

01:33:37.460 where it's supposed to be.

01:33:38.760 Um, and so then, you know, it becomes more real in that moment.

01:33:42.260 I fully, you know, maybe I'm just in denial.

01:33:45.140 I wasn't appreciating the money could be gone.

01:33:47.860 Like where'd it go, right?

01:33:49.180 Like Sam's not off buying, you know, he bought houses for the company.

01:33:52.060 Don't get me wrong, but he's not out there blowing hundreds of millions of dollars on

01:33:55.740 his own personal life, right?

01:33:57.740 Everything is somewhere in the system that is Sam's system.

01:34:01.360 Where is it?

01:34:02.400 Um, and then it becomes clear.

01:34:04.940 Um, I don't remember when, this is all public.

01:34:07.020 So if I, I don't want to screw up and say this day, and it was actually the day before,

01:34:10.100 but, um, Sam drops the ventures book into a chat, um, which is all of the money that

01:34:16.560 he has spent in FTX ventures.

01:34:18.800 Um, FTX ventures was a VC arm that he'd launched about a year before.

01:34:22.820 And he publicly said he was putting a billion dollars into it.

01:34:26.060 Um, and we all, you know, he's, he's worth 40 billion with Forbes.

01:34:30.000 I knew he, his money in my mind was somewhere, so it's fine.

01:34:32.920 Um, but then he drops his ventures book into this chat that I'm in, which is now an infamous,

01:34:38.240 infamous chat called small group chat.

01:34:40.160 And he says, Hey, we have, you know, can anyone sell this ventures book or start selling off

01:34:44.080 some of it to meet the liquidity needs?

01:34:45.920 And I opened the ventures book and I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled and got to the bottom.

01:34:49.740 And there was like six to $8 billion of FTX ventures investments.

01:34:54.960 And it clicked to me.

01:34:57.020 That's where the customer's money was.

01:34:58.220 And he had sort of taken what I think happened.

01:35:02.280 And I think a lot of people don't think this is the truth, but in my mind, uh, Sam had taken

01:35:07.500 all the money from Alameda that he'd borrowed from Genesis.

01:35:09.940 And he, when, when crypto tanked or started going down and they weren't making as much trading,

01:35:15.000 he poured it into a ventures book.

01:35:17.200 And then eventually the lenders recalled all those loans and Sam didn't have the loans

01:35:21.740 because he'd poured it all into the ventures book, which is illiquid.

01:35:24.300 You can't turn it into cash right away.

01:35:25.840 And so he went and took customers' funds.

01:35:28.040 Did any of those investments hit?

01:35:30.000 Yeah.

01:35:30.280 A bunch of them did great.

01:35:31.520 Actually really good.

01:35:32.540 It was a phenomenal, I mean, that's why customers are being paid back so much.

01:35:35.180 Anthropic alone, I think he made, um, like 500% on, um, no, they were great.

01:35:41.280 A lot of them were great investments.

01:35:43.160 That's interesting.

01:35:44.260 I didn't know any of this.

01:35:45.420 So, um, not a defensive Sam Bankman.

01:35:47.920 No, it's not a, I want to be clear.

01:35:49.140 It's not a defensive.

01:35:49.780 Right.

01:35:49.800 You can't do that.

01:35:50.500 But, um, do you think, you know, net, net, as they say in your business, that was, that

01:35:56.880 was like a smart move?

01:36:00.060 Uh, if it wasn't with, with the lender's money, yes.

01:36:02.880 Here's what I think should happen.

01:36:03.940 He took all that lender's money and put it into ventures.

01:36:06.900 And then when he couldn't repay the lenders, he should have gotten on the phone and called

01:36:10.840 them and said, what do you want to do here?

01:36:13.720 Like, I got this ventures book.

01:36:15.100 It's not a bad book.

01:36:16.820 Do you, I mean, I could file bankruptcy if you want.

01:36:19.300 I can give you guys the ventures.

01:36:20.640 Like, how do you want to solve this?

01:36:22.360 That's not, yeah, because when, you know, once you take that much from an institution

01:36:26.460 famously, you know, you've got some power.

01:36:29.040 Yeah, correct.

01:36:29.800 You're almost too, he became too big to fail and then didn't use it.

01:36:34.300 Interesting.

01:36:34.940 Why?

01:36:36.020 I don't know.

01:36:36.660 I think about that a lot.

01:36:38.460 I, you know, and that's if what I'm telling you turns out to be the correct story.

01:36:41.800 I mean, I was so uninvolved, you know, the world really, because I've pled guilty to

01:36:45.120 something associated with this, the world really wants me to have been like heavily involved

01:36:48.720 in this or because Sam brought me into a group chat, but I hadn't been aware of what the

01:36:52.740 company was doing.

01:36:53.460 Well, if you'd been involved, you would have been indicted for it, I assume.

01:36:56.040 Yeah, I know.

01:36:56.720 Government would, for sure.

01:36:58.240 Yeah.

01:36:58.720 Right.

01:36:59.340 And so I, again, we don't need to guess about that.

01:37:02.360 I mean, you went through the process, you're headed to prison and you haven't been charged with,

01:37:06.640 or pled to any crime related to the fraud at FTX.

01:37:11.220 That's correct.

01:37:11.860 Yes.

01:37:12.220 Oh, I know it's correct.

01:37:12.860 They had me involved. 0.98

01:37:14.360 They threatened bank fraud, which is asinine.

01:37:17.580 But they, I was CC'd on an email between general counsel and the bank and Sam that was a bank

01:37:25.420 application that they argued did not completely articulate what that bank account was supposed

01:37:31.360 to be doing.

01:37:32.640 So they, they dangled bank fraud as a potential.

01:37:35.740 But there's no email from you saying, hey, let's take customer money and spend it on things.

01:37:40.800 No, no.

01:37:41.560 And I think the bank fraud accusation is one of the most crazy actually, but that's, you

01:37:45.940 know, I didn't plead guilty to that.

01:37:47.620 Yeah.

01:37:49.500 Interesting.

01:37:49.940 So at this point, when you're texting back and forth with people who are still at the

01:37:56.980 company and you hear that there are no, you know, we have no, you know, there's no money.

01:38:02.460 Do you, do you think I'm in trouble?

01:38:05.860 No, I really didn't think, I mean, I knew I was about to have a hellish, you know, year

01:38:11.140 or two ahead.

01:38:12.140 Yeah.

01:38:12.820 But no, I didn't think I was going to be in trouble.

01:38:16.200 You know, I had most of my money on the platform.

01:38:19.320 Like if I knew this was a fraud, I wouldn't have my money on the platform.

01:38:22.040 I at all times thought I got the right people involved.

01:38:25.940 I got lawyers involved where I thought it was necessary.

01:38:28.120 I, you know, I thought the decisions that I had made the entire time I was there were

01:38:34.120 the reasonable, correct decisions.

01:38:36.440 So, you know, I knew there was going to be a lot of action, interaction with the government.

01:38:40.020 Um, but no, I did not expect to have any legal trouble.

01:38:43.200 So when did you find out you were in trouble?

01:38:45.680 Um, let's see.

01:38:47.380 So we're proffering, which for everyone doesn't know you, the lawyer, you tell the lawyers

01:38:52.380 stuff and then they go to the government and talk about it.

01:38:54.860 And then the government comes back with questions and then you answer their questions.

01:38:57.940 And so there's this interaction between your lawyers and the prosecutors, um, about everything

01:39:03.100 you have and know and want to share.

01:39:05.460 Um, and so I was doing a couple of those and I thought everything was going well.

01:39:09.240 I think this was about January, maybe February.

01:39:12.240 Um, so it was this four.

01:39:13.880 Yeah.

01:39:14.120 So this is four months ish after the collapse.

01:39:17.040 Um, you know, I had sent off my cell phone for like $200,000 to be completely downloaded,

01:39:23.880 imaged and sent to the government for everything they needed.

01:39:27.160 Why'd it cost 200 grand?

01:39:28.700 I don't know.

01:39:29.060 It's what they charge at these.

01:39:30.340 I don't, I don't know.

01:39:31.580 And the lawyers recommend a firm, you use them.

01:39:33.760 Um, but the FBI showed up at my house one day.

01:39:38.280 Uh, it was early morning.

01:39:40.300 Um, you know, I answered the door in my bathrobe.

01:39:43.180 There's police everywhere.

01:39:44.460 There's probably 30 armed agents that had the entire house surrounded with assault rifles

01:39:48.260 pointed at me.

01:39:49.040 There was, uh, some guy with a battering ram, obviously a guy with a megaphone yelling at

01:39:53.580 me.

01:39:53.800 Um, and without any warning, no, in fact, the lawyers were, you know, I asked the lawyers

01:40:01.280 as someone, the police are going to show up at the house.

01:40:03.340 And they said, almost certainly not, you know, we're cooperating with them.

01:40:05.860 We're giving them everything they want.

01:40:08.040 Um, you're answering all their questions.

01:40:10.640 Uh, we don't expect that to happen.

01:40:14.360 Um, but they, they did, they were there, they seized my cell phone, um, and Michelle's

01:40:19.200 cell phone.

01:40:20.100 They came with a battering ram and automatic rifles to take your cell phones.

01:40:23.580 Yeah.

01:40:23.980 A lot of cruiser.

01:40:24.840 I mean, it was really nuts.

01:40:26.240 And then they held us in the car as all the school buses went by, which was, uh, infuriating.

01:40:32.140 So the FBI shows up at your house rather than just calling your lawyer and saying, Hey, we

01:40:37.500 know you've imaged your cell phones already at the expense of $200,000 with like physical

01:40:42.960 possession of your cell phones.

01:40:44.060 They show up with multiple cruisers, automatic weapons, a battering ram.

01:40:48.800 You're at home with your child, I think, and your pets.

01:40:52.360 Uh, this is pre-child at this point.

01:40:53.700 It's pre-child?

01:40:54.100 Yeah.

01:40:54.300 Just pregnant, pregnant girlfriend. 1.00

01:40:56.580 Great.

01:40:57.080 Perfect.

01:40:58.140 And, um, they show up and then throw you in a cruiser?

01:41:02.140 Yeah.

01:41:02.440 They held us in the cruiser for a while.

01:41:03.880 They were very upset.

01:41:05.140 We'd brought our cell phones out with us.

01:41:07.100 Um, I think they had this grand image of like trashing my house.

01:41:10.600 I think is what a lot of these guys wanted to do.

01:41:13.160 Um, they certainly wanted to enter the house.

01:41:14.980 I could hear them discussing.

01:41:15.940 They were upset.

01:41:16.460 They couldn't enter the house.

01:41:17.400 These FBI employees?

01:41:18.320 Yeah.

01:41:18.700 We had had our phones with us when we went outside.

01:41:21.340 So they had no justification to enter, uh, the house anymore.

01:41:25.400 So they held us in the cruiser for a while.

01:41:27.340 I could hear some back and forth about being upset.

01:41:29.040 They couldn't go in the house.

01:41:30.460 Uh, you know, all the school buses are coming by, which was unfortunate.

01:41:33.120 And then once the school buses were done, they let us go back inside the house.

01:41:36.780 Um, you know, and it's scary.

01:41:38.460 I mean, being without your cell phone, all of a sudden it's hard.

01:41:40.640 You know, there's people trying to get in touch with you and get in touch with the lawyers

01:41:43.220 and things like that.

01:41:44.060 So, um, you know, you had to run down to the store, buy a new cell phone.

01:41:47.660 Um, but it was the government sending a message.

01:41:49.900 You know, we don't, we don't believe you.

01:41:52.020 Uh, you know, we have a different narrative and, you know, you're facing the government right

01:41:55.400 now.

01:41:55.620 So get in line.

01:41:58.700 But again, the only purpose of sending guys with automatic rifles

01:42:02.940 and a battering ram is to intimidate you.

01:42:05.640 Correct.

01:42:06.140 You're an American citizen.

01:42:08.200 And that embarrass you.

01:42:10.060 I mean, the neighbors see it's loud.

01:42:11.960 It's yeah. 1.00

01:42:13.860 But treat you like garbage. 1.00

01:42:15.440 You've not been convicted of anything. 0.99

01:42:17.260 Not only that, but I had thought into that moment we were being very cooperative.

01:42:20.440 I mean, I had, you know, there's this sort of narrative out there that I refused to

01:42:24.300 cooperate with the DOJ.

01:42:25.940 I wasn't giving them what they wanted.

01:42:27.760 That's not true.

01:42:28.600 I immediately cooperated.

01:42:30.000 You know, I replied to the Bahamian government when they emailed me and I was offering the

01:42:35.100 DOJ what I had.

01:42:36.420 Um, I just, I don't think what I had jives with their story of how things were and the

01:42:41.880 narrative that they were able to create.

01:42:43.440 And so they weren't, you know, they allude to, and they're very careful with it.

01:42:47.620 So I, you know, I don't want to accuse them of being, well, not accused, but like, they're

01:42:50.980 not outward with this, but they, through the proffering, you can kind of tell what you're

01:42:55.060 able to say that would help you save yourself a little bit more.

01:42:58.740 Um, they don't tell you directly, but it's, you know, describe this campaign finance in

01:43:03.280 a different way, or, you know, how, how does this reconcile, you know, they sort of tell

01:43:07.500 you their narrative, um, through the questioning and it's your decision if you play ball or not.

01:43:12.680 And I just decided I wasn't going to lie to the government to save myself.

01:43:16.440 Um, like I feel some other people have in this situation.

01:43:21.180 So, uh, who, um, I don't think, well, look, I know Nishad did not think he was committing

01:43:28.060 campaign finance fraud.

01:43:29.500 Um, I know that for a fact, um, you know, the idea that people worth hundreds of millions,

01:43:35.340 two billions of dollars can be straw donors just doesn't make, it doesn't even cross your

01:43:39.540 mind.

01:43:40.480 Um, you know, I had had, uh, when Michelle ran for Congress, I had foreign people that would

01:43:45.820 text me and say, Hey, you know, I'll send you 50 bucks.

01:43:48.000 You can put it in her campaign.

01:43:48.960 And I reply, no, that's illegal.

01:43:51.040 We're not, we can't take foreign money.

01:43:52.420 I appreciate the offer.

01:43:53.860 Um, or even, you know, U S people will be like, Hey, I'll, you know, I'll just Venmo it. 0.78

01:43:57.060 You know, you can put it in.

01:43:58.200 No, you can't do that.

01:43:59.060 That's so.

01:43:59.560 You're speaking of the mother of your child who ran for Congress.

01:44:02.120 Yes, correct.

01:44:02.780 In New York.

01:44:03.740 Yep.

01:44:03.940 Um, didn't win and is now in trouble for taking money from you or something unclear exactly.

01:44:13.220 For us having commingled finances.

01:44:14.960 Right.

01:44:15.140 And her work for FTX not being real.

01:44:18.440 Um, yeah.

01:44:20.920 Yeah.

01:44:22.260 So.

01:44:22.900 Where was I before that?

01:44:23.600 Sorry.

01:44:24.100 Sorry.

01:44:24.500 I just have to point out that there, again, I wouldn't be saying any of this if you had

01:44:30.400 even been accused of participating in the core fraud here, but you haven't been even

01:44:34.760 accused of that.

01:44:35.740 So by the government.

01:44:37.000 So, um, but, but you did give to Republican candidates.

01:44:42.340 Yes.

01:44:42.600 And I was associated with FTX.

01:44:45.200 Well, yeah.

01:44:46.080 Yeah.

01:44:47.000 Well, a lot of people were who haven't been indicted.

01:44:48.820 I mean.

01:44:49.300 Right.

01:44:49.640 In our system, I don't know if you know this, but the people who commit the crimes get indicted.

01:44:53.180 People who haven't committed the crimes don't get indicted.

01:44:54.900 That's, that's the promise of the system.

01:44:56.380 I'm not sure I, I'm not sure I believe that.

01:44:58.820 Well, I don't either.

01:44:59.740 That's why this is a fascinating interview.

01:45:01.400 But I, I used to believe that.

01:45:03.960 Did you believe that?

01:45:05.440 Yeah.

01:45:05.720 I held up right until very recently believing that I, you know, I even tried.

01:45:11.040 I'm, I'm not, I'm not a victim.

01:45:13.240 I will never be a victim.

01:45:14.720 I don't consider myself a victim.

01:45:16.060 I chose to listen to the lawyers.

01:45:17.660 I, I made the decisions that I got.

01:45:20.300 And so I don't want, I don't want this narrative to be that I feel like I'm a victim of something.

01:45:24.000 And I, I go out of my way to make sure I don't have that feeling.

01:45:26.920 Um, so I constantly try to spin it in my head to make it more the narrative events that I know isn't true, but I'm, I'm constantly trying to get there to make this all make sense.

01:45:37.920 So, you know, I had a lot of, I don't dislike the legal system or have that strong of issues with it until I sort of saw what I saw, um, and saw how it plays out.

01:45:48.040 I mean, the, the, well, I'm, I, I think you're taking the right tack emotionally.

01:45:53.060 I think it's very destructive to think of yourself as a victim.

01:45:56.840 I think the democratic party destroys millions of lives by encouraging Americans in certain groups to think of themselves as victims.

01:46:02.540 I agree with you a hundred percent, but as a factual matter, you are a victim because the crimes to which you pled guilty are not crimes.

01:46:10.900 I, from my read of it, I don't, I don't understand how those are crimes.

01:46:14.180 It doesn't make any sense at all.

01:46:15.560 If you're borrowing against your own assets and then you take that, which every rich person in the world who's invested in low basis equities, for example, does, then every person, um, that money that you get from that loan or any loan is yours.

01:46:37.160 It's yours. It's yours. And if you donate some of that to political candidates, you're not a straw donor for the person who loaned you the money. I mean, that's like a, that's crazy.

01:46:46.440 Yeah, I agree. I think.

01:46:47.660 So you are a victim in that sense. That's like not a crime. And to construe that as a crime is like itself a miscarriage of justice, in my opinion.

01:46:54.240 Yeah. I mean, I think it says a lot of why there was an inducement, right? There's no need to make an inducement to get someone to, to plea if you have a good case or, or if they're guilty, right?

01:47:03.960 You only bring up an inducement because you know that, you know, this person's not believing or getting to the same place you want them to get to.

01:47:13.160 Right. So they threaten your family.

01:47:14.700 It's, it's more common than you'd think.

01:47:16.320 Oh, I know.

01:47:16.920 The Varsity Blues case, you know, and a lot of the reality is people don't have sympathy for wealthy people, right? Which is fair. I'm not arguing. There's plenty of people that have sympathy for. And so when there's a misjustice to someone with money, a lot of the world's just like.

01:47:28.820 Well, I am a wealthy person, I guess, relatively speaking. And I intensely dislike rich people, even though, you know, I've been one my whole life, really. But yeah, I dislike them a lot because I think they've been terrible leaders of our country. And I also just, I don't, I just don't like them personally. So I get it.

01:47:46.020 I absolutely understand that bias, that bigotry, but, but the system itself should, should guard itself from bias and bigotry just because you don't like, okay, you don't like black people. Does that mean every accused black person should go to prison? No, of course not. That's horrible. It's immoral.

01:48:01.820 Yeah, yeah.

01:48:02.100 Right. And so it's true for any group. You assess the crime on its own terms. Is this actually a crime? Did the person actually commit the crime? And what's the appropriate punishment for committing that crime? Like those are the only questions that matter. It doesn't matter what group you're from, right?

01:48:18.360 Yeah, that's how you'd expect the legal system to work, I think. But it's clear as day. That's not how it works.

01:48:24.000 If they told you that because you're white and straight that you can't get a fair trial, like, don't we have a civil rights division at the Justice Department? I mean, that's the problem.

01:48:33.700 So it would be like, well, you know, you're black. You can't get a fair trial. Well, okay. We have a federal government to fix that. Right? 1.00

01:48:41.720 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I mean, I'm getting, you're obviously much more balanced psychologically, but I'm outraged on your behalf.

01:48:48.480 You go crazy if not. 1.00

01:48:49.260 You go crazy. So how are you feeling having gone through all of this? This has been a remarkable conversation. Thank you, by the way. But how are you feeling by the prospect of spending seven and a half years in federal prison?

01:49:01.980 Um, it's a good question. I think I'm more upset at the impact it's having on everyone else. Um, I've, I mean, no one's gonna, I've always been fairly selfless, I think, in sort of how I operate. Um, you know, I'm not excited for it, but, uh, you know, the impact on Michelle, the impact on the kids, the impact on my family, the impact on, you know, the FTX fraud on all the customers. I mean, those things are much worse.

01:49:28.760 I think, um, I've talked to a number of people that have been through the prison system. And so I've gotten advice on how to do it. Um, or what have they said?

01:49:38.380 Well, they sort of assure you it's not as scary as, as you're feeling like it's going to be right. It's, it's, you're not in with, um, people who committed sexual assault or gangbangers or things like that. Um, you know, figure out ways. The boredom is what I'm told is sort of the hardest thing to grapple with. And you have to find ways, uh, to have purpose.

01:49:58.280 I think a lot of people that end up in, in white collar crime situations, right. Their whole life, they felt they did things to have purpose, right? People who are successful want to have purpose.

01:50:06.740 Yeah. Um, and so you're all of a sudden stripped of your ability to have any real purpose and figuring out how to combat that, um, is, is one of the key things that people recommend.

01:50:17.160 And so how do you do that?

01:50:19.800 I mean, I've got a massive book list I've sort of been putting together, um, and working with people who are going to send me those. Um, hopefully I can teach or provide some educational material. I've already helped create. So there's this guy named Michael Santos. He was incarcerated for almost 30 years for a small drug possession crime during, um, during the war on drugs. Um, and he has started a program to help with education.

01:50:43.160 And so we together created a course that'll be sent into almost a million prisoners by the end of this year, I'm hoping around digital assets and cryptocurrency and this evolving economy.

01:50:54.140 Come on.

01:50:54.360 Um, so that was very cool to be a part of and is hopefully going to have some positive impact. Um, you know, there's pros and cons, but the crypto industry has a low barrier to entry, right? Um, and it's, I think it's one of the cool things. There's people all over the world in every economic class or situation that get to be involved. Um, and it's a very unjudgmental community in the sense that you can just self get involved.

01:51:17.480 And so, um, you know, I'm hoping people less fortunate than me who come out of prison, um, this could be something that's hopeful for them, you know, cause you get a prison job prospects are terrible.

01:51:28.220 You know, all these things are horrific the moment you get out. Um, and so, you know, if this, if a couple of people could find a meaningful job in this industry, that would be incredible.

01:51:36.800 You know, it's terrible. The situation's been for me. There's the people who have it way worse who go through this system. So, um,

01:51:43.600 Um, are you claustrophobic? No, I actually like small spaces, believe it or not. Come on. I do. I do.

01:51:49.860 It's one of my, I live in this very large house right now and it drives me nuts. I walk into a room and

01:51:54.680 I'm at least 10 things need to be fixed in it that I haven't gotten to. And I just, I don't mind small

01:51:59.060 spaces. So I lived in about 400 square feet in Hong Kong, um, and loved it, loved the apartment. So,

01:52:05.860 um, I'm not worried about the space. I don't, I don't know what I'm worried about, to be honest with you,

01:52:11.360 like for myself personally. Um, I navigate situations well. Um, I'm pretty friendly with

01:52:17.020 all types of people. So, uh, you know, it's much, it's much worse on everyone who has to deal with

01:52:23.440 my aftermath out here. Yeah. How is your family dealing with it? Not well. I mean, it's hard.

01:52:28.380 It's hard. You know, I'm splashed across my local newspaper as like this horrific human being that

01:52:32.600 stole everyone's money and hurt all these people. Um, you know, all the stuff that I thought was

01:52:37.000 doing good is now perceived as me trying to hide that I was an evil person by doing good. 0.69

01:52:42.260 Um, so that sucks. Um, you know, yeah, it's terrible for them. It's terrible for a lot of people.

01:52:50.880 Um, I'm sorry. No, not your fault. Has it changed your view of crypto?

01:52:56.780 No, I'm a stronger supporter now of crypto than I think I was before. So the basis of crypto,

01:53:01.680 FTX is in some ways the antithesis of what crypto is, right? Crypto is a decentralized

01:53:06.960 platform that the network that doesn't need these centralized institutions that sort of doesn't

01:53:12.900 have to deal with the horrific banking industry, which is a horrific industry. Um, and so FTX and

01:53:19.280 Binance, these all serve as bridges right now between what I'll call the old world and the new

01:53:23.300 blockchain based world. And, you know, FTX proved the exact thing that a lot of people in the crypto

01:53:29.880 industry are arguing, which is like these centralized powers. You don't know what's

01:53:33.080 going on inside of them. They get too big, they get too careless. They obfuscate human lives in this

01:53:38.320 sort of, you know, it's big central arena. Um, so the basis of crypto is fighting against what FTX was

01:53:46.320 really. Um, they're necessary bridges right now, but, uh, I think eventually they won't be. So no,

01:53:51.600 I love the crypto industry. I'm not saying there's no issues with it. That's not my point at all,

01:53:55.940 but I have a stronger faith in crypto now than I did even before.

01:53:58.880 Really? It's really, it's an incredible network. I mean, I'm not like praying to it every night,

01:54:05.140 like some people are, but, um, it's amazing. I mean, if you've ever sent cross border remittance

01:54:10.640 through a fed wire system or through a bank, it's a horrific process. And the authority that the banks

01:54:17.360 have over what is your asset is not good. It shouldn't be. It's shocking. Uh, you know,

01:54:25.500 try to withdraw, you know, $25,000 in cash from a bank. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you probably get more

01:54:32.120 money. You probably get more than 30 agents at your door. Oh yeah. No, no. I, well, I couldn't

01:54:37.400 agree more with that. I wonder though, given your experience, just trying to sort of see what you've

01:54:44.060 learned from it. Like, you know, you make the people with power mad, you annoy them, you give,

01:54:50.240 you know, $20 million to Republican candidates in a tightly contested cycle. And they like,

01:54:55.960 they wreck you. And then they go after the mother of your child, you know, small child trying to send

01:55:00.200 both parents to prison really on campaign finance violations. It's pretty, if you would do that,

01:55:05.020 there's nothing you wouldn't do. Right. So crypto, the idea of crypto absolutely disempowers the

01:55:11.920 banks. Single most important institution, most powerful in America. Yeah. More, more powerful

01:55:17.300 than pharma even. Like the, how can they allow crypto? Honestly. Yeah. I mean, I don't think the

01:55:24.660 government gets to decide what's allowed. Well, I couldn't agree more. It's not allowed. So, uh, you know,

01:55:29.860 there have to be rules. I, I'm not anti all regulation, right? There needs to be guidelines.

01:55:33.480 I'm just saying as a practical matter, now that you, they sent a guy with a battering ram to your

01:55:39.100 house in suburban DC. Yep. Um, like they don't have limits. Like if you get in their way, they'll

01:55:46.360 crush you. Right. They killed, they murdered Jeffrey Epstein. Actually, that actually happened.

01:55:51.380 Sorry. It did. So how can they allow Bitcoin? I mean, you have to proceed. You have to fight,

01:55:59.020 right? You can't not fight. But at some point the fangs are going to come out, right? Oh,

01:56:03.300 they've come out. The fangs have come out. I mean, the Republicans are fighting against those

01:56:07.280 fangs. Um, you know, really thank you to Ted Cruz for initiating that, um, war, but you know, 0.68

01:56:13.840 it was interesting and I'm going to sound crazy when I say this, when crypto first started being

01:56:17.020 noticed in DC, I was worried that, um, not worried, but I like, I thought Elizabeth Warren

01:56:22.760 was going to like it. She's ran this whole, you know, fake anti-banking campaign. Of course, 0.71

01:56:28.060 individual rights, you know, this whole thing. And I thought Republicans are going to see this

01:56:32.740 as a competition to the dollar and might be more apprehensive to something competing with the

01:56:37.800 dollar. Yeah. And so I was like, Oh, you know, we're going to have to do some education work on

01:56:41.020 the Republican side. And then, I mean, Elizabeth comes out pro big bank, anti, I mean, it's

01:56:46.880 same with Bernie Sanders. It's really why they're against the billionaires. They're against power.

01:56:51.080 Same with that. Who's that sort of mildly attractive, but super annoying chick, the 1.00

01:56:57.080 former bartender from New York. Yeah. I can't, but I can never remember her real name, but anyway,

01:57:02.240 um, yeah, we're against fighting the power, fight the banks, but they're tools of the banks. Of

01:57:06.300 course, every one of them. Yeah. I mean, crypto is a great proof of that. I mean, this thing is,

01:57:10.620 I mean, this is the quintessential individual rights, you know, a network can't be racist,

01:57:16.220 can't be sexist, can't be anything like it's, it's just math working. This should be the

01:57:20.800 dream for people who advocate that that is their priority. Like true egalitarians should

01:57:25.300 embrace it. Love it. Should love it. I mean, you can't be denied access to using crypto because

01:57:30.260 you're in the slums or something like that. Or you, you know, a lot of people go to get bank

01:57:35.240 accounts that don't have a lot of money and they get hit with all these fees and all this. So crypto

01:57:38.580 doesn't do that. It can't do that. It's a math network that works because math works. Um, yeah,

01:57:44.680 it should be the dream for these people. I mean, they showed their cards completely and now a lot of

01:57:49.420 people pretend it's not true. I think Democrats will come around. It's crazy.

01:57:53.560 Well, I watched this, we were laughing with this at breakfast, but the Gary Gensler thing,

01:57:57.000 I watched some very smart, really good people in crypto who I know, big holders of say Bitcoin

01:58:02.360 say, well, I think Gary Gensler's, you know, he's not going to be, you know, it's like Gary

01:58:06.420 Gensler, first of all, he's just a total tool of the people in charge. Like that's it. Like

01:58:11.340 whatever they want, he'll do. He's never going to be on your side, but they like were convinced

01:58:16.620 that he was. Yeah. It's baffling. I mean, in a dream world, it's not a partisan issue,

01:58:21.020 but the crypto industry didn't make it partisan. The government made it partisan. Right. Well,

01:58:26.060 I agree. Yeah. Well, I think it's really simple and I have the advantage of knowing a lot less

01:58:30.260 than you do about the details. So for me, the big picture is clear and it is that this technology

01:58:37.880 is a threat to entrench power. Therefore, they'll do whatever it takes to destroy it.

01:58:44.200 Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Or try to control it. Right. I think they've gotten sort of the U.S.

01:58:50.360 government now. So Binance survived where it was one of the biggest crypto exchanges, but now they're

01:58:54.680 under U.S. government surveillance. So I think Binance is essentially just an extension, a crypto

01:58:59.160 extension of the U.S. government at this point. So can I just ask, as someone who believes in freedom,

01:59:04.420 whose freedom is about to be taken from him, one of the, to me, the most intriguing promise,

01:59:10.280 most thrilling promise of cryptocurrency was the ability to transact, you know, any kind of

01:59:17.560 economic, financial transaction with privacy. It's like nobody's business, actually.

01:59:22.940 Yeah. It's not, it turns out it's not that private though. In a lot of ways-

01:59:25.460 It's not private.

01:59:26.300 In a lot of ways, it's more, so who the account holder is, is private until it's somehow made public,

01:59:32.180 but the transactions are public forever.

01:59:35.300 Yeah. By definition.

01:59:36.220 By definition.

01:59:36.900 That's the point of the blockchain.

01:59:38.000 But the idea that, you know, I don't, no one has to know, like I'm allowed to buy things

01:59:43.160 or sell things without everyone knowing about it. That seems like a human right to me.

01:59:47.260 Yeah.

01:59:48.840 Can, will that ever be made good? I mean-

01:59:53.620 There are blockchains that operate that way. There are sort of hidden like XMR and there

01:59:58.280 are blockchains specifically built to obfuscate ownership and ability to review the transactions.

02:00:04.600 But in say 20, I mean, this is an emerging technology. So in 20 years, will it be easy

02:00:09.620 for the average person, i.e. me, to buy something or sell something using this technology as a

02:00:17.580 currency, medium exchange, privately?

02:00:20.200 No. My sense is no, it won't be. The, like, the core use of it won't be. But it's not private.

02:00:26.260 It's not private now. Cash is your most private.

02:00:29.400 For sure. That's why they hate it.

02:00:33.240 But cash is going away.

02:00:35.280 Yeah, unfortunately. I'm not, yeah. Sorry, the blockchain doesn't solve cancer and every problem.

02:00:41.360 Just to be clear, it's just a very good network for some specific sets of purposes.

02:00:46.340 I know. I was just, okay. I won't throw out my key.

02:00:51.760 No, I don't think you'll end up a crypto lover at any point in time.

02:00:54.760 Well, I want to be. That's the thing. I've spoken at two crypto conferences. I like a lot

02:00:58.700 of crypto people. They're smart. Some of them are scammers for sure. But a lot of them are just

02:01:02.740 really high-minded, idealistic people, high IQ people who want to make the world better. So I

02:01:07.980 love them. I love them. I love Michael Saylor. I like, you know, a lot of those people. I'm so

02:01:13.280 sympathetic to it. But I just want it to give me some privacy.

02:01:18.860 Yeah. No, privacy is you're not going to get. I mean, you can be private in the sense that no

02:01:23.300 one knows your address belongs to you.

02:01:25.380 Right.

02:01:25.940 But I don't think it's going to get, it's not going to solve the privacy on a large scale.

02:01:31.220 Could you fund a, because there is no meaningful opposition to the current regime in the United

02:01:38.000 States? There's no, there are a lot of Trump voters, but they're not organized and they never

02:01:43.140 will be organized because the people in charge prevent them from being organized. They tried

02:01:46.540 on January 6th. A lot of them are still in jail. So will crypto solve for that? Will you ever be

02:01:53.220 able to fund a protest movement that can't be defunded by the people the protest movement

02:01:58.580 challenges? Uh, well, I mean, so the, you can't stop the transactions from occurring. Um, and so

02:02:07.320 that's, you know, a bank can stop a transaction from occurring to close your account or things of

02:02:11.580 that sense. You can't close someone's Bitcoin account. Um, and there's tons of different

02:02:15.140 cryptocurrencies. So we're generalizing here a lot. Um, but you can't close someone's Bitcoin

02:02:19.840 account.

02:02:20.180 Yeah, let's go with Bitcoin.

02:02:20.720 So you, there, that account, yes, you could use it to fund a protest that couldn't be stopped.

02:02:26.060 Now, once you have the Bitcoin, if you want to turn it into cash, that could be prevented.

02:02:31.120 Um, or if they flag your wallet as being as like extremely high risk wallet or associated

02:02:36.620 with something nefarious, a lot of other people won't interact with it or won't want to receive

02:02:40.560 from it. Um, this doesn't completely solve government control. Um, but it takes things out

02:02:47.780 of centralized institutions and puts them in your own pocket, um, which is enticing for a

02:02:52.860 lot of people.

02:02:53.860 I think we're going to do a border economy.

02:02:56.060 Um, I just, I just think it's really important that the people in charge not have a monopoly

02:03:02.640 on the money because when they do, they will defund any effort to challenge their authority.

02:03:08.740 Yeah. It's anti-American. I mean, the whole principle we're doing here.

02:03:12.400 That's right.

02:03:12.840 But I don't know. A lot of people don't share that view.

02:03:15.700 Well, I just want to wish you truly Godspeed and thank you for explaining all of this. And anyone

02:03:22.160 who's made it to the end of this interview, I think we'll have a completely different

02:03:24.820 as I do view of what happened, certainly to you. Last question. Have you talked to Sam

02:03:32.520 Bankman-Fried since all this happened?

02:03:34.060 I have not. No, uh, I haven't really spoken to anyone. So the lawyers do a great job. You get

02:03:38.020 siloed immediately. You can't interact with each other. Um, because then you get threatened with

02:03:43.080 collusion or more crimes. Um, it's sort of part of the legal, it's very smart part of the legal

02:03:48.320 system. They, you know, you become a pawn in this game of lawyers, um, and the pawns can't interact.

02:03:54.140 The pawns lawyers can interact if the pawns lawyers are willing to interact, but, uh, for the most part

02:03:59.780 you're siloed and separated. So I haven't spoken to anyone who's meaningful, um, in the entire

02:04:05.680 situation.

02:04:07.460 No first amendment for the accused.

02:04:09.680 No, I mean, they, it's, yeah, they don't like you talking. Uh, you know, they threw Sam,

02:04:14.400 Sam got locked up early for leaking a diary to the press. Um, you know, the, the prosecutors control

02:04:23.060 the whole, they have to control the whole narrative. It's a, it's a game of publicity,

02:04:26.220 uh, for everyone, but you know, the individuals in a horrific spot and the government's in

02:04:31.520 the greatest imaginable spot. 0.75

02:04:34.860 It's so disgusting. It's hard to express it. Ryan, thank you very much.

02:04:38.620 Yeah. Thank you for having me.

02:04:39.640 Appreciate it.

02:04:40.100 Yeah.

02:04:42.240 Thanks for listening to Tucker Carlson show. If you enjoyed it, you can go to

02:04:45.600 tuckercarlson.com to see everything that we have made the complete library,

02:04:50.840 tuckercarlson.com.

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02:05:03.580 at tuckercarlson.com. James O'Keefe's new documentary line in the sand at tuckercarlson.com.

The Tucker Carlson Show - October 09, 2024

Ryan Salame： Facing Prison for Donating to Trump, His Journey With SBF, & Why the Banks Hate Crypto

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