Sam Bankman-Fried has been sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for campaign finance violations, but not for financial crimes. Instead, he was charged with conspiracy to commit campaign finance fraud and conspiracy to make false statements to obtain campaign funds. Tucker and I discuss why he was not charged with financial crimes, and why he should have been sent to prison for the campaign finance crimes he committed. Tucker also discusses why he wasn t charged with money laundering or money laundering, and how the Justice Department got him to plead guilty to the charges, and what he did to avoid going to prison. Tucker also explains why he didn t have a license to move money in and out of the United States, and explains how he was able to get a license from the U.S. government to do so, even though he was the sole person in charge of a company that had no money transmitting license. Check out all of our content at TuckerCarlson.me/TuckerCarlson on all social media platforms, including TikTok, Reddit, and other social media outlets, to get the most up to date news and information on the most trending topics in the world. If you like the show, please consider becoming a supporter by rating, reviewing and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts, and sharing it on your social media accounts! and leaving us a review on iTunes! Subscribe to our newest episode of The Tucker Carlson Show! to be notified when new episodes are available! in your preferred podcast platform. Subscribe, review, and subscribe to our podcasting platform so you don't miss out on the newest episode! and get notified when a new episode hits your favorite show on the next episode of Tucker Carlson's newest episode is released! on the air! Thank you for supporting the show! Timestamps: 4:00 - What's good? 5:30 - What do you think of the show? 6:15 - What would you would you like to see me recommend? 7:40 - What are you looking for? 8:00 9:00 -- What's your favorite piece of advice? 11:30 -- How do you want to hear from me? 13:15 -- What s your favorite part? 15:40 -- What is your biggest takeaway from this episode? 16:30 17:00 | What s a good day? 19:00-- How do I feel about it?
00:00:00.000So 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.
00:00:11.160But 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.
00:00:18.560So 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.
00:00:34.940And so in one sentence, let me tell you the overview from my perspective.
00:01:43.520I'm now realizing that it is incredibly political.
00:01:47.040But you're not going to prison for making up a fake cryptocurrency or defrauding investors?
00:01:52.140No, in fact, the Justice Department has sort of specifically noted and stated that they know I was not aware of the central fraud.
00:01:59.100So 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.
00:02:12.120So, I mean, again, I'm coming at this as a non-finance person, just as a reader of the news.
00:02:19.620But I thought the crime at FTX was defrauding a million investors, using investor funds for things like real estate.
00:02:32.700They, 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.
00:02:40.140So the two things that I've pled guilty to are operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and campaign finance fraud.
00:02:47.840The reality is the campaign finance fraud is everything that they wanted.
00:02:51.520And then they sort of found some other things to lay at my feet and put pressure on me with.
00:04:50.060I mean, even when I was considering doing this interview, I was thinking, well, FTX, bad, fraud, bad.
00:04:54.920We did a whole documentary on why FTX committed fraud and why they're bad, which I still think.
00:04:59.740And I just didn't know that you weren't charged for any of those crimes.
00:05:06.140And 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.
00:06:31.920So 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.
00:07:34.180And then I use a bunch of that money to get involved in the political system.
00:07:37.680But 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.
00:11:53.260They 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.
00:13:24.380No one's going to get up and testify in my defense.
00:13:26.140They're scared that the government's going to go after them if they do.
00:13:29.060You know, this is a big problem I had with Sam Bankman-Fried's trial.
00:13:31.980I'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.
00:13:41.680But no one got up to counter any of the government's narrative because then, you know, you get threatened with more time in prison.
00:13:48.920Like, 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.
00:13:55.560So, 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.
00:14:10.820And that's not how the justice is supposed to work.
00:14:13.860So, I note this to my lawyers, and the lawyers, you know, said you could face an extra 10 years for doing that.
00:14:18.880Like, do you really want to sort of risk that?
00:14:22.120You 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.
00:14:30.760You 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.
00:15:29.680I mean, they explained, the government's careful, right?
00:15:32.500I mean, I'll say that I think today or tomorrow I'm going to file an appeal to my guilty plea.
00:15:39.160Um, 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.
00:15:49.980So I'm going to use that in an attempt and appeal.
00:15:53.120Wait, so they got you to plead by threatening the person you love, um, with indictment.
00:16:00.120And, and so you pled on the basis of their promise that they would not indict her.
00:16:43.820I mean, and they went further than that.
00:16:45.020They 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.
00:16:53.120She's also going through a sort of difficult divorce proceeding.
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00:19:57.900Was there any suggestion that you could be charged with a central fraud?
00:20:16.400In 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.
00:20:23.960No, 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?
00:20:30.840There's this public idea that 100% of the employees, the people at the company must have known, and everyone should go to prison.
00:20:44.580There'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.
00:21:20.860She 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.
00:21:34.260Okay, but she's, as far as you know, not going to prison.
00:21:58.040You know, I don't know what to think of it.
00:22:00.840You've reached some level of Zen acceptance here.
00:22:03.140You 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.
00:22:55.640Or any of the lawyers that advised a substantial amount of this.
00:22:58.760I mean, in both of my fact patterns, the lawyers were heavily, heavily involved.
00:23:02.680You 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.
00:23:11.260That's not a defensive, you can't say the lawyer told me I could do this, so I did it.
00:23:15.240But I don't know what the point of the lawyer is then, right?
00:23:18.600If 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?
00:23:30.140This is the whole reason I, you know, you go to them, or you talk to them, or you ask them these questions.
00:23:34.560So, 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.
00:23:44.660Also, 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.
00:23:57.460Like, who would ever imagine that you would be indicted for that?
00:26:26.920You know, throughout the plea process, they—you know, my lawyers told me what Kaplan really cares about is acceptance of responsibility.
00:26:35.460If 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.
00:26:47.320So we didn't sort of—that's all I did.
00:26:49.280I made this whole, you know, apology speech and everything, and I'm genuinely sorry for all the customers of FTX.
00:26:58.180You know, it's a real—you know, what happened to them is horrific and haunts me daily.
00:27:03.040But, 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?
00:27:15.000So he said, I ran to the Bahamian regulators to save myself.
00:28:07.660So 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.
00:28:13.600Like, what does that have to do with the crime?
00:28:22.060Yeah, 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.
00:28:28.860You 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.
00:30:18.980There was a whole accounting department.
00:30:20.520The accounting department was hiring more people.
00:30:22.820I mean, the company's only three years old, was only three years old, and just had meteoric growth from basically the beginning.
00:30:28.800So 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.
00:30:36.900There was an attempt by every department that I was aware of and involved in to hire good people and build out real systems.
00:30:44.120But 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.
00:30:52.500They lost their money because the money was misused.
00:32:09.560It's a systemic issue that, you know, I don't know how it gets addressed.
00:32:15.380So 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?
00:33:07.660Just 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.
00:33:19.340And 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.
00:33:25.980And it's like a complete scam that benefits the same people, always.
00:33:31.020You know, the lawyers, the Democratic donors, the Democratic politicians, and the people.
00:33:36.200And, you know, a tragedy like this, tragedy for the investors, is hijacked by these institutions for political reasons.
00:33:44.220I mean, that's what I see after talking to you this morning.
00:33:50.680I 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.
00:33:59.540And then it just becomes your reality, or you go crazy.
00:34:39.680The whole way it was handled was wild and not great.
00:34:43.600But 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.
00:34:52.680So a real biosecurity threat, the government's not prepared for.
00:34:57.200And, 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.
00:35:04.240But that doesn't mean there's not the potential, you know, for an actual bioweapon.
00:35:08.200And 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.
00:44:16.460I mean, they were giving it to everyone.
00:44:17.860When I was younger, they tried to put me on Adderall.
00:44:19.600And my parents, thankfully, were like, no, he's just a little boy.
00:44:24.300You know, he's just got energy because he's a boy.
00:44:27.580But 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.
00:44:39.560But some of them are very bad over time.
00:44:46.820No, 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.
01:28:33.280Um, and what it showed was that Alameda had basically been borrowing from a ton of lenders with questionable assets.
01:28:40.380So, 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.
01:28:48.820Now, when that broke, my first thought was, our lenders are screwed.
01:29:07.160And, um, they had to keep showing new origination so they could show that they were growing.
01:29:11.500You 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?
01:29:17.880You know, it's, um, Binance used to love to say, like, let's all pick each other up.
01:29:21.540And then Binance would crush little companies so it could get bigger, right?
01:32:12.960I mean, I'm going to, I don't know what they're going to do to me now, but.
01:32:15.700Yeah, you're going to prison, like, you know, whatever.
01:32:18.200You know, I had almost thought the, the government and other people laid out the exact, my defense, right?
01:32:24.320So 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.
01:32:32.300Like that was in his words, um, that he stated that, uh, you know, the.
01:32:36.380Where is, where is Friedberg in prison now?
01:32:38.720No, he's not, he's not in charge of money.
01:32:40.520Um, you know, the government noted I was worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.
01:32:46.440So like, I'm just choosing to make this a crime.
01:32:49.760Like I thought my defense had been laid out by other people in like an odd way, um, that no one seemed to care about.
01:45:20.300And so I don't want, I don't want this narrative to be that I feel like I'm a victim of something.
01:45:24.000And I, I go out of my way to make sure I don't have that feeling.
01:45:26.920Um, 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.
01:45:37.920So, 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.
01:45:48.040I mean, the, the, well, I'm, I, I think you're taking the right tack emotionally.
01:45:53.060I think it's very destructive to think of yourself as a victim.
01:45:56.840I think the democratic party destroys millions of lives by encouraging Americans in certain groups to think of themselves as victims.
01:46:02.540I 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.
01:46:10.900I, from my read of it, I don't, I don't understand how those are crimes.
01:46:15.560If 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.
01:46:37.160It'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.
01:46:47.660So 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.
01:46:54.240Yeah. 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?
01:47:03.960You 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.
01:47:16.920The 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.
01:47:28.820Well, 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.
01:47:46.020I 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.
01:48:02.100Right. 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?
01:48:18.360Yeah, 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.
01:48:24.000If 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.
01:48:33.700So 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?
01:48:41.720Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I mean, I'm getting, you're obviously much more balanced psychologically, but I'm outraged on your behalf.
01:48:49.260You 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?
01:49:01.980Um, 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.
01:49:28.760I 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?
01:49:38.380Well, 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.
01:49:58.280I 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.
01:50:06.740Yeah. 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.
01:50:19.800I 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.
01:50:43.160And 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.
01:50:54.360Um, 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.
01:51:17.480And 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.
01:51:28.220You 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.
01:51:36.800You 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,
01:51:43.600Um, are you claustrophobic? No, I actually like small spaces, believe it or not. Come on. I do. I do.
01:51:49.860It's one of my, I live in this very large house right now and it drives me nuts. I walk into a room and
01:51:54.680I'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
01:51:59.060spaces. So I lived in about 400 square feet in Hong Kong, um, and loved it, loved the apartment. So,
01:52:05.860um, I'm not worried about the space. I don't, I don't know what I'm worried about, to be honest with you,
01:52:11.360like for myself personally. Um, I navigate situations well. Um, I'm pretty friendly with
01:52:17.020all types of people. So, uh, you know, it's much, it's much worse on everyone who has to deal with
01:52:23.440my aftermath out here. Yeah. How is your family dealing with it? Not well. I mean, it's hard.
01:52:28.380It's hard. You know, I'm splashed across my local newspaper as like this horrific human being that
01:52:32.600stole everyone's money and hurt all these people. Um, you know, all the stuff that I thought was
01:52:37.000doing good is now perceived as me trying to hide that I was an evil person by doing good.
01:52:42.260Um, so that sucks. Um, you know, yeah, it's terrible for them. It's terrible for a lot of people.
01:52:50.880Um, I'm sorry. No, not your fault. Has it changed your view of crypto?
01:52:56.780No, I'm a stronger supporter now of crypto than I think I was before. So the basis of crypto,
01:53:01.680FTX is in some ways the antithesis of what crypto is, right? Crypto is a decentralized
01:53:06.960platform that the network that doesn't need these centralized institutions that sort of doesn't
01:53:12.900have to deal with the horrific banking industry, which is a horrific industry. Um, and so FTX and
01:53:19.280Binance, these all serve as bridges right now between what I'll call the old world and the new
01:53:23.300blockchain based world. And, you know, FTX proved the exact thing that a lot of people in the crypto
01:53:29.880industry are arguing, which is like these centralized powers. You don't know what's
01:53:33.080going on inside of them. They get too big, they get too careless. They obfuscate human lives in this
01:53:38.320sort of, you know, it's big central arena. Um, so the basis of crypto is fighting against what FTX was
01:53:46.320really. Um, they're necessary bridges right now, but, uh, I think eventually they won't be. So no,
01:53:51.600I love the crypto industry. I'm not saying there's no issues with it. That's not my point at all,
01:53:55.940but I have a stronger faith in crypto now than I did even before.
01:53:58.880Really? It's really, it's an incredible network. I mean, I'm not like praying to it every night,
01:54:05.140like some people are, but, um, it's amazing. I mean, if you've ever sent cross border remittance
01:54:10.640through a fed wire system or through a bank, it's a horrific process. And the authority that the banks
01:54:17.360have over what is your asset is not good. It shouldn't be. It's shocking. Uh, you know,
01:54:25.500try to withdraw, you know, $25,000 in cash from a bank. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you probably get more
01:54:32.120money. You probably get more than 30 agents at your door. Oh yeah. No, no. I, well, I couldn't
01:54:37.400agree more with that. I wonder though, given your experience, just trying to sort of see what you've
01:54:44.060learned from it. Like, you know, you make the people with power mad, you annoy them, you give,
01:54:50.240you know, $20 million to Republican candidates in a tightly contested cycle. And they like,
01:54:55.960they wreck you. And then they go after the mother of your child, you know, small child trying to send
01:55:00.200both parents to prison really on campaign finance violations. It's pretty, if you would do that,
01:55:05.020there's nothing you wouldn't do. Right. So crypto, the idea of crypto absolutely disempowers the
01:55:11.920banks. Single most important institution, most powerful in America. Yeah. More, more powerful
01:55:17.300than pharma even. Like the, how can they allow crypto? Honestly. Yeah. I mean, I don't think the
01:55:24.660government gets to decide what's allowed. Well, I couldn't agree more. It's not allowed. So, uh, you know,
01:55:29.860there have to be rules. I, I'm not anti all regulation, right? There needs to be guidelines.
01:55:33.480I'm just saying as a practical matter, now that you, they sent a guy with a battering ram to your
01:55:39.100house in suburban DC. Yep. Um, like they don't have limits. Like if you get in their way, they'll
01:55:46.360crush you. Right. They killed, they murdered Jeffrey Epstein. Actually, that actually happened.
01:55:51.380Sorry. It did. So how can they allow Bitcoin? I mean, you have to proceed. You have to fight,
01:55:59.020right? You can't not fight. But at some point the fangs are going to come out, right? Oh,
01:56:03.300they've come out. The fangs have come out. I mean, the Republicans are fighting against those
01:56:07.280fangs. Um, you know, really thank you to Ted Cruz for initiating that, um, war, but you know,
01:56:13.840it was interesting and I'm going to sound crazy when I say this, when crypto first started being
01:56:17.020noticed in DC, I was worried that, um, not worried, but I like, I thought Elizabeth Warren
01:56:22.760was going to like it. She's ran this whole, you know, fake anti-banking campaign. Of course,
01:56:28.060individual rights, you know, this whole thing. And I thought Republicans are going to see this
01:56:32.740as a competition to the dollar and might be more apprehensive to something competing with the
01:56:37.800dollar. Yeah. And so I was like, Oh, you know, we're going to have to do some education work on
01:56:41.020the Republican side. And then, I mean, Elizabeth comes out pro big bank, anti, I mean, it's
01:56:46.880same with Bernie Sanders. It's really why they're against the billionaires. They're against power.
01:56:51.080Same with that. Who's that sort of mildly attractive, but super annoying chick, the
01:56:57.080former bartender from New York. Yeah. I can't, but I can never remember her real name, but anyway,
01:57:02.240um, yeah, we're against fighting the power, fight the banks, but they're tools of the banks. Of
01:57:06.300course, every one of them. Yeah. I mean, crypto is a great proof of that. I mean, this thing is,
01:57:10.620I mean, this is the quintessential individual rights, you know, a network can't be racist,
01:57:16.220can't be sexist, can't be anything like it's, it's just math working. This should be the
01:57:20.800dream for people who advocate that that is their priority. Like true egalitarians should
01:57:25.300embrace it. Love it. Should love it. I mean, you can't be denied access to using crypto because
01:57:30.260you're in the slums or something like that. Or you, you know, a lot of people go to get bank
01:57:35.240accounts that don't have a lot of money and they get hit with all these fees and all this. So crypto
01:57:38.580doesn't do that. It can't do that. It's a math network that works because math works. Um, yeah,
01:57:44.680it should be the dream for these people. I mean, they showed their cards completely and now a lot of
01:57:49.420people pretend it's not true. I think Democrats will come around. It's crazy.
01:57:53.560Well, I watched this, we were laughing with this at breakfast, but the Gary Gensler thing,
01:57:57.000I watched some very smart, really good people in crypto who I know, big holders of say Bitcoin
01:58:02.360say, well, I think Gary Gensler's, you know, he's not going to be, you know, it's like Gary
01:58:06.420Gensler, first of all, he's just a total tool of the people in charge. Like that's it. Like
01:58:11.340whatever they want, he'll do. He's never going to be on your side, but they like were convinced
01:58:16.620that he was. Yeah. It's baffling. I mean, in a dream world, it's not a partisan issue,
01:58:21.020but the crypto industry didn't make it partisan. The government made it partisan. Right. Well,
01:58:26.060I agree. Yeah. Well, I think it's really simple and I have the advantage of knowing a lot less
01:58:30.260than you do about the details. So for me, the big picture is clear and it is that this technology
01:58:37.880is a threat to entrench power. Therefore, they'll do whatever it takes to destroy it.
01:58:44.200Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Or try to control it. Right. I think they've gotten sort of the U.S.
01:58:50.360government now. So Binance survived where it was one of the biggest crypto exchanges, but now they're
01:58:54.680under U.S. government surveillance. So I think Binance is essentially just an extension, a crypto
01:58:59.160extension of the U.S. government at this point. So can I just ask, as someone who believes in freedom,
01:59:04.420whose freedom is about to be taken from him, one of the, to me, the most intriguing promise,
01:59:10.280most thrilling promise of cryptocurrency was the ability to transact, you know, any kind of
01:59:17.560economic, financial transaction with privacy. It's like nobody's business, actually.
01:59:22.940Yeah. It's not, it turns out it's not that private though. In a lot of ways-