SBF Trial Update: Damning Testimonies and What's at Stake

Transcript

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show. All right, everyone. Back with another round up. Back with popular demand, we have Casey Wagner, senior reporter at Blockworks. Casey, welcome back. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, I I was like 50/50 that I was that I was going to get the the look back after you came on. I thought Santi was going to get me, but I hired a bunch of trolls to just comment on YouTube saying "Yano out." Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You got So, my different alt accounts, yeah. Engagement farming, yeah, exactly. Anyways, it got to my head, so Um Good.

So, Casey, fill us in. So, you you've been at the courthouse. You I saw you just got back into the Blockworks office today. You were there all day. Tell tell us about what's going on this week. Yeah. Um so, the trial's on week three for those who've not been following it as closely. Um when I left, they were on the government's almost done. They think that they'll rest their case early on next week. Um there's actually a break. There's no court on Friday of this week or Monday through Wednesday of next week. The judge has a conference, but that's good news for the defense.

They'll have a lot longer to prepare. Um the government's expected to rest next Thursday morning, and the defense will start that afternoon. Um the defense asked the judge if they could start the following Friday instead of that day. Uh, the judge denied that. Um, it's looking and sounding anecdotally more likely that Sam will take the stand. So, which personally I hope he does. I think it would be great to watch. Um, but we'll have to see. Hm. Do you think uh I mean is do you read much into this idea that the government's going to wrap up early?

I think So, what I'll say about that is the government yesterday, they pulled two witnesses that the judge was really upset about. The judge basically said, "This was pointless. This was a waste of time. You've made your point." Um, one of the witnesses was the former director of policy at FTX, and she actually joined in April 2022, and then obviously left in November 2022. Um, so she wasn't there for the parts where FTX was drafting their policy statements. Um, I don't know if you all remember there was a blog on FTX's website that really outlined all of their plans. Sam testified, I think,

three times in front of the House and Senate in 2021. This policy director was not there for any of that, so she couldn't speak to it. Um, and basically what the judge ended up saying was the government was using her as a mannequin. Um, just to like show videos and clips of Sam's testimonies, which again, she wasn't there for. And the judge was really upset. He said that it was just a massive waste of time. It was a waste of resources. You know, they they brought this woman in from DC. Um, the second witness that the judge was really upset about um was someone that works at Google, and their role at Google is to respond to government subpoenas. And the prosecution basically called him to confirm that all of the

Google Docs and spreadsheets that have been entered into evidence are authentic. Um he was on the stand for I mean it felt like 10 minutes, maybe it was half an hour, but in court time that's incredibly short. Um they flew him in from Texas, and Kaplan was like, "Again, it's a massive waste of resources. You know, these are public funds being used to to fund the prosecution's case, and this witness truly added nothing." Um so I would assume that after those comments from Kaplan, the government is thinking a little bit more carefully. Um you know, their witness list is extremely long.

They're obviously not calling everyone on it. Um personally, as someone that's that's been in the courtroom, I think that they made their point several days ago, but you know, when you get into this burden of proof, they have to have the jury believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Sam committed these crimes. Um there's very specific pieces of evidence that go with each individual count. He's facing seven counts. So there are like boxes that they need to check in that sense, but Yeah. I think that their point has has clearly been made. Yeah. So when we recorded the episode 2 weeks ago um we that day Caroline, I think was called in as a witness, and then it was a few day I think it was a couple of days where she went in, and that was like the star, you know, witness.

Yes. Um then you had Nishad, I believe, another co-founder um this week. So maybe get us up to speed on kind of your highlight of all of that, and kind of the the more kind of salient points. Yeah, definitely. Um Caroline lasted like 4 days. She went from week two or week one into week two. Um it was it was damning. I mean, she's facing 110 years in prison. Um she's facing seven counts, which is actually the same that Sam's facing. They're a little bit different, but all for fraud and conspiracy.

She she got really emotional. She started crying a couple times um on like her fourth day in court, I think, when she finally finished, when she walked off the stand out of the courtroom, like she was breaking down. I don't know if it seemed like it was just relief that that she was done. Um, you know, she was on the stand for so many hours just answering really, really hard questions. But again, as part of her crop cooperation agreement with the government, um, the more forthcoming she is and the more that she helps the prosecution prove their case, um, potentially the better sentence she'll receive. So, obviously the defense was trying to really hammer in that point that she's speaking in a way that would help her in the end.

And this judge that's presiding over Sam's case will also be sentencing Caroline. Her sentence hasn't been scheduled yet, but it does depend to some extent on how well she did over the last couple days. Um, and I would say like the highlights from that she knew so early on that they were using customer funds. She said that it really stressed her out. She said that she knew it was wrong, but she continued doing it. She said that she actually created the falsified financial statements that they sent to investors, um, at Sam's direction. Although she said that Sam instructed her to do, but she very knowingly did commit fraud. And she was very clear about that. So, it was it was damning,

for sure. Yeah. Um, what about uh, what is it? Nishad? Nishant? Nishad, yeah, that's right. Yeah, so Nishad's saying Nishad, Gary, and Caroline are are kind of the inner circle um, that have all been charged. Um, all of them have taken cooperation agreements with the government. Caroline's facing the most time. I think Nishad's facing like 65 years. I'm not quite sure about Gary. Um, Nishad's testimony, you say the defense did a better job at kind of countering his story. Nishad had a very similar narrative that, you know, when he found out, which was later than when Caroline found out, about the missing

funds, about, you know, this money being transferred out of FTX customers' accounts and into Alameda's account, um Nishad said that he felt very guilty, he was very concerned, he knew that there was a massive hole in the balance sheet. Um you know, he's all this whole group um Sam recruited back in 2018 from the effective altruist community. Um and Nishad was really the only one that like really kind of mentioned that on the stand. He didn't say effective altruist, but he kept speaking about like, you know, wanting to to make money and and to do it in ethical way and to spread the money in an ethical way, and that was really at what FTX and Alameda were doing was really at odds with his

personal beliefs. But as the defense pointed out, he still did it. Um the defense actually pointed out, so there were a lot of personal loans that Alameda made to Sam and Gary and Nishad. Um Nishad actually received a loan, I think in October 2022 to buy a home for like two million dollars, three million dollars, something around there. Um and this was after he knew that they were missing all of this money. So the defense is like, "Okay, well if you felt so guilty, if you knew it was so wrong, why did you continue to take out loans and buy property?" Um so that was a small win. The defense hasn't had many, I'll say, but again, like they're all they're saying

the same thing, they're corroborating each other's stories. Um and they keep kind of going back to this sense of Sam told us to do this and Sam was the ringleader. And and that really is the key, right? Which is always pinning it back to Sam. Like the the the the government really wants to make it very clear that Sam was the mastermind orchestrating all of this knowingly, and he had lieutenants under him, but he was always in the know and directing them. Um and it was a very intimidating environment for all these kind of like lieutenants of his. Even though they were co-founders, he was very much in charge and and knew about it.

Yeah, definitely. And going back to the government's burden of proof with some of these a lot of the charges that Sam is facing is conspiracy. And so when the jury's in the room deliberating, they need to prove or believe without a reasonable doubt that Sam conspired with at least one other person. And if it was only him, it conspiracy counts wouldn't stick. Can you get a sense of um just how the jury is feeling? Like do they show their emotions? Do they show anger towards Sam or other emotions? Yeah, the jury's it's been fun actually So you get there so early so you can be in the courtroom and and see what's happening and you know, Sam's parents were there and you can see the jury's reactions. Um a few of them have been asleep like almost

the entire time. Um the judge hasn't said anything about it which is strange. I actually wrote about this for Blockworks. Um I spoke to an attorney and it's I can only assume that the members of the jury that are asleep, the defense is fine with it because they think that these jurors would probably find Sam guilty anyway. But if the defense or the prosecution for that matter wants to use any of this in an appeal, um they would have to bring it to the judge and say they would have to put it in the record that a juror has been sleeping.

Um every attorney I've talked to has said that Sam's team is without a doubt already working on the appeal. So it's it's interesting that they haven't brought it up, but to answer your question, the jury's bored. Um there's a lot of spreadsheets. They've had several expert witnesses that are just going through like pages and pages of cell phone documents and financial statements and bank statements and I mean I'm bored at points. This isn't like a murder where there's like drama around every corner. No, it's white-collar crime. Like and they're they're trying to prove wire fraud. So, I guess the two Yeah, things that The The two more important things that I picked up on uh maybe there's others, but one was there is kind of these chats that have been screenshotted. I know who I don't

know who actually took them, but there's one where they very clearly like the priorities of Sam. We talked about this in the prior round up um um which was one of those was like taking down Binance or or actually placing regulator directing regulators attention to Binance. And that's very interesting um when you think about everything that's going on of course now with Binance and um you know, how the government's going after them um you know, Sam I think did a very proactive effort with the donations buying this kind of political goodwill.

Uh there was like over 35 like I think it was Ryan Salame who did who did a lot of these kind of political uh donations through a bunch of other people. Um but yeah, it was uh pretty pretty interesting to see that. And the other one was um I guess this uh uh intent to like bribe Chinese government officials because they had over a hundred million dollars or a billion dollars stuck in uh two Chinese-based exchanges and they Yeah, it was OKX and and Huobi I think. Yeah Huobi yeah.

Yeah. And so, they bribed like it was to the order of a hundred million to get out like a it was basically a ten percent tax to get your money uh out of China. Uh and so, those two were I don't know if that's included in the sentence or they mostly focused on bribing like cuz like that's a that's a foreign corrupt practices act or whatever. The So, that charge specifically is not included in this particular criminal trial. Um he's not Sam is not currently been charged with bribery in any sense. He might be later. Um there is another trial that's scheduled for March that deals specifically with the campaign finance stuff.

Which is interesting because the government has spent a really long time talking about campaign finance fraud. They've talked about how they funneled money through Alameda to Nishad and Gary who made donations and Ryan who made personal donations and how the money went through. Nishad actually gave his bank account login information to Ryan and Ryan would like make the transfers for him. Nishad said that he signed like a lot of blank checks that Ryan then made to to political candidates.

What comes next after this is one I'm curious to like you're talking to sounds like you're talking to a bunch of like lawyers in the room and what their sentiment is around where they kind of the pendulum is swinging. What kind of sentence Sam can get, how quickly how can we know Sam's like There was also something big that came out this week, right? Which was the the there was the GC who kind of went off the went off the rails a little bit this week it sounded like. That That lawyer? Uh yeah, the the ex wasn't the ex FTX GC was uh Yes. Yes, he actually he took Can Sun.

He started today. When I left they were on his cross-examine. That was incredibly damaging. The government basically went through the FTX terms and conditions line by line where it says like and I quote we promise we will not use your money. Like we will safeguard your assets. None of your money will be transferred or loaned or anything. And if he's the lawyer though, the lawyer's the one who writes these terms. So why is he how is he not why is he saying He wrote it. He was given immunity. So he said basically how he found out about all of this alleged fraud and money stealing was on November 7th. So like What was that? Like 3 days before FTX filed for bankruptcy.

Sam directed the attorney Can to get on a call with Apollo. They were like frantically trying to raise billions of dollars in order to meet their loan repayments and satisfy a customer withdrawals. Apollo Capital asked for financials and that is when Nishad or excuse me when Can saw the balance sheet and saw that there was a 7 billion dollar hole and he quit the very next day. So and then he went to prosecutors, agreed to help them and in exchange was granted immunity. So he will not be charged with anything. He will not spend any time in jail or anything.

Um, it was his I'm curious to to read about um how his cross ended up finishing up because he kept saying that he just took Sam at his word and when Sam said, "Yeah, we don't commingle funds and we keep client assets in this account and we keep Alameda money in this account and none of it's ever crossed." Um, the attorney just took his word for it and the attorney was the one that was writing up all of these loan agreements. Um, like 2 billion dollars in loans made to the founders, to Gary, Sam and Nishad. This attorney approved all of those contracts and you know, he was told that the money was coming from profits from Alameda and profits from FTX, not from customers and

he took them at their word for it. So it is I'm curious to see if the defense is successful in in poking holes in that narrative and and you know, just crediting him as a witness, but yes, he was granted immunity. His future job prospects, however, I'm not not so sure of. Speaking of, I'm curious about two things. One, where is Sam Trabucco? Um, right? Because he was in he was in the chat, he was in the insider group. We all want to know where he is. And what his deal is. And the other one is the auditor here, like you know, this is an Enron type of situation in terms of both magnitude and the importance and significance to the industry.

Um what about the auditing firm that was signing off on these audits? Um you know, cuz they've done work with a number of other crypto players. I mean, they're they're like Arthur People should just for memory going down memory lane, like Arthur Andersen was signing off of Enron audits and their accounting gimmicks and treatment of a lot of these kind of Anyways, the nastics that they were doing went away, but it was the auditor that kind of like was very complicit in all of this. Um clearly like a lot of investors and people relied on the audit, which was you know, bogus.

Um where are they? Are they a witness? Are they also fraud like going to be charged at some point because of gross negligence? Is that even being discussed in the courtroom? I am not sure what the auditors actually audited. Um every investor, every lender that has testified so far so investor in FTX, lender to Alameda, I mean, um they have said that every financial statement that they received was unaudited. Um which BlockFi's Zach Prince testified last week, I believe.

Um and he said that yeah, with crypto firms, we took unaudited financial statements all the time. It's very common in this industry. It's hard to find auditors who will work with crypto companies, so that wasn't an in and of itself necessarily a red flag. But these lenders have confirmed that they did not receive anything audited. Um the government has not actually said what was audited. Um I'm curious if the defense might bring that up in their case. Um Try to place some of the blame on them, but to answer your question, no. That has not really been brought up. I'm also curious.

Um But again, like if they were not signing off on these balance sheets it's not their problem. just No, not problem, right. Um and Sam Trabucco, that's the million-dollar question. Um I thought he might be called there So, we knew that two people had immunity. Now, we know that that was Adam Jedidiah who worked at Alameda and then um Can Sun, the attorney that we were just speaking about. Those are the two with immunity. I thought that Sam Trabucco might be one, but he's obviously not. Um Where in the world is he? I have no idea. Could he be charged with something? Maybe. Every witness is talking about him, like Caroline, Nishad, Gary, Adam. Everyone is

mentioning him all the time. he wasn't in the Michael Lewis book, either. It's like, what did he do to get off from all this? Yeah, how did he avoid all of this? not somewhere. Yeah. So far. So far. Yeah, so far. He's maybe he's maybe on his boat in international waters waiting to be extradited. No I I think he is. Yeah. Yeah, who knows? It's I mean, the the most damning thing I I that I've seen is obviously Yeah, I can see your point, like everyone's talking about him, but also he's in these chats where they're talking about bribing Chinese officials. Like, he's in the signal group.

was the one that said like oh, Honey was the um employee Yeah, who who Or yeah, Hani, who um whose father was actually a police officer in China. They made it sound In court, they made it sound like this person was like much higher up, but regardless, and Trabucco was the one who sent the message that was like oh, did they turn us in? Like, are we in trouble now? Incredibly implicating. So. Yeah. We'll see. But again, that's that's not a charge that's been brought against Sam at this point.

Yeah. Um and I think the fact that the judge even allowed that to come into play, I thought was interesting. The defense did try hard to keep all of that out of it because he's not being charged with it, but the jury can't You know, the judge will say, "By the way, the defendant is not being charged with bribery, keep that in mind, but the jury can't unhear that. You know, they're human, they're going to They are going to consider It just paints a much more negative picture, right, on on on the person and and the the intentions behind the man, you know. Yeah. Anything worth highlighting in the kind of last, you know, 2 weeks or something that's coming up that you're looking out for as it relates to the case?

Yeah, definitely. Um I So, the defense is planning on starting next Thursday. If, and this is based on my personal opinion and what some attorneys have told me, Sam, I think will either be the first witness they call or the last. Um if he's testifying against his attorney's recommendations, which is very likely, um then he would be the last witness. If the defense is now crafting their case on something that Sam will say on the stand, then he'll probably be first. So, potentially as early as a week from today, we'll we'll know what Sam is saying.

Um I have no idea who else they would call, to be honest. A couple of their expert witnesses have gotten thrown out. So, all the witnesses need to go through approval with the judge and the opposing side can can, you know, raise concerns and and get witnesses taken off the list. They can get evidence expunged. So, there's been a lot of that. Um I will follow up on the Adderall situation. It appears that it has been resolved. Um there was a meeting in chambers with So, we were not there for that. Um with Sam and and both counsels. And since that meeting, there have been several morning breaks where Sam is taken into a back room and I can only assume being given some drugs. But, I will say that the

judge was pretty funny. The judge said, "I've seen no evidence that Sam needs this stimulant." And also, apparently, the prison doctors have said that he does not need as high of a dose as he is receiving. But He's just hooked on Adderall. This guy. Yeah, and I will say I don't think that anyone should be forced to detox in prison. So, I'll give it to him. I don't Yeah, let him have it. Yeah. God, this is so great. Um So timeline-wise uh the defense is going to take over.

They're going to call us some witnesses. And then the process, the sentencing, if any, or whatever the outcome is, we will know Was it November? Sometime in November? So, probably. Um the defense said that So, they'll likely start on October 26th. They think that they'll probably end by like November 3rd or sometime in that week. They don't think their case will take very long. Although again, if Sam takes the stand, I mean, that's going to be another Caroline Ellison situation where it just takes days and days.

Um And then the jury will be given their instructions, and they'll deliberate, and they will take as long as they take. Um you know, it it could be hours, it could be week like we we just don't know. And then sentencing will happen much, much later. That's like months down the line. And again, everyone I've talked to has said that the defense is without a doubt already working on some sort of appeal. So, they basically they have to ask to appeal, the judge has to grant that, and then they have to issue the appeal. It's a super long process. Um but if Sam's found guilty on any of the charges, I think we can definitely expect that.

An appeal? An appeal, yeah. And then again, he he has this other trial scheduled for March about these campaign finance charges. If the jury finds him guilty, and then his appeal is denied, I can see him taking some sort of plea deal for these campaign finance charges rather than sitting through an entire trial if he's already been sentenced to decades in prison, I can't see why he would sit through another trial. But he has the right to a trial. So, we don't know. And there's a lot of ifs in that scenario, of course. Yeah. I mean, maybe as a last question, like what's the sentiment uh amongst like the lawyers in there in the room, are there reporters? Uh does it feel like a slam dunk for the government? Uh uh and and if so, is it like a life in

prison kind of thing? Yeah, attorneys are they're a little cagey about talking about sentencing just because no one I think wants to to be wrong and and to make a guess. I mean, if I had to guess, I I'm thinking like 40, 50 years, like maybe longer. Um I'm not an expert, but the the phrase that attorneys keep saying is, you know, you can only play the cards you're dealt, and Sam's attorneys just don't have good cards, and the facts are bad. So, dealing with that is is hard. Um again, I mean, the the government, like they're pulling in FBI agents that are analyzing the financial statements. They're

pulling They paid a professor $100,000 plus additional fees for taking the stand to to create a whole study on on financial forensics and accounting, and it's wild. It doesn't feel like we need that much uh forensics here. It's pretty out I mean, look, if they want to pay me 250K, I'm I'm I'm I'm happy to go to DC and just do Yeah, we'll take that deal. Yeah. Yeah right. Empire's happening. We've got a Blockworks research analyst who will uh happy happy to do that. that's what I was going to say. Yes. Discount. Um well, good. Um out of context, Yana, I don't know if either of you know, but what was the sentence for uh Bernie Madoff? Was that uh just just cuz that's my comp, really, like in terms of the

magnitude and the scale. I think it was life. More than life. It was two I think double like a double life sentence. It's like 140, 150 Yeah, it was just like basically whatever life expectancy is. And and then you die. Yeah, Sam, I think the maximum What makes you think it's less? Yeah. I don't know. Sam's maximum is 115. So, again, like I I I don't know. But every day I'm more convinced that the government is just doing a really, really good job. But who knows? Maybe the defense will surprise us. Maybe a week from now I'll be saying they have they have some good points.

I think I mean, Sante did the my answer to that would be that the made off losses were bigger than this. Like made off's estimated loss, I think the total Ponzi scheme was 65 billion of client assets. The total losses there were 18 billion. Um so, but 18 18 billion is still bigger than whatever's going to be lost in FTX. 8 billion on paper, of course, anthropic might come in, save the day, but but still, it's it's still pretty large. It is. Yeah. Government cares less about crypto than investors too.

I don't know. And the the jury I I'm curious how the jury is perceiving some of these victims that the government has called um FTX customers in. And you know, these are people that had tens of thousands of dollars to play with in crypto markets. And I I just I can't see that sitting super well with the jury or being relatable to them. But again, I could be wrong. Who knows what they're thinking. Yeah. Case, we're talking uh DCG and Genesis and Gemini next. Do you Do you have any interest in joining us? Any any uh I will step out. I will say I I am so behind on the news cycle being in the courtroom every day without any technology. I read the first few pages of the complaint. It sounds really bad,

and I will tune in to the podcast to listen to what you guys have to say about it. But thank you for having me. Thanks, Case. Appreciate it. Thanks, Case. Appreciate it. Bye guys. Well, that's that. That's that. It's great having someone on the like who's actually in the courthouse. She's doing it. Yeah, team's doing it. Must be a bit surreal experience. It felt like the first week was like like the first two weeks were just like real I mean, these there's another guy that I'm following who's like Inner City Press or something and and this guy's like showing videos and all this stuff. Well, he's the only he's the only one who has a pass to get in in the actual courtroom. So, media like where like Casey with another reporter James like where they're sitting is in a separate area. It's like the media area I think,

but it's a separate area. Um they're not actually in the room, I'm pretty sure. Um Yeah. Yeah. This guy Inner City Press is the only only one in the room. So. This episode is brought to you by Chronicle Protocol, the best on-chain source for cost-efficient, verifiable data. For anyone who listens to Empire a lot, you know that we talk a lot about Maker DAO. Well, Chronicle Protocol is this novel Oracle solution that has exclusively secured over 10 billion in assets for Maker and its ecosystem since 2017. And for the first time ever, super excited to share here that Chronicle's Oracle service is now publicly available for anyone to use. Compared to using

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episode to get started. And not to bore people to death around this stuff, but there's some something really hot dropped today. It was the the Attorney General of New York Yeah, and 5G basically argued that Gemini misrepresented its earn product as liquid and safe, but the real Oh, I got the thumbs up, by the way. I updated it. But, the real kicker is that Genesis, DCG, and they specifically called out Michael Moro and Barry Silbert. They said that they quote disguised 1.1 billion in losses through this months-long campaign of misstatements, omissions, and concealment. So, I think I haven't read it yet. I think you actually read the whole thing. Would love to hear the update in the summary.

I didn't upload it to you, ChatGPT. I was tempted to, but I actually read through it. All 58 pages, yeah, you know. Power reading. Unheard of in 2023. I know, right? It was it was just like it read it was like a thriller of sorts. What's crazy because you you actually know some of these people, too, right? Like in the when Casey was talking about SBF, it's like, yeah, the jurors find it important cuz they don't know these names, but when a Telegram chat gets released, you're like, oh my god, I That's crazy. I didn't know that person. Yeah. Yeah. So, look, the highlights are of course Gemini had this Gemini's an exchange. They've always marketed themselves. This is the the Winklevoss brothers uh who've been a long time in crypto.

They've marketed the exchange as, "Hey, we're here to ask permission. We're here to do the right thing. We are regulated. We're in New York. Like we which is a very tough jurisdiction to operate in historically, right?" Um and they they've sort of always marketed themselves as that, right? We're making crypto safe. Uh we're always going to safeguard uh customer assets. What was really a surprise and threw a wrench here is um of course when everything went down, DCG as a holding parent company had this arm Genesis which was doing a lot of lending.

Um a lot of that they had a huge exposure to Grayscale. They had a huge exposure to Three Arrows um which was doing this Grayscale ARB product and whatnot and had a bunch of exposure to Terra. As As soon as This is I'm giving a little bit of context. As soon as Three Arrows goes down, Genesis has a big hole in their books to the tune of 1.1 billion or so. Um and the relationship between um Genesis and Gemini is a Gemini used Genesis. So basically, if you're a customer in New York or any other state where they were licensed to operate in, you could uh deposit a bunch of crypto, bit Bitcoin, ETH, and whatever and earn some yield on that. That was called the

Gemini sorry the Gemini Earn product which is hey, look, if you have your crypto, you're long, you want to earn some yield, and the yields kind of varied, but it was you know, when record broke uh where interest rates are zero, you're getting five, three, six, seven percent, potentially even more in some of these assets. What was going on um and they always marketed that as kind of I think that started around 2000 uh the 2000 I want to say 2021, I believe. In and around that time. Um and they used Genesis as the primary uh counterparty here where they would send the customer deposits to Genesis and Genesis would then do their right magic and they would share some of

the yield, right? What Genesis was doing was was sending it to other people that were probably doing some arb on chain or doing some other things and they were getting so caught in that and so you The so anyway back to the complaint that just came out. The Winklevii and Gemini were always very vocal on Twitter, publicly that Barry oversees and runs and founded DCG and the Gemini and the Genesis team were misrepresented the financial condition of Genesis, right? The counterparty. And because of that that was fraud, right? I mean

the thing that Gemini had to constantly underwrite was the risk that Genesis might go down and that their customers if they ever wanted to redeem always had the ability to redeem it quickly and the money was always there. And so the complaint just details the big surprise is that it's not just the the the New York kind of what is it the Attorney General's office but goes after both Genesis and Gemini. Both were kind of complicit both were acting and did fraudulent schemes as they call them.

As you mentioned Gemini misrepresented that it was a safe product because they knew internally the board discussions there was a couple members of the board that at some point like after Terra happened they had a board meeting in the summer and they highlighted that Gemini sorry Genesis was like basically junk bond status. They had like an internal rating system. They had it at a triple B which is sub par and then they downgraded to junk internally and then they were really deliberating around the fact that they thought that it was a a very crappy counterpart and they should disband dissolve the Earn uh product.

Because the idea is if you're investing in a junk bond, well, you should expect to earn 14, 15, potentially 20% or more if the risk is that high, but the Earn product was giving you like four or five, well, that sounds like a pretty bad trade. You should probably not uh do that. More more importantly, they were they had done some kind of risk assessments where if if prices were to you know, crypto being volatile as it is, if prices were to And this is around Terra, like it was pretty volatile around like summer of 2020 2021 or 2022. 2022, I believe. Um and so they were of the mind that if prices were to continue to be really volatile and continue to decline, like it was a material probability that customers would actually be impacted and

there would be huge losses. Um and moreover, they continued to take in customer deposits even after internally some employees kind of like withdrew, stopped using Earn, and the internal Basically, they were very much in the know that there was a very high likelihood that the counterpart was going down and they didn't stop it. And that and that's uh you know, pretty damning, I think. Um and of course, the other side of the the other side of the kind of the complaint, if you call it that, is that detailing very clearly that um um Genesis totally misrepresented their financial condition

both to counterparties like BlockFi and Gen and Gemini. Um they kind of um concealed this huge hole that they had in their balance sheet, very similar to FTX situation. Um they publicly said that their financials were strong, that DCG had stepped in to kind of plug the hole, which was not the case. They had they did this promissory note of like to repay in 10 years with 1% interest rate. They omitted certain footnotes when they sent it to their counterparties like Gemini that would uh very clearly the footnotes would have made it very easily to understand that the hole was very much still there.

So anyways, um again, not very dissimilar from FTX, right? This is a asset-liability mismatch and uh not really understanding your counterparty risk. And the fraudulent part here is the misrepresentation Yeah. to customers and to counterparties of your true financial condition. So anyways, that's uh long TLDR, I guess. Mhm. Good summary. I So I think Genesis is going to be at Genesis is dead and Genesis is going to be one of these companies that I would actually compare to Mount Gox in that people who were in the industry in 2013, 2014, Mount Gox was so central to the industry and now

people are in the industry like it's uh it's almost this mythological thing Mount Gox. Gemini sat at the center of everything in crypto, right? It was the first OTC Bitcoin desk in 2013. They were the largest lending desk by a country mile. And I pulled some of their We have uh we have their Q4 2021 numbers. 50 billion in loan originations, uh 12 and a half This is just in one quarter in Q4. 12 and a half billion in outstanding active loans, 31 billion in spot volume traded, 21 billion in derivatives traded. So that is uh those are some remarkable numbers that are just uh yeah, ten tens of billions.

It's like Lehman Brothers. I mean, they had uh tentacles and touched pretty much every large player in crypto. I remember I sent this out. So here's Here, let me share this. So I sent it Can you see this? Yes. I said if this tweeted November 2022, if this really is the end of for Genesis, this is when some of the rumors were coming out. Remember we recorded that episode with Fubar, which is actually our most listened to episode of all time. Um I said that the end of Genesis could be more impactful for than even FTX. FTX hurt liquid funds and consumers. Genesis impacts nearly every company in crypto. And if you look at the company I highlighted here, I said, "Why is the downfall of Genesis so bad? Dozens of companies like Gemini

use Genesis to help their consumers earn money earn yield." If you're a C5 platform that that offers yield, you probably use Genesis. And I actually screenshotted this Gemini page that said, "Earn interest on crypto." Which Gemini earn. So, it's crazy, man. Yeah, 10 10 month 11 months later, here we are. Mhm. Yeah. So, lo and behold, DCG and Barry Silbert issued a statement in response to the NYAG civil suit. And I quote, "We fully intend to fight the claims and look forward to being vindicated in this case. DCG has always conducted its business lawfully and with integrity. We have actively cooperated for months with the Attorney General's investigation in an open and transparent manner. We are blindsided by the filing of the

complaint, and there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by DCG, Barry Silbert, or its employees." Uh and Barry That was a statement from DCG. The statement directly from Barry was as follows, "I am shocked by the baseless allegations in the Attorney General's complaint and intend to fight these claims in court. Honesty and integrity have always been my guiding principles. Last year, my and DCG's goal was to help Genesis weather the storm caused caused by the collapse of Three Arrows Capital and position Genesis for success going forward. It is unfortunate that this lawsuit omits that fundamental fact."

I think one of the I think one of the kickers here is that Attorney General What's her name? James, I think it is. Damian? I think it's I don't I don't know. Oh yeah. Uh No, James. I think it's I I I forget her first name, but James. Anyway, said uh said that they defrauded comp companies of more than a billion dollars, but also included this big number 230,000 individual investors. And that's why I think we've got another FTX case on our hands here. it's you're correct. It's Letitia James, I believe.

Letitia James, that's right. Letitia James, yeah. Um how do you think this impacts the GBTC I think a lot of folks thought that the Grayscale was going to be the first to convert into a Bitcoin ETF. How do you think this impacts the GBTC conversion? Uh so, million-dollar question. I think it definitely hurts them. I would be I mean, I would be surprised if it doesn't compute into the sequence of that. Whereas, if you're going to have the first ETF, would you want to go with this organization that is drawn in the middle of this drama, noise?

I think as an industry, we don't want that to be the first I would much rather have BlackRock, to be honest. Like a powerful launch. Like Let me ask you a question. If you're the head of marketing of crypto all of crypto who would you rather have as the first steward of an ETF? Bitwise. There you go. Uh well, Bitwise. Bitwise. Not not DCG. Like not Grayscale. Not not DCG. That with that being said, so I think this really hurts their chances to convert the GBTC into the spot ETF. That sucks for consumers though, right? It it will continue The best move for for for GBTC shareholders would be to convert it. Um but I don't think they will. I don't

think they will. I don't think they will. Uh without a question, it is absurd that you're paying two I say what is it? 2%? 5% fee? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. on this product, where an ETF has 25 basis points. Like they're just getting ripped off. Plus, it trades at a at a discount. Look, it's a closed-end mutual fund. So, okay. There's a time like the liquidity discount. I get it. But, you're absolutely right. Consumers are being hurt. Now, the premium has definitely compressed on GBTC and ETHE like at its worst, it was like close to 50% discount GBTC to Bitcoin spot. Now, that is down to a 14%, 12%, which look is kind of more in line.

Uh but, it's traded at its a tightest range. Uh uh for for memory, historically, for years, it's traded at a premium. Uh folks should go listen to the Bitwise episode to understand a bit of those dynamics. Uh it's really just why an ETF is so important. But, yeah. Succinctly, I think it does impact their chances. Yeah. Hm. Being first. I do think that they will Barry looks I I know I know some of these are just allegations from from from the Winklevoss twins and stuff, but man, Barry looks horrible here. Used a lot of tricky accounting to basically hide a billion plus in debt and

play the profits. People should go watch Smartest Guys in the Room. Well look. I don't have the full picture, but if I were in his If Cameron is right. Correct. Let's hypothetically assume that you're in that in that position, in that hot seat. You just get a call 2:00 in the morning from Mike Morenci says, "Hey, 3 Arrows is going down. We have a huge exposure on our books." And it's a thumbs up No, I'm not. Anyways. You got to turn that off. That's like can't be talking about the comparison of DCG to Three Arrows. I'm not giving a thumbs up.

Going back to it. Um if you get that call 3:00 in the morning, you say, "Hey, 3 Arrows is going down. What do we do here? We have a ton of our books. We're basically going to eat it, and we're going to have a billion-dollar shortfall." You're Barry. He's made a pro He's worth multiple billion dollars. His holdings in DCG alone, right? DCG is in the secondary markets at to one point was worth 8, 12, 15 billion. He always wrote for like I even at one point wanted to buy DCG. I thought it was you know, a massive business with multiple different business lines. Anyways. I'm glad I didn't end up doing that.

That deal was wrote for um And what do you do? You at that point say what is most important? Like I have a golden goose here which is grayscale which is printing cash flow. Now that might go away if it gets converted to an ETF but still you're going to say look, personally I will make it whole because that is the most important thing for this industry like and we will survive. We'll live to see another day like it's going to maybe take us a few years but we'll we'll see it through and it's the right thing to do.

That's what I would do. Like just instead of to your point doing this promissory note which was just hiding the loss and not doing anything, right? You just make immediately from one of your companies to another company. Yeah, yeah, it's just it's just shuffling internal shuffling and not doing anything. capital. Yeah, correct. I also think though the Winklevoss twins should have injected their own capital to cover the losses of Earn. I think what were the losses of of Earn people? 400 million or something? Or was it 1.2? 300 or three to No, it was I think three to 400 million. So I think the I mean who am I to say someone should step up and pump 400 of their own million into a company but I do think in the financial crisis though.

This is what if I were Cameron and the Winklevoss twins, I'd say I'm in this for the long haul. You call if you don't want to you know I would you could pledge your own stock in Gemini and then take out you know, a loan or whatever and repay it at some point or you could just do a bridge financing have call like at one of the Apollos of the world and say hey guys, we're in a tight spot. We need some capital because we got hit and we did some dumb stuff but know, the business is still sound. It's a great exchange, reputation. Look at Coinbase, like their reputation. They're synonymous with crypto.

And they're what, an $8 billion company? Yeah. You play the long game, and you make customers whole immediately. And I think we would have been in a different spot as an industry if those two things had happened already by now. Yeah. Yeah. Like why the the more Look, I mean I don't want to get too philosophical here, but the more you see it in Caroline too. It just once you start down that slippery slope of making certain statements that were financially strong, and you're starting lying publicly it just snowballs from there, and it just becomes easy to do, and then, you know

Let me Let me read this. You lied to This Let me Let me We also have the tweets, so yeah, go ahead. I know Due to Three Arrows' default on June 13th, 2022, the Genesis entities' balance sheets were not strong, solvent, or capable of absorbing the losses. The Genesis entities suffered a loss that exceeded all of their equity. In a June 21st, 2022 email, Silbert informed colleagues at DCG that, quote, "The hole in Genesis equity due to the Three Arrows exposure is something that we need to fill by June 30th, so in 8 days." And asked his colleagues to, quote, "Keep that all between us." Three days later, so this would be June 24th, Silbert explained to DCG personnel, quote, "We can't just allow people inside or outside to question Genesis'

solvency due to Silbert's concerns that this could spark a bank run. Yikes. Yeah. That was Yeah, I mean, that was I don't I I My guess is that Barry won't be allowed to trade securities anymore for the rest of his life after this. Most likely. That's what I think. I I that's uh best case scenario for him. Which is nuts because how does this impact DCG's venture arm? Actually, DCG's probably I mean, what do you Does DC Do you think they make it out of this? Uh anything else on DCG or Gemini that's interesting to talk about here?

Well, maybe a question to you is uh you know, we both have tracked this extensively as it was going down. Now that it's coming more and more to light, one thing I'll say is I think crypto Twitter got a lot of things right in the spur of the moment and the heat of the moment. Um what do you think are the like the ramifications that are of all this? Um I know it's a very broad and open-ended question but where do we go from here? Have we cleaned up everything, all this mess-ups?

Uh or is there still carnage and how do we get it over it? I don't think there's still over leverage left in the system, but I think what people are waiting for is what get what tokens get sold off, right? People were talking about that, whether it relates to Solana or people are still talking about the Mount Mount Gox selling off Bitcoin. I think that kind of stuff takes years, but I don't think there's over leverage less than left in the system. Maybe fast forwarding, I think because I think you were talking about maybe this quarter, next quarter. Maybe if I try to fast forward into the next cycle though, um what I would putting on my optimistic cap for a second, what I would hope is that I think people always thought that CeFi was safe and and DeFi was a little riskier. And I would hope that people

realize that it's actually the inverse. Right? CeFi is just like traditional capital markets, but even riskier because there weren't the regulations and there there wasn't the transparency. So, when I'm getting interest from Bank of America, it might be a really low interest, but like it is actually quite safe because of all of the regulations that are there. CeFi was basically these really high rates, but but one of the riskiest products you you actually put yourself into. DeFi is I would call it scarier but safer. So, DeFi while you might not understand how your chromic it feels like a Chrome extension is put it if maybe for those who are unfamiliar with DeFi like I think they

will get get more familiar as rates go back up in DeFi and it gets a little more exciting and people I think this will be a really good catalyst for DeFi in the next cycle. That's my optimistic cap. Yeah. What do you think? As this investor deal they said that he really liked Bloomberg as he was talking about like more of the just the coverage on a number of things like and look it's I think I paid a lot of attention as this was going down like over a year ago on how they've portrayed this and my biggest fear was that they would use all of this to say like as some people are like like Senator Warren is really pushing a tax bill here to really clamp the like that would be

very damaging. Basically saying hey this is terrorist use crypto this is bad and using the whole kind of drama in the room to just kind of like to that to push that kind of narrative um but I've actually been very surprised in how balanced and informed and objective the discussion has been around why all of this transpired meaning why did FTX happen why did all this happen and the and they've actually emphasized this on the on air. I mean of course there's different commentators but the the people that are in Bloomberg crypto I'll give them credit you know I'll take my hat off to them because a lot of them said this is why we need regulation because when you don't have regulation it's the bad guys that exploit it and the good guys that are trying to get do a good job end up being saddled with

uncertainty and fear and legal costs and and the the bad guys actually end up coming ahead meaning they go to different jurisdictions they don't register as a bank they don't have the proper disclosures audits no auditor wants to work with a crypto company. So, these are the ramifications, unintended or I think, of not having clarity in regulator like regulatory clarity. And uh anyways, I think we've all known that. We've talked about this here, but it is a refreshing to hear that more and more people are waking up to this idea, even if you hear that some of the depositions in Congress, people in Congress, I think are very acutely aware. Regulation is and rules are essential.

Essential. Because, look, Coinbase and Kraken are both registered in the US. And they've operated exceptionally well. Yeah. Like, you know, they've had their slaps or whatever. They disagreements around like staking and whatnot, but that was not the case. FTX was an entity that went offshore, was not regulated by anyone, a kind of operating no man's land. And it's just not the same. You know, but gave you all the false sense of security that it was a company that was like a bank, right?

Yeah. You were investing in a stable coin like Terra. Like, no. Like, you know what I mean? Like, absolutely we need better rules and disclosures in this industry. Yeah. I think that's the the hope in all of this that I'm actually glad that all of this is coming to air and coming to light, because that's to your point. That's when you can make the real distinction. Like, none of this has ever happened with DeFi protocol. There's other set of security smart contract risks. Absolutely. Let's talk about that. Let's actually fund innovation that can help that. But, it's night and day. You don't have any concerns around a DeFi money market, Ave, Compound, or some of the others being solvent.

And if you do, you can always inspect your balance like in 24/7 365. Where's the collateral? Where's the deposits? Like, you know, you can see it. And that's not true for FTX. That was not true for Genesis. That was not true for Gemini. And that's not true for any other bank in the That's it. Yeah. Let's talk Uniswap for a few. Mhm. Yeah. So, Uniswap announced that they are implementing an interface fee switch. They're going to be charging 15 bips on swaps on select tokens through official Uniswap interfaces. Um I'd be very curious to to hear what you think about this. I can let me actually share a couple more things about it for people who missed this announcement. So, for context, so Uni Uni token holders control

this thing called this the fee switch, which is this parameter in Uniswap V2, V3, and V4 that allows a portion of swap fees to accrue to a to an address, a smart contract address, a DAO specified address. Um And the Uniswap uh community delegate community has for the past year or so, you actually even longer than that, um repeatedly tried to turn on the switch, but they failed every time, I would say, in their in their attempts to do so. And uh you the reason they wanted to do that is it accrues more value to the Uni token. Um so, in this case, what they're doing is the decision that Uniswap Labs is making, in the way that I understand it,

is actually accruing more value uh with with this decision back to the equity holders of Uniswap Labs as opposed to the the Uni token holders. So, I think some of the Uni token holders are not so happy with Uniswap Labs um basically turning on the fee switch before they as as delegate delegates were were able to do it. So, um that's a little bit of context here. Would would love to hear what you think about it, though. That's great summary. The this the the source of grief here is amongst Uni token holders, I'd say. On one end, the majority of Uni voting power is voting no on the fee switch from uh VC investors, presumably, and other entities that have received that

delegated vote. Uh but now you go on and slap a 15 basis point fee. I I think there'd would any problem if the fee switch was on for UNI token to accrue some of that. Um you know, that is being kind of now in the vesting contract and the admin contract. Um and you know, the front end can charge whatever, right? And and and cuz you know, my point was, look, at the end of the day you can still interact with the Uniswap protocol. You don't have to go through their front end. The front end that Uniswap Labs, the company um developed if you go through that front end, you're going to be charged this new fee, which is 15 basis points for every trade.

That money is going to go to the, you know, the Uniswap Labs team that is, you know, developing V3, V4, and some other stuff and host maintains the front end. You can you know, most people I'd say are not sophisticated enough, which is a problem to go directly to the protocol, but there are alternatives. You can use an aggregator, you can use other kind of Matcha, you 1 inch, some of the other like there's a number of other front ends that you can go through to interact with the protocol where the liquidity sits.

Um so, you know, wallets charge a fee, too. I don't have any problem with that, but I do agree with you that the the problem and the nuance here seems to be the the fee switch, right? On on the Uniswap a fee, right? Wallets charge a fee, centralized exchanges charge a fee, right? I'm surprised it took him this long. Yeah, it's just I don't think you can have a token I don't think you can have the protocol charge the fee or the token becomes in the eyes of a regulator, right? There's there's tax implications. There's not only legal implications, there's tax implications for that, too, and I don't think they want to deal with it. Yeah.

Yeah, look, I mean, it's always been this um um intricate relationship between having both equity and tokens issued. Um and I guess the it begs the question, well, if you own equity in a company that is a developer and develops a protocol, you get a piece of that protocol that was developed, but you also get maybe residual value in whatever that company ends up doing for that protocol or other stuff. Yeah. Which, you know, is is I've always felt that the the the the real value is in the token, but I do think that when you have both, it can lead to confusion.

And and mixed incentives on where the energy is spent. Of course, the argument there as well, people should come forth and the Uniswap protocol and the UNI holders can actually, you know, vote and and get access to a lot of the you know, the the money that is being accrued and could, you know, presumably go and fund a lot of these grants, right? That are, you know, other teams that might want to build on top of the Uniswap protocol.

Look, that's a valid statement. I don't think the value in the UNI token is worthless. You're clearly UNI token holders preside and govern over a pretty substantial treasury uh that is being accrued in the protocol. It's just not being distributed as a dividend, so to speak. Yeah. Um the nuance, of course, to round out the argument is that when you think about applying for a grant and the voting power is concentrated. And that's, I think, the the challenge. I mean, every protocol has just kind of faced this, right?

Maker for such a long time was very difficult to to get proposals, and you had some people in the community that were very vocal, very active, but they didn't have enough voting power, and so they had to go out and like try to get voting power, which is is tricky, right? So, anyways. Yeah. So, Blockworks Research put together this dashboard that I was just starting to show you here. This is basically showing the uh revenue broken down by it by the hour. So, they're bringing in right now I don't know. Looks like it's like a thousand bucks an hour or something.

They've brought in 110,000 since October 17th. If you start to annualize these numbers out, you're bringing in an extra 12 million bucks? 14 million bucks? Yeah. I depend I mean these we we only have like a day and a half of of numbers, but it looks like it'll be around, you know, maybe 30, 40, 50 million could be 30, 40, 50 million bucks of revenue, actually. If some of the like You see how spiky this is? Yeah, that's very 110, that's total since it launched October 17th, right? So, that's 2 days, I guess. Yeah, exactly. Like their biggest Yeah, I guess that's a lot.

hour was yesterday at 6:00 p.m. They brought in 20K for the hour. So, you can start to see like the revenue by the fee. Um mostly on on on wrapped ETH. It's come down a bit, but yeah, like it's going to bring in at least 10 million bucks here. Like if you were to like smooth it out, but yeah, like it's a meaningful source of revenue, I think, for the Uniswap Labs team. Yeah. Yeah. Um I would say this probably decreases the likelihood of a overall protocol fee switch coming anytime soon, which is inherently probably not good for the the UNI token value accrual thesis, but I'm not I'm not out here trading UNI, but that would be my if I were trading, that would be my thought.

Yeah. Hm. Do you think this comes because just last question here and then we can start to wrap is do you think this comes because Uniswap Labs raised that big round several months ago? Now they're forced to start to think about how do you return value to those equity holders? If especially if we have to, you know, kind of piggybacks on our conversation last week, like if you have to maybe go raise another round, you need to start seeing some some value returning to those equity shareholders. Do you think this is kind of why maybe maybe plays a role there? I think it definitely plays a role.

The viability of I mean, look, wallets exchanges uh can be hugely be MetaMask Yeah. People should look I me. I think they charge way more than 15 basis points. I think it's like a full percentage point, like 100 basis points or so. But, you know, these these uh I think the the maybe the internal question is how do we sustain ourselves as a developer team for the Uniswap protocol and build some of these other products uh and and maintain the front end and develop V4 and hire a bunch of other technical people um without necessarily having to sell UNI.

Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like cuz they they they will receive uh pretty substantial part of investing of the UNI token. And I think part of the question was, well, do we necessarily want to sell UNI in the open market or to uh other investors or we just turn on this fee switch and, you know, minimize our burn and maybe turn profitable and own our own destiny without necessarily Yeah. selling the UNI token, which is honestly maybe something that UNI token holders may want to consider here, which is if you have a huge substantial UNI holder that is going to become profitable and instead of selling UNI to finance our operations, well, is this really bad?

Time will tell. But, something to consider at least. Yep. Um All right, before we wrap, I got a surprise for you, especially when you come to New York. Are you shaving your head? Pudgy Penguins, we got an airdrop of uh Woah! What's that? We're going to do an unveiling, an unboxing. So, we got this box, big box, Pudgy Penguins Last Crumb. I don't know what Last Crumb is. Is it like cereal? No, don't open it. All right, we're doing a live unboxing.

Oh, are you unboxing right now? Oh, wow. Oh. A little box within a box. Okay, that's a sick box right there. That is a nice box. Wait, come on. So, open the box. Clear instructions. Yeah. Unlike many other CRYPTO LIKE THE WHAT IS THAT? OOH, NETFLIX and These are cookies. These are cool. Yeah, and the the Donkey Kong, the Netflix and Crunch. Everything but the candles.

Interesting. All right. So, these are just Are you going to eat them all? Last crumb from your favorite penguins. Dive into your delicious last crumb cookies. Share a treat on social. Don't forget to tag us. Blah, blah, Don't forget to grab a Pudgy Penguins plushy at Walmart. Respect the hustle. Yeah. Hey folks, well, if you want to up your game, you know, we we like hoodies. We like What else do we like? Well, Scroll sent us some stickers. We like We don't like We We don't I mean, we like stickers, but we we we like cookies more. So. Well, I Okay, well, pressure's on. you. You're coming in what? 2 3 weeks to run the marathon? I'll save some for you.

I'll I'll guess I'll have to carbo-load with some of these cookies or post-marathon, they'll be my motivation as I'm like struggling to run this thing. Be like, well, at least the like next Netflix and crumble or crunch is waiting for me at the finish line or something. Exactly. Exactly. All right, man. Good good pod. That's the pod. Good pod, yeah. That is the pod, folks. Thank you very much for listening and tuning in. I had an idea. I had an idea. And I'll just leave it to that. Of course, Jason continues to um skirt and avoid the ultimate elephant in the room, which is when is he going to shave his head?

I told you once already. So, I'm willing I'm willing to throw a proposal. Oh god. And I don't usually negotiate when I win but because you're a friend. If you shave your head, I'll shave my beard. And for context, I have not shaved my beard since my time at JP Morgan as a second year investment banking analyst. That was 10 years ago. I've always had a beard. For the last And when my sister got married my mom hated me for it because she felt that I would look terrible in the pictures. I would ruin it and she begged me to shave. And I said no.

So, if you shave your head, I'll shave my beard. Of course, it has to be before November or maybe after. We could do it live while we're recording live. Maybe live at Consensus. Maybe at the Digital Asset Summit, March, London. Dude, March is like eons years away. Yeah, I'm balding. I'm I'm balding. Clearly wifey doesn't want you to shave. For the holiday, Thanksgiving, Christmas. I told you I told you you I told you had to do it. Now you're boxed in your corner. I don't think I don't think a bald being bald would be nice, but like I think it'd be kind of nice to have like a buzz cut, free of you know, your hair.

No comment. And this is I'm just going to end it there because people, please drop your comments here what you think about this buzz cut. That's the part you're shaving. Rapping. That's it. I'm done.