Interviewing SBF, The Fall of BitBoy and Future of Crypto I Tiffany Fong DSH #379

He was like, it's worth like 20, I don't remember what it was worth, maybe like five, ten bucks, 20.

And I was just like, yeah, I don't care.

Like, where's my actual gift?

That's the best gift you ever gotten, Loki.

I know, I know.

Just at the time, I just didn't know what the f it was.

And it was like, this is.

He had two computers mining, and I thought it was sick, but everyone else made fun of him.

I mean, he's probably chilling now.

Hell yeah.

Hell yeah.

It's always the people that get made fun of that end up on top.

That's true.

That's true.

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All right, we are back.

Wayne and I are here today with Tiffany.

What about

crypto news reporter?

Thank you.

Crypto is back, huh?

I guess it's back.

I mean, we're at 44K right now as we speak.

So you're about to be busy.

Busy reporting on some scams, some frauds.

Yeah,

if anyone wants to

start a Ponzi scheme, then please let me know in advance and let's get in touch.

So you can expose them.

Yes.

What was the first one you exposed?

All of this just started at Celsius Network.

I don't know if you guys have heard of Celsius or you know too much about it, okay?

I mean, I wasn't talking about crypto or posting about it at all until Celsius went down because I had 3.1 Bitcoins, 11.6 ETH, and Somatic and Aave and some other coins, which I don't know, you guys have more money than me, so it's probably not as big a deal to to you guys.

But it was a lot of money for me.

I mean, when I put it in, it was well over 200K for me.

So

I was pissed off when that went down.

Was that like all your money?

I still have some money on the sidelines.

I have some crypto on the sidelines.

But it was a lot of my money.

And yeah, I was just really depressed at that.

Oh, wait, is this clean?

Shit.

Okay, okay.

We'll just censor it.

Just curse the storm.

Okay, let's go.

Let's go.

Get that trauma out.

No, for real.

Oh, well, if we want to talk about trauma, we can talk about trauma.

I mean, so a couple months before I lost all that money to Celsius, I was going through a breakup.

So I was just already really depressed.

Then I lost all that money.

So I was just in bed, really sad every day.

And I was like, okay, I need to start doing shit.

So I just, one of the random things I started doing was posting YouTube videos.

So my first video was literally like, I just lost a lot of money to Celsius Network.

And then that video, I mean, I had zero followers or subscribers on YouTube at the time.

And I was like, I'm just going to put this out there and no one's going to watch it.

But I think it got like 70 or 80K

for my very first YouTube video with no following.

Did you use hashtags when you just posted?

I don't even think I, I didn't know what the f ⁇ I was doing.

Instagram or YouTube?

YouTube.

So I posted a TikTok and the TikTok did it well as well.

But yeah, the YouTube video got like 70-something K.

Wow.

I wasn't expecting that, obviously, with no following.

I think it's just that.

I figure a lot of other people who lost money to Celsius were looking at it.

And I knew I was doing that.

So I was like, oh, I might as well just post updates about Celsius because a bunch of other people lost money.

So that's what I started doing.

And I was posting updates about the bankruptcy.

And

after a couple of months of doing that, some employees inside the company started contacting me and being like, whistleblowers?

Yes, yes, whistleblowers.

So they started sending me leaked information.

So the first thing I received was a leaked, secretly recorded internal all-hands meeting.

And yeah, so I

worked with the New York Times a bit and the New York Times did a story on it.

And then I posted it in conjunction on my YouTube channel.

So it was, I started posting leaks and that's not why I started my YouTube channel or anything, but that's like how things snowballed.

Celsius was able to file chapter 11 instead of seven, right?

So they're still in business.

Yes.

Well, no, they're not still in business.

They're in, we just haven't been able to get money back.

And for the past year and a half, they've literally just been toying around with different ideas for what they could do.

And telling people like, this is possible.

Yeah, this is possible for a year and a half.

So no one's seen a dime back.

We're not in business.

So we're not making money.

We're literally just bleeding money to bankruptcy lawyers right now for over a year and a half.

So

the lawyers always win.

The lawyers always win.

I didn't know any about anything about this stuff.

Like I'd never experienced being in a bankruptcy before.

Did they try to sue you for like leaking stuff?

They did.

Well,

so I ended up leaking a bunch of pieces of leaked information.

The founder, Alex Mashinsky's wallet addresses and transaction history, some other files.

And the thing that really set them off was leaking the bids on Celsius Network's assets.

Like they were trying to auction off some of Celsius' assets and they didn't want us to know who was bidding on our assets.

And I'm like, guys, we are the customers.

We should know who's buying our assets or who's restarting the company.

But they weren't going to tell us.

So someone leaked me the bids and I leaked them.

So did they end up selling the company or did they just file Chapter 11?

We've gone through so many iterations of it.

They sold it for a bit, tried to clear this new plan with the SEC recently.

SEC shot it down.

So we're basically back at square one right now.

But at least they're not in the same predicament as Sam Bakeman Free.

Yes.

Do you think he should have gone went that route or

was he too greedy?

What did he do wrong?

Well, Sam still regrets filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy.

So we're talking about Sam Bakeman Freed for anyone who's not aware.

That's better than Chapter 7, right?

I don't know the difference.

Chapter 7 is like basically an immediate liquidation.

But to be completely honest,

some of us creditors who have been sitting through the chapter 11 bankruptcy for over a year and a half are like, we should have just gone into chapter 7.

Because that's basically like fire sale of your assets, which may not be great because you're selling it locally.

But the reason why chapter seven isn't good is because they can basically just walk away.

Chapter 11 allows them to restructure the company's terms and models and code.

But that's the thing

most of us, it gives them a second chance, but a lot of us are like, like me, for example, I'm like, I want my fing money back.

I don't want to be a part of your new company.

So they're trying to start a new company like, hey, we can keep your ETH though, and then we can start staking it and earn some APY.

So these are the plans they're coming up with.

I'm like, how about you don't keep my ETH and give it back to me?

Basically, now it is up because they still have it, right?

It's still in their wallet?

Yeah.

Bro, well, who knows if they have it, honestly?

Nah,

they lost over 50% of our money.

So that's a state.

They have ETH.

They have all the other coins.

But you heard her.

They lost 50% of it.

Over 50%.

Yeah.

I mean, if it goes up over 50%, then

but they're not going to give you double the ETH.

No, not at all.

I'd love for us to just like, well, I guess selling right now, we would be selling at a profit from the time.

For sure.

So I'm sure.

And even for them, even let's say if they held on, the fact that it's up right now,

they can still hear here here here just kind of get rid of it and just have a clean slate but it's true it's true it's been a nightmare how did um the whole spf thing happen yeah so sam

i i posted my very first piece of leaked information on september 13th 2022 that was a leaked internal all-hands meeting and sam bakeman free just randomly started following me on twitter and at the time

this is before everything before everything happened so everything went down

well so i mean

he was still the golden boy of crypto at the time that he followed me so oh so you were hype yes

like he was on forbs he was on fortune i honestly at the heat center yeah ftx yeah yeah exactly so like i honestly didn't know that much about him because i'd never used ftx but i was like i've seen this guy in magazines like this is a big shot right and at the time i had practically no following because i had just started posting on twitter and youtube like a month or two prior so um I messaged Sam and I was like, hey, thanks for the follow.

And we just DM'd really briefly that day.

It was just, he was just like, oh, I thought it was really interesting what you posted, whatever.

I didn't think much about it.

He commented on a few of my posts over the next couple of months.

But then suddenly in November, FTX goes down.

I know you were like, no,

I gotta do a story on my homeboy.

On my homeboy.

I know.

So I was just like, okay, I've DM'd with this guy one more, one time before.

I was like, our DMs are open.

Company just went down.

I'm I'm just going to shoot my shot, see if he'd be willing to chat with me.

There's no way this guy's going to talk to me.

Like,

first of all, you shouldn't be talking to random reporters in the first place.

I'm not even a reporter.

He wasn't in s right.

He's in shit.

I know, yeah.

It was like, this guy might get indicted.

You shouldn't be talking to anyone.

And if he talks to someone, I was like, he's going to talk to the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, New York Times.

So

went about my day, didn't expect anything.

I was just like, shot my shot.

And five days after I messaged him, so I messaged him on November 11th, the day they they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Five days later on November 16th, I was out on a date in New York City.

I was drunk at like midnight.

And I randomly see my phone light up.

Sam Bankman Fried messages me and it's like a heart with a arrow and like a three.

And he's like, hey, free to chat for the next hour or so.

Yeah.

So

I like ran home from a date.

I blew off that date.

I did.

The funny thing is the guy I was on a date with actually lost a ton of money to ftx because i met him through crypto and he was like he told me he lost several millions of dollars i never saw his account i know men can exaggerate sometimes so i don't know if he was

i don't know if he was being honest but um yeah he was like go home talk to sam ask him where my money is

so uh yeah i just like ran home and then that started that was i think sam's First, if not one of the very first interviews he gave after the collapse.

So we hopped on the phone call for like an hour or so.

A few days later we hopped on the phone again so i got two interviews uh then he set off on like a weird little media tour so i don't know if you guys followed that but he started doing a bunch of interviews two weeks later were you those conversations yeah were you recording them or not i did record the those conversations yeah yeah um those like first two interviews and um

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What was his, his mind state like?

Like, where was he at mentally?

Was he fearful?

Was he like, damn, I really

that's what I was so curious about.

Like, was he just like

it was so weird?

I mean, right after your company, your multi-billion dollar company collapses, I expected him to be devastated, crying, his voice shaking.

I don't know, but I guess men are a little bit less like emotional.

Nah, nah, nah.

When you're talking about that much, especially a company scale, how would you feel?

I would be, I wouldn't talk to you.

I would be talking to the partners.

Like, look, you're going to Mexico.

I'm going.

Dude, you are leaving tonight.

I think he tried to flee, right?

No, he didn't try to flee.

Oh, he didn't?

No, I'd have been in Thailand that same night.

I've asked him why he didn't try to flee, and we've talked about that and stuff.

But, but on those first two phone calls, I don't, first of all, maybe he didn't understand the trouble he was in because he hadn't been indicted yet, but he just sounded so unaffected.

He was just like,

hey, it's Sam.

And I was like, how are you doing?

And he's like, eh, hasn't been the best week.

And I was just like,

wow.

It could be the autism.

He might not be able to feel.

So, like, I think there is something.

Yeah.

That is the thing.

I mean, like, the more I've gotten to know Sam, he certainly lacks the

normal.

Yeah, he does lack empathy.

Like, he says he has difficulty feeling empathy.

And, um,

he says he has a very innovative empathy.

Yeah, he had autism.

A lot of guys in crypto do.

Yeah, a lot of guys do.

Pretty much all the tops.

He hasn't been, like, professionally diagnosed, but I would say that most people who watch enough of his interviews are like.

Yeah.

But yeah, it was very strange.

He didn't seem overly affected.

Wow.

And then, yeah, I don't think he understood the trouble he was in.

And that's sort of the sense I got throughout our house arrest conversations, even after he got indicted.

So Sam

when we first had those first two phone calls, he hadn't been indicted yet.

He thought that there was still a shot at reopening the company and him being this, well, actually, he called the chapter of it, but he still wanted to play a role in the company.

Then he set off on a media tour for a couple weeks, then got abruptly arrested in the Bahamas and thrown in jail for eight days.

And I figured this guy's not going to talk to me again because when I posted our interviews, there was one specific part of our first interview that I didn't know was going to get him into as much trouble as it did.

But on our first interview, Sam.

admitted to me that he donated a lot of money dark to Republicans.

And I didn't, I didn't follow Sam that closely, so I wasn't aware that that wasn't public information yet.

And I removed everything he said in the interview that he said off the record.

So I removed all of that, and that was on the record.

So I didn't think anything of it.

And that got cited, first of all, all over the media, but also in the FEC Federal Elections Committee or Commission complaint against him.

So it actually got

into the middle of the day.

That's why I don't think he's going to do a lot of time in jail.

Didn't he just get sentenced to a lot of time?

No, he hasn't.

Oh,

he's facing two.

He's facing 115 years.

And

I don't think he'll get the master's.

I said, I think he'll do three years.

No.

I don't think so.

Right.

They got a lot on him.

He's not going to do it.

He's not going to do three years.

Considering the people that he gave money, we don't know who he gave money to.

I think they know.

No, they know, actually.

We know a lot.

Yeah, we know a lot.

I don't know.

So you don't think that'll help?

I don't think so.

I think, if anything, it'll hurt him because, I mean, it is public, a lot of these donations, and a lot of these politicians want to now very publicly distance themselves from him.

So if anything, they don't want to look like that.

They want to make an example out of him.

Yes.

I think so.

And with financial crimes, it's always the amount.

Yes.

So like he's going to get a lot of time.

Yeah.

When you you look at the sentencing guidelines, the amount, like you get enhancements for the amount stolen.

So what was his amount?

7 billion, right?

I think more than the 8 billion range.

You're sentenced to 7 billion years in jail.

Well, the guidelines stop and cut off at 550 mil.

So there are increases in the amount of.

So he might get 50, 60 years.

The sentencing guidelines, I believe, based on a lawyer who counted this up, said that the guideline recommendation would be life.

Jeez.

So how could this this have been prevented?

Like, is this a preventable thing?

Like, yeah, I think so.

Because the thing is, well, first of all, a lot of people hate Michael Lewis and, um, because Michael Lewis has been like a little overly positive about Sam.

But ultimately, I mean, FTX itself was a profitable company.

Right.

But Sam was doing some

things.

Like, I mean,

money.

I don't know, this is a really complex situation, but from the get-go, FTX and Alameda Research were two of Sam's companies, and I I guess they're sister companies.

And from the start of FTX, money was going to Alameda Research because FTX is a crypto company.

And in the beginning, when he just started FTX, he had difficulty getting banks to want to work with a crypto company.

So Alameda Research, his sister company, already had bank accounts.

So he had FTX customers wire money to Alameda Research so that they could trade on FTX.

So this was happening from the inception of FTX, which

is probably illegal, but also doesn't look as sinister and malicious.

Like it wasn't like he intentionally put that in place so that he could f ⁇ around with customer funds.

So I can understand why he put it in.

Probably illegal, but

wasn't the intent didn't seem to be like, I just want to ruin everyone's life.

But I think over time, he eventually ended up using that money when, like,

I believe it depends on when you want to start the beginning of the fraud, but I think a lot of that money was used in

summer of 2022 because Alameda had used a lot of third-party loans from lenders or whatever and they were recalling their loans.

FTX had used that money to put into illiquid venture investments and needed to repay those lenders.

Oops.

And ended up using some customer funds to cover up that.

So all the donations were basically customer funds.

Yeah, it does look like a lot of the donations were customer funds.

Wow.

Maybe not all of them, but quite a bit of them.

And he was donating to both sides, right?

He was.

I saw that.

I thought that was interesting.

Yeah.

Well, on a political side?

Yeah.

For real?

Yeah.

He didn't pick one side.

He did both.

And that was the thing he told me on the first interview that got cited in the FCC complaint.

What's the logic behind that?

Donating to both sides.

What do you think?

Because obviously he's not.

Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to think of a...

I think he was just trying to get in as many people's pockets as possible.

I think so.

Like, just wanted to curry favor.

Create, yeah, favor on both sides.

So just in case something happens, you can get that.

Yeah, I think so.

And from my understanding, the Republican politicians he was donating to were like the more center-leaning ones.

I know that he just really hated Donald Trump.

This came out in Michael Lewis's book, Sam Didn't Tell Me This, but apparently Sam was considering trying to pay Donald Trump $5 billion to not run for the bank.

$5 billion?

I would have took it, bro.

Yeah.

I'm taking $5 billion.

I would take $5 billion.

$5 million or $5 billion.

If anyone would like to pay me $5 billion to not run for president,

I'd be happy to get it.

I don't think Trump would take it, dude.

Trump loves the country too much.

Bro, but he already took four years off.

Yeah, but he's running again.

Yeah, exactly.

I would have run again.

Sam's in jail now.

Oh,

it would have worked.

Wow.

I saw you.

You got invited to the White House, actually, right?

I did.

But I feel like people think that that's because the president invited me to the White House.

But it's just after posting videos for a few months, I got a random email

that said, invite to the White House.

And I was like, this looks like a finger.

Yeah, that sounds sad.

They wanted to arrest

me.

I was like, this is like,

I know.

I'm like, I don't deserve to go to the the white house

and

i responded and i was like this seem i literally said this seems like a ploy to kidnap me or is a scam if this is not a scam or a ploy to kidnap me you have to send me a picture of you holding up three fingers and your government issued id you need to send me an email from a government email address like i put this person through a bunch of hoops yes and they did all of it wow so it was a guy that's in the presidential secret service and he just invited me to be his plus one to the white no way so he wanted to date you i told him up front i was like nothing romantic is happening here.

I still have the messages.

I was like, nothing romantic is happening here.

If that's what you expect, then pick someone else to go with you.

But if you're okay with nothing romantic happening, I will come with you as your plus one to go.

I definitely would have picked someone else.

Yes.

Dude, that's like the hottest ticket in town.

I'm like, that's like a once-in-a-life ticket.

I would have sold out for like 50 G.

Yeah, I would have picked somebody else.

I was like, this girl's not even going to put out.

Like, she's someone else.

I'm good.

Go on Raya, go on seeking arrangements.

So you got to meet Biden?

I did get to meet Biden.

We didn't have an actual conversation, but everyone gets to stand next to him and take a picture with him.

What was he like?

I didn't even vote Biden.

Waxy.

His face looked waxy.

He looked wet and waxy.

He looked sweaty and like waxy.

Like not real.

He just looked like he had been

covered in makeup, like foundation, like women's foundation, and looked sweaty.

They do try to hide the age now that you see it.

I think they do.

I think they do.

It was weird.

I didn't like it.

Yeah, because when you see him on videos, it's always like kind of weird.

You know what I mean?

He looks weird in person it was odd interesting yeah that was fun though you think he'll win again i hope not i don't think so i'm honestly not super political but what do you guys think i think trump i think trump got an edge i have a lot of edge a lot but we got to see what happens with him rfk is taking votes away though yeah they were talking about rfk at the conference a lot of people like him too

more concerned about his health but they really like him yeah he does sound pretty rough yeah

the voice scares me a little bit does kind of

i honestly can't like listen to him speak for too long.

It just kind of like

the whole recent BitBoy stuff.

Have you covered any of those?

Bit Boy.

What happened?

I've talked to him.

You know, he came on the show.

Yeah.

But it seemed like he was out of it.

So I don't think, I don't know.

Did he come on the show right before the collapse or something?

Yeah, he came on before the collapse.

It was

three weeks on?

It was right before.

Yeah, it was like he seemed off, to be honest.

Yeah, yeah.

He was twitching on the interview.

He was talking about him a lot.

We kind of just let him talk the whole show.

And he did.

Interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

So did you think he was actually like on drugs?

Because he's obviously denied being on drugs.

After that day, yeah, dude, to be honest.

I think something was off about him.

I don't know

what it was, but something's definitely off.

He ruined a lot of relationships, too.

Oh, yeah, he did.

I mean, BitBoy and I, we started off disliking each other because BitBoy, he messaged me when he went to the Bahamas to try to interview Sam Bigman-Fried, and he kept messaging, or he messaged me being like, get me in touch with Sam, something like that.

And I didn't respond and it became like a little dispute.

Then we ended up like being on good terms because we were at conferences together and he was always nice to me.

So I don't have any like personal gripes with him in terms of like him being to me.

Obviously, a lot of people hate him and think he's a scammer.

But then like that meltdown, I mean, that was.

I didn't understand it.

I don't know.

I don't know what was going on there.

I do remember like a few weeks before that, he was sending me like some slightly like erratic messages.

But I was just like, eh, I didn't think that much of it um

but yeah the whole wife and um wife left him right thing yeah

i think i think his company uh guy from his company they separated from him yeah he lost a lot bro yeah he lost the company lost the wife yeah lost a lot of crypto yeah he lost that's the thing i feel like to some degree i do like feel for him and like

it like he started that company himself it's called it was called bitboy crypto i was like you can really take that away from him i didn't know that you can just pull the ruck out from someone.

He was the face of it.

It's going to be hard for that company to even rebrand, honestly.

Completely.

I think that's kind of like them taking the company away from him.

I'm kind of like, you guys can all leave the company and start your own company.

I feel like to take it away.

But having him as a face, as the face of the company and this mindset, this mental mindset that he's in, wouldn't be good for the company anyway.

Yeah.

I mean, I think it has its pros and its cons.

Yeah.

In a way.

That's true.

When I think of BitBoy, I think of literally BitBoy.

Me too.

I feel like you can't separate the two.

Yeah.

so i don't know it's very strange i mean the whole like personal life matter is yeah i think he went manic honestly i think so too honestly well i think in that time too crypto is down i mean i think a lot of people lost their mind um when it came to crypto just because they lost a lot but as you know you know and as you you know sean's a big eth holder that um you gotta hold Yeah, you know, so what's your mindset now on the

I've always been a holder.

Like i haven't sold yeah i haven't sold well because the reason i got into crypto was because one of my relatives was a bitcoin miner back when i was in high school so i got my first bitcoin as a christmas gift in 2011 he's chilling oh he's chilling

do you still have it or did does celsius have it yeah i put it into celsius

but i have i have other crypto that wasn't in celsius so i'm i'm I'm not doing great.

That was a lot of my crypto, but

it wasn't everything.

But yeah, I hadn't sold any of it.

So I'm certainly not like a day trader.

I don't don't go and buy coins and like try to catch the market top or anything.

So I'm also in the holding little

mindset.

Mining in 2011, he's got to be

worth nine, ten figures now.

Yeah.

I mean, who is this, your uncle?

He doesn't want to be known just for his like six years.

That's fair.

You might ask me.

So he still has

Bitcoin?

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

I mean, he certainly sold over.

Bro, the price was like five bucks back.

Oh, yeah.

I remember because I was in high school.

I didn't know what Bitcoin was.

And he, like, for Christmas, he was like, it's a Bitcoin.

it's obviously not physical, but I think he wrote me like a card that said he was giving me a Bitcoin.

You probably hated that guy.

I was like, what the is this?

He was like, it's worth like 20.

I don't remember what it was worth, maybe like five, 10 bucks, 20.

And I was just like, yeah, I don't care.

Like, where's my actual gift?

That's the best gift you've ever gotten, Loki.

I know, I know.

Just at the time, I just didn't know what the f ⁇ it was.

And I was like, this isn't a real thing.

You wrote that.

You're giving me something on paper?

Like, what the f ⁇ ?

No, I feel that, though, because kids in my high school got made fun of for like even talking about crypto.

Did you know kids in high school that were like mine?

Yeah.

And I would be friends with him because it interested me.

And I even got into it.

I didn't mind, but he did.

He had two computers mining, and I thought it was sick.

But everyone else made fun of him.

I mean, he's probably chilling now.

Hell yeah.

Hell yeah.

It's always the people that get made fun of that end up on top.

That's true.

That's true.

I wish I befriended all these photos.

I was like, I've got to do dumb money about the GameStop stock.

They had a movie about that.

Oh, I haven't watched that.

Oh, he got bullied, have you?

Bro, that, yeah, he came up crazy.

He came up crazy.

I remember those days i didn't make money on that one doge was wild when doge blew up yeah did you make any money off any coins i've never bought coins well i actually like over the course of this i'm now really good friends with billy marcus the dogecoin founder so he's given me a little bit of doge for my birthday that's okay

coin i think i own other than that like eth bitcoin i think i've bought a couple other projects along the way like i bought a little like aave and matic and yeah solana i have a little solana i know some shiba millionaires shiba you know Really?

Yeah, yeah.

That one's hot.

Do they sell?

I know three, yeah.

Good for the.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What are you working on now?

Now I'm just like,

I don't know.

I'm still doing content stuff and I'm just like finding my way out of the specific crypto niche because I don't know.

I just thought about like, do I want to keep just doing the whole Coffee thing?

I don't know if it's what I want to do forever.

You should.

Because it's information.

Yeah.

If you're passionate about it, yeah.

But Twitter's paying well.

I saw you tweet a little bit about that.

Well, the Twitter payments are now down after Elon.

Oh, they're down.

After Elon said you to all the advertisers, I noticed.

Twitter losing the ass because

the advertisers left, I noticed a drastic decrease.

I think that the most I made in a two-week period was like $1,700 for two weeks, which is good for Twitter because I never even expected to make money.

Yeah, I just went to tweeting.

Yeah.

And then my latest payment I got today was like $130.

So we're down bad after the adventure.

TikTok, how are you doing on here?

I don't actually, I should use TikTok more.

It just makes me feel cringy.

Why?

I don't know.

It just feels like something that like very, it's Gen Z, but I know that you make a lot of shorts and you probably do really well with them.

Yeah, I mean, they don't pay anything crazy, but it's good for eyeballs.

Yeah, that makes sense.

That makes the business.

That makes sense.

I'm just, yeah.

I mean, you have a team too.

I feel like just to go through and make every single one of these things, it's like, oh, yeah.

It takes enough time to make like a YouTube video just because I have to read so many documents.

And for me, I'm like, I picked the wrong niche.

Like a lot of the YouTube videos I was making was about were about the bankruptcy filings and bankruptcy proceedings.

So I'm like reading like 30-page court documents and trying to summarize them.

I'm like, it's so f ⁇ ing sufferable.

So honestly, I'm now in a bit of a state of limbo because I'm like, I don't know if this is what I want to do forever.

I need to inch my way out a bit.

So no more dates with the crypto bros?

I know.

I mean, my favorite scammer is going to go to jail for a long time.

So no more Sammy.

Oh, God, I can't.

I feel like I joke around with my friends in private and I'm like, Sammy, Sammy is going to jail for a long time.

but I'm like yeah it's not gonna come off well hopefully but has he talked you at all recently I haven't talked to him since we he went to jail in

August he got thrown in jail in August

so I haven't talked to him um

and we just talked a lot before that and like in a weird way we sort of became friends you were close when I heard

yeah we did become friends yeah it's weird it's weird to be like friends with a scammer but Sam was always nice

she said it's weird to be friends with a scammer do you believe his whole MO was to scam people or did he not know what to do?

His company scaled so fast.

Did he not know what to do with?

What was it?

He said $5 billion.

$8 billion.

I just billionaire.

I don't believe that his intent was to ever hurt customers.

I don't believe that his intent was to ever enrich himself so that he could go buy yachts and like...

What else do rich people buy?

I don't know.

Everything.

But what?

Yeah, like partying.

That's the purpose of starting FTX.

He got carried away.

No, so the reason.

So people think that this is a PR.

This is just him trying to do PR, but he believed in this thing called effective altruism, this, I guess, belief.

Effective what?

Effective altruism.

It's funny that you guys don't know because I feel like it's a very Silicone Valley people know what EA is, and I didn't know what it was going into it.

But it's just this, I guess, way of life or mentality or mindset or philosophy where you believe that the more money you accumulate,

that you'll be able to donate to whatever charities you see fit.

That's the way that you can have the most positive impact on the world.

Because ultimately, if you go and volunteer for a charity and put in that amount of time of your your hours, like how much good are you really doing?

But if you're able to make an exorbitant amount of money and then donate that money to these charities, you're going to be able to like really multiply the amount of money.

So is that what he was doing?

That's what he was doing.

And that's considered fraud.

Well, that was, I think, his actual intent.

But in order to get his hands on all this money that he allegedly, I mean, that he has claimed through and through that he wanted to donate to charity, he did commit some crimes along the way.

He committed some crimes.

He might have done some illegal things.

So he committed some crimes along the way in order to donate to charity.

I know.

Was he not donating?

That's really like breaking it down to simplify it.

But yeah, ultimately, he was donating quite a bit to charity.

He didn't donate everything he had.

Well, in terms of his personal holdings, he actually didn't come out of this with

that much money.

I mean, he sh he showed me screenshots of his personal bank accounts.

He had like 200K in them.

Obviously,

people are like, he's hiding money away, which could be true.

I'm sure he could be hiding money, but I don't think he's hiding billions of dollars or anything.

A lot of this is.

But where do you think he's hiding like hundreds of millions though?

I think probably certainly some millions.

Some hundreds of millions is somewhere.

Because there's no way.

So it's $8 billion gone.

It's missing.

No, so that's the thing.

The $8 billion, it's not gone.

It's like he was making insane, illiquid investments.

So he was putting money into, for example, Anthropic.

But one of FTX's largest investments was in Anthropic, the AI company.

And that investment has actually ended up doing really well.

So that company is still doing good.

Yeah, Anthropic, I think just because the AI, like, there's been so much interest in that.

I know, for sure.

Yeah.

So I think it was a $500 million million investment.

And obviously you can't.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that's $500 million.

You can't value it now, but we're still at $7.5 billion.

I need to know where the other.

Oh, my God.

Ooh, there's like a big breakdown.

I mean, there were a lot of liquid venture investments where I wouldn't remember every company.

There was some like Robin Hood shares.

Well,

mostly liquid venture investments.

The money that's gone, I would say, is like a lot of money went to politicians.

And they're trying to get that money back to customers, but

yeah, claw back.

But will these politicians give us that money back i doubt it yeah so like that's the money that i think is gone but sam didn't like he didn't own like super yachts he didn't party at nightclubs he didn't spend money on hookers and drugs so

see that's why i'm thinking bro i don't think he's gonna get that much time i think he is we'll see what happens when do they sentence it march 28th okay and i'm gonna fly to new york for it so we'll see we'll see what happens i think

if he gets sins thereby be so happy but they still don't get their money back that's the thing well so i don't know what do you guys think is fair Actually, I guess you guys don't follow what he's done.

Well, I think what's fair, I think he should minimum get probably like five to 10 years.

It's a white-collar crime.

Granted, it's a lot of money, but when you talk about what he actually spent the money on,

didn't he buy like houses and shit?

He stole.

The real estate he had, he had a $35 million henthouse in the Bahamas, which kept coming up in court and obviously looks really bad.

And I'm not going to like defend it, but he also had 10 other FTX employees living with with him in that penthouse.

So it wasn't like, it's like these guys are all billionaires and they're sharing a $35 million penthouse.

Oh, so Caroline lived there?

Caroline, Gary Nishaw.

Oh, wow.

I just don't feel like, because when you hear stories about everyone else, it's like they bought Islands, they bought this, they bought that.

And I'm like, okay, cool.

You can see where the fraud is.

But in his case, I think it was unintentional.

And

I just don't, so I'm trying to just get a better understanding of what he was doing.

That was just so fraudulent.

Plus, I know in terms and conditions with banks um crypto holding companies in that fine print technically you don't own those coins anymore once they're trans in ftx though their terms of service did say that the customers remain retain um titles to the coins so they do celsius for example we did transfer our title to the coins but right ftx different but you'll probably get some i mean i don't know how much your audience follows or cares about this stuff but if i say something like um anything remotely not positive but say something like yeah, five to 10 years would probably be fair.

I get a lot of heat because I think there's just a lot of people with pitchforks that are like, this guy needs to die in jail.

He needs to run out of time.

I think he should get five to 10.

And if he dies in jail, then so be it.

I mean, but like, I mean, to just throw him away, bro.

That's crazy.

He has a smart mind, but just

to throw him away, I think they can use him.

I think they can use him more than anything.

He's of more use to like the customer, the people who lost money.

He's certain criminals need jobs, bro.

With the government.

No, it's the truth, right?

You too.

Certain criminals need jobs.

I think he's one of those criminals.

They used to hire hackers in jail.

Right.

If you put him in jail, he's going to educate them prisoners and you're going to have a whole top row of people ready to go when they get out.

I'm just trying to understand like, why does he deserve life in prison?

I understand the amount, but then there's also insurance companies I'm sure that was probably backing him.

So there's ways to kind of recuperate that.

I would hope so, right?

Let's just hope that he had insurance to back FTX just in case of loss or anything.

No, there's no insurance.

No, he had no insurance.

Yeah.

He had no insurance on his company.

The money that customers are actually going to end up losing after the bankruptcy is all said and done, it doesn't look like FTX customers are going to end up losing a lot because some of his insane illiquid investments that he shouldn't have made in the first place have surprisingly done really well.

Like Anthropic was a $500 million investment, one of their largest investments.

And people are now valuing that stake in Anthropic at potentially $2 to $3 billion.

Obviously, things like that.

I think customers might end up being a business.

So did the equity from FTX and okay, so he transferred their money and made other investments.

So are those customers still locked in and equities and shares to those other companies?

They're not as of now.

It's really messy and complicated.

So this is going to take like a few more.

Because you're saying they're not losing that money.

So are they gaining?

Like, what do they actually get from those other investments that he made?

I don't think they're going to end up gaining.

That's more of a reason to get it.

Yeah, they won't gain, but they might be made whole.

Yeah, the the amount of money that they are technically owed, I think, is locked in on the date of the bankruptcy, which kind of sucks for them because crypto prices were down bad that day.

But apparently, that's just the precedent in bankruptcies.

You lock in that price.

But I think it's very, especially with the prices right now skyrocketing.

I think that customers are probably going to end up being made whole.

I don't want to promise or say that as well.

And that's FTX.

What about Celsius, you think?

Oh, Celsius, we're not going to be doing so well.

I mean, we're going to get back a

percentage of our money.

He's not going to jail?

No, he's in jail.

Mishzinski did get indicted, and his trial is going to be in September next year.

Even though Celsius went down before FTX, they took so long to indict Mashinsky.

It's honestly just odd how fast they went after Sam because usually these white-collar fraud cases apparently take a really long time.

Sam had more visibility

and more brand recognition.

Exactly.

With Celsius, just like you said, you guys handed over the titles and everything to your actual coins.

Yes.

So his terms and conditions were actually written in a way that benefited him.

Yeah.

So more than likely, he's going to get off.

He filed chapter.

I still think he committed some fraud, though.

I mean in in that case but what if they fine him two three million dollars we'll see or maybe ten he still gets a shame if if

if Sam goes to prison for life and Alex gets nothing because I personally hate Alex Mashinsky more you guys probably

your company structure though yeah this is true I mean that that one thing in the terms of service does help it helps a lot

yeah that's the whole that's the whole trial well Tiffany it's been fun anything you want to promote our clothes off with oh I mean I'm on Twitter at Tiffany Fong with one underscore on YouTube at Tiffany Fong I I mean, I'm on most of the platforms.

If you just look up Tiffany Fong, you'll find me.

Simple name.

All right.

Fong F-O-N-G.

You heard it here, guys.

Hopefully, you guys watch and get your crypto back.

Until then, see you next time.

Bye, guys.