35 Burst results for "Sam Bankman"
CoinDesk Podcast Network
"sam bankman" Discussed on CoinDesk Podcast Network
"To happen to you. Hey, hey, lawyer expert allegedly bad things. It's just remember that this fan is innocent until proven guilty. We don't know that he's going to do some different shenanigans from different accounts and transferring kept it around. We do not know that. Those are all baseless allegations. He's watching football guys. He's just watching football. Look at him. Clearly a die hard football fan. Spring training baseball has started. The man needs to watch on MLB TV, so that's on the list. Welcome to the dot com. Anyway. This is the cost of losing your freedom to the criminal justice system, right? You have to make silly requests, and you have to lay bare to the world through public documents, which dumb websites you like to read. And that is ultimately maybe just desserts for someone who allegedly has made off with lots and lots of money. So anyway. It's unchanged. Gosh, golly. Hey, hey, American justice system, whatever, whatever. It's all done, David. Proven guilty. Yeah, just to follow up on what Jen said about witness tampering, basically. I mean, we unfortunately have a day full of dumb stories about bad people today. I wish we could steal the castle. I'm a boys thing and have bad boys cops theme play. But yeah, so rewinding back to November and December, whatever, I guess it's December. We found out then that Sam bankman fried was like messaging JJR, the bankruptcy CEO being like, oh, maybe I can help you. So he's got this vibe where he thinks he's like, on some level of his brain, he thinks he's just being like a regular nice guy, but what he's actually doing is criminal. It's like a recurring theme. I mean, he just like, whatever the process is, the Rube Goldberg machine that runs through his brain. There must be some smart seeming rationalization for all this behavior, but he ultimately winds up just looking like a dumb, dumb guy and like the fact that you're on house arrest using a VPN to watch football is just like the ultimate and then simultaneously doing witness tampering. It's awesome. This is the level of fraud that we deserve, apparently. So, oh, go for it, Wendy. I will say though, I'm pretty sure when he does go to the big House, he's going to have a lot more privileges than he does have at home. They have access to all kinds of things. And I feel like his behavior just kind of shows certain types of tendencies that can be observed. And also to, again, I've said it before. I do think that he's been giving access and the judges kind of taking it easy on him, so he can continue to incriminate himself. I believe there was a wallet that was found with a bunch of Bitcoin from the exchange, there's a bunch of things that happen over the weekend. But he adds everything is just a legend just to let you. That is a very good fear. That is a very interesting thought. Let's do this. I mean, I got the next story. I got the mixer. Are you guys ready? You guys ready for this segue? For one, alleged fraudster to the next. Let's go from SPF. Here we go. That's the bad boys theme. Yeah,
CoinDesk Podcast Network
"sam bankman" Discussed on CoinDesk Podcast Network
"Wendy kick us off SPF update. What's up? We can't, it can't be a manic Monday without an SPF update, okay? So being the freed should have only flip phones, website, whitelist, DoJ says, I think I kind of agree with this. I think that Sam bankman fried should only be allowed to have a flip phone. But basically, SPF just, he just wants to watch Netflix and read crypto news, like coindesk, the hash. Sam, if you're watching, grr. But anyways, apparently his attorney to the district judge, Lewis Kaplan requesting adjustments to the conditions of SBS bail. It includes establishing allow list of websites he could visit on a new, especially configured laptop that allowable websites are described as not providing a private communication platform and not facilitating access to or transferring crypto, which we all know he will still be doing that. He will just use another device. I mean, who wouldn't? I raised two teenage kids. I get it. I know how these things work, but apparently the websites included are going to be Amazon, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, crypto media like coin desk, the hash. Make sure you guys are watching. Netflix and Spotify and food delivery services DoorDash and Uber eats because when he does go to the big House, he will not have access to those. Jen, since you're our legal person on the channel, let's go ahead. Have you comment on this? I don't really have a legal take on this. I think it's funny that as part of this as parents will have to commit to having monitoring devices on the devices that he has Internet access to. They have to commit to not allowing him to use their devices. It's like having a three year old all over again and I just can't imagine how his parents are coping or what they're going through amongst all of this. I thought it was super funny that he wants access to coin desk. I hope he watches the hash. I hope he hears our takes. I'd love to hear more about that. But we have to remember that Sam was using his devices to contact witnesses in this upcoming trial and his messaging apps were taken away. And so I think it makes sense that he shouldn't have access to the Internet.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
Sam Bankman-Fried May Soon Use a Flip Phone
"Wendy kick us off SPF update. What's up? We can't, it can't be a manic Monday without an SPF update, okay? So being the freed should have only flip phones, website, whitelist, DoJ says, I think I kind of agree with this. I think that Sam bankman fried should only be allowed to have a flip phone. But basically, SPF just, he just wants to watch Netflix and read crypto news, like coindesk, the hash. Sam, if you're watching, grr. But anyways, apparently his attorney to the district judge, Lewis Kaplan requesting adjustments to the conditions of SBS bail. It includes establishing allow list of websites he could visit on a new, especially configured laptop that allowable websites are described as not providing a private communication platform and not facilitating access to or transferring crypto, which we all know he will still be doing that. He will just use another device. I mean, who wouldn't? I raised two teenage kids. I get it. I know how these things work, but apparently the websites included are going to be Amazon, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, crypto media like coin desk, the hash. Make sure you guys are watching. Netflix and Spotify and food delivery services DoorDash and Uber eats because when he does go to the big House, he will not have access to those. Jen, since you're our legal person on the channel, let's go ahead. Have you comment on this? I don't really have a legal take on this. I think it's funny that as part of this as parents will have to commit to having monitoring devices on the devices that he has Internet access to. They have to commit to not allowing him to use their devices. It's like having a three year old all over again and I just can't imagine how his parents are coping or what they're going through amongst all of this. I thought it was super funny that he wants access to coin desk. I hope he watches the hash. I hope he hears our takes. I'd love to hear more about that. But we have to remember that Sam was using his devices to contact witnesses in this upcoming trial and his messaging apps were taken away. And so I think it makes sense that he shouldn't have access to the Internet.
Decrypt
SBF Wants to Watch Netflix and Read Crypto News While Awaiting Trial
"2 a.m. Monday, march 6th, 2023 SPF wants to watch Netflix and red crypto news, while awaiting trial. The U.S. attorney submitted a new request to limit the websites and online services Sam bankman fried can use.
The Breakdown
Gary Gensler, Bitcoin and the Bad-Faith SEC
"All right Friends, well, hope you had a great weekend. And to kick the day off, I wanted to bring you back to a simpler time. Remember when Gary gensler was first coming into this SEC role and so many folks, myself included thought, hey, maybe this will be good. I mean, this is a guy who has taught about Bitcoin and crypto at MIT right? The simple fact of that understanding is almost certainly likely to make him better to work with than someone like Jake Clayton and then remember how Gary decided to be avowedly against the industry. To perpetuate a regulation by enforcement approach and to take actions that are clearly less about the investor protection he purports to care so much about and so much more focused on advancing his own political career, while in all of that, a road bump on Gary's preferred political path are the questions that swirl around his discussions with Sam bankman freed and FTX. Genzler's opponents in Congress are getting louder about demanding answers. About the SEC's discussions with FTX, as well as their investigations into FTX after the collapse. The narrative those opponents are trying to make stick is a pretty simple one. At the same time, Gary was scoring PR victory slapping Kim Kardashian on the wrist, he was also meeting with the guy who ended up being revealed as one of the biggest financial frauds in American history. The problem for gensler is that it's a pretty compelling narrative sort of backed transparently by the facts. It's enough of a problem, in fact, that gensler has started to fight his own media counter offensive. Late last week, New York magazine published a pretty extensive piece called can Gary gensler survived crypto winter. D.C.'s top financial cop on bankman freed blowback. In the interview gensler discusses at least one of his meetings with FTX directly. The meeting in question came a year ago in March 2022. FTX had come in with IEX, a stock exchange that they were in the process of acquiring a piece of, and the two firms together were pitching a quote alternative trading system, which is basically an SEC approved trading venue that has lighter regulations than being a national securities exchange would.
Unchained
SBF Set Signal Messages to AutoDelete During FTX Unraveling
"12 p.m. Friday, February 24th, 2023. SPF set signal messages to auto delete during FTX unraveling. A new indictment against Sam bankman fried alleges that he took a number of steps that would ultimately obfuscate incriminating evidence. In a February 23rd filing, U.S. prosecutors charged bankman fried with bank fraud, operating an unlicensed money, transmitting business, money laundering, and conspiracy to defraud the federal election commission FEC with the post SPF set signal messages to auto delete during FTX unraveling appeared first on unchained crypto
Coin Edition
Crypto Community Trolls Solana as it Suffers Major Network Outage
"11 a.m. Sunday, February 26th, 2023. Crypto community troll Solana as it suffers major network outage. The crypto community makes fun of the Solana blockchain as it has suffered another major network outage in recent times. How is this proof of stake blockchain in the top ten crypto list, a crypto enthusiast twittered? A crypto influencer account on Twitter used the former CEO of the bankrupt FTX exchange, Sam bankman fried as a meme. The post crypto community troll Solana as it suffers major network outage appeared first on coin edition.
Decrypt
Sam BankmanFried Did Immeasurable Damage to Crypto Industry Ava Labs CEO
"8 p.m. Sunday February 26th, 2023. Sam bankman fried did a miserable damage to crypto industry Eva lab CEO. M and G and Cyrus said Sam bankman freed's alleged fraud tarnished the crypto industries goodwill
Bitcoin News
Democrats to Return 2.2 of 45.2 Million Donation Made by FTXs CoFounder Sam BankmanFried
"9 p.m. Sunday February 19th, 2023. Democrats to return 2.2 of 45.2 million donation made by FTX cofounder Sam bankman fried. After the disgraced cofounder of FTX, Sam bankman fried SPF, donated 5.2 million to Joe Biden's campaign in 2020 and more than 40 million to Democrats leading up to the U.S. midterm election cycle, three major democratic organizations planned to return 2.2 of the funds or 1 million to the now defund crypto exchange. Of the total.
Unchained
SBF Could Face Jail Time if Internet Access Is Not Curtailed
"12 p.m. Friday February 17th, 2023. SPF could face jail time if Internet access is not curtailed. A federal judge isn't happy with former FTX CEO Sam bankman fried's unrestricted access to the Internet and electronic devices. In a Thursday hearing reported by The New York Times the post SPF could face jail time if Internet access is not curtailed appeared first on unchained podcast.
Crypto Briefing
Sam BankmanFried Should Be Cut Off From the Internet Prosecutors
"5 p.m. Thursday, February 16th, 2023. Sam bankman fried should be cut off from the Internet prosecutors. Since he's so willing to circumvent his bail conditions, Sam bankman fried should be cut off entirely from the Internet while he awaits trial, say prosecutors a technologically sophisticated person prosecutors
Blockchain News
Former FTX CEO Sam BankmanFried to Appear in court remotely
"9 a.m. Monday, February 20th, 2023 former FTX CEO of Sam bankman fried to appear in court remotely. According to a February 18th court filing, Sam bankman fried has days to provide documentation to Voyager digital's unsecured creditors committee. Read more
CryptoCompare
Market Analysis Report 17 Feb 2023
"10 a.m. Friday February 17th, 2023. Market analysis report February 17th, 2023. SEC sues terraform labs over terror USD FTX Sam bankman Fred could have freedom revoked, judge warns top and gaw's creditor opts for Bitcoin payout.
Blockchain Consultants
Former FTX CEO Sam BankmanFried Restricted from Using encrypted messaging apps
"5 a.m. Sunday, February 12th, 2023 former FTX CEO of Sam bankman fried restricted from using encrypted messaging apps. It has been reported that a federal court has ruled against oral arguments asking that a former CEO of FTX, Sam bankman fried, be permitted to use some chat applications. As a condition of his release on a bond in the amount of 250 million, judge Lewis Kaplan of the United States District Court for the post former FTX CEO Sam bankman fried restricted from using encrypted messaging apps first appeared on blockchain consultants.
Protos
Scoop Australian political parties received donations from FTX
"11 a.m. Friday February 10th, 2023. Scoop Australian political parties receive donations from FTX. FTX made political donations in Australia through the related high vex entity led by Sam bankman Freud and purchased by Alameda research the post scoop Australian political parties received donations from FTX appeared first on protos.
Blockchain News
SEC Chair Gary Gensler Called Out by House Representatives Over FTX
"9 a.m. Monday, February 13th, 2023. SEC chair Gary gensler called out by House representatives over FTX. Former FTX CEO Sam bankman fried was supposed to appear before the House financial services committee in December. Lawmakers are questioning his arrest. Read more.
InsideBitcoins
The FTX investigation widens as prosecutors contact former executives
"2 a.m. Monday, February 6th, 2023. The FTX investigation widens this prosecutor's contact former executives. According to a dozen people with knowledge of the investigation, federal prosecutors are closely looking at an expanding number of individuals connected to Sam bankman freed's.
The Daily Hodl
DOJ Seeks To Cut Off Sam BankmanFrieds Communication With Key People Involved in Fraud Trial
"7 p.m. Sunday, January 29th, 2023. DoJ seeks to cut off Sam bankman fried's communication with key people involved in fraud trial. The U.S. Department of Justice DoJ is seeking to stifle Sam bankman freed's communications with FTX and Alameda research employees before his trial. In a new court filing, the DoJ asks for a ruling that would cut off bankman freed's access to all current and former employees of the embattled crypto firms as they may be prone. The post DoJ seeks to cut off Sam bankman fried's communication with key people involved in fraud trial appeared first on the daily HODL
CoinDesk
DOJ Claims Sam BankmanFried Tried to Influence Witness Testimony, Asks for Communications Ban
"2 a.m. Saturday, January 28th, 2023 DoJ claims Sam bankman fried tried to influence witness testimony, asks for communications ban federal prosecutors wrote a letter to U.S. district court judge Lewis Kaplan on Friday, requesting that he modified the conditions of Sam bankman fried's bail to include ban on private communications with current and former employees of FTX and Alameda research.
Forkast
Sam BankmanFrieds family members are not cooperating with FTX attorneys, court documents claim
"2 p.m. Friday, January 27th, 2023 Sam bankman fried's family members are not cooperating with FTX attorneys, court documents claim Sam bankman fried's mother and brother are not cooperating with the FTX legal team's investigations into The Bahamas based exchanges bankruptcy and misappropriation of customer funds
CoinDesk Podcast Network
"sam bankman" Discussed on CoinDesk Podcast Network
"Holidays, Zach, what do you make of this? We thought that Sam bankman fried was going for extradition to get out on bail and it seems like that has come true. Yeah, work. It sounded nice. I think there was a lot of misinformation out there on Twitter yesterday. It's not like sandbagging freed walked up and plunked $250 million on the table and said, okay, cool, I'm done. What happened here, which is pretty crazy if you look into it, this is a personal recognizance bond where Sam beckman fried's parents put up the collateral in their Bay Area home, rumored to be about worth $4 million. But that was the only collateral that was posted. Basically what happens is he has to say on the solemnly swears that, hey, if I skip town, I owe you guys $250 million, and these other folks are going to be on the hook. I'll pick it up from there. I think there's some interesting CNBC reporting as well. Regarding this whole situation, which caused a little bit of confusion, according to CNBC, which I believe posted this report first. Saying that the house was indeed on the list for collateral, but there's other collateral as well, including some people who assigned up saying that they would be willing to put funds on the line. The question was, are those people in was that reporting accurate? So I think a lot of people are confused by that. Some other takes, which Zach was just mentioning there was that people thought Sammy from free was now free to go. But that's not exactly how bail or bonds work at all. Danny, I want to get your take on this story, however, since it is a pretty interesting development. I mean, he got out of Bahamas. He wasn't allowed bailed in Bahamas. But he got out of it, now he's in the U.S. and he can go back to California and live out of his parents basement. Well, you know, this is definitely a best case scenario for him all things considered with the collapse of his kapos that have turned on him and routed to the feds. You know, he's not really looking at anything too promising in terms of how the legal system will shake out for him. So getting out on bail, being able to go to your parents house, that's a pretty good situation. For him to be in. And he didn't have to post $250 million. He had to post, I believe, around 25 million or equivalent. Just goes to show it pays to be rich, right? If you have access to means or if you're from means, if you have means yourself, you can, you can make the legal system work for you to at a certain extent. And that's what we're seeing here, even though Sam has said before he was arrested, of course, that he only had personally about a $100,000 left at the bank. Yeah, daddy, that was exactly my take that it pays to be rich and here is a prime example of that. The judge said that the monitoring device alleviates fears of him going anywhere and that he's not a threat to anyone, given that he can't start a business or move any money. The interesting part of this article for me though was, so Caroline Allison, the former CEO of Alameda research and cofounder of FTX, Gary Wang. Settled with the SEC and CFTC and in that settlement, FTT is listed as a security. I think that that is super interesting and we're going to see some kind of precedent, possibly set out of this case when it comes to exchange tokens. And I don't know if that is fair or not. Will, what do you think? Jen, you're zagging away from the story here. We're not talking about FTT or securities. We're talking about SPF, living in his parents basement, back in California, going to be on Twitter spaces here in a week again. I'm looking forward to that. Of course we should bring up some more information pertaining to the security stuff that came up. It is interesting to see FTT list of securities and I think a lot of people, especially on Twitter dot com, we're talking about that yesterday saying, hey, if FTT is security, why is in BNB a security or any of these other exchange tokens or any other token that's out there besides Bitcoin Ethereum and USD C, which is the tokens that we've really seen the CFTC has come out and said that they are commodities. So yes, there's some interesting things for the crypto community to pay attention to within this documentation. Because the SEC and the CFTC are going after FTX and within that, they have to make arguments against the tokens and things on their balance sheet. So definitely something to watch there. I think we might get Zach back. I mean, there's this huge crazy winter storm, took out a few of us. Zach, you there, buddy. We're missing you. We're missing you. What? Look at that. It's a Christmas. Can't stop me. I'm back, baby. How do we still talk about SPF? We saved your take for you. Let's go. Who said the best part? Who had the best take? I just want to recap. Who had the best years? Spicy steak. What do you say? I'm sorry, Jen's take. So you know, that's what that's the vibe right now. Damn. All right, well, I can't top that. This one out into the next story. So you guys take it away. I don't know what was said. I don't want to be redundant. And if I get frozen again, I'm literally frozen in a snowstorm, so anyway. Thanks. That's okay. I got the next story. So I will snag it before we got to go to the old history corner and take a look at SBS bail bond. How's sack up against all the other fraudsters in notorious criminals in U.S. history? Let's go to that really quickly. And now, will's history corner with will foxley? Dad's always nice. That's always a nice little swipe we got for you guys here. Okay, so according to an FTX judge, we have about we have some worries about the $450 million worth of capital that is tied up in sand baker and freed's investments across different various entities. There's been some concerns over these Robinhood shares about $450 million worth of them and a few different people, including SPF, want them to pay for legal bills or just a clawback funds to creditors. And right now there's a debate going on. Who's going to get this? This is part of the messy process of chapter 11, right? We have three different entities or even more than that FTX U.S., FTX itself, and Alameda, and they all want to claw back some funds and the SPF. Also want some of his funds. Zach gonna throw this story over to you, get your take on it. If you're still here, throw it up to you, get your take on
Unchained
"sam bankman" Discussed on Unchained
"Today's guest is Martin shkreli, entrepreneur and investor. Welcome Martin. Hey, thanks for having me. You're a former hedge fund manager and pharmaceutical executive, and you are also one of the most famous white collar criminals of recent times. You are convicted of securities fraud and sentenced to 7 years in prison. And after being released earlier this year, you took not only an interest in crypto, but it also seems the case of FTX. And as we speak, former CEO of sampling is in the process of being extradited from The Bahamas to the U.S. and two of his associates, Caroline Ellison, the former Alameda CEO, and Gary Wang, FTX is CTO, have pleaded guilty to fraud. Given your experience with the justice system as a white collar criminal, which is pretty much the situation, all of these people are facing. I was wondering, what do you think is going through Sam's head right now? Sure. I have lots to say about this. I just wanted to start by saying though that I while I respect the legal outcome in my case, I was found guilty at trial. I certainly went to trial as a not guilty plea. I was found not guilty of several of my charges. I was found guilty of three, not guilty of 5. I still maintain my innocence. So I certainly respect the courts. I am technically a convicted felon and a white collar criminal, but I still dispute those charges and still proclaim my answers just so you just to air that out for a second. Sam's going through a lot. This is the hardest, the people I've talked to, this is the hardest thing you'll ever have to go through in life. It's extremely difficult emotionally to know that your life is in the hands of one person. And that person is in this case judge Ronnie Abrams, Sam's judge. And what you've learned as a criminal defendant in that state of uncertainty is that you have very, very little control over the things you're going to be doing over the next several years throughout the process of the system, but quite possibly after that as well as you serve your son. But the next, it's funny because you think the long sentence is the hard part. Honestly, I think that was the easy part for me and I could say being in a similar situation to Sam sort of it's much easier than the trial prosecution part, which is really, really, really harrowing. It's really difficult. It's fraught with a lot of emotional baggage and difficulty. You feel frustrated, you feel angry, you feel in denial, you have to go through acceptance, you have to go through a little bit of grief. You know, it's really, it hit me the hardest when I saw my mother in, and it's funny, like you don't process it until certain moments. And for me, the moment was seeing my mother in the galley, I guess it's called when my satin Swiss given. And I said, gee, I really messed up.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"sam bankman" Discussed on Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"It's not like one was in Singapore and the other one was in some country in Africa or something, right? Where you couldn't see them face to face and watch what they're doing and interacting with them. They were in the same damn apartment, right? So get the hell out of here, Sam bankman free, nobody believes that. So I'm hoping justice is handed out here so far. He's getting the easy treatment, right? This man should be in jail right now, but he's getting bailed out. His parents are connected. He's made millions of dollars in political donations. Maxine waters was blowing him kisses last year or so. It is what it is here, but let's see how this progresses because we will have to do a public outcry if this doesn't go the right direction. Now, on that note, here it is being reported by block works. The SEC, FDT, which is the native token of FTX, complaint is yet another case of regulation by enforcement based on prior complaints, regulation by enforcement seems to be the SEC's preferred method of keeping an eye on the crypto industry. So a couple things here, they're now coming out saying FTT was a security. Oh yeah, after billions of dollars were lost. It was in your office, Gary genser, the FTX officials were in your office multiple times. They also met with the CFTC. So Gary failed and he was about to give a free pass, and this has been documented, by the way, two FTX, and the other exchanges we're going to get thrown under the bus, like binance, and this is what pisses you off. So Gary's now coming out after the fact, after the bank has been robbed as the cop on the beat, trying to say that cash or that token or this person is bad and this is a security really Gary. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to ask is collapse. FTT is garbage now. It's down to zero. So whatever you're trying to position or picture you're trying to paint here is even is not relevant anymore. The relevant part is getting sandbagged between in jail and customer funds return to users. But FTT is garbage now. Nobody's using that. So FTT was offered and sold as an investment contract and therefore a security, the complaint read. You guys, can you believe this? Who the hell nobody has FTT right now? Well, it's dead. It's done. SEC chair Gary gensler reinforced the designation with a tweet stating
TIME's Top Stories
"sam bankman" Discussed on TIME's Top Stories
"Sam bankman fried is in handcuffs, but no crypto crackdown is in sight by Andrew R chow. The feds dropped the hammer on FTX founder Sam bankman freed, arresting him in The Bahamas on Monday night as part of an 8 count indictment that includes wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering. Then more hammer strokes fell. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates financial markets, filed civil charges, alleging he defrauded his investors and his customers. The commodity futures trading commission, or CFTC, which bankman fried nicknamed SPF had once lobbied to regulate FTX and the crypto industry, followed suit with allegations of its own. After weeks of speculation over when, or even if the 30 year old former multi billionaire would be charged, he now faces the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence and years of litigation with an alphabet soup of federal regulators. But the charges against SPF so far are narrowly focused and leave the broader cryptocurrency industry largely unscathed in terms of new regulatory oversight. The SEC and its complaint passed up the opportunity to try to seize control over a much larger swath up the crypto market by declaring certain cryptocurrencies as securities, which would subject them to much more intense federal rules, experts note, and the heightened public interest around bankment freed could actually slow Congress's effort to pass crypto legislation, industry experts say. The result is that crypto is chaotic status quo remains in place for now. Any crypto critics who hoped that SPFs fall would lead to the swift crackdown upon the entire industry will have to wait. I'm happy to see the way they were framed, says Kristen Smith, the executive director of the blockchain association, a D.C. based crypto lobby, referring to the SEC and DS NY complaints. I don't see them as having much of a ripple effect on other parts of the industry. For the last year, various federal agencies have been jockeying for a crypto oversight, including the SEC and the CFTC. Early Tuesday, the SEC appeared to go on the offensive. It was the first federal regulator to publicly release a complaint against bankman freed. The U.S. attorney's office for the southern district of New York, which handles many of the biggest financial prosecutions in the country, filed the original indictment December 9th. It was not made public until later Tuesday.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"sam bankman" Discussed on Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"Now, with these CPI numbers that came in today, Bitcoin did see some bounce, but this is nothing to call home about. It could easily pendulum swing back down. So just, you know, you may see folks get very bullish. There's some folks who call around Christmas time, a Santa Claus rally. We're at the end of the year, you know, some of these folks are pumping to prices a bit because they want to take profits before the end of the year due to taxes and all that. But I'm not concerned about that. I'm not looking to do that. I'm waiting for the rally in 2023, just like we saw in 2019. We'll see if it happens. There's no guarantee. But some of the metrics are showing that. And hear from the folks at stock money lizards, they provided a great chart showing the similar pattern that took place in 2019. You know, you had your washout phase. You bit of sideways movement and consolidation, and then your breakout upwards. We'll see if this actually plays out like it did in 2019. That's, you know, those are the facts and the historical patterns that we have to work with. Certainly things could do Bitcoin could do what the hell it wants, right? Totally break out an upwards or break downwards, right? So we just want to at least use facts and be, you know, our make our former thesis based on the facts, not just our emotions, of course. And a certain feelings and things like that. It should be database. Now, let's move ahead, guys. Sam bankman fried, there has been photos and video release of him getting arrested in The Bahamas by a bahamian authorities and here's a photo shared by autism capital. Who has been covering the situation and Sam back in your freedom and what's been going on with FTX. So it is for real. He has been taken into custody, my Friends. And he has been charged with wire fraud, wired fraud conspiracy, securities, fraud, securities, fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering per The New York Times. There's also news that his request for bail has been denied by the judge who believes him to be a flight risk. I could see that happening that he's going to try to jump to another island or go to Serbia or wherever the hell do Kwan is. I think that's where a dope one is, as far as what I was hearing in the news. But yeah, he's certainly a flight risk. And the current CEO of FTX, man. He had a lot to deal with today in front of Congress with Maxine waters and a bunch of other people. And here's a headline from Barron's. FTX is collapsed was old fashioned embezzlement CEO says. So this was not a crypto specific thing. It's just someone who built a centralized exchange, which is FTX and was basically committing the age old fraud. Stealing customer at once, right? This could have happened at a bank. You could have happened in another hedge fund or whatever it is. So this is what's going on here. This is not like crypto fail or a blockchain fail. It didn't. It's just a business with bad actors who committed fraud. And look, there's some highlights from him testifying. And by the way, let me give you his name so you guys, John ray, he's the currency yo.
The Charlie Kirk Show
"sam bankman" Discussed on The Charlie Kirk Show
"That's why we are here. Brought to you by the loan experts I trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific mortgage at Andrew and Todd dot com. Last evening, Sam bankman freed has been officially indicted by the United States government by the Department of Justice, interestingly right on the cusp before he would have to testify in front of Congress and answer a lot of questions. About exactly where did all this money go? Well, look, for over a month, millions of crypto investors around the world were very worried that Sam bankman freed would somehow pull off one of the greatest criminal Houdini acts in history. Now Sam bankman frees crypto exchange called FTX collapse about a month ago. It collapsed because of a crypto blog called coinbase. That noticed an irregularity in their reporting. Now I'm far from a crypto expert from what I understand, though, one of the, one of the selling points or one of the characteristics of crypto technology is that there is an open ledger so people can go through it and they can see are your books actually balanced. You can see all the transactions, and I actually believe coinbase didn't necessarily find the discrepancy in FTX itself, but in one of FTX investments or subsidiaries. It might have been Alameda, it might have been one of their other projects. And so this caused a basically crypto bank run. SPF just sat at his home in The Bahamas giving interviews while no charges were forthcoming, but yesterday that changed and the timing, I think, is very interesting. In The Bahamas, they announced that they arrested SPF in his home. It's coin desk, not coinbase. I'm sorry. Coin desk is the blog coinbase is something else. I forgive me for that. So this morning, the security and exchange commission, and the Department of Justice revealed they had brought charges against SPF for securities fraud. So some more background on this. FTX was a crypto exchange, who's a website where people could transfer their own money in and use it to buy or sell cryptocurrencies. The variety of cryptocurrencies available on the platform and the options you had for investing made FTX very popular with crypto investors, well over one million people used FTX as a pseudo crypto bank. But according to the security exchange commission, SPF treated FTX and its users as a piggy bank for his own financial ventures instead of holding users funds on the platform, SPF secretly transferred many of those funds to his own private crypto hedge fund named Alameda research. So SPF went on a media tour as soon as it was found that Alameda research was built as a potemkin village, he started to go do media interview after media interview, but let's go back in time. This was SPF and notice just how he dresses his appearance, his hair, his voice. Almost acting as if he's an innocent teenager in one of the great heists in human history. Play cut 44 of him testifying about consumer advocates, play cut 44. I see this with the utmost respect, but I actually found something a little bit offensive that we said. I'm going to be pretty blunt, most of the traders on our platform know a lot more about these contracts. Than many of the people in this room, including many of the people in this room who are condescendingly talking to them about what they do and don't know and shouldn't shouldn't be offered. Anyway, I just had to get off my chest a little bit and I think it's at some point about consumer choice here. His 7th grade voice, the unkept hair, the sloppy appearance. It was all a ruse. It was a ruse to have us treat him differently as if maybe he knows something we don't know. No, he's a thief. Period. He's not a genius. He's not some sort of whiz kid, he's a robber baron. The complaint from the indictment alleges that bankman freed used commingled FTX consumer funds, customer funds, I'm sorry at Alameda to make undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases and large political donations. Now the real estate purchase is interest me because here is SPF going around saying my net worth is a $100,000 and I remember a couple of weeks ago I mentioned I said there's no way that's true. I said, I guarantee you he purchased land all over the world as a way to harbor cash and a way to evade detection of his actual net worth..
The Café Bitcoin Podcast
"sam bankman" Discussed on The Café Bitcoin Podcast
"There was just no way, right? He was being pummeled on Twitter to ask tough questions. He asked some tough questions. He did some follow. It wasn't very good. Stephanopoulos did a better job than coffeezilla did a much better job. Coffee Zola actually has, I don't know who the fuck he is, but he has some influence as a YouTuber and journalist who allegedly got SPF to finally after like four times on stage on Twitter space has got SPF to finally admit to some fraud or something. But coffee Zilla has a YouTube video, which I usually recommend against you guys watching because you guys are conspiracy minded enough just kidding. He broke down. He broke down hell, sorting, fucked up, like how stuff anopolis did a better job, but still fucked up and how kind of SPF kept evading, right? Because it's very frustrating to a lot of us to watch SPF wiggle out of tough question and change the subject, use different excuses, like detract, deflect all the crappy was doing. Okay, so something else that that's interesting and this is coming from the block, by the way, the block's got its own issues in this bear market apparently. But so there's an article talking about there's an implication that bohemian officials and attorneys for Sam bankman fried maybe breaking U.S. law by keeping large quantities of assets outside of champ or chapter 11. They did somebody, you know, I seem to recall that a huge amount of U.S. dollar value of crypto tokens, whatever the hell they are, I don't know, but like $400 million worth was transferred to bohemian government. Some weeks ago. Do you know anything about this? We know it wasn't Bitcoin. I mean, that's a good point in itself. For people who are confused about all this, like, you know, there's still this nonsense where a lot of people think that this is all about Bitcoin. It's not. It's nothing to do with Bitcoin. Nothing to do with Bitcoin has everything to do with shit coins with people literally making stuff up and using that as leverage to make other stuff up. It's completely fake money. That they're using to fake people out and then take their real money and gamble with their real money and then lose it all. That's what happened here. Yeah, I mean, the only tie to Bitcoin is the fact that he told customers who thought they were buying Bitcoin that he was buying Bitcoin on the behalf, but he never did. So I mean, that's the only thing that kind of has to do with Bitcoin. Everything else is just crypto Fiat bullshit.
Markets Daily Crypto Roundup
"sam bankman" Discussed on Markets Daily Crypto Roundup
"Show yesterday. Meanwhile, gold is trading hands above $1800, currently priced at 1814 bucks per Troy ounce. That's up about 1% over the same time period. Today's traditional markets coverage draws from The Wall Street Journal, the FT and market watch. Stay tuned for after the break we'll take a look at sandbank when freeze extravagant tour before his eventual appearance in a courtroom. We'll be right back. Hey folks, this is Adrian blessed, associate producer on coin desk podcasts. If you like markets daily, it'd be great to hear from you. Give us a shout by leaving us a comment or review on your favorite podcast player. And check out our other podcasts on the coin desk podcast network. Like the breakdown within LW for a more macro perspective on the crypto market or the hash for a roundtable discussion on current hot topics in the crypto world. Also remember you can always reach us at podcasts at coindesk dot com. If you have any questions, feedback or topics you'd like to share with us. Just send us an email. Thanks again for listening and let's get back to the show. Today's featured stories and opinion piece by David Z Morris, coin desk's chief insights columnist. Our feature today is entitled Sam bankman freed's self incrimination tour. FTX and Alameda research founder Sam bankman fried is spent the week on what may be a genuinely unprecedented media tour, sitting for a series of extended interviews, even in the face of his likely imminent arrest for criminal financial fraud. One of those interviews with The New York Times Andrew Ross Sorkin was already scheduled before the unmasking of FTX and Alameda in November, but bankman freed also sat for a surprise interview with George Stephanopoulos. At ABC's Good Morning America. On Thursday night, he subjected himself to a sometimes hapless, but undeniably intense grilling in a Twitter space. We've also got a new interview over at New York magazine after a novice crypto enthusiast named Tiffany Wong, released a prior conversation, and there's likely more to come. There's some strategy to this. Bank and freed wants to tell the world his version of events. According to which, FTX was brought down by the larger crypto market slump, and at worst, his inattention to detail. As I've detailed in excruciating detail and in more convenient tweet form, this is disconnected from reality. Sorkin and stephanopoulos to their credit didn't appear to buy it. Meanwhile, bank and fried has admitted that his legal advisers really, really wished he wasn't doing this media tour. It seemingly why his prior legal team fired him as a client. It was very good advice because he wound up directly implicating himself in a variety of ways. SPF is also seemed to admit or to come close to admitting, specific corrupt practices at FTX and Alameda. Some of these were previously either contained only in dry legal documents or just merely suspected. And these statements in his own words and on the public record could prove extremely harmful to him in a courtroom. A few brief highlights. Though couched in obfuscated language full of strategic admissions, bankman fried has effectively admitted to commingling funds between Alameda and FTX under admirably sustained questioning from both Sorkin and stephanopoulos. In the New York magazine interview, bankman fried effectively admitted to Alameda special exemption from margin rules. Bloomberg's Matt Levine unpacked that in depth. In the Twitter spaces event on Thursday, bank and freed seemed to admit that when some customers bought Bitcoin on FTX, the exchange never actually purchased or held the BTC. That is, FTX was selling so called paper Bitcoin that appeared as BTC balances on the exchange, but that was un backed by any real token on the Bitcoin blockchain. And these are just examples. There is almost certainly a lot more in there to be unpacked. Bankman fried may think he's insulating himself by couching these admissions with caveats like I believe, and that's my impression, but given he was the CEO with ultimate oversight responsibility, these hedges may not accomplish much in court. The question, though, is why? There are a few ways to explain the incredible overexposure of sandbank and Frida's thirstily pursued in recent days. The most obvious is that, while bank and fried is defying whatever legal and PR adviser he can still afford to pay, he is nonetheless pursuing a strategy of his own devising. Despite the admissions we've discussed so far, he is advancing an obfuscated version of events, according to which he was hapless, distracted, and not really in charge of anything going on at the company. In fact, he's building the foundation for a criminal defense in which he would be portrayed as incompetent, but not criminal, with Alameda research, CEO Carolyn Ellison, perhaps thrown under the bus in his stead. We'll pause from the article for a moment to read an embedded tweet from Nick Carter, who says, Sam isn't behaving like a renegade who's ignoring the advice of his lawyers, he's behaving like he has a world class crisis management firm in legal team constructing a very specific and deliberate public narrative. Back to the article. Bankman freed self presentation in these interviews seems almost tailored to buttress the impression of ineptitude and distraction. In his conversation with Sorkin bankman free jitter nervously, with stephanopoulos, SPF avoided eye contact and hunched into himself meekly, like a naughty child begging forgiveness of an indulgent parent. Such body language could certainly be coached, but this approach, which you might call the small bean defense, recently failed Toronto's fraudster, Elizabeth Holmes, who's on her way to a federal prison. But the more interesting and likely theory is that there is no strategy here at all, just a cornered man following his worst instincts into some very bad decisions. Dan primack at axios floated the idea that bankman fried is simply feeling lonely and isolated. His psychologically incapable of handling that and is turning to journalists as surrogate Friends. Coindesk podcast host Nathaniel whittemore did some similar psychologizing. Positing that bankman fried was suffering from congenital main character syndrome. Thank been free to spent the past two to three years at the center of public attention and praise and the theory goes. That's very hard to give up. In other words, Sam bank been freed is just frantically licking up the final bitter dregs of public attention he can get. As he contemplates the ignominious end of his brief time at the top, the legal risk may feel insignificant, wait against the chance for one final and intoxicating turn in the spotlight. And that's our show for today. Thank you very much for listening. If you have any questions or comments, send the show an email at podcast at coin desk dot com or you can email me directly at Adam Levine at coin desk dot com. If you like what we're doing, we always appreciate reviews on Apple podcasts or your preferred listening platform. This episode was produced by Adrian blossom myself with further support from the podcast team over at coin desk dot com. Have a great rest of your day and we'll be back tomorrow with another episode of markets daily.
CNBC's Fast Money
"sam bankman" Discussed on CNBC's Fast Money
"Right, I'm gonna send it to the DealBook conference. Now you see Andrew Ross Sorkin walking on the stage for his conversation with Sam bankman fried and we're going to listen in. And thank you for staying for the entire day so that we can do what I think may be one of the most important interviews we will do. Today. In the span of about one week, sandbank and freed went from a billionaire, the white knight of the crypto world. And running one of the largest exchanges to what some people think has become a wanted man, FTX was once valued at $32 billion. It's now effectively worthless in bankruptcy. We're going to talk about that in whether investors will ever get money back. There are multiple billions owed to creditors and big questions. In the wake of the collapse, Bitcoin fell to its lowest price in two years and on Monday, BlockFi, which had been bailed out by FTX filed for bankruptcy, the rapid fall of this empire has left so many questions about crypto, about the future of it, and whether it can be trusted again. Sandbank and free joins us right now live from The Bahamas. Sam, I want to thank you for joining us this afternoon. I appreciate your willingness to have this conversation. As I said at the outset of today, there are a lot of questions that need to be asked and also need to be answered. As you know, a lot of people have been hurt. Genuinely hurt. And my hope is that over the time we have together that we can have a candid conversation about what happened. How it happened. There are people who are angry and they are seeking answers.
Bankless
"sam bankman" Discussed on Bankless
"Yep. Yeah. A playful group house. Several of them used to be in romantic relationships with one another. And of course, this is where SPF had rumored to be dating Caroline Ellison, the CEO. Okay, so group housing, they all dated each other. 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 any sort of amphetamine. They had intimate knowledge of, well, this amphetamine does this to you if you want to do this, this amphetamines does that to you if you want to do that. Okay, so we have we have SPF and in Caroline and they're living together. There's a group dating going on. They are spending all of their time together is starting to sound kind of like a cult. And so this is when groupthink takes over. And this is when I was talking to with the frog army, that was enabling do Kwan. Well, this group of people just enabled themselves. And they were on you saw Sam bankman fried when we had him on with Eric Voorhees. And then there was like 17 other interviews where the guy is literally vibrating. And so if you're taking too much amphetamines, you can not actually come to terms with what reality is. And so this is probably part of one of the big reasons why FTX got as crazy as it was, is drug use, dude. It's insane. And so there was this picture, I think it was autism capital on Twitter, which I know is an interesting Twitter handle name that found this one drug called estrone or something. I'm Sam. I'm talking about M Sam. How do you spell that? Yeah. A combination of M and Sam is kind of the name. It's because the creator of this named it after his children. Wow. In fact, the fact that it's Sam is in there is pretty interesting. So the listed, what do you call it? Side effects of this thing is like risk-taking and gambling behavior. And basically everything that you would put into a fraudulent company that is a gigantic. It probably exacerbated all of this. I think what's interesting about what you just said though is there is kind of this character afterwards of sociopath clear psychopath. It's interesting if you could believe what this therapist is saying and he's not in himself and I guess delusional about it. His therapist and think so. Yeah, therapists. It's very interesting. So either he was very good at fooling a large number of people or maybe the portrait of him being sort of pure sociopath psychopath is not accurate. I'm not sure. I know which would be more interesting for Hollywood to cover. It's definitely the drug drug orgy line of thought. So maybe that's what we'll see coming out of there. Yeah. You want me to share this tweet? Yeah, so here's the autism capital tweet that identified the M sim rapper on Sam's desk. A drug normally used to treat depression or Parkinson's off label for its alertness and focus benefits. So I can actually tap into some of my psychology background. So Parkinson's and depression is like a lack of dopamine. And so dopamine is highly associated with attention and focus and also reward seeking behavior.
Bankless
"sam bankman" Discussed on Bankless
"Cool. Yep, okay. So there's that. The next in the list, semaphore, a new journalism project created by Ben Smith, the formerly the media columnist at The New York Times, and before that, the editor in chief of BuzzFeed, SPF, gave a grant to semaphore. Yeah, remember, and then Ryan, remember trustless media. We recovered this a very briefly on a weekly roll up a long time ago. It was a raised money to start a media company in crypto called trustless media, which I took offense to because my Twitter name is trustless state. But we talked about them anyways, because it was a good race. High production, and they were actually the bankless killer. But yeah, the bank was killer, yeah, that was kind of the wink wink. They were also the first organization that did the first big piece on do Kwan after the terror collapse. That was their episode zero. They were somehow got do Quan to do an interview after look at that photo man. What the hell? After Tara collapsed, they got the first goop with do kwon. You remember this? Yes, I totally do. Well, guess who led the round of trustless media. You're going to tell me what I already know, but why don't you tell everyone else? It was Sam bankman fried. Sam bank fin for FTX CEO leads trustless media seed round to help build community owned web three shows. Does that can you go back to the old website? Does that look community owned to you? Well, this is what bankers could look like if we actually had some fantastic if we actually raised money. Look, he's going for something here, right? I guess I get it. But is this effectively what it means to buy media is you kind of write checks, grants through sponsorship. And when you can't get any forays into crypto, you kind of found and create your own crypto native web three media companies. This is effectively what it means. I guess so. Yeah. I mean, I would imagine there's a bunch of sponsors out there who are like, well, totally sponsor your media, Oregon, run commercials, but you have to do this this and this. Can you talk about that? So I feel like we have, we have an idea of what this looks like because we are actually writing a media company. And so we have sponsors. That pay for our show. I guess I will talk about that for a minute. Our policy in 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's policy number one.
Against the Rules with Michael Lewis
"sam bankman" Discussed on Against the Rules with Michael Lewis
"Here is the lightning round with Sam bankman freed as it originally ran back in May. Several of the answers played pretty differently now in light of the collapse of FTX. Let me just, let's just do a lightning round, a few quick questions, and you can answer them fast. What's the least rational thing you do? Mister rational thing. I know I spend way too much time like aimlessly browsing my Facebook feed. Is it true you still sleep on a beanbag chair? And if so, why? I did last night. I do do many nights. I find it. I don't know, that's what I'm used to is honestly just part of the answer there. It's like, it's what feels natural for me. If everything goes well, what problem will you be trying to solve in 5 years? I would say the details of how to of what to prioritize for pandemic prevention funding with Institutes that have been set up and are unloading at a ton of capital into it. And really great teams who are devoting themselves to building it out. So the dream is you'll be like deep in the weeds figuring out how to prevent a pandemic. I've seen in other interviews you doing lots of different things during the interview. I couldn't actually tell if you were doing other things during this interview, but were you? And if so, what were you doing? I was playing game of storybook for all. I say the name of the game again. Storybook brawl. How did they I took second place out of each could have been worse. And I apologize, I do have to hop off. Okay, last one, what's one piece of advice you give to somebody trying to solve a hard problem? One piece of advice I would say, I just keep going. Just keep going step by step, you know, try
Against the Rules with Michael Lewis
"sam bankman" Discussed on Against the Rules with Michael Lewis
"Expected value. And he went ahead and did it. Okay, now let's get back to the original interview. At this point, we're talking about how expected value shaped Sam's thinking about philanthropy. And what he says is when he's thinking about giving away money, he doesn't just think about the world today. He thinks about like the whole future of humanity. How many people will live if we play our cards right as a world, like in the 90th percentile outcome? How many people will live in the future? The answer is trillions, probably. Maybe hundreds of trillions, right? Thousands of times more than the number of people who have ever lived. And so that's just that's a huge factor, right? Anything that we do that actually has impact on the whole future of the world. Is massively important. It's kind of a ridiculous way to think at some level, right? It just gets so big, then you're just some guy with a lot of money. At some level, right? Talking about like trillions of people and the whole future of humanity. Like, it gets weird, right? It does get really weird. You should really stress testing and we think like, okay, do I really believe this? Like, do I really actually think that there is compelling evidence that these numbers that I'm looking at are as big as I'm claiming they are? Or am I kind of bullshitting myself on this? You should absolutely have some humility around that. But it's not totally implausible. And there are examples of people people who we've heard of for a very famous and people who know one has ever heard of. Who have had massive massive impact on the world who have had that massive multiplier. And so it's not totally implausible. And so, you know, I think that while we should absolutely have a healthy dose of humility towards extreme outcomes, we should also acknowledge that they can be real. And that often the highest expected value things are, in fact, pushing directly towards them. Well, and in fact, you did hit the extreme right tail of the distribution in work, right? You did just get implausibly rich in a ridiculously short period of time. So at least on that one, it worked. That's right. And I think that's certainly been a big update towards me in the direction of this stuff is plausible. So the fact that you got so rich so fast in crypto does it make, does it push your altruism toward like, well, shit, if I could make $20 billion in three years, everybody on earth could in fact die from a pandemic or from some out of control AI. And I should spend some of the money to try and reduce the probabilities of that. I mean, is it like that? Yeah, it absolutely does. I think it absolutely does make me think, you know what? These really extreme outcomes are probably plausible. And they're probably plausible enough that I should be taking them really seriously. You know, and that has pretty profound implications, I think. For what we should be doing. So listening back to that section now, I do feel like there was a moment in there when I was starting to push in the right direction. It was when Sam started talking about the whole future of humanity thing and helping trillions of people. And I was like, come on, trillions of people, the whole future of humanity, that seems like a bit much. But Sam had a reasonable answer there. He said, yes, we should have some humility in thinking about things this big, but you know, look, he said, there are people who have had really, really profound effects on humanity and why shouldn't I Sam bankman fried try to be one of those people. And that made sense to me. It did seem reasonable. And I think that is part of what was so appealing and convincing about Sam. I think that is part of why I and, you know, so many other people really believed him and wanted to believe him. He seemed guided by this sort of straightforward logic. He seemed like a very smart, very reasonable person. In a minute, we'll have more from the May interview
Crypto Curious
"sam bankman" Discussed on Crypto Curious
"It really kind of reminds me of Eos or died them where it's highly centralized. So like you said, some red flags there. So many red flags. So it didn't go as well. And I think the actors team were kind of putting their heads in the sand a bit as all these things poked up and a bit of shadow was going around. And they even muted their Discord channel. After us users were all asking questions and they were demanding asses and what was going on with this launch. But instead of answering them, they decided to put their users on mute, which was really dodgy as far as some PR goes. But after all that, as you can imagine, the token price plummeted within the first hour of being listed the app just token tanked 30% and dropped as low as 46% on the day. So, you know, don't think Solana is in any danger, just yet Craig will be happy. Moving on. He's back in the news again this week. Sam bankman fried, just published his thoughts on the future of regulation in a paper that has been very widely debated this week. Let's talk about what's going on with sandbank and freed in just the past 5 years in bankman went from buying his first Bitcoin to becoming a multi billionaire. The FTX founder is now worth an estimated $11 billion. It's now worth $32 billion and it brought in about a $1 billion in revenue just last year. Same suggests a lot of things, and we'll give you a few key points here. Firstly, he talks about sanctions, allow lists and blacklists. So when it comes to censoring addresses, Sam thinks that blacklists of preferable to allow lists Sam suggests that blacklists can be created and updated in real time. So I'm not a 100% sure where he's going here with this blanket and whether you looked into it a little bit more, yeah? Yeah, I'm just assuming that a blacklist would be wallet that's received stolen stolen crypto. And then the exchanges obviously haven't lost reference. Yeah, they have an anti money laundering regime that they have to follow. And it's just going to make their life easier if they can identify funds that are coming in that have been used for nefarious purposes. So that's really practical. And the same thing happens in the banking system. And I think certainly some regime around that would be beneficial. Okay. What's next? He then goes into KYC. So KYC is when you hand over your identification like your passport or your driver's license to verify your identity. So the know your customer for DeFi. Which is kind of a bit of an oxymoron or a little bit counterintuitive because the whole point of default. The idea of DeFi is decentralized finances for it to be permissionless, which means that you don't need to ask anyone's permission to use these platforms.
New To Crypto
"sam bankman" Discussed on New To Crypto
"People in the crypto world right now is Sam bankman freed. He's 30 years old, founded the crypto exchange FTX a few years back, and today he is worth around $20 billion, according to Forbes. And yet he still lives with roommates and drives a Toyota Corolla. And maybe the most interesting thing about Sam? It's actually not that into crypto. He didn't get into it because he thinks Bitcoin is going to replace the dollar or that we're on the brink of some revolution in the very meaning of money. He got into crypto so that he could make as much money as possible, and then give almost all of it away. So when Sam thinks about really big problems. He doesn't necessarily think about how much the price of Bitcoin is falling or that a big stable coin fell apart a few weeks ago. He thinks about things like how to save humanity from extinction. How many people will live if we play our cards right as a world, like in the 90th percentile outcome? How many people will live in the future? The answer is trillions of probably. Maybe hundreds of trillions, hundreds of trillions. I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is what's your problem? The show where entrepreneurs and engineers talk about how they're going to change the world once they solve a few problems. My guest today is Sam bankman free, and his problem is this. How do you save the world? Before we get to the interview, I just want to take a minute here and set up this one big idea. This really useful intellectual framework that drives almost everything Sam does. It's called expected value. I try to use it a lot because I think it sort of is the default correct way in some senses to calculate something. If you're just trying to do a generic calculation, I think it's usually the right thing to use. You can understand expected value by understanding how Sam decided to start his company. The crypto exchange FTX. He was working as a trader, making millions of dollars. And when he thought about starting FTX, he knew there was a really good chance it might fail. It might ultimately be worth zero. But on the other hand, if it succeeded, it could be worth tens of billions of dollars. So here is a slightly oversimplified version of how you would use expected value in this case. Say Sam thought there was only a 1% chance that his exchange would be really successful. But that if it were really successful, it would make him $20 billion. The expected value of starting the exchange is the probability of it being successful, 1%, times the value if that success happens. $20 billion, which comes out to $200 million. A lot. So in 2019, say I'm started FTX. And Sam told me, there is a really important lesson here about expected value. One of the takeaways that often ends up coming from really thinking hard and critically about expected values is that you should go for way more than is generally understood. Go big. You should really go really big, even if you probably will fail and wind up with zero. That's absolutely right. And I think one of the intuitions for why that's the case for why I think going big is often the right thing to do. Well, if you think about it, you've got obviously a number of options available to you somewhere on the far right hand side of distributions. Is like the best possible thing. Meaning the really good outcomes. That's right. The best possible thing you could imagine happening. And the best possible thing is probably really good. It's probably orders of magnitude. Bigger than whatever you're sort of expecting to do. Yeah, right. It's not a little better. It's wildly better. It's almost unimaginably better. That's right. And if you're thinking about, well, if I found a company, how is it going to go? You're probably thinking this might be a $1 million company, right? But the right hand distribution, the right hand tail of that is going to be a $1 billion company. And that's a thousand times bigger. And so in order for it to be justified to choose that decision, if you really do care a linearly about money, if you really do think that getting that marginal dollars worth of law, even once you already have a lot of money, then it should lead you to think that the best outcomes might be outcomes that have a 99% chance of failure, right? Because in 1990% chance of failure and a 1% chance of that billion is still that's 10 million. And that's a lot. And so any time that there is some nonzero and non negligible chance of a really, really good outcome, our times when you're going to be incentivized more than seems natural, probably, to choose extreme outcomes. I feel like that maps in different ways both to your work you do for money and your altruism, which obviously are tied up, right? They both seem like very much rooted in those extreme outcomes. In the case of your work, it's what extremely large amount of money in a short amount of time. And in the case of the altruism, it's profoundly bad outcomes, like everybody dying, right? Like both of those are sort of the same in the kind of expected value universe. There are things we should probably think more about than seems intuitive if we're not using expected value. That's exactly right. And when you think, as you said, the altruism perspective, right? How many people will live if we play our cards right as a world? Like in the 90th percentile outcome, how many people will live in the future? The answer is trillions, probably. Maybe hundreds of trillions, right? Thousands of times more than the number of people who have ever lived. And so that just that's a huge factor, right? Anything that we do that actually has impact on the whole future of the world. Is massively important. It's kind of a ridiculous way to think at some level, right? It just gets so big, then you're just some guy with a lot of money. At some level, right? Talking about like trillions of people and the whole future of humanity. Like, it gets weird, right? It does get really weird. You should really stress testing and think like, okay, do I really believe this? Do I really actually think that there is compelling evidence that these numbers that I'm looking at are as big as I'm claiming they are? Or am I kind of bullshitting myself on this? You should absolutely have some humility around that. But it's not totally implausible. And there are examples of people people who we've heard of who are very famous and people who know one has ever heard of. Who have had massive massive impact on the world who have had that massive multiplier. And so it's not totally implausible. And so, you know, I think that while we should absolutely have a healthy dose of humility towards extreme outcomes, we should also acknowledge that they can be real. And that often the highest expected value things are, in fact, pushing directly towards them. Well, and in fact, you did hit the extreme right tale of the distribution in work, right? You did just get implausibly rich in a ridiculously short period of time. So at least on that one, it worked. That's right. And I think that's certainly been a big update towards me in the direction of like this stuff is plausible. Uh huh. So the fact that you got so rich so fast in crypto does it make does it push your altruism toward like, well, shit, if I could make $20 billion in three years, everybody on earth could in fact die from a pandemic or from some out of control AI. And I should spend some of the money to try and reduce the probabilities of that. I mean, is it like that? Yeah, it absolutely does. I think it absolutely does make me think, you know what? These really extreme outcomes are probably plausible and they're probably plausible enough that I should be taking them really seriously. You know, and that has pretty profound implications, I think. For what we should be doing.