LIVE: Why Isn't Sam Bankman-Fried in Jail?

29 Nov 2022 · 1:17:46

Ryan Sean Adams and David Hoffman of Bankless ask why Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) had not been arrested weeks after the FTX collapse. Hoffman walks through the alleged wrongdoing, including Alameda Research trading with FTX customer funds, a backdoor in the bookkeeping system and $121 million of Bahamas property. The hosts criticise soft coverage in outlets such as The New York Times, list SBF's donations to media and political groups, and discuss a thread by Balaji arguing that fights over clawbacks may stand in the way of prosecution. They also explain their own sponsorship rules, discuss reported amphetamine use at FTX, and argue that holding your own private keys would have protected users.

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cover I think and the big question on my mind maybe on everyone's mind is why isn't SPF in jail already right like the hell's going on what's Happening is anything happening is anyone doing anything about this and I think this is a topical issue of course because um crypto is really having sort of some introspection in itself and and asking yourself like why why do scammers keep invading the space why do we keep falling for it how does this keep happening every time um David I've been kind of a little bit relaxing over uh Thanksgiving so not quite as tuned in but I know you've been hard at work preparing this agenda so it's kind of like uh I want to throw it over to you man and just get me up to

speed but the basic question is the same question I think in the bot a lot of bankless listeners mind is like what is SBF still doing is anyone going to bring some accountability to this situation what does this look like yeah it was really the uh video that surfaced that somebody took of SBF and in the Bahamas like running around in his like backpack in a cargo shorts and like it was something like 12 13 14. the boy went to the Bahamas right I think that was that wasn't bit boy that recorded that video but boy is now in the Bahamas uh but like we saw this video of SPF just like running around in the Bahamas like all right like why and why is he not in jail why so like we know he did a bunch of illegal

things we're gonna go through all of the illegal things that he did but there's this big question is like why isn't anyone outside of crypto taking this seriously well people in the chat David right now are saying uh Jayla isn't for rich people right and this is common sentiment is this part of the story here is just like have we grown that cynical rich people just don't go to jail and he's Rich so he's not going to jail uh I think that definitely plays a very significant role in this but it's not just like oh if Rich then no jail there's more to that story which is a part of the story that we're gonna tell here today are you going to talk a little bit about mainstream media's coverage about this too because uh that's been a piece on my on my mind um like why mainstream media is uh is

giving him so much positive coverage not all mainstream media but like some Outlets certainly aren't I don't understand this yeah and there are some Outlets that are giving Sam bakeman freed the time of day and also those same Outlets all also are running like pretty good reports pretty good accounts so it's very mixed like the New York Times And The Wall Street Journal are definitely the big like culprits here like these articles that ran pieces and so like oh like Sam bankman freed says he's sorry and like forgets about the whole theft of the customer deposits and then that same Outlet will actually run like decently well like research report on the whole thing uh and so like what what the hell is going on with that uh and and so there's a lot to unpack there uh part of this answer of course goes

into the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that Sam bakeman freed has donated uh not just to the Democrats or other even the Republicans or to political organizations but non-profits as well and so there's just going to be this massive like audit of the state of money that Sam bankman freed and FTX like sloshed around everywhere and like what what do we do about that fact because that's a very relevant part of the story too well we're gonna talk about all that and I know toward the end of this episode you're going to put on your therapist hat a little bit as well and because I I think there's some psychology here that's maybe persistent psychology that we've seen a pattern emerge across many of these uh folks that have scammed the industry really so I want to get to that too guys before we get in I want to tell

you about our friends and sponsors this is uh in Fiora they are calling all web 3 infrastructure providers to get early access to their decentralized infrastructure Network thinking fear has been criticized as being a centralization vector of ethereum in the past and of course they don't run your individual ethereum node but they run a lot of the archival nodes so they would be like infuria would be maybe behind a metamask transaction or or something like this well they are taking steps to decentralize the infuria network which is pretty key if we're going to build a decentralized future on top of this crypto money system that we have rather

than rely on sbfs of the world we need to decentralize our data providers infrastructure providers I think there's some Early Access people can get here David what are we looking at on the link yeah there is the Early Access program to the decentralized version of infuria which exists in the future if we help it come about there's been a bunch of controversy in inferior in the news lately about just like reporting IP addresses and mapping ethereum addresses there was a bunch of nuanced threads that came out of Dan Finley and Joseph Lubin but this is actually not about that this is about taking the inferior stack the very important role of RPC endpoints in the way that we broadcast transactions to ethereum and doing the thing that we love to do in this space

which is decentralizing it so if you have skills that inferior might want or need to help decentralize their own stack there is a link in the show notes where you can sign up to help that effort uh proceed into the frontier David as you were talking about that uh I was reading the chat window someone said David looking jacked man you've been working out over the holidays that turkey treating you well I I have set a goal to climb a mountain in 2023 and so yeah I've been going to the gym climb a mountain not metaphorically you're talking about I'm talking about literal Mountain yeah that's cool David in his spare time went away from crypto goes and uh you know does ice climbing up glacial sheets all the risks I don't take in crypto I take in my outside

Adventures oh that's great stay healthy my friend that's all I gotta say this show would be pretty boring if it's just me no one would tune in all right so um let's start at the high level of this story and here's kind of the question maybe we need a reminder of like obviously uh people have Banning about the word you fraud and talked about you know scammer there are some legal definitions for what SBF actually did right we could get into the story but I want you to kind of remind us because this is the topic of why isn't SPF a rest and the question of okay some people are saying because rich people don't go to jail others are saying because he didn't do anything illegal can you just remind us of what SBF actually did and we'll talk about

whether it's legal or whether it's not in the Nuance there yeah yeah we got we got the receipts of course and as if anyone listening to this episode like needs to be reminded but we're going to go through all the illegal things that SBF did uh some some things aren't technically illegal but they are Downstream of illegal things and so uh we'll get into all those those as well but I want to start before we get to all of that with this article out of Fortune Fortune Magazine which the title of this is just like could SBF go to prison for the FDX disaster which like the answer is yes you don't you don't even have to ask the question yes he could but yeah well to be fair this is November 13th this was a while ago sure and also the audience to this article

are like not bankless listeners they aren't on crypto Twitter they aren't familiar with FDX so like this is still coming for like going out to people that are still trying to get up to speed with the article or with with the events uh and so this article gives out two reasons about like perhaps what like what it would take to get SBF arrested uh and two complications if you will first there's jurisdiction uh so since FCX is an offshore business with headquarters in the Bahamas and did not cater to Americans defense lawyers could argue that the actions of FTX executives are beyond the reach of U.S law enforcement I'm sure people listening to that are like um that doesn't sound like that the Bahamas has jail yeah the Bahamas also has a jail yeah okay and then the second would be intent uh or so

like you know mismanaging your company and losing a bunch of other people's money is technically not criminal mismanagement happens all the time for a criminal case there has to be like deception right and so these are the two things that we would need to get over in order to prove that SPF needs to go to just prove these in court right you know all of these things of course I feel like Ryan that these are easy things to prove surmountable options very surmountable obstacles uh because like reminder SPF is an American FTX totally serviced American customers it marketed to Americans remember the Super Bowl ad remember the FTX Arena oh yeah I remember that like yeah they're the best Super Bowl ad so it's like no actually coming out of

that it was our favorite um it was super yeah it was it was our favorite yeah it was it was hilarious yeah Larry David who is now being sued for for doing that which is ridiculous but like okay so like jurisdiction and intent uh like jurisdiction I just covered that we don't need to go over like how many Americans lost money some intent there I mean the stories of him like cooking the books behind the scenes having backdoor access from like one set of books to the other and by the way if you did that I think that's maybe legally technically like fraud the bar of fraud but what are we looking at here is this uh yeah you've got a police arrest yeah if you've got a a statement from the police public affairs and Communications Department of uh the Bahamian police saying in light of the collapse of FTX

globally and the provision provisional liquidation of FTX a team of financial investigators from the again bahaman Financial crimes investigation brands are working closely with the baham and Securities Commission to investigate if any criminal misconduct occurred uh November 13th 2022. uh reminder criminal misconduct definitely occurred so uh I mean we're about to get into all of the people that SBF paid money to and I would just like to raise the possibility that if SBF donated to both political parties a bunch of non-profits the New York Times a bunch of media institutions who are going to go through all of these is it also possible that FTX also paid off Bahamian Regulators I don't have the

answer to that question I am just posing that question I don't know what the police are like in the Bahamas but I don't know why I have this stereotype of them being like super chill um I don't know I don't know that that's the case though um but what are we looking at here one million creditors yes in their bankruptcy filing so you know when this this um public affairs communication from from Bahamian police was released two days later we got the actual bankruptcy filing which indicated how many creditors were out of money here why why are we pulling this up uh well because it would imply that if there are over 1 million people or entities who are owed money by FTX that uh it's like a you know uh what's the word uh Smoking Gun

that the criminal activity death definitely occurred if like yes if you owe one million people money like people can find what did you do people can find something you can we can find something illegal that you probably did so the like the likelihood is very very strong uh the vast majority of these one million uh you know creditors are again customers retail who did not consent to their money being sent to Alameda research which is like the main bit of fraud that happened here uh and so there's a bunch of other like things that were about to go down SPF use Alameda research for customer for trading of customer funds the illegal back door in a bespoke bookkeeping system FTX buying 19 million 19 properties in the Bahamas worth 121

million dollars that's not illegal uh unless you do with someone else's money that you stole yes yeah all right so we're gonna get to all of these things and more right after we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible arbitrim1 is pioneering the world of secure ethereum scalability and is continuing to accelerate the web 3 landscape hundreds of projects have already deployed on arbitrum one producing flourishing defy and nft ecosystems with a recent addition of arbitrum Nova gaming and social dapps like Reddit are also now calling Arboretum home both arbitrim1 and Nova leverage the security and decentralization of ethereum and provide a builder experience that's intuitive familiar and fully evm compatible on

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limitations of the evm if you want to learn more there's a link in the show notes to see how you can get involved with a fuel Network all right Ryan we got a long list of you know criminal activity to go through you ready yeah we'll see other options uh and so uh the CNBC article headline of course says Sam bakeman feeds Alameda quietly used FTX customer funds for trading says sources and of course this is the big one this is the big thing the the umbilical cord between FTX and Alameda is the illegal thing um there's a bunch of other things as well but this is a matter of like setting up an exchange and then when you have an exchange uh if you're ever interested in starting an exchange Ryan

uh here's how you would do it you would take in like one customer's Bitcoin and then you would have a one Bitcoin liability to that customer you would also have one Bitcoin and so that matches and so you should never ever not have the funds that customers deposit you are meant to be a full Reserve institution these are the words that I remember coming out of a Nick Carter's mouth when I was listening to his podcast you're are meant to be a full Reserve institution and so the fact that Alameda had this like pipeline of money to trade customers funds is the first obviously very illegal thing to do according to U.S Securities loss right uh in this same article Sam bankman free told CNBC our margin

our margin position took a huge hit implying that FTX sent money to Alameda who then used it on Leverage to gamble on the market right Perhaps Perhaps there might be some laws inside the United States that say that that might be illegal um and then in the same article Alameda was allowed to post the ftt tokens it held as collateral and Bart and so this is the insane thing Alameda research had ftt tokens which it sent to FTX to post as collateral when it was borrowing the funds and so I was like okay like we have this collateral which FTX totally has the money printer for but we'll use this collateral as like legitimate

justification to buying to borrowing customer funds that's insane pretty fresh so so that's a big one uh there's also the uh back door bespoke bookkeeping system that FTX made themselves uh and so there was a back door in their own accounting system that allowed Sam to execute commands that could alter the company's Financial records without alerting anyone else in the company including external Auditors and this was what allowed for the movement of 10 billion dollars in funds to Alameda that didn't trigger any internal or compliance red flags at FTX I bet you they didn't even have any internal like compliance teams but okay so that that is what is that that is

like there's intent there if you create a back door in a bespoke bookkeeping system I feel like that is uh evidence of intent right am I crazy uh it seems like it I mean that's pretty intentful I mean you're that's called cooking the books right it's uh this is Enron level fraud uh and then there's the uh the article about how FTX bought 19 properties for a total of 121 million dollars uh and then inside this article it says separately attorneys for FTX said that one of the company's units remember how like there's this massive org chart of FTX spent 300 million dollars in the Bahamas buying homes and vacation properties for its senior staff

and that FTX was of course run as the personal fiefdom of Sam bankman freed most of these were luxury beachfront homes that this is insane 72 million dollars of like the most expensive property in uh in the Bahamas uh and the the Deeds of these properties which were again bought by a unit of FTX were said that these were used as residences for Key Personnel of FTX like I don't think like it's just dubious that an exchange or any company would buy this much real estate and for their own like C levels execs but then when you combine that of course with like the fact that they were just using customer deposits to do this is like it's not only dubious like it's

illegal to begin with um there's also there's also the fact that SPF took out a one billion dollar loan from Alameda research a personal loan from Alameda research but where did Alameda research get that money well they got it from FTX so Sam Baker's feeds exchange sent it to his prop trading desk look man it's not too much to say he was basically using depositors money as a personal food bank is exactly what he's doing for his parents and himself okay beautiful property here's my favorite one this is the the coindesk article uh and so remember do you remember when um FTX wrote raised 420 million dollars and

it's 420 million 69 000 for the meme race remember that me it's so funny now isn't it super funny you know what else is super funny in that same race SBF sold three million dollars of his own Equity into that funding no not three million oh excuse me 300 300 million 300 300 those are rookie numbers okay this is SBF world you got a 10 100x those numbers three so so while FTX raised 420 million 69 000 Sam bacon free personally sold 300 million dollars of his own stake in FTX somebody in chat by the way saying his

parents are lawyers isn't that crazy the guy the guy knows better than this raised by lawyers and this is what's happening right what's going on yeah apparently at the time when SPF did this he told previous investors that this was partially to reimburse him for money he spent to buy out binance's stake in FTX a few months earlier um like if you're a VC though and you like just put 420 million and the founder takes out 300 million out of that race three quarters of that do you think something is happening off in your head and you'll be like huh this so we got 120 million of this raise to continue like building the company

but Founders just taking out 300 million why did this story not come out until now because investors at the time knew this he told investors of FTX during this raise that he did this because why didn't why didn't they bring this up at the time look we'll have to wait for the movie to get all the kind of dramatization details by the way did you know that um Netflix is signed for the rights of this among like apples fighting for it like there's gonna be so much material I could what you want the story to be uh told yeah yeah because if they tell the story right dramatized yes if they tell the story right hopefully maybe I'm like have too much Faith they're going to tell the difference

between defy and FTX do you think it might not expect you to be very pissed off at the outcome of the stories that are told we will see but like let's take our clue from mainstream media coverage right now because that has been very much mixed to terrible coverage yeah maybe emphasis more on the terrible side of things that's the other part of the story um should we pull up I actually don't have a subscription to New York Times David I forgot to get that Pride of the show but um what is this New York Times article so this is the puff piece that everyone got really really mad about uh so there's this New York Times puff piece that talked about how Sam bankman treats Empire collapsed uh and uh even though you didn't uh subscribe to New

York Times I still pulled out a couple lines uh one of the reasons why according to the New York Times that ftx's Empire collapsed was that it expanded too fast and that they failed to see warning signs how does that how does that land with you right how does that land with me it does not want me to make me want to subscribe to the New York Times uh and the the the a comment on the article that was from another article was that this whole article just uses soft passive language to disguise blame at every single turn uh and so there's a tweet that I thought was pretty useful from uh Trung fan that said that looks like did the command F on the words fraud Enron crime illiquid stolen hidden criminal or backdoor to see if any of

these words showed up in the New York Times article and none of them did uh some for some reason they talked about him getting sleep now I know I personally read this uh article Ryan of course uh and like well that point definitely stands that the there's no word fraud or theft in this article it actually wasn't as Puff PC as I kind of thought it was I don't know if you've read this article or got your take on it but uh like it was an acceptable account of things that happened in FTX that could have been more scathing but was a little bit rounded edges but I still thought it was an acceptable like account of what happened anyway that's okay so you don't think this was as much it's not super

puffy it's just not as deadly as it should have been it's kind of funny because I do feel like many of the biases out of the New York Times Wall Street Journal these other sources are very crypty crypto unfriendly yes and have been um for crypto's entire life cycle you would have expected now that they actually have a smoking gun gun ah we found the scammer the biggest scammer in like maybe modern begging history uh they would have gone hardcore after not only crypto but also the scammer themselves it kind of begs the question of why we got a different outcome here um yeah so this is remember when Sam

bankman free turned what do I call him uh SPF wrote that uh apology to his employees and like it got sent out in a bunch of screenshots yeah so Liz Hoffman of the Wall Street Journal uh tweets out these screenshots she wasn't the source but she tweets out the screenshots to make some commentary uh and she follows up and says well this mostly makes sense to me uh after Sam gave the account for how FTX ran out of funds and like he's like yeah we had a leverage position the Market's turned against us our assets became less than our liabilities uh and then he does he does his napkin math accounting which is embarrassing because he doesn't even know how much FTX has in his books and then Liz Hoffman of the Wall Street Journal responds this mostly

makes sense to me FTX had a lot of collateral 60 billion against not that many liabilities the problem that the collateral was Monopoly money and the liabilities were real money just real basic bankless stuff excuse me banking system uh that's not what happened Liz that's something might happen at all number one is you never trust a Hoffman so I I think that's uh she needs to change her name I'm not changing my name wow that's that's an interesting take um okay but you get a lot of bad takes on on crypto I guess not every mainstream media journalist publication is gonna have I guess great takes on this um what is this from Forbes that we're looking at orbs Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison is a math whiz who loves Harry Potter and risk

wait what did this when was this published November 18th oh my god dude wow among other things and scamming customers and using depositors funds and wow also a math whiz and loves Harry Potter again if you actually read this full length of the article you actually do you actually do get this image of like oh Caroline totally like effed up and this is totally her fault but the headline is that she is a mathwiz who loves Harry Potter and risk is absurd wow that is silly um okay okay this is this is taken down the street was not taken down no uh but okay so here's my favorite one uh this which is which is the Washington Post before FTX collapsed founder poured

Millions into pandemic prevention and so here's most of these initiatives have come to a sudden Hall yeah they have uh so so I'm going to read an excerpt from this uh when the coronavirus pandemic hit and the world shut down in the spring of 2020 many more in the loss of life drops in normalcy Sam bankman freed then a 28 year old cryptocurrency entrepreneur and his brother Gabe a 25 year old Congressional staffer said the pandemic provided them with something else an opportunity to make a difference harnessing the enormous wealth created by FTX The cryptocurrency Exchange that SBF had founded they undertook a project to spend potentially billions of dollars on pandemic prevention a long neglected priority on Capitol Hill even amidst the coronavirus crisis what is this

reporting dude I don't know I don't know that I mean this is either very lazy like reporting or just um completely out of touch with what's actually happening but did this just say that Sam had a brother who is a 25 year old Congressional staffer yeah that's actually news to me I didn't know that I did not know that brother Gabe is a a congressional staffer okay and this family is all over the place man like all over the place like embedded in some of the largest institutions that run the United States is what you mean by all over the place yes that is uh okay and so uh Ryan did you know tomorrow SPF is meant to appear at a New York Times conference I did know this yeah uh so that's how that's happening

tomorrow it's happening virtually I believe is it okay well that makes sense because I believe that's the case remember sandbagman's freeze tweet to see about CC he's like is that you've a guy even allowed in the United States uh well pretty sure Stan Bacon street is not supposed to go to the United States anyway did you see the speaker list for this by the way this looks like a total pose I don't know if he's like are you seeing any amphetamines on the desk um uh there is a picture of amphetamines on the desk that we'll come to later they'll be at the end of the day oh thanks they really delivered on this agenda um did you see who else was was with him uh no okay so I think I I tweeted out kind of a list of the other people who are attending this conference at the

same time because it's kind of like uh uh who's who's this here we go look at this okay mayor of New York City the mayor all right uh Larry Fink so you know BlackRock read Hastings oh Janet Yellen I'm suing her Janet Yellen Mike Pence um Zuck zelenski wow and also SPF and I'm just surprised he hasn't been Uninvited honestly um I don't know like what do you what do you think about this like you're in kind of the content uh game SPF has been on the bankless podcast before um before all of this came to light I'm not convinced that we wouldn't have him on again I I think he deserves an accounting to the crypto industry to

just like somebody to just be like what did you do and why did you do this so I I did DM Sam when he was talking to who was he talking to uh Dave Portnoy uh Dave port and I was like I'm gonna do I'm gonna do an interview with Sam bakeman freed and I sent uh Sam in Twitter DMS that tweet I was like if you go on any media like thing that's not a crypto media thing crypto media platform to talk to to and about crypto like no one's ever like I mean he was beyond the point of repair at that point but it's basically like you have to come talk to the crypto industry and apologize to us and he of course didn't didn't answer that so yeah accounting for your actions right so would I would we have SPF on uh

I think so because also we're not the New York Times who is apparently conflicted and not sober about what happened and we would actually ask the right questions but why I I just still don't understand why would New York Times Washington Post why would they be giving him the softball treatment um is there an answer to that question there is not a concrete answer but there is a bunch of data that points to a very plausible answer uh and the answer is money brownie surprise uh but before before we get to that point there's like a few more tweets that I want to get through did you see the Matt Walsh tweet that just went absolutely viral uh I did yes this is Matt Walsh um correcting yes the Wall Street Journal by the way so for people who can't see on the podcast this

is the Wall Street Journal front page of the Wall Street Journal and the um the title the headline on the front page is FTX collapse wiped out Founders philanthropic aims okay and this is published November 25th so Black Friday the day after you're having your Thanksgiving meal 25th or the 23rd uh this says on the top here November 25th okay okay cool I got the glasses David now I do not I got that seat this is clearer than 2020 to me all right these glasses really help um FDX FTX has collapsed wiped out Founders philanthropic Ames and Matt Walsh revises this headline with something else what it is what does he

say yeah so in big bold Sharpie he writes ftx's fraud wiped out customer money again it's not that complicated what happened on the 20 on the 25th too of November like this is very clear what SPS been up to like evidence has mounted like I can't I can't how did this make it off of the press floor this is after the Vox article where SPF said yeah the whole like woke liberal like effective altruism donation things was just a front that's after he told us this is this okay I'm still not convinced that this isn't just lazy laziness it

could just be laziness do you think it is pretty damn I mean if if it is laziness then what is this state of modern day journalism Ryan I don't know like what are they doing so here's the thing I've um I've always rejected um when people have referred to bankless as journalists I've always rejected that you're not because like I feel like journalists should be at a much higher held to a much higher standard than Bank listings all right we are investors trying to figure this out on the on the journey right thesis driven Media Company yeah so sometimes we're trying to interpret uh events as they come in but like we are not doing in-depth investigative reporting that's for these guys to do right I thought that's what these institutions were set up to do the

Wall Street Journal New York Times Washington Post aren't they supposed to like get to the meat of the story and uncover the facts and give us some distillation of this um this is not the headline that's doing that David yeah uh I would say to put it into a a single sentence bankless is Right would write an article that says ether is ultrasound money and a investigative journalist would write an article that says is ether ultrasound money those are two different things okay so that begs the question then we're getting back to which is like why is the media like this right what hap why are they doing this um what's the reason for this kind of reporting and you said you whispered

into the mic just now money money what what are we looking at from Elon Musk so here's Elon Musk saying if SPF was as good at running a crypto exchange as he was at bribing media FTX would still be solvent which has almost 30 000 likes good good sweet good tweet that is an explanation it's bribing media what does that mean what does it take to Broad media well I I'd love to ask SPF this he did this in a variety of different capacities uh and so uh there's this intercept um journalist uh journalism thing uh which this subtitle for The Intercept is fearless adversarial journalism that holds the powerful accountable uh SPF donated 3.25 million dollars to The

Intercept uh there is wait is this like a non-profit The Intercept non-profit no it's a oh maybe it's a non-profit I actually don't know it's definitely a media an investigative media institution whether it's a non-profit or not I don't know okay I don't know uh oh it's a nonprofit news organization founded by Glenn Greenwald cool um yep okay so there's that uh the next in the list semaphore a new journalism project created by Ben Smith that formerly the media columnist at the New York Times and before that the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed uh SPF gave a grant to semaphore a grant yeah remember uh and then Ryan remember trustless media we recovered this very briefly on a weekly roll-up a long time

ago it was a it raised money to start a media company in crypto called trustless media which I took offense to because my Twitter name is trustless State um but we talked about them anyways because it was a good race uh high production uh and they were actually the bankless killer yeah the bankless killer yeah that was like kind of the wink wink they were also the first organization that did the first big piece on dokwan after the terror collapse they that was their episode zero they like it were somehow got dokwan to do an interview after after uh look at that photo man what the hell after Tara collapsed they got the first scoop with doe Quan you remember this yes I totally do well guess who led the round of trustless

media you're gonna tell me what I already know but why don't you tell everyone else it was Sam bankman free Sam bankman free FTX CEO leads trustless media seed round to help build community-owned web 3 shows can we does that can you go back to the old website does that look Community owned to you well this is what bank this could look like if we actually had some uh fantastic if we actually raised money yeah yeah raise money I you know look uh he's going for something here right like I I guess I get it but um is this is this effectively what it means to buy media is you kind of write checks uh grants through sponsorship and when you can't get any

forays into crypto you kind of found and create your own crypto native web 3 media companies is this effectively what it means I guess so yeah I mean I would imagine there's a bunch of sponsors out there who are like we'll totally sponsor your like Media or I can like run commercials but you have to do this this and this and can you talk can you talk about that so um I feel like we have um we have an idea of what this looks like because we are actually running a media company right and so like we have sponsors that pay for our show I I guess I will um talk about that for a minute our our policy and our approach to sponsorship is always has always been like you have to be willing to fire your

sponsors at any time you can't let them own you that that's policy number one right and so we are never beholden to sponsors never be beholden to sponsors right don't be ever put yourself in a place where you uh require a check from a set of sponsors in order to exist and put your message for it right rather be in a place where you can select and pick your sponsors as you go and drop those that don't align with your values and retain those that that do so that's something that I I feel like we've worked hard at bankless to do and in order to do that you have to like keep small stay Scrappy maintain profitable over be profitable over time and kind of

establish a reputation because I think you can very easily be put in a place where you're owned by sponsors you can also be put in a place where you're owned by uh your investors as well and so um I think this is a challenge if you are funded by like a billionaire Jeff Bezos or somebody in the crypto like this example of trustless media was funded by SPF really hard to write a a piece on SBF or comments and talk about SPF if you're actually funded by the guy Alameda right so that's another thing that um we've avoid avoided doing and um I guess you know our policy towards sponsors has

always been just like um fire any of them if we have to right and so we have let sponsors go in the past um don't sell to the highest bidder never never receive sponsorship for like um content yeah paid content so right paid content is an absolute No-No like always has been for Bank list can we can you define paid content because when we were taught when we had our bit Boy show people like Bank list receives money for their sponsors what the hell's what the hell is the difference between what we were talking about bit boy what is saying that Iran what is paid content yeah paid content means like it looks like it's organic content right so let's say we wrote an article on bankless and it looked like it was organic content

but it was really funded by some sponsor FTX or something like this and so it was it was actually a puff piece right right um or or a podcast a show let's say the reason we're having so-and-so on a show is because they have paid to be on the show something like that and so disclosed or undisclosed and then disclosure on this goes if it is disclosed like that's one business model as long as you're extremely explicit about it I agree but even then it can become kind of a slippery slope right right of like you're just you're disclosing it but like so we have never done paid content pieces we always segment our sponsors as like hey this is a sponsor like it's very clear when

bankless runs an ad like these are these are advertisers anyway it's not perfect right but um it is a way to put some firewalls in our media entity so that we can't be purchased by a sandbankment freed or an FTX right right and I think that becomes hard uh over time if you know maybe you're an established institution your your revenue is down your subscribers are down all of these things there's mounting pressure and so there can be external pressures that that cause you to take sponsor funds that you wouldn't ordinarily take right um we've been we've always tried to be very diligent on that and like make sure that that um or fire walled off from that and

we don't have that that kind of risk and I think other crypto media entities do that fairly well um so I guess that is how you buy by media though right you could like pay for content and pay pay for a puff piece you could donate to the right right people you can um spend on sponsorship money with kind of the wink wig nudge nudge oh you're going to cover us favorably if we spend on you that sort of thing oh I have a I have plenty to talk about there and actually Balaji has plenty to talk about there uh because this Bellagio I think did a pretty good like autopsy of the whole like confusion it's like is the media mainstream media paid off is it not what the hell is going on uh so

he put a thread together which which I I want to read uh and then he also gets into some uh some technical some like legal terms which uh he says like if you lost money and fex you should be familiar with Easter which I will go through uh Ryan you wanted to share balaji's thread while I go through this oh yeah I was just looking at it here let me share my screen this is blushy now yeah okay so blaji says the net result of FTX is that billions of dollars were stolen from crypto investors to give Democrat aligned politicians non-profits and journalists this is why there may be no prosecution so this brings us to kind of the punch line of the whole episode why isn't SBF in jail well because he spent hundreds of millions of dollars on political organizations Pacs non-profits and

journalists can I can I just pause this is a stronger articulation of what you just said because part of the answer if Y is an SBF in jail is just because it's too soon like we have to prove this case she has to be arrested like we have some probable cause before arresting all of these things but balaji's making the case that he may never go to jail right in fact there might never be prosecution here so let's segment that out it's not that SPF isn't in jail now it's that he might never face accountability for his actions right so yeah go on what does bellagi say yeah so Balaji of course asked the question so why is SPF so protected and answers he was basically Soros Jr just with stolen

customer money and evidently bought off entire media non-profit political and Regulatory establishments uh the author of this article that blodges ranking uh linking is he says a born rich journalist so he knows of Sam begman Freed's milieu his like you know uh comrades if you will the author of what uh the article that he is uh he is citing in this tweet right here okay um uh and so the the article says the Optics would look awful it's if SPF is giving away money to whiz-kid political projects just as millions of FTX customers lose their deposits uh and then Balaji says the overall picture you get is of rats scurrying around now that SBS money has been cut off and very much

not wanting to defraud crypto investors to claw back those stolen funds we'll get into what a club back is in a second um and so Bellagio continues and says the stage is set for an absolutely insane zero-sum match on one side one million crypto investors robbed of 10 millions of dollars by SPF on the other side a network of dark money Democrats who will fight to keep as much of those stolen funds as possible so this tension is one of the big answers to the question as to why SBF isn't arrested yet and this is the the juxtaposition if you believe Balaji if you believe this this angle of things is that we have you know a bunch of people who would like their money back because it was stolen from them by SBF and crew and then

there's a bunch of political organizations who now have a bunch of money and would like to stay in power and not give that money back because you know we need money to stay in power and so Balaji continues and says the bankruptcy case may play out on social media crypto investors to get FTX funds back may hire lawyers like Irving Pickard who Claude back 75 cents on the dollar for madoff's victims Bernie Madoff victims and so who would they Claude the money back from of course it's the groups that SBF funded and so uh just continue a few more tweets here the fundamental question is when did SPF start stealing from customers and how much did he steal and Ryan like throughout the reporting we've there's

pretty strong indications that the fraud of FCX actually started all the way back in 2021 because if you remember Alameda research posted a net loss of three billion dollars on their tax returns on 2021 full year for crypto right and lose money and SPF started shooting from the hip with political donations before 2022 back in 2021 and so SBF was sending while his big hedge fund Alameda was taking the the fat L he was still spending a ton of money on political donations on non-profits on media entities and so this fraud might may go as far back as uh money being spent in 2021

so that's crazy uh and so blaji says this can only be answered by forensic accounting so hopefully that is uh you know some forensic analysis that's going on right now uh and so uh on his uh one one more tweet yeah one more tweet uh he goes the list of all the donations for this David it says the headline amount given to Democrat politicians is 37 million but understates it FDX Foundation alone was 190 million oh my God that is getting to Soros level donations here right yeah and so the next tweet 69 million dollars in political donations mostly to Democrats but also to some Republicans 109 million dollars to a foundation that's the FTX

128 million dollars to a political action committee uh you know that political action committee you know which one that is Ryan I'm sure it was protecting D5 freedoms uh it was it was what was it uh [ __ ] where's my notes uh it's I can't remember the title it's like fright for Freedom it's something it's two F's fight for freed it's uh it's his mom's Super PAC or oh cool yeah so he sent 120 for a little uh nepotism in there exactly he sent 128 million dollars to his mom's political action well he's buying his parents houses in the Bahamas right they're in on this too right yeah wow right uh okay actually yeah okay but one one piece for this David what I wasn't aware of and going through

bellagi's Suite is the clawback potential here yeah mine mine sorry mind the gap was uh the pack that was started by banking sandbagman Freed's money which received 120 million what do what does mine the gaps do mind the gap uh let me quickly Google protect people from like metros Subways I don't step out too far uh left wing Super PAC dedicated to helping Democratic political candidates win elections okay so this is also political uh donation here yes okay so the clawback piece is the part that's new to me I didn't realize that that could be right this money could be clawed back which maybe lends some Credence because I've always like why is mainstream media now

once this guy's ship is sunk why are rather than distancing themselves and condemning him and pretending like they are part of the group that's always hated SPF or always thought he was suspect I would I would anticipate that's the default reaction mainstream media but blasi's saying it's maybe it's because they don't want their money to be clotted back exactly yeah so if you actually scroll down a few more uh tweets uh blazzy titles this week the crypto clawback anyone with money on FTX may want to learn the following terms fall back look back fraudulent conveyance unjust enrichment avoidable preference now right I went again ahead and did some Googling so I've got some of these terms defined here so if anyone listening has lost money in FTX and is curious as to what these means here we

go are you a lawyer now David I'm so such a lawyer armchair Bank list is not legal advice I'm just reading definitions here uh clawback uh the term clawback refers to any money or benefits that have been given out but are required to be returned due to special circumstances or events such as the monies having been received as a result of a financial crime wow that seems relevant fraudulent conveyance the transfer of property for the express purpose of putting it beyond the reach of creditors making creditors have to bring a lawsuit to uh to the courts in order to void the transfer so making it hard to get your call back yes exactly unjustly enrichment when party a confers a

benefit to party B without party B providing proper restitution AKA an unequal exchange of value for example the recipients of political donations from FTX who did not provide an equal and opposite return of value for those donations therefore implying that the actual compensation was political protection um wait wait wait wait isn't that all political donation is that what lobbyists do legally well okay it depends on definitions all right and then avoidable preference when there is a transfer of assets to a creditor shortly before a debtor files for bankruptcy protection recipient of these assets must return them to the bankruptcy estate but basically if you kind of withdrew from FTX and you're able to get your funds out or something

like this um that would be avoidable preference yep so all of these things seem kind of bad if you got money from FTX yeah yeah so so if anyone is listening who got money from FTX you have to give it back you that's probably you have to prove this in court and I guess you're trying to disprove it in court yeah how does that yeah but if you're trying to disprove it that you have to give it back who are you because that is credit like that's customers money you kind of suck right yeah you kind of suck outside yeah well somebody's got to take the L so somebody does have to take the L so maybe it should be depositors

then that's what some these donation recipients are probably going to argue in court yeah yeah okay so I want to speed run through the rest of this uh show rhyme because we actually have a representative a correspondent in the Bahamas standing by to come on yeah bankless correspondent uh so let's speed run through some of the uh political donations so we can get to our our correspondent in the Bahamian uh aisles if you will it's not bit boy okay okay so uh five million dollars donated to Joe Biden for the 2021 uh presidential campaign yes 2022 midterm election cycle uh 40 million dollars donated to mostly

Democratic politicians making him the second largest financial backer after George Soros uh go on he's also uh paid for its speaking opportunities to sit on stage with none other than Bill Clinton but FTX us hey this is Tony Blair too oh Tony Blair look at that yeah uh FTX U.S also donated three quarters of a million dollars to Congressional leadership fund and 150 000 to the American Patriots pack these are uh Republican uh uh um entities right uh according to a Bloomberg report FTX donated one million dollars to the Senate leadership fund a Super PAC associated with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell uh and uh it just goes on and on and on I do

want to shout out to Beto o'rouruk who returned one million dollars that was donated by SPF uh the money on October 11th SBF sent Beto o'rouruk one million dollars uh but that one million dollars was returned not not after FTX imploded but before because the contribution was unsolicited and campaign and the uh campaign's upcoming report would show that this uh one million dollar donation was returned on November 4th so I just want to do a tip of the hat to Beto o'ruke for returning thank you for returning one million dollars because it didn't pass the sniff test well done wait you could do that if you're a politician yes

yes you can give money back that seems counterproductive I don't know about this David okay well Ryan should we go to our reporter in the field uh are we ready for that I think we're I'm ready I'm curious to see who it is yeah all right so we have our our correspondent in the field uh he's gonna turn on his camera here in a sec uh Gabriel I knew this would be good yeah what's up Gabriel Gabriel what's up man yeah my friends how are you sir very good I um must be quieter than usual because I am in enemy territory because what's going on I am deep in the Bahamas here exploring

looking for Clues right now and situated in the island which is only kilometers away from the Albany which is the residence of SPF and the poly tools tell what have you learned is there any sign of SPF what have I learned what have I I lost you there there is no sign of SPF I have all of my highest trackers um open on all tabs on my computer flight trackers boat trackers anything that goes into international territory we will I will be pinged immediately and I will I will make a beeline for it so do not worry rest

assured he's in the penthouse Gabriel does SBF know you're there does does he does he know enough to fear you yet well I sent them a message I asked him if he was busy this week so maybe he will get lunch or something are you seeing a screenshot have you seen bitboy while you're there I have not seen Bitcoin but I would not hesitate to challenge oh I want to hear the rest of that I think there was a challenge that was issued David I think there was a challenge Gabriel you're breaking up is probably spf's uh secret anti-signal drones [Music]

thank you we appreciate you uh popping in and giving us the update okay hold on wait before I go make sure if anyone has any intelligence if anyone has any information please send me a DM it is of utmost importance I will follow any hot leads find me on Twitter Gabrielle Haynes same on telegram as well if you're scared I know elon's in his pocket yeah Thanksgiving God's word we appreciate you man keep us updated keep tracking him down no problem no problem all right well so we do have people on the ground maybe we do have people on

the ground yeah looking for justice um okay so what do you think the psychology of all of this is I I know you wanted to talk about this and I I've seen a lot of um you know armchair psychological profiles I'm talking about like amphetamines playing a role talking about the psyche of a sandbag Retreat I think look I guess the goal here in like people like why do you even care about the psychology of this person for me it's just about it's also about um kind of looking for the early warning signs seeing sort of the patterns so uh the crypto industry doesn't get duped again because this keeps happening and I feel like it's it's even now it's it's

still happening people in crypto like there are other megalomaniac scammers that the crypto industry is still propping up like even now and so yeah what are your thoughts on the kind of the psychology of this situation what was SPF thinking what's this profile yeah so I remember that uh crypto grifters uh video that I made on that uh that short video and I talked about like the common denominators behind all of the grifters of crypto like what what draws them all together uh and there are some elements of uh Sam begman free story that is very very much the same as all of them uh but there's also some some unique ones right uh so like uh let's see did I put that tweet in there no I don't think I did

um for so like uh dokwan massively bombastic individual clearly was like really stroking his ego while uh like the Luna price was going up through the roof and he also had this like massive Army of lunatic self-described lunatics that just like enabled the hell out of him as in like he couldn't do anything wrong because any tweet that he would tweet would immediately get like 10 000 likes and a bunch of people just like piling on on whatever like thing that that doquan would produce right like this is the story of Daniel sesta this is like the story of Thrones Capital there's like these people in crypto that their ego is too like it's too like when it gets big and inflated they love

it and they want more and we saw this same sort of behavior with SPF even though like it kind of threw us all for a loop because like here's this modest guy in like a sweaty t-shirt and New Balances and cargo shorts and he's Plastering His Image about effective altruism all over the world and it was like it was different from Thrones Capital it was different from dokwan it was different from Daniel Cessna but it was still like SBF the character SPF the ego was large and some people definitely called SPF out but not as you know not it wasn't as obvious as you know Del Quan for example right do you know by the way where I first saw this massive contrast between SBF and um and some of the others is like when we had that

conversation uh after all of this unfolded with Jesse Powell Kraken yeah another exchange founder but incredibly understated yes like he is like I traitor god um savior of crypto Persona is he's almost like kind of in the background working and there's such a contrast there between Jesse Powell and an SPF but yeah go on so uh there's a article I found that I actually did not see circulate on crypto Twitter while I was making this agenda uh Ryan did you know that FTX employed a therapist on staff for 32 hours a week just for coaching services to FTX employees I didn't I I had heard this was it could this

therapist prescribe medication as well I believe they could or if this is someone else um so if you're a therapist you can prescribe very limited medication it's a psychiatrist that can prescribe medication and this person is not a psychiatrist person is not a psychiatric psychiatrist they were just a therapist okay um uh and so there's this quote from the article that I'll read um and if you think you're screen sharing Ryan you're not uh someone can't open it I don't have the New York Times sad and so in this article uh so the therapist uh was first off very surprised as to the events that took place when really when people said that like oh yeah SPF is like this sociopath who has zero empathy for anyone that was

a surprise to him and so like while it would be like super easy to be like uh SPF is this like insane character and like we all saw it coming and like he was just like it was blah blah blah it was actually not it's much more nuanced the therapist was uh he had a uh when asking about the the culture at FTX uh Dr Leonard is his name uh let's see what's the full name I can't remember Dr Leonard says it was a very tame Place uh the higher-ups this was also asking about like uh the perhaps like orgies that were going on if you remember those rumors uh Dr Leonard said it was a very tame Place FTX was the higher ups they mostly played chess and board games there was no partying they were under

sexed if anything as a director uh you know those people really felt like it was a family said the doctor I think that that's why this is so devastating for all of us for this to be over citing about the kind of the culture at FTX there was like very much a family thing but also if you cross-reference that with a few other things FTX employees lived in a uh it lived in a Palladio what is that word uh palatial political group house like uh yep yeah a platial group house several several of them uh used to be in romantic relationships with one another uh and of course this is where SBF had rumored to be dating uh Caroline Ellison the the CEO right okay so group housing they all they all dated each other uh and then also of course

there is just the rampant use of amphetamines which has come out post FTX collapse that the leadership totally encouraged employees to take like any sort of like amphetamine they had like like intimate knowledge of well this amphetamine does this to you if you want to do this this amphetamine does that too if you want to do that okay so we have we have we have SPF and in Caroline and they're they're living together there's like group dating going on uh they are spending all of their time together it's starting to sound kind of like a cult so this is when groupthink takes over and this is when like the same what I was talking to with like the Frog Army that was enabling dokwan well this group of people just enabled themselves and they were on like you saw Sam bankman freed when we had him on with Eric Voorhees

and then there was like 17 other interviews where the guy is literally vibrating yeah and so if you're taking too much amphetamines like you cannot actually come to terms with what reality is uh and so this is probably part of one of the big reasons why FTX got as crazy as it was it's is drug use dude like it's insane uh and so like the there was this a picture I think it was like uh autism capital on Twitter which I know is an interesting uh Twitter handle name that uh found this one drug uh called uh SRAM SRAM or something M Sam M Sam how do you spell that um yes Sam yeah it's a combination of uh M and Sam is kind of the name it's

because the the creator of this named it after his children wow well in fact the fact that it's Sam is in there is pretty interesting um so the by the the the like listed um what do you call the side effects of this thing is like Risk taking and gambling Behavior Uh and like basically everything that you like like you would put into like a fraudulent company that is like a giganticism it probably exacerbated all of this I I think what's interesting about what you just said though is um there is kind of this character chair afterwards of uh clear sociopath clear psychopath um it's interesting if this if you could believe what this therapist is saying um and he's not in himself being kind of

uh yeah I guess delusional about it um this therapist didn't think so yeah therapist it's very interesting right like so either he was very good at fooling a large number of people um or maybe the portrait of him being sort of pure sociopath psychopath is not accurate um I'm not sure I I know which which would be more interesting for Hollywood to cover is definitely the like drug drug orgy kind of line of thought so maybe that's what we'll see coming out of there yeah um you wanted me to share this tweet yeah so here here's the autism Capital tweet that that is identified the msim like uh rapper on uh Sam's desk a drug normally used to treat depression

or Parkinson's off-label for its alertness and focus benefits uh so I can actually tap into uh some of my psychology background uh so Parkinson's and depression is like a lack of dopamine and so dopamine is highly associated with like attention and focus and also reward seeking behavior um Parkinson's just happens to be a lack of dopamine so if you increase your dopamine like your Parkinson's systems go away uh and so uh this is why when some of the uh the uh things that uh are the likely to happen the side effects thank you is the word I'm going for side effects is like impulse control because if you have this system that is tinkering with your reward Pathways uh you are you can't control your impulses

uh and so literally on this side on the side like the warnings of this drug are the the side effects of uncontrolled spending of money binge eating remember how SPF got gained a ton of weight in the last like year um and other intense urges right uh and so all of these things are like adjacent to so many of the conversations that have been going on and so like this is a story of like a kid without any like oversight no parents in the room enabled a bunch of his friends didn't really think to have any sort of like controls over the funds of FTX uh put a bunch of like-minded friends in the same room they all live together they all started using amphetamines to be high performers uh

and eventually it just got too much it was just like one gigantic Crescendo and eventually it blew up what's interesting about all of this is that's probably the legal defense I would use it's if I'm oh I do not think that is a legal defense I don't know man it was the drugs they made me crazy it's a side effect look at all of this uh I don't know I mean which brings us to I guess kind of the the final thought for this episode and the question we started with is SBF going to jail um why is he not already in jail so uh what what do you think about this oh all the like fact patterns considered so we've got somebody who's clearly doing um it's clearly illegal activity it's really unethical activity

um ripping off millions of people billions of dollars um you know give a huge black eye to the industry they cause I don't know how many crypto Banks to enter chapter 11 block 5 just earlier this week after chapter 11 going bankrupt from this destroyed lives I wouldn't be surprised if there was like personal injury uh in some destroyed lives as a result of this like caused a lot of harm and pain to a lot of people um not in jail maybe it's getting softball treatment from someone mainstream media as a result of of what what are the motivations here political donations uh you know something else like wanting to prevent clawbacks that's blushy's Theory anyway and then we've got like kind of a psychological uh I

guess profile starting to emerge here how do you think this ends does SBF actually go to jail I mean I don't I'm not an expert in this particular matter I'm like the odds of whether he ends in jail or not I think the thought that I do have is I know you and I are both big fans of Ray dalio's um book about uh the changing World orders and what did what did Ray dalio do to write this book he went back in time to look at uh when Empires rise and fall and why do they rise and fall and there was a part uh I think even in his earlier book which talked about the fall of the Roman Empire and talk and he said that people were aware of the decline of the Roman Empire before it collapsed like people saw the writing on the walls

right and one of those one of the big writings on the walls were like people just started to become blatantly corrupt and they stopped caring about public opinion they instead of doing things you know behind closed doors they just did it out in the open uh and that was like well it's one of the last symptoms of like a falling Empire is like just total corruption total total blatant corruption and no one cares uh and that's like the last thing that happens before everything breaks down and like every time I see like Nancy Pelosi making public trades about laws that she's about to enact that's what I think of and now when I see SBF sending out hundreds of millions of dollars to political organizations and the political organizations are like well we don't want to give it back because we want to stay in power which

is basically just like giving a thumbs up to fraud saying hey thanks for the fraud because you gave us a hundred million dollars I'm thinking the same thing man just the end stage late late stage Empire debt cycle late stage Empire problem of we've got corruption in the system yeah so I I think you'd say that if SBF is not held to account not prosecuted for this right I mean on the flip side of this all right um uh Elizabeth Holmes theranos founder just went to jail for 11 years did she did she don't donate any money to political organizations I don't know I I guess it's probably too early to call at some level but if this turns out to be a case where we get no prosecution and we

have people like Alex percev who let me just remind everyone listening right now is a developer of Open Source privacy Tools in crypto for ethereum developed a smart contract called Tornado cash is now in jail has been in jail for three months uh is going to be in jail for at least another three months it was brought to jail without charges actually confiscated his his material possessions they went and they repoed his car David took his personal property okay what's his crime open source privacy tools for the world they repoed his car and SPF has 19 properties in the Bahamas let's see where it all falls out I you know I'm a

little hesitant right now because we don't know what's going to happen yet the legal system does take time let's put that out there but if in six months time a year's time two years time we have someone who has is so is so wealthy is so well connected has given to the right politicians and let's call what is bribe the right people such that this individual faces no consequences for their for their actions this is late stage Empire this is blatant corruption and I think we've already seen a number of those cases right it goes back to kind of a Epstein didn't kill himself right type stuff like it's

another Tremor I guess [Music] um here's the thing though David extra Insidious part about this is the industry he did this in is crypto right and now so we get to the end of this and it feels um how in the world are we supposed to say you and I a technology that we believe in right protocols not people code not Kings right how are we supposed to now defend crypto and say oh actually crypto is the way out of this and surface level you tell me crypto is the way out of this right no crypto is to enable this yeah crypto is the way SPF stole all of that money and you're

telling me crypto is the way out you're telling me protocols can solve this you might say no look it's nuanced this was another Banker that was like entering the crypto and he had custody of your keys like if you don't give up your private Keys you know then uh you become the bank you don't have to trust this other individual and so yeah actually crypto is the way out that falls on death death ears right now which is why I'm so infuriated in this particular case because um man how many years of like how many years have we been doing this podcast bankless people how to take their private keys go bankless decentralized Finance of the way out um we have to trust third parties like Sam bega freed and now here we are in crypto in the same so I don't even feel like we're in a position to say oh and

all those problems that you just described or some of those problems a subset of those problems with late stage Empire and late stage capitalism all these things uh and crypto is the way out you have the corruption problems you have well like we need to create code that is not corruptable it's uncorruptable like decentralization what is it it's corruption resistance technology that's what it is the bottom line it's really hard to make the case for crypto at this point yeah so what do we do with that people just like conflate these things um but I will take another Leaf out of the pocket of uh uh the on the bring podcast where Matt was Matt uh Walsh was talking about this exact point where uh people would report New York Times mainstream media would report on uh the collapse of FTX then they would be like

their reaction would be like oh it's it's so confusing there's like these crypto things and like there's these tokens and like I'm just really confused about it and Matt responded like it's not that confusing he stole 10 billion dollars like it wasn't it wasn't crypto it was what what caused the collapse of FTX a lack of Regulation a lack of oversight and the fact that again the SEC pushed all of this stuff offshore because the Gary genslers of the world are like effing up their jobs and so like yes it's it's say oh D5 fixes this is like such an old thing to say but at the end of the day it's just like that is the truth I'm a fundamental believer that the truth

always comes out because hiding the truth is always harder than than fabricating the truth or their own private Keys would have fixed this yeah you can't steal your money if he doesn't have your crypto right so this is a harsh way to learn it but um that's why maybe he's not in jail we'll have to see uh where this goes from here anything else you want to say David I had fun putting this agenda together thanks for doing this man yeah I mean is this what I'd love to hear from the chat uh we usually Reserve this show slot for guests but lately we felt that actually it's just better to just talk about the updated news over the last seven days so I'd love to hear from the chat what kind of content because like at some point

we're not going to want to talk about FTX at some point we're going to want to go back to regular scheduled programming of bankless stuff I would love to hear from the chat uh what you guys want us to talk about I think we're getting close to that David I I feel like um this may take a little bit longer to heal but I can't wait to go back to talking about like projects that are building in the space again uh and get back together yeah dude I can't wait to honestly talk about 2023 starts I can't wait in crypto anyway to leave 2022 behind us and like let's start rebuilding this thing right yeah uh all right guys we appreciate you tuning in as always I gotta say none of this has been Financial advice nor legal

advice nor journalist advice I don't know and I'm also not a psychologist yeah David's also a nice psychologist no medical advice here either uh as you know we say this at the end of every show eth is risky crypto's risky so it's Bitcoin so it's defy so are centralized exchanges for sure you could lose what you put in but we're headed west this is the frontier it's not for everyone but thanks for joining us on the bankless journey sequence is the all-in-one developer platform you need to build web 3 games and applications for your users sequence is a smart wallet and it's the easiest most intuitive onboarding your users will ever experience and comes with all the features users need to feel empowered in the web 3 world multi-chain support nft display and users can buy sfts nfts and crypto directly with a

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