Anthony Pompliano and Andrew Schulz dissect the FTX collapse, detailing how Sam Bankman-Fried's misuse of FTT tokens obscured billions in misappropriated funds, triggering a crash when Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao sold his $500 million stake. They contrast Bitcoin's transparent ledger with opaque centralized exchanges, debate the efficacy of self-custody versus platform storage, and analyze the legal complexities of prosecuting international defendants while advocating for "Proof of Reserves" to prevent future fraud. Ultimately, the discussion underscores that while crypto markets remain volatile, long-term holders like Paul Tudor Jones suggest resilience lies in understanding asset ownership rather than relying on unregulated intermediaries. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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How FTX Created Value00:14:30
What's up everybody?
Welcome to Flagrant.
And today we're going to find out what the f ⁇ FTX is.
Okay.
What's an FTT?
Okay, we're going to find out how they convinced Tom Brady to give all of his money to them.
We're going to find out how they convinced Miami Heat to give them the damn arena to name and how they got Larry David to be in a Super Bowl commercial and then how they squandered $10 billion somehow and why a guy worth $26 billion would be having sex with a girl that looks like she designs costumes for the Incredibles.
We're going to figure out all of this with the one and only.
Maybe the guy who started it, to be honest.
The reason we're in, the reason we're invested, not the pizza boy, the pizza man, and the pumpkin.
Talk to us, pumps.
Y'all got to get the fuck out of New York because it is freezing here.
This is right.
You are right about this.
You are right about this.
New Yorker term for crypto that you use and I mean I also think when people see me on the podcast, they should ask themselves, is this the top or the bottom?
Because that's the only two times I come on.
I was telling us, we're going to mark tops and mark bottoms with my appearance.
I was telling, I was like, I really admire it.
I admire if you came out.
People could run away.
They could not be part of it.
Do you want to know why I came?
Talk to us.
Two reasons.
One, hey, listen, let's talk about it.
Let's talk about it.
Whatever.
But the second thing was, my wife was like, oh, you're going to go for the day, the whole thing.
I said, listen, I saw Andrew Schultz, when everyone was going at Rogan, he stood up and he said, yo, fuck this.
I know this guy.
He's not a racist.
I'm cool with it.
And I said to myself, I said, oh, look, if he's going to go bat for Pete Boggo, fuck it.
And let's go talk about whatever they want to talk about.
Hopefully we don't talk about anything I don't want to talk about.
Okay.
I don't know what you just said, but I'm with you, man.
And we can't promise you that one.
Okay, okay.
First of all, we have to understand what's going on.
Please explain to us what FTX was, what Alameda was, and Sam Bankman Freed, what he did with these companies.
So we're still learning everything, right?
So everything is based on what we know right now.
But basically, Sam used to work at Jane Street, which was a trading firm in Wall Street.
He was like, yo, I can make money in crypto.
He subscribes to this idea of effective altruism and basically like make as much money as you can to do as much good in the world as you can.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's it.
Hey, everyone's a liar.
Everyone's a liar.
I want to make $10 billion to help people.
What a fucking load of shit.
All right.
So that's what he said.
Yeah.
And so he starts out.
He got into that.
Unbelievable.
Larry David, you fucking goofy.
So he starts out.
He's basically trading back and forth.
You could buy Bitcoin on one exchange in America.
You could go sell it in another country for a different price.
He would just profit.
So he found some arbitrage there.
Arbitrage.
I think it was in Japan.
Japan.
Yeah, yeah.
So he's just doing over and over and over again.
That was the beginning of Alameda Research.
Just think of it as a trading firm, right?
Hedge funds, traders.
Hedge fund, trading firm, whatever you want.
And at some point, they were like, hey, this is a good game, but like the exchanges, that's an even better game.
And for people who don't know anything about these exchanges, one of the key pieces is you have to have liquidity.
So if you start an exchange, you need people to trade there, right?
Because if people show up and they want to trade, like, hey, I'll sell Bitcoin, but no one wants to buy it, then you're screwed.
Because you have to hold the Bitcoin until someone else buys it.
You just need buyers and sellers to meet.
And so you could do that a lot of different ways.
You could be really good at marketing and getting people there.
You could have some sort of better economics for people, like an incentive or whatever.
They had an exchange and then they had the hedge funds.
They could provide liquidity.
So it was a very liquid market early on.
So a lot of people would show up.
It also didn't hurt that a lot of people, supposedly when they were showing up, were making a lot of money.
So if you're a trader and you're like, hey, I can go trade in all these different exchanges, but I always make money on this one.
Well, this one sounds like a good one.
It's kind of like a sports book, right?
you're gambling all the time and you're like, oh, but I always went at this sports book.
We're going back.
They get all your business, right?
Yeah.
So that started to happen.
And real quick, an exchange is a place where people can buy crypto, sell crypto, and also store crypto, right?
You're not supposed to leave it there, but yes, people do leave it on the exchanges.
Because think about it, if you're trading, especially the traders, right?
If you're trading, you don't know if a couple hours from now, you're going to want to buy, sell, do nothing, whatever.
So you can't do that.
So you're going to take it all the way off, put it back up.
So you leave it up there.
So a lot of people leave it, right?
Yeah.
And so as this was building up, he built it into a $32 billion company, FTX, raised a bunch of money, had not really that many employees, couple hundred employees, but for a $32 billion company, not that many.
And then it all fell apart over the last two weeks.
And now people are waking up and they're like, oh shit, like they took away the alcohol.
No one's drunk anymore on all the profits.
Like, what the hell happened?
And that's where we are now.
Okay, so what did happen?
How did they go from $32 billion to absolutely nothing?
That's pretty tough.
Yeah.
So remember, $32 billion is basically like a fake number, right?
It's kind of like if we all start a company together and we come to you and we're like, our company's worth $100 million and you give us a dollar and you say, yes, it's worth $100 million.
Like now we're all like, oh, we have a $100 million company.
But like, that's just because we convinced you that it was worth $100 million.
Got you.
So it's the evaluation.
So if it's worth $100 million and I give you $1 million, I own 1% of that company.
Correct.
At that evaluation.
But at that valuation.
Yeah.
Somebody else may be like, it's not worth $100 million.
It's worth $50 million.
Right.
Somebody else may be like, you guys are all morons.
That's a worthless company.
This always happens on Shark Tank.
Correct.
Guys come in and they say you get 10% for a million dollars.
And you're like, you're giving yourself a $10 million valuation.
I don't agree.
Correct.
So $32 billion was the valuation of the company itself, which people were giving real money.
They invested billions of dollars, but the 32 number was just the valuation of the company.
And so what basically occurred was people were giving them money on the exchange to buy and sell crypto.
And in their terms of service, it said, we don't touch the coins that you give us.
So if you have Bitcoin on our exchange, we leave it there.
If you have Ethereum, we leave it there.
If you have stable coins, we leave it there.
We don't touch it.
And so one of the things that does go on in crypto, it also goes on in traditional finance.
And we've talked about on past episodes, like if you put your dollars in the bank, what do they do?
They lend it on the back, right?
There are crypto companies that do the same thing, but FTX said we don't do that.
And so people believe them.
And so then it came out.
How are they making money?
How are they making money?
They take a spread.
So like, I want to sell Bitcoin.
You want to buy the Bitcoin?
They take like a fee or a spread, sometimes both.
And so it came out that at some point over the last couple of years, Sam, the FTX team, whoever allegedly was like, oh, why don't we take the user funds and like bring it over here to the hedge fund?
Which is Alameda.
Correct.
And so it's unclear, like, was there legal documentation that it was a loan?
Did they just like move it?
The degree of intentionality versus they would describe it as a mistake.
Like you can imagine there's a big bankruptcy filing.
So like now lawyers are involved.
Like it's all going to come out.
So do we know if they move the funds or if they take a loan on the on the creator funds?
What I think is clear is that like $8 billion like wasn't where it was supposed to be.
I think it's maybe the best way to say it.
And how it got to the wrong place, I think there's some debating going on right now.
Now, is it, I read something about them backing that, let's call it a loan or whatever it is with their own token.
Yes.
Is that true?
Because they had a token, right?
FTT is.
This is where it gets kind of crazy.
So like imagine, again, go back to that example.
We have a $100 million company that we all created.
We got an investor to invested that valuation.
And then he was like, all right, Cole, like, what are the assets of the business?
And we're like, well, we have some computers, we have some desks.
And then like, we literally just have a stack of papers that we just like ripped out of a notebook and they're just sitting here.
And like, that's an asset.
And they're like, well, what's it worth?
Be like, well, we sold some of those pieces of paper to somebody else for $100 a piece of paper.
Be like, okay.
Like, why do they think it's worth $100?
Well, that's what the market says it's worth.
It's not paper.
They just created coins.
Like, they literally just got coins that they created, FTT.
Now, there was an advantage if you held it.
So some of these exchanges do have coins.
And what they'll say is things like, if you have our coin, you may get lower fees on the exchange.
And they try to create like value.
So you trade in your Bitcoin for FTTs and then they pay you to hold the FTC.
Like a casino kind of thing.
A few different exchanges did this.
I think Block5 might be one of them.
Yeah.
So BlockFive.
You want to hear all your problems?
No, I'm just saying you got me into crypto.
So I have some idea of what you're saying, which is rare.
And I know different ways in which you fucked me.
So you're like, I still believe long term, but you've, you know, you fucked me gently.
BlockFi doesn't have BlockFi doesn't have a token, but there are other actual exchanges.
So Binance has a token, FTX had a token, et cetera.
And what became kind of weird is like, if you control the money supply, essentially, of FTT and you give it to someone and you say, hey, I'll give you $500 million of this token.
Give me a loan or give me some value.
I invest the token.
Now I own equity in your business.
Like all these different things.
Pretty brilliant, actually.
If the token is worth what you say it's worth, okay.
It's crazy, but like, okay.
The problem, what eventually happened is CZ, CEO of Binance, was just like, I don't think that I'm going to hold this anymore.
And he tweeted it, which like Binance is another exchange.
Yeah.
The biggest competitor of FTX.
Correct.
And it looks like he intentionally tried to affect FTX's bottom line or business or tank the whole company.
It appears that way.
CZ doesn't seem to be a stupid guy.
And he basically had a kill shot.
And I think he took it.
And why did he have a kill shot?
They helped seed FTX years ago.
So he was an investor.
And so he got bought out of his position.
And he publicly said that they got paid in stable coins and some of these other tokens, these FTT tokens.
So he was sitting on like $500 million worth of the token.
And he realized.
And what he tweeted was just like, due to recent information, because there's an article that CoinDesk published, he goes, We're going to be selling our position.
We've got $500 million.
That's a big position.
You tell people you're going to sell it.
Well, everyone else goes, maybe I'll sell before he sells.
Now, I heard SBF Sam Bankman Freed try to buy the position at like $22 a coin from, what's his name is CZ?
CZ.
From CZ.
And then CZ said no, because he didn't want to get purchased.
He wanted to flood the market.
There was a public tweet from the CEO of the hedge fund, which, again, this is where you start getting into a little bit of conspiracy land.
Like, why did she tweet $22 was the price of the token at the time?
Like, was that an important number?
And so did they kind of reveal or tip their hand?
And so, like, the one thing in crypto is like, there are millions and millions and millions of people around the world that are playing this game slash in this industry, trading, whatever.
These people are not dumb.
Yeah.
And so if they think that there's an opportunity to make money by arbitraging something or by like basically screwing somebody in terms of like the market, like they're going to at least try.
And so that's ultimately what happened.
It unraveled the whole thing.
And pretty much within like a week, they filed for bankruptcy.
Wasn't there a leak that came through Coindesk that basically kind of blew all of it up before the tweet?
And how did that leak come out?
I don't know who leaked it.
What was the leak?
It was the balance sheet of the hedge fund.
Ooh.
So like basically saying like...
The hedge fund is Alameda.
Alameda.
Yeah.
Like, hey, they have all these assets, but a lot of them are in this token that is their token.
Like kind of like revealed more information.
There's a guy, Ian Allison, at Coindesk, who.
in my opinion, like this is the story of for sure the year, if not probably the decade, when it comes to kind of this new like digital world.
And he's not going to get as much credit as he should.
But it wasn't like the mainstream media.
It wasn't a regulator.
It wasn't anything.
Like somebody supposedly from the industry leaked the balance sheet to a reporter in the industry.
He published it.
And then like the free market took over.
Interesting.
Right.
And then you have CZ.
He's got a lot of people.
CZ kind of swayed it a little.
Like he kind of started that run.
Plus, he's a market participant, right?
It's kind of like free market dynamics play.
Now, the sad part, I think we should call it is like a lot of people got hurt in this.
Right.
And there's a lot of people who lost money.
There's a lot of people who got duped.
There's a lot of people who thought this was one thing.
It turns out it's not.
So like free market is like this interesting dynamic because like technically I've said that like the free market's the judge, jury, and executioner, but like there's collateral damage as well.
And so this happens in finance to a degree.
But if in finance, let's say a stock goes down too fast, like remember during COVID, like the stocks may be falling, like they look like shit coins, right?
They have something called circuit breaker, where if the stock falls, I think it's like 8%, they basically just say timeout.
They hold stops trading for 15 minutes.
Like everyone catch your breath.
And then if it falls again, they stop it.
And then if I think it's like 20%, they shut off the trading of that for the day.
So it's not just this one day race to the bottom.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So like very rarely will you see it.
Now, now in aftermarket trading, there's all kinds of crazy stuff that can happen.
But like there's controls around the trading of the assets because they've seen this stuff happen in the past where things can go from worth a lot to basically nothing in seconds.
Now, isn't that an argument for regulation?
I know one of the beautiful things about crypto, one of the things that was so exciting about it was that it was not regulated.
It was not, it didn't have like that central bank system that we have here and that freedom that people talk about.
I'm sure you spoke about many times.
But I feel like this experience right here is a perfect example of where regulation could have helped.
Yeah, well, there's two things.
So first, you can't confuse Bitcoin with like all this other stuff, right?
So Bitcoin is a decentralized kind of electronic peer-to-peer.
All this other stuff is finance.
Controls on Asset Trading00:05:56
Yeah, it's finance.
No, no, but it's like more similar to the dollar.
Like dollars.
100%.
Like what you were describing with FTT, I was thinking, how is that not fiat?
Yeah, basically these people have become central banks.
And the thing about that is like, if you are a central bank, you're going to need regulation in place.
So they were central banks without regulation.
And what would somebody do if they just had a printing press for money?
Well, it's even, I think, worse than that.
So like Bitcoin is kind of in a league of its own.
It is this decentralized thing.
An asset isn't regulated, right?
Like the dollar doesn't get put in jail.
The dollar isn't fined.
It's the companies and the organizations and the people who deal with dollars.
They're regulated in the traditional financial world.
So the asset is just an inanimate object.
Same with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin's just a system.
You can't regulate it.
There's nobody to put in money.
There is a regulation, right?
There's an amount.
I would call that a regulation.
Oh, the code.
Yeah.
The code basically says it'll be 21 million Bitcoin.
And maybe that's all you need to create the value.
It's like a self-regulated.
The reason why it's the most valuable is because it has a regulator on it.
Yeah.
It's decentralized.
It's the most secure.
And also, I think that there's like the least amount of fuckery, which I think is a really key piece to this, because what we'll see on this other stuff is like they just recreated finance.
And I don't go as far as maybe some of the hardcore Bitcoin like Maximos people will go.
They'll be like, it's all worthless.
It's all stupid.
It's all the stuff.
I just look at it as like, people are going to create these financial systems, whether we like it or not, right?
They're going to do it.
But what the central bank idea of like just creating your own tokens, to your point, like there's no disclosure rules at the same level that there is in the legacy financial system.
But FTX was regulated.
They had a regulated entity in the United States.
They had a regulated entity in the Bahamas.
Now, you could argue how good were the regulations in either place?
Should they have been better?
Whatever.
But there's details coming out now that like the auditors didn't know this was happening.
So you kind of have to ask yourself, like, if you go to a company, you say, send me your audited financials and they send them to you.
Like, what else do you want?
This is like if you're an athlete and you can beat Usada.
You know what I mean?
Like every year they find a way to get the Reids in the system without being detected.
And they're like, here, I passed my drug test.
It passed.
So they were passing the drug tests even though they were on the Reuts.
They don't like right before you run the 100-meter dash at the Olympics.
They're not like, take the data bluff right now.
Right.
So like there's a little bit of that going on, which again, more details will come out.
And I think it's important that we find that out over time.
But also like the regulations don't always stop bad people.
Like if you remember, Bernie Madoff was regulated, right?
So part of regulation, which is interesting, is like if people are just flat out lying, usually almost 100% of the time, they get caught.
But what we find out is like they're able to trick the rules or the regulators for some period of time.
And so you can't just say, oh, if it's regulated, it's 100% all good.
And what I think in this situation is that like this grew so fast.
There were so many different types of organizations involved from investors to the people they did commercials with, like all this stuff.
People just were like, no one even asked the question of like, could the audited financials be wrong?
Could this information be wrong?
Could they just be potentially misleading people?
So here's what I'm not making the connection on.
Seems like we're kind of saying CZ drove the value down intentionally by saying, you know what?
This 500 million, I don't think it's worth that.
I'm backing out.
Did he do that to potentially, I don't know, fuck FTX over and just say it?
Or did he see something and FTX was doing a lot of shady shit?
You see what I'm saying?
Like there's, it seems like there's a bit of a disconnect.
It seems like it's probably all of the above.
Like in these situations, I think people love to have just like a black and white, like good person, bad person.
They did this and this is why the end result happened.
But I think what ends up happening is like CZ says, hey, I got a bunch of these tokens.
I don't think the token is really worth anything.
So I'm going to sell them.
Okay.
That like creates part of the problem.
Then it happens that it exposes this other problem, which then compounds.
And like, then you get this like cascading effect and the whole thing falls apart.
So I read a little bit, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I read that the goal for SBX.
Let me tell you something, bro.
Let me tell you something.
It was a lot of grammar and spelling mistakes in this article.
And that made me believe it even more.
I was like, yo, this guy's excited to get this piece out.
Like, this piece needs to get printed today.
So basically, he was saying that it was going over these donations.
A lot have been made about the donations that SBF and FTX and I guess Alameda have made, not only to the Democratic Party, but also to the Republican Party.
And of course, any liberal outlet goes, hey, just donating to the Republicans and every conservatives.
Like 50 million to the liberals.
Okay.
Doesn't matter.
I have 70 million in total to people in political positions of power.
And verbally had committed that he was thinking about doing a billion in 2024.
Yeah.
I mean, he was second in donations to George Soros to the Democratic Party that year.
Yeah.
5 million to Biden, which is crazy.
Well, he didn't give to both parties.
One of his guys gave to the conservatives.
Of the big questions, and I'm not smart enough, nor have I looked into it enough, but like I do wonder how many corporations, if you went and you looked at them plus all the employees, everybody.
And some of it's just like, hey, if you're the president and you're the CEO of a company, like you two just may have different politics.
So you just give to the party that you support.
Some of it maybe is like more coordinated.
I don't know.
It's the politics that help the business, I assume.
If you're in the lumber business and one candidate is like, yo, we should chop down some trees.
You're like, I'd like to put some money in that guy's pocket.
I've always thought that politicians, they should have to disclose as they do who is the biggest donors.
And then let's say that you're a politician and you get in because the pharma industry like backs you.
You shouldn't be able to have a voice in creating regulation for the pharma industry.
The Multi-Trillion Dollar Question00:15:23
That's interesting.
Right?
Like, basically, say, hey, you can take money from whoever you want.
Take as much as you want.
Your voice is gone.
But you have to abstain from the regulation of the industry that paid you to get in there.
Yeah.
In other words, and they ain't going to do nothing that fucking dumb.
One politician going to pass that law.
It's like, yeah, take the money out of my pocket.
Bro, they can still day trade stocks.
Yeah, it's true.
It's crazy.
So, so basically, what I was reading is that CZ saw that FTX had close connections and was trying to become the first legal regulated exchange by the United States government.
And they would have a huge advantage in the space if they were that.
And he saw maybe it was a little bit closer than most people thought.
And I mean, they have, obviously, there's a, I think, a close connection to one of the people that is on the SEC or the chairman of the SEC through, I think, Caroline's the girl.
SBF has, you know, political family members or people who have like, I think, raised money for Democrats in different parts.
So they had these connections.
You good?
All right.
And basically, and basically he thought that he was going to use those connections to regulate that one and then he would be fucked.
So he's like, I have to go nuclear right now before they end up getting regulated.
The regulation is so crazy because we have publicly traded exchanges in America.
There's publicly traded exchanges in Canada and other places around the world.
And so I think that when people look at this industry and they say there's no regulations, that's not an accurate statement, in my opinion.
But why they in the Bahamas?
Well, there's regulation there, but I think there's a big difference between the regulation in America versus the regulatory environment there.
So what people basically do is they go like regulation shopping.
And what they're doing is they're like, hmm, who's got the country?
And now to the opposite side, right?
Because when you look at these situations, it's easy to have the bombastic take of like, oh, everyone's bad or everyone's good.
But I always look at it as like, if you're the country and you're trying to create a certain type of economic development or growth, you have a carrot and a stick.
You have taxes, you have regulation.
So you can punish people or you can incentivize them.
Puerto Rico in America, we basically like, if you move to Puerto Rico, you live there for a while, like you ain't got to pay taxes.
Why?
We want people to move there so that they will invest in the country, in the territory and do all the stuff.
So a lot of these other countries are like, well, shit, why don't we create regulation that will incentivize these people to move?
So in that sense, like you can understand the incentive side, but I think that the downside to it is like, if you're still using customer funds on the platforms and it creates problems or at least these situations, then people are like, yo, that's not the ultimate goal.
Like if you actually believe that doing the right thing by the customer, which I believe I think most people in the industry believe, then you've got to believe that regulation has to meet some criteria in order to ensure people are doing what they're saying they're doing.
And I'm curious, if the leak never came out or CZ never made that tweet, could FTX have just kept on floating on like they were?
That's like the multi-trillion dollar question.
Yeah, right?
Like what would like if nothing stimulated the run, basically, they could have just continued to like take out like user funds with no cost to themselves, right?
It's impossible to know what would have happened, but I think what this goes back to is like, so use the FTX situation, like put it in a box and say like, all right, we kind of sort of understand what's happening there, whether more details will come out.
But I think what this really shows, and you've seen people talking about it online, is like, take a system like Bitcoin compared to this.
In the FTX situation, people could take the user funds and no one knew.
Right.
It was like hard to tell.
But with Bitcoin, it's like very clear.
It's like very clear.
You can watch them shit move on the fucking blockchain.
Yeah.
So can they create a circuit breaker within their own exchange?
That's what I read.
Not a circuit breaker, but I read that they created a backdoor.
There was like SPF and another dude and they did the code as well.
And they created a backdoor to like flow the money over to Alameda.
Oh, yeah, well, that makes sense.
But the crazy thing about this whole Bitcoin, not even Bitcoin, like crypto thing is like for fucking years, everybody's been saying, hey, you can't get away with anything.
It's minted on the blockchain.
Where's this fucking blockchain that shows exactly what SPF is doing?
Not SPF.
SPF and then the rest of them are doing like, where is this proof?
It should be there, right?
What happened to the 10 billion?
That's the thing, because that money existed, but like separated out.
You have like the Bitcoin system, which is this decentralized thing that everyone's really excited about.
And like in my mind is that is what we were promised, right?
It's a blockchain that is truly decentralized.
That's this global system.
There is no CEO.
There is no centralized control.
And it's something that you can take control.
You take self-custody of the assets.
No one else has them.
Like there's all these benefits to it.
And then like everything else is basically just recreating finance.
And so just like there's bad people doing bad things in regular finance, there's going to be bad people doing bad things in like crypto world.
And so I think just like separating those and like one is a decentralized transparent system, which is like what everyone was promised.
And then of course people were like, yo, we could just go recreate finance and do it like all around the world with these coins.
And so again, people are going to play that game whether we like it or not.
But that's where the problems come in.
Right.
Because now you just recreated finance.
So imagine if you had centralized entities that could create their own money.
Like I bet you bad shit would happen.
Yeah.
But you said, I'm sorry, you said the 10 billion was actually there at one time.
I thought it was just the evaluation of the money.
No, user funds.
They had 10 billion actual dollars.
32 billion was the value of the company and they had 10 billion of user funds.
Unclear what they still have left.
I've seen estimates that they're missing 1 billion, 2 billion.
I saw one that said 8 billion.
I had to read that three times to make sure I was reading it right.
They're like missing 8 billion.
Yeah, because I certainly do.
It's unclear.
Weren't there like DMs of the guy that they kind of came out and he was like, oh, yeah, I just come up with like $6 billion or some shit like that.
Yeah, I know.
But again, it even goes to like down in the Bahamas, like now it's coming out that there was like use of amphetamines, right?
And they had like a doctor who allegedly was prescribing medicine, like all this stuff.
And it's like, okay, if you went to Wall Street in like the 80s or 90s, like there's no cocaine on the table.
And so like, in some ways, a lot of the like non-Bitcoin part of this whole industry is just recreating a lot of what already happened in finance.
But now it's just like 20 to 35 year old kids being like, like, basically, I missed it.
Let's do it again.
Yeah, you know, institutions.
That's the thing about humans.
It's like we will, the reason why history is cyclical is because we'll repeat the same things over and over again.
If there's an opportunity to make money without doing much, we're going to find it and we're going to exploit it.
Green stays green.
It's great.
And we were talking about this before, but like to me, I'm reading this and I'm like, holy shit, is this the 2008 financial collapse all over again?
It's made off.
Oh, you think this is made up?
See, I think this is 2008.
It's like both.
Or maybe it's both.
It's like ingredients of both.
But the reason why I thought it was 2008 is because the subprime mortgages were FTT.
That token, which was a useless thing that was pegged to a valuable thing.
And then everybody believed it was valuable because it was making them money.
I believe these subprime mortgages are worth something because you can't lose money on it in a home.
And the second that dipped, now all of a sudden, well, I got to come for that home.
Oh, there are, there are no moments.
As soon as there's a proxy between like the thing that's actually valuable, and I guess in 2008, it's like the CDOs, like those like consolidated debt obligations.
It's like, yeah, we just dump all this shit in this little bin, and then that's actually what you're buying.
Somebody's watching this right now being like, what do these motherfuckers know about CDOs?
No, we don't know.
But here's the part: is that you guys are way smarter than most people think.
But until you said that, nobody knew that we didn't know.
But now they all know.
We'll cut it out.
Yeah, we can cut that out.
We'll cut that.
We'll cut that part.
Yeah, we're back.
But real quick, just to say, like, and I guarantee that this has happened throughout history is there's a the quickest way to make money is by creating value in something that is otherwise valueless, right?
I mean, like snake oil salesmen, that's what they're doing, right?
They're going down the river and they're selling some bullshit.
You think it's worth something to make a lot of a lick and then you get the fuck out of here because eventually the bottom's going to fall out of it.
And okay, it's sad at the same time.
It's sad that humans repeat the same thing every time, but it also kind of makes me happy that it is a human flaw in a weird way.
Like there's not just like one, you know what I mean?
Like, like you hear about like power dynamics, right?
It's just like, it's a function of humanity.
Put any human next to the opportunity to make a bunch of money doing absolutely nothing.
We're going to fucking do it.
PPP loans, we're going to do it.
Crypto, we're going to do it.
It's like percentages now that are coming out of like the PPP loan stuff.
Oh, it's crazy.
But also, like, again, I always go back.
Like, if you were the government and you were told by the politicians and everything, like, you got to do this, who could have designed a system that would prevent all the fraud in three weeks, right?
So it's like, again, like, it's stupid that they engaged in it, stupid that they sent it and stuff.
But like, these are complex problems.
So I always remind myself, I'm like, yo, I don't want any of these people's jobs, right?
I don't want to be the guy.
Imagine being the dude who's like, yo, you got to run the PPP program and make sure there's no fraud.
Fuck that.
I quit that debt.
Yo, it's impossible.
I feel the same about COVID, like when they're trying to figure it out as the shit is happening and people are dying.
You're just like, the amount of pressure that to make regular people.
And then every mistake they made.
No, but my only issue with them is just not acknowledging that they made mistakes.
It's like you almost to use the lady term gaslighting or whatever, it's you're almost like gaslighting the public.
Like when we go, yo, that shit was a little funky.
Like what you just told me last week was a little funky.
All you got to say is, yeah, my bad was funky.
Yeah.
When's the last time people in finance said, oh, we fucked up?
They don't.
That's what I'm saying.
Oh, but it's frustrating.
And then you just keep on moving along.
Yeah.
So the people who had money on FTX, shitcoin and Bitcoin.
Yep.
Do they get it back?
What happens?
If it's Bitcoin, based on what you're saying, I assume they get it back.
I actually don't have money with FTX for the record.
So they filed for bankruptcy, but they filed not just FTX, like everything that they touched.
Like I think it was like 130-something entities.
So you can imagine like people are showing up being like, all right, what do we got?
And the guy who is the new CEO, he's the same guy who came in when Enron went through bankruptcy.
Like he's been around the block, right?
He's seen the most fucked up shit.
And there's a document that they have to submit pretty early.
I think it's within the first 30 or 45 days.
And they basically kind of laid the land.
Here's where we're at.
And he wrote in the one for FTX.
He was like, this is the single worst like corporate situation I've ever seen in my career.
Wow.
Oh, shit.
Right.
So he's trying to figure out like, what are the entities?
Who's involved?
How much money do we have?
Where is the money?
Was there any funky business going on?
Where was the funky business?
Like, there's all this stuff going on.
So again, like, that's a guy.
I don't want his job.
Right.
But what I do think is a big question here is how much money is left?
Because that will help determine how much will people get back.
And remember, lawyers get paid too.
Oh, lawyers, but it will also determine how much money we're going to have to ask back from these politicians.
If you're Joe Biden, you got $5 million from SBF.
And you know that there's like some hardworking contractor out there that saw a lot of people making money on crypto and he wasn't making money on crypto.
And I think like all of us felt that FOMO is like, yo, I'm working really hard and my friends are making money on this thing where they're not even working.
I want a piece of that.
And then they dump their fucking savings into that shit.
And then they get rinse and you're Joe Biden.
You got 5 million.
You got to cough that up.
Can you recall political donations?
Is there a precedent for that?
So what's happening now, I think it was, I don't want to say which outlet it was, but one of the like mainstream outlets, they made a whole list of, hey, here's everyone who got donations from the people they could identify that were involved.
And then when they asked them.
And the politicians, they were like, yo, you got this donation.
What are you going to do?
Are you going to give it back or not?
It was like maybe a third of them said they were going to give it back.
And the rest didn't respond at the time that they published.
So like, we'll see what happens.
But it's definitely not even.
Yeah, you got to give it away.
Why would you trade it like this?
Why would you not offer?
Why would you not refuse it initially?
Like, or once, not even initially, once this information has come out, like immediately or something like that.
I think they asked them like within 48 hours.
Like it was like pretty clear to know what the fuck is going on.
But with Bitcoin, wouldn't you be able to trace back through the blockchain who initially bought it and then they would be able to get it back?
Am I, this is very rude.
So like in the most general sense, usually in a bankruptcy, what'll happen is people who have a claim.
You could have a claim because you gave them, you lent them money.
You could have a claim because you're some sort of equity holder that has some like extra, you know, a claim on the business, or you could have assets in as a user.
They basically will say, okay, well, here's the pot of money we have.
What percentage should you get?
And so let's just say as an easy example, in the Mt. Gox situation, I think people are getting back 25%.
Goxes, I just heard about this when someone was coming.
I haven't heard of it.
Mt. Gox is an exchange from back in like 2014 that basically failed.
So similar.
Apparently Bitcoin back when it was like 600 fucking crashed and it went to like $10 a shit, like a coin.
It was the biggest exchange, the one everyone used.
And they had a bunch of Bitcoin in there.
And so they've gone through a similar process.
This like bankruptcy stuff.
And so what happened is people basically got like an IOU, right?
Which is like, again, it goes counter to the Bitcoin ethos of like, you can do self-custody.
You can hold on to the asset.
But because you had it in the exchange, you get an IOU.
And those like, we'll get back to you on how much you're going to get.
So let's just say that you had 10 Bitcoin sitting in there at 600 bucks or whatever it was.
Now they're giving back 25%.
So you'll get two and a half Bitcoin.
Now, for those people, you'd rather have the 10 Bitcoin than the two and a half, but the price of Bitcoin has gone up so much in dollar terms, you're like up, but you'd rather have 10 Bitcoin at $17,000 or whatever.
What happens to those Bitcoin?
If there's only 21 million ever made and there were 10, well, now they can get spent.
That's where the question is, where did the $2 billion, let's say that $2 billion is missing from FTX.
Where did it go?
But even if you spend it, you have to give it to someone else to spot it.
It doesn't disappear.
And it never bought it.
So you got to start.
This is what this guy is going to have to try to figure out.
Where'd the money go?
Are you confident they'll be able to find it due to the confidence of the blockchain?
I think that the blockchain will be some of it, but like just go through an easy example.
So Andrew has an account on an exchange that goes under.
They ended up taking his money and they were trading with it.
And he had $100 on their worth of, let's just say, I don't know, FTT.
And as they were trading, they lost money.
So now that they only have $20 of Andrew's original $100, like technically they didn't give it to anyone.
They were just trading and they're bad traders.
So there's $80 missing.
And Andrew's like, yo, yo, where's my $100?
And then the bankruptcy people show up and they're like, yo, there's only $20 left.
Like, here it is.
Right.
Right.
So like you can't, like, what are you going to go do?
Try to figure out like which one of his FTT tokens, who did you trade with?
Like, they didn't, it's just different than like, if you took the money and you went and you bought like a piece of real estate or you donated it, that's very clear, like who has it?
And then can you get it back?
Will they give it back?
Like that becomes part of the process.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
I guess in that example, I look at FTT and I'm like, oh, that's like a proxy coin that they're making.
But like with Bitcoin, are they actually using the actual coins?
So I read something.
I don't know how accurate this is, but guess how many Bitcoin they actually ended up having?
How many?
Zero.
What?
Where Did My Hundred Go00:03:08
Supposedly, in the game.
Isn't that convenient, Pompley?
It's very convenient.
But it goes back to the narrative of like, if you want to do this stuff.
Bitcoin wouldn't be at all connected with the worst crypto scandal in history.
But this is the whole thing, right?
It's like, if you wanted to do all the fuckery, right?
Remember, I said, like, Bitcoin has got a fuckery.
All the fuckery goes on in the rest of this thing.
And so like, you don't want to use Bitcoin if you're doing this, right?
And why?
You can't control the production of Bitcoin.
So like, you can't play central banker.
So like, all right, that's less enticing.
And then what they were doing is they were creating what a lot of people in finance would call like paper Bitcoin or wrapped Bitcoin is what the crypto world would call it.
Oh, a coin that's pegged to it.
But they'll like they like try to move it onto like a different blockchain.
And now they have like an Ethereum token that represents Bitcoin.
But like, how do you know there's really a Bitcoin?
Maybe they could just create more of them.
So it's paper based.
Like you get in this world where like if you're the average user, you have no clue 99.9% of this is going on.
And so like, again, it's finance.
It's the same thing.
Like when you put your dollar in the bank, like there's shit that they do that when people hear about, they're like, yo, they could do that.
Like, who was the person who was like drunk one night and figured that out?
That's what's going on in this whole other side.
So I think like the Bitcoin world, in some ways, the Bitcoiners are very like, we told you so, like, keep your coins off of exchanges, like all this stuff, right?
Which like, I would say some Bitcoiners are very hardcore and like, don't put your stuff on exchanges.
There's other people, right?
More like me who is like, look, people are going to maybe keep majority of it off exchanges, but they're still going to want to use the stuff.
They're still going to want to earn yield.
They're still going to want to participate in finance, whether we like it or not.
They're going to want to do it.
And so it's more about like the responsibility.
Don't put everything somewhere, right?
If you're going to do it, do it with one, three, four, five percent.
Don't do it with a hundred percent.
So I think that that's the world that like now people are starting to realize like, okay, hold on a second.
Bitcoin is different, which is unfortunate we have to go through this.
It's not the first time it's happened, but usually what ends up happening is the net gain of Bitcoiners through this whole process is like zero.
They're not messing with these other tokens.
I saw a guy wrote a whole thread.
He's like a hardcore Bitcoiner now.
And he was like, yo, back in the day, I got burnt, but I didn't learn my lesson.
I had to touch the stove twice.
Interesting.
Right.
And he was like, by the second time I got burnt, I was like, yo, I'm just into Bitcoin.
Because it's so fucking enticing, man.
I'm telling you.
Like, I would see Akash making money through it.
It would piss me off.
And I ended up buying a bunch of fucking Bitcoin strictly because Akash was making all this money doing nothing.
And I was working my ass off for money.
It drove me fucking crazy.
Well, if it makes you feel any better, this guy has some of my Bitcoin.
Akasha and I are in the same boat.
We're waiting to see what happens.
All right, guys, we're going to take a break for a second because today's amazing episode of Flagrant is sponsored by Market Mondays live at the Hulu Theater starring Ian Dunlap.
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Now, did you yank yours off and put on a ledger?
No, I'm going down with the shit.
Wait, really?
You just keep it on?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I've read the news.
And this is the thing.
Like, there are a lot of people who are all upset about a whole bunch of different things.
You know, when I said yank yours off, I meant like put it on your own private.
Nah.
You don't keep your Bitcoin.
No, Like the things that I had on the platforms, right?
Because you got to remember, like, I've worked with, we had advertising deals with some of these people.
And like, an advertising deal is no different than you guys, you know, I don't know, Athletic Greens.
I think I've seen you guys advertise, right?
If all of a sudden something was wrong with Athletic Greens product, it's not like y'all are in the fucking science lab being like, let me test this or this or whatever.
But you would still be like, damn, that is somebody who we worked with, right?
Now, in this case, it appears to be that it was misleading or fraudulent.
They tricked a lot of people that are way smarter than me.
But still, at the end of the day, it's like, yo, if people are going down, fuck it.
Right.
And so I left the shit on there.
I'm like, we'll see what happens.
If the shit's going down, I'm getting the fuck off the ship.
Why are you playing music on this asset?
I went down to television.
Yeah, but it's like...
I can't believe this for a second.
No, I left all of it on exchanges.
I'm the man of the people.
I'm the Bitcoiner of the people.
I'm in solidarity with you.
This is a lot.
You said yourself, real Bitcoiners are like, put your shit on a ledger.
Yeah.
You got to have some on a ledger.
No, no, I think everybody in Bitcoin does self-custody.
What I'm saying is like the same thing that when people would ask me, I was doing as well, right?
It's like, yo, I don't want to just sit and hold the asset 100% of it.
So what I would do is I would take some and I would put on a platform to earn yield or I would have it on like there's payment apps, right?
I would have some sitting on the payment app so that I could send it to people when I wanted to send it rather than have to go get it out of cold storage.
Like at the end of the day, security and convenience, there's a trade-off.
And as much as we want to live in a world where everyone takes security, you know, like as the utmost responsibility, convenience.
I believe that you had it all on there until I noticed one thing.
What?
It's the ring on your finger right here.
There's no way.
There's no way your wife would let you leave all that shit on the bottom.
My wife is the biggest Bitcoin maximalist that I know.
Exactly.
She's like, all this other shit's bullshit.
Exactly why.
She's just throwing ledgers up in the air.
What are they called?
Ledgers?
Ledgers.
Ledgers.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's no way.
There's no way.
I mean, she believes in Bitcoin.
I still have my Bitcoin.
I haven't sold a single sex.
Cold stores drive up your nose.
You technically took it off, babe.
But I do think that it's really important to call out.
Like, I think what we just saw over the last really eight months or so, because it wasn't just this one, there was other ones as well, is that there's a huge difference between decentralized systems and centralized systems.
And, you know, what you guys are hitting on is like the centralized systems are just recreating Wall Street.
And like, just like people get fucked in Wall Street, they're getting fucked here.
And like, similar to what this guy said online of like, you have to touch the stove a couple times before people realize is that there's a lot of people who they do some of the self-custody, some of the ledger stuff, whatever, but they're still playing around here.
A Wake-Up Call for Crypto00:15:01
I think that now this was a wake-up call to a lot of people and they're like, yo, fuck this other crypto stuff, all this other stuff.
I'm going to stick with Bitcoin, which like maybe that's the silver lining in this, but still it sucks.
Like the whole situation sucks.
Now, I'm curious, why wouldn't like Binance or one other exchange try to buy or acquire FTX if this is disrupting the entire market in general?
Oh, oh, shit.
By letting it fail, it ends up hurting Binance as well.
Yeah, like they should see it and be like, because like obviously if they go away, then they can monopolize and think they're aggregating more market share, but you could just acquire them, keep everything hushed.
Nobody financials are so messy.
But Binance did.
So when CZ tweeted and he was like, yo, I'm going to dump the token, FTX was kind of like, you know, they were rocking.
They were a little unsteady.
And so they announced, it wasn't a definitive agreement, but they announced that Binance had intentions to buy FTX.
And then within like 24 hours, CZ was like, nah, this is too messed up.
We're walking away.
And then they failed and filed for bankruptcy.
And that's why I thought he tweeted the 500 million FTT thing because he was going to buy it, but he was like, no.
Yeah, I mean, like, you got to remember, these people are, you know, they're wealthy, that there's a lot of pride.
There's real businesses at stake here.
Like, it's no different than one of the greatest CNBC clips of all time is Bill Ackman calls in live and Carl Icon is on as well.
I don't know if y'all ever seen this.
You got two billionaires and they're screaming at each other on the phone.
And you can hear in the background the traders on the Wall Street stock exchange floor.
Whenever one of them says something crazy, they're like, yeah.
It's like, yo, this is like egos too, right?
Yeah.
Massive egos.
Yeah.
Now it's just like they don't call into a national media outlet.
They're like doing the shit on Twitter.
Yo, that's so true.
Yeah, that's interesting.
And they used to do it on fucking, what was the, not Jim Kramer show, but like what is MSNBC or some shit?
They do them all.
And they just beef with one another.
And now it's done on Twitter way more eyeballs.
You guys are pioneering like kind of a new type of talk show and like going direct to the people and stuff.
But also during this entire saga, there's a couple of people.
There's like there's an account called Autism Capital, which like a pseudonymous account.
There's a kid, Dylan LeClaire.
There's a couple of these folks who like, they were breaking the news like by the minute.
People were DMing them things.
They were like, I'm a former employee.
Here's this.
Here's this.
Like, oh, I saw this piece of information.
And so like in some way, Twitter became the like the show.
So you're watching it and you're like, this is in the mainstream media, like writing up the article.
Do you think that there's a lack of empathy for people who have lost money in this because so many people weren't invested in crypto and they kind of resented that a lot of people were making money out of it?
Even the people who had crypto rubbed it in.
Oh, huge.
They acted like they were experts.
You got to come up with it.
Well, you got compounding things, right?
So like the price of all the assets fell before this happened.
It was already down.
So you already had the like critics, the anti-crypto people.
They were, they're doing it.
They're dancing on graves, right?
They loved it.
We told you it was worthless.
Fuck them.
I saw you covering different shit.
You were talking about this guy who's talking about the Jets or something.
He's like, oh, shit.
Bitcoin down, man.
It's giants.
Giants, this is a sport show now.
I thought it was Joe that was doing that.
His brother does.
He had you working for him after your broke.
When does he have you working for him now?
I need a job.
Hut up.
Hut all this stuff.
Like, no, hey, brother.
Check out Joe Popliano.
That's legit.
He does this.
It's this amazing convergence between money and support, which is obviously there.
But like, he does these great minute-long videos on Twitter.
He's also on Instagram and stuff.
Yeah.
And TikTok.
You should be on all of it.
But it's great.
Like, the content is phenomenal.
So I knew that I was in trouble when he started sending me screenshots of the analytics comparing us.
And he's like, I'm going to catch you.
That's why he's don't go follow that.
I'm curious.
Could FCX have just disclosed and said, hey, we're using user funds?
Like, could they have just come out and said that?
So there's other platforms that did do that.
That's my point.
Like, why couldn't they have just done that and disclosed it?
And everybody's making money, so they're not going to ask questions.
They're going to use it.
I'm getting 15%.
Use away.
Yeah.
I think that people who were using that platform were using it to trade and with the understanding that they weren't doing anything with the user funds.
So it was deemed like safer.
Sure.
Right.
Oh, shit.
How can I trade my shit if you're trading my shit?
Another good question.
Yeah.
So like, if you think about the reason why people were allowing companies to lend out their assets is because they were getting paid really high rates of return.
So if they're going to say to you, hey, I'll pay you 10%, right?
I'll just make up number 10% yield.
Well, then you're like, ah, maybe it's worth it.
Maybe it's not.
But if they say, we're not going to touch your stuff and we're not going to pay you anything, there's a lot of people who are just like, I don't want it.
Just don't talk to my stuff.
Let me trade.
And like, just to clarify, 10% yield is basically just leaving the coins on the exchange.
The exchange pays you so that they can go trade their shit out.
No different than a bank that gives you, what is it, AYP or something like that?
APY.
Or APY.
Yeah.
Okay.
But Mark's point is interesting, though.
Like, if they just acknowledged it, then everybody would be taking on that risk.
And if the money got flushed down the toilet, that was the risk that you took.
Yeah, but I guess that was their competitive edge in the market space.
That you were getting the yield without the risk.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, I don't know.
Yeah.
Well, now it was a risk, but they were marketing it as if there's none.
Right.
Yeah.
Like terms of service, from what I understand, just basically said, we don't touch it.
We don't invest it.
We don't touch it.
I guess that's where you pivot.
You do that for three years to eat a market share.
And then after a little bit, you go, yeah, we're going to start using funds.
And then you put that into the user agreement.
Yeah.
And then some people start pulling it off, but then you can now basically like fractionally reserve your own coins and shit.
I feel like I'm going to get home and there's going to be the flagrant crypto exchange launch.
I mean, Ocots wanted us to do this so badly we're in Miami.
You wanted a flagrant coin.
I did.
Flagrant coin?
I did.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Why not?
Why not?
Just stick with Bitcoin.
Yeah.
Why hasn't anybody else just made Bitcoin?
Huh?
Why hasn't anybody else just made another version of Bitcoin?
Well, there's a lot of people who tried.
I mean, there's people who say that they created Bitcoin.
No, no, no, not like that.
I guess what I'm saying is like, just create a limited number of them.
No, they did.
And what it just didn't take the same way?
No, it's when you think of like tech innovation, the true innovation is where all the value accrues, right?
So it's like a lot of times people use the terminology zero to one.
Like it's the actual innovation is where the value is.
And so that's what Bitcoin did.
And then you have to remember too, like now, if somebody launched a coin, there's like every degenerate in the world is like looking around on the internet, like, well, who got the coins?
Where are the coins?
Where's the new coin?
Right.
So you're attracting people who are like more mercenaries than missionaries.
In the early days of Bitcoin, at first there was no price.
There was no exchange.
There was no anything.
Like people who wanted it were like they believed in the technology.
They got it.
They mined it.
And the missionaries, right?
Bought it drugs on the internet with it.
That's the game.
My sister bought mushrooms for like five Bitcoin back in like 2011.
Get the fuck out of here.
That's like a true true story.
She told me this recently.
She was like, Yeah, I bought it on Silk Road.
Yeah.
It wasn't that many Bitcoin, but yeah, it was like it was like half a Bitcoin or full Bitcoin or something.
There's that story about the guy buying a slice of pizza or something like that for 10 Bitcoin.
Yeah, no, no, no, no, 10,000 Bitcoin.
He spent on two pizzas.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like hundreds of millions of dollars today.
We have zero compassion.
No, it is true.
People, I feel like.
It's the first, it was the first transaction in history where somebody like used it to buy something.
He like went online.
He was like, yo, if I send someone Bitcoin, like, will you get me a pizza?
And I think, if I remember correctly, they like called a Domino's or whatever pizza place in his hometown and was like, well, you bring this dude a pizza.
I'll pay for it.
And then they sent him the 10,000 Bitcoin.
Wow.
Crazy.
Does that dude still have the Bitcoin?
Is he still a holder?
I'm not sure what's a lot of Bitcoin.
Yeah, I'm not sure what happened to Bitcoin.
They've asked the guy who spent the 10,000 Bitcoin.
He's like, no, I don't regret it at all because he's like, Bitcoin probably wouldn't have become what it became unless we started to use it, which I think is what you have to tell yourself.
If you're the guy who's saying this, the guy that's not in the Beatles anymore, he's like, best thing that ever happened.
Love my life.
Love my fat kid, my fat wife.
Bitcoin's down.
Yeah.
Are you buying more?
I have been buying more.
I'm always going to buy more.
And it's just like nothing about Bitcoin has changed.
I didn't sound as confident as you were in my listen, D. I'm like, I'm in like the 11th month with the 11th round of a 12-round fight.
I've been getting punched all year, right?
And I'm like, yo, man, I'm still here.
All right, let's go.
Whatever.
But if you think about Bitcoin, all I keep looking at is like the underlying fundamentals are exactly the same.
And there's a lot of people who are like, oh, what does that mean?
Or whatever.
It's just like, think of a company who is doing the same or more in whether it was revenue or sales or whatever metric you wanted to look at, but the stock price went down.
Some people be like, yo, stock price is down.
I'm out.
Okay, that's fine.
But the people who would look at the actual company and say, hey, I like this.
It's doing the things I want it to do.
I just think that it's a cheaper price for the same company.
They'll buy.
So, like, that's where the market ends up.
Like, that's where people express their view.
There's a lot of people buying because there's two stats that just blow my mind.
The amount of Bitcoin in the last 12 months that hasn't moved is almost 70%.
So, 70% of the Bitcoin people are holding, even though the price went down 75%.
We'll believe it's going back up.
They're not fucking selling, right?
They're not moving it.
So, like, that's an interesting stat.
And then, the second one is on chain, like on the blockchain, you can see the wallet addresses with 0.1 or 0.01 Bitcoin.
So, I think a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand dollars.
Those, the number of those wallets keep hitting all-time highs, meaning that it's not Wall Street guys buying, it's like the small little people are saying, Hey, I buy 20 bucks every week.
Now I've got two, three, $500 worth of Bitcoin, right, in this wallet.
And so, like, I think that those are signals that there is some portion of the kind of holder base or the Bitcoiners that just they're still buying.
It's just not, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars like we saw with the Wall Street guys were coming in.
And what is the FTX lesson for traders, but also for exchanges?
Traders, I think, are just gonna be traders.
Like, they should learn things.
I just don't think they're going to.
I think they're gonna keep trading.
What should they learn, though?
It's just don't keep your assets on the exchange, right?
Like, my shit off.
My shit's still on.
Is Coinbase still around?
Yes, it is.
Coinbase I've heard is legit.
Like, yeah, yeah, my friend who got me Tom Brady thought that shit was legit, too.
FTX, they got him.
They got him.
I had most of them.
I'm getting my shit off today.
The fact that you said that, I'm getting my shit off.
This motherfucker gave me spell coin for my birthday, bro.
Yeah.
Was it called?
Yeah.
You made it?
Spell token.
Yeah, yeah.
You made it?
He didn't even hear him.
I should have.
I should have made it.
You heard it was legit, right?
I got a broken man right now, bro.
I got most of mine on a cold storage.
Most of my Bitcoin on a cold storage.
My friend was like, don't worry about your Coinbase because I have some on Coinbase.
Now, BlockFi, not doing so well.
Definitely lost some there.
And then Voyager, that's on Mark Cube in the list, not on you.
You know what I mean?
Damn, you just got a whole fucking hit list.
No, that's two people.
It's good company.
It's good company for you to be in.
You and Cuban, that's great.
I think that's the big lesson.
Take your stuff off the exchanges, learn about self-custody.
Like one of the pieces of advice I've given people for a long time, we did a lot of work with Ledger, and I used to say, just take $5 of Bitcoin and move it into self-custody, move it into cold storage.
Like learn how this stuff works.
I can't even move that shit to my new iPhone, bro.
That's why you should start with iPhones.
But that's why you should start with $5 is because there are some say that last fucking time when I put $60,000 in for a Bitcoin.
And then they start at $5.
Remember that?
Son of a bitch.
You're still down, right?
You have to still be dead.
What am I doing?
Yeah.
I bought it at the day of the peak.
I think his button push was the downfall of the peak.
I literally hit it.
The podcast came out the next day, and the whole world was like, ooh, Shulti's all in on something.
Literally, that was the truth.
I think the part in the conversation was when you confused 14% with 0.14% returns.
You should look mad similar, bro.
I was reaping rewards.
You can say I got boomer stocks and all that shit.
I was feeling good about myself.
I was like, 14, take that.
And that was 0.14%.
You're like, 14%?
How are your boomer stocks doing?
Are they?
Yo, War Buffett's killing it, right?
Don't you want to have cash right now as in Cash King?
I mean, to a degree, yeah, all the assets go down in value, but also it's like it's a weird timing.
Cash has also kind of gone down if inflation's at 9%.
No, but the American dollar, it's buying power versus the other currencies in the world, right?
So our dollar right now, I think, is a strong.
That's why it's complex, right?
It's like there's inflation.
So if you go back to stay singular to Warren, sorry to Warren.
Warren Buffett.
Sorry to Warren.
Where's that?
Yo, fuck Fiat.
Fuck Williams.
Yeah, that's your winch.
That's great.
Yo, yo, yo.
Yo, where's the star, bro?
Dirty sneakers off.
What's going on?
The stat that Warren needs to learn about is Warren is.
Tell Warren what he needs to learn about.
Let's tell Warren what he needs to learn about.
I think he's up like 30%.
30%.
That's true.
Since the pandemic, Bitcoin's up 2X.
So if Warren had just converted all his fucking money, Bitcoin's up 2X.
I'm going to start drinking out there.
Give me some alcohol, bro.
Stop 2X.
God damn alcohol.
Hold on, hold on.
Oh, you want Arnold Pantheon?
Yo, let's go.
You up?
I'm up 2x.
No, you're not.
Yeah.
So every time I purchase, it went down.
And I tried to go.
Tell me when you're going to purchase.
Bro, the last that I stopped listening to you.
I've lost less and less, but I bought that shit.
I remember it was in my head.
Oh, you lost less and less because you kept going down?
Yeah, No, but I bought it 60, like a fucking baboon with you.
And then that shit hit like 35.
It was during a podcast, right?
And I was like, I called my wife.
I was like, it's never going this low again.
I tried to buy.
You know what I mean?
When I try to buy it, take me about four or five times to actually get the shit to go through.
So I bought at 35.
By the end of the podcast, 28.
God.
Oh, my God.
No, I was fucked, but we're drinking.
So it is what it is.
You know what's better than making money with your friends?
Losing money.
Losing money's fire.
Losing Less Is Still Losing00:03:24
That shit is fun.
When everyone's losing money together.
Can I tell you something that'll make you feel a little bit better about losing money?
Sure.
You should talk to your accountant about this, but you can sell your Bitcoin before the end of the year and book whatever the loss is.
So you take that off your taxes and they just buy it back.
Now, they may change the rules at some point in the future.
You can wait 30 days.
And you can only write off $3,000 a year.
So you can carry that forward.
There's things that you should talk to.
Let me interrupt you.
How long you knowing this information?
A couple weeks.
A couple weeks.
This is amazing.
That's amazing.
You just sitting on that information while I'm sitting here bleeding out money.
But I haven't done it yet because I don't know if it's worth it yet.
I'm still trying to figure it out.
Oh, well, it'd be nice if I could figure that out here.
It'd be nice if I had that.
If I'm telling you about G-Wagons for fucking two years.
Something I already knew about G-WA.
Well, fuck you for not telling me.
Why don't you tell me nothing?
You know everything.
This guy don't tell me nothing.
What the fuck?
I told you about Bitcoin.
Can we just keep doing this?
Like, we'll do it like once a year.
No, Pop.
So listen, and then we'll just count up who lost more money by the end.
Jesus is crazy.
Can we invest in anything?
Is there another like sport paddle?
Let's get a paddle team.
Did y'all look at the pickleball teams?
Yeah, or pickleball.
We could do pickleball.
So I ain't doing nothing else, Tom Brady endorsing.
Is this why Tom's still playing?
Somebody asked.
I heard you.
Monk FCX has sold on Giselle.
You're the worst investor ever.
Hopefully, nobody gets mad about this, but somebody offered us early on.
They were like, yo, y'all want to buy a pickleball team?
And so me and Joe, I got an in-house sports expert.
I was like, hey, this is good sport, bad sports.
It's growing fast.
All this stuff.
Amazing content.
I said, if we buy the team, what do we have to do?
And at the time, you had to be the GM and the coach.
I was like, bro, come on.
Are we going to recruit players?
How do we call the plays?
Like, I don't know.
Can we buy the Miami Arena naming rights, though?
Y'all probably could.
Bank bros try to buy for 10 million then.
That's fine.
They're trying to scoot in on the fire sale.
Son, these arena rights, we looked him up on when I was doing KFC on Barcelona.
It's like a couple million.
That's an investment, you know what I mean?
Flagrant 2 stadium.
Flagrant 11 million a year stadium.
That's a 10% higher bid than Bangbros.
Son.
Flagrant Stadium, fire.
Flagrant Arena?
You perform there?
Yeah.
Fire.
Figure.
I'm not.
Tax write-offs.
There's a tax write-off.
It's a marketing expense.
Hey, look, hey, you know, there's a tax write-off if you buy an arena?
Except for you don't own the arena, you just own the name.
Yeah, you know.
No, but if you got the name, it's a bad thing.
That's mine.
That's daddy's arena.
Yeah, that's daddy.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like, don't you, you own your wife.
Like, like, you know what I mean?
Like, shout out to Tate.
You know what I mean?
Like, you do technically, because it's got the name.
They got the name.
They do have the name, right?
By the way, guys, that's how it works.
You own your wife?
Yeah, technically.
Oh, you all could be in the doghouse.
You own your wife too?
If they own their wife, I own my wife.
I'm going to be the bitch not owning his wife.
That's not up to us.
That's up to God, bro.
Why would God make it like that?
That's good.
That's God's rule.
Hey, do you own your girl?
Yeah.
Security Risks in Reselling00:05:07
Y'all should do a wife at Bitcoin.
Hey, your girl is looking for ownership, Al.
You buy a pickleball team first.
That's in trouble now.
I'm out here working on his.
Flagrant has gone on a four-week hiatus.
We all in a doghouse.
No, it is what it is.
Sip it up.
You want something?
Bitcoin.
Don't even worry about it, bro.
Am I buying more?
I thought about it, to be honest with you.
That's a no.
That's a no.
You see what a voyage is.
I thought?
That's what I just said.
I own my wife and she won't let me buy more Bitcoin.
No, I thought about it.
I thought about it.
What was the thought?
I thought about buying it.
And then I thought about it.
G's up, dog.
G's up.
You ain't really buying more, bro.
You bought more, dog.
No, you didn't.
You didn't buy no more fucking Bitcoin.
Did you buy Bitcoin or did you buy Ditcoin?
Bitcoin.
I bought Bitcoin.
I bought Bitcoin and then Voyager folded and froze my Bitcoin.
So let's figure out what happens here.
Wait, you bought it on Voyager?
I bought some on Voyager, some on Coinbase.
Why would you mix up?
Because, yo, yo, yo, this is how all in I was three weeks ago is you could only put a certain amount per day in.
And I was like, I'm putting that much in Coinbase and I'm putting more in Voyager.
I love a cost.
My guy tells you all this story.
He DM'd me the other day and he goes, yo.
And I was like, oh, boy.
Then we started texting.
And he was basically like, hey, man, so I got a lot of different accounts.
And like, that was probably a smart decision.
The only problem is that every single account I got, the company's faulted.
He went for like straight up like three for three.
G's up.
Block five, Voyager, Coinbase.
These are my three.
No, Coinbase is not missing.
You're still on Coinbase.
You're not even on Coinbase.
You're on iPhone 12.
I'm gonna shit is on.
I'll be honest with you, I don't even know that phone got battery left.
I told you, we had, we had Marquez, I hope it was called Marquez Houston, Marquez Brownlee.
We had Marcus Brownlee.
Do you know who he is?
The tech guru on the fucking thing.
And he's talking and he's...
Is that Bitcoin?
No, but he was telling us about how sometimes the phone battery starts to swell.
Yeah.
And I had the FBI agent who did the Crack the Code.
No, the Silk Road arrest.
And he said that at the thing.
What do you mean?
He said, I had the FBI.
He said, that cracked the code.
Like, what?
What code?
Like, what?
Apple wouldn't let the San Bernardino terrorists, they wouldn't let him open the phone.
Remember, Apple wasn't going to do that?
And then FBI came in, and one of them had to crack that code.
Maybe it was your boy.
Like if your boy cracked the cadet.
God smelled it.
I did.
That's literally what I thought it was.
You don't remember this?
Y'all don't remember this from nine years ago at one time?
You don't remember the big story?
Apple wouldn't do it.
What do you think they call us?
Listen, they go to arrest the guys, 9-11 or something like that.
Did they just try that?
Did they try doing that?
And they could.
I love y'all, but one day you're going to call me and be like, we're done.
We're going to be like.
No, but they had a guy who was there, and his only job, this FBI guy said, he said the only job was this guy's to keep the computer alive.
I was like, what do you mean?
He said, when they took the computer from the Silk Road guy, they slid it down the table.
And this dude's job was to sit there.
And he had like a million battery packs.
He had all the adapters.
He just kept hitting the space button like this because they didn't know if it would auto-lock or whatever.
His job was just to keep the computer on.
So it's like, it's not, yeah, maybe the battery's swell, but like it's a real thing.
I need, but what happens if that phone dies and that's where all my shit is?
Akash has your Bitcoin.
Did you really?
What?
Why would you even?
I'd be more happy, to be honest with you.
I'd be more happy if I knew someone who had it.
Can it be on the phone?
That's all I'm saying.
I don't even know where my phone is.
It's on the app.
I don't even say how it is.
I don't know how to get it on.
I'm not on their phone.
Like, it's on like the photo.
Oh, they got Coinbase here, Coinbase Pro.
I don't know how to use that shit.
So I got some shit on Coinbase, some shit on Coinbase Pro.
Okay.
Yeah, I don't know.
He hasn't been able to bring it to the new.
And I don't want to do too many wrong passwords and shit.
So I got to do my face.
Just promise me that you won't go to like one of these experts that's like password recovery.
And then next thing you know, you can't find your Bitcoin because they have your password.
Oh, yeah, So like that, here's another tip: if you're going to do the ledger.
I'm going to lose that shit.
What do I do with the ledger?
Hold on a second.
I'm going to lose it.
Just when you buy it, make sure you buy it from the company.
Don't buy it off a reseller on Amazon.
Oh, fuck.
Because somebody could have bought it, put some malware on it, and then resell it.
And then now they've got a back door.
So you want to buy it from the company?
That's another thing that's so stressful.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm going to end.
You're going to go at the place that Biden's son went to.
Avoid that spot.
Oh, yeah.
That's not good.
Avoid that.
Is that confirmed now?
Like, is that like a real thing?
Are they still saying that's not real?
You were friends with him.
With who?
You were friends with Hunter.
We know about that.
That's good times.
Tell us the good times in Miami.
You and Hunter have.
Just smoking up fats back in the day, the old back in the day, before the day.
Yeah, it is.
This is just attempts.
It's like, shit, I said I own my wife.
I got a reimbursement.
That's why it's not the same.
Avoid Buying From Resellers00:03:50
I'm holding my soul to say.
I'm just saying.
God damn, this is stressful.
It is crazy, though, that the media is censor so much different things.
Wait, hold on.
But now that Elon owns Twitter, it won't happen.
Did you know SBF?
You ever meet him?
I interviewed him before.
All right, guys, we take a break for a second because I got to make sure that Chapek is looking good for the holidays.
Let's just be serious right here.
Let's just be serious.
You cannot have that bush going crazy.
I don't care how cold it is.
I don't care what the climate you're dealing with is right now.
Not for the holidays.
Holiday dick got to be smooth, yo.
Holiday dick gots to be smooth.
And the way you make it smooth is with Manscape, okay?
That lawnmower 4.0, that shit is nip-tucking, bro.
It is getting those edges, trimming them pubes.
Sometimes it comes down to the thigh meat.
You got to trim around there as well.
Maybe trim up by your belly button.
We don't know what you're working with, but it's got to be nip tuck.
It's got to be seized up.
It's got to be faded up.
The head got to look like mace.
You got to have a head that looks like mace.
Harlem World, you pull off your underwear.
It should go Harlem World.
The point that I was trying to make is Manscape is going to be the one to get you there.
Now, they've got all these amazing things.
I mean, look, they got the crop exfoliator.
You know, your dick not exfoliated as much as it should be.
They got that crop gel.
Amazing.
Okay.
They got the razors.
They got absolutely everything.
It's a mix.
Treat your balls, treat your junk right.
Save some time.
Literally save time.
That's what it does for me.
Saves time.
You want to be in and out of there with all these different utensils.
No.
Voop voop voop, voop and you're done, ready to pack box.
That's what you need to be ready for for the holidays, and the way you're going to do it is you're going to do it with a nice 20 off discount and free shipping at Manscaped.com.
Slash Flagrant.
That's 20 off of the free shipping at Manscaped.com Slash Flagrant.
Make sure your dick looks delicious okay, so it gets sucked on like a christmas candy cane.
You're very welcome for that.
Let's get back to the show.
Listen, y'all need tickets.
Y'all needed tickets.
This past week it's our cost sold out shows at Carolines.
You know what I mean.
You couldn't get them.
Maybe if you were on seat geek, you could see Geek has got your back.
Okay, all you need to do is look at the dots.
They got the red dots.
Not talking about the ones at Akash's show, i'm talking about the way that you know that the tickets are too expensive and not a good deal.
They also got the green dots.
Those are the green dots.
They let you know that that's a great deal.
You should gobble up that ticket if you can.
Green and red.
You just look in it, stop and go.
Anything you need.
You need comedy shows, you need sport events, you need shit.
I bet Taylor Swift tickets are about to be up on SEAT GEEK one of these days.
Yeah, I don't know that for a fact, but I imagine you might be able to get some Taylor Swift tickets if they do come out.
All i'm trying to say is, anything you need is over at SEAT GEEK and you know what we're gonna do.
I mean, we're gonna make this right here for you.
We're gonna give you a little discount.
I gotta say we're gonna do it.
We're gonna hit.
We're gonna have to hook you up flagrant.
You use the code flagrant.
You're gonna get 20 off tickets at SEAT GEEK, 20 off your purchase with the promo code flagrant.
Think about that now.
Get it seen a little bit better section.
Get a little bit closer to the action because you support this show.
Okay, go out there, get them tickets and enjoy your goddamn life.
Now let's get back to the show.
Also guys, I need to tell you about some dates I got.
December 1st, i'm gonna be in Tempe, Arizona.
And january 14th super excited about this i'm going to be at the Wilburth Theater.
We will sell these tickets out.
You need to get them now.
And january 21st and 22nd, i'm gonna be in Vegas.
I'm not supposed to announce that, but i'm gonna do it anyway.
Who cares?
Get your tickets at Akash Sing.com now.
Let's get back, do you?
Did you know Sbf?
You ever meet him?
Uh, I interviewed him before and what'd you think?
What was your takeaway seriously, in the moment, what did you think of this guy?
Interviewing Sam Bankman-Fried00:08:18
My interaction with him was, I don't know, maybe two years ago, year and a half ago, whatever when I interviewed him and he was just like a normal dude I mean, i've interviewed a bunch of these people, right so like there was nothing at the time where it was like oh, this is like crazy.
But I think also I saw somebody put a like a montage where, when he first started back in 2018 2019, then a couple years later, a couple years later, like there's physical differences.
There's like you could just tell like he's kind of just like a little bit more agitated, and so you got to remember that like if you take a snapshot of somebody at one point in time, it's not the same person that they are, you know, a year, two years later, whatever.
And I think what's crazy is that like this dude was on stage at a conference with all kinds of big name celebrities and politicians, all that stuff, the media, I mean, you put him on the front cover of article of uh magazines being like he's the next Warren Buffet, so it's like it isn't one single group.
That I think is responsible, right.
It's not uh, the users who trusted him, it's not the investors, it's not social media.
That exalted the media, right and so like in some way in hindsight is very obvious, right.
People like, Oh shit, of course.
But like to your point.
Did you pick up on it at all when you were interviewing them?
No.
And like did he wear that stupid tech outfit where you act like you don't know how to dress?
Did he do that?
That's become a hack.
Oh, I hate it.
I'm in the network.
What is it called?
The social network.
Like, ugh.
You know how to dress.
You're not a fucking idiot.
I was just chest high on Zoom.
Oh, you zoomed him.
Yeah, zoomed him.
So I think the other thing that's kind of crazy about it, though, is like the reports that are coming out is this wasn't like the whole company knew this either.
So everyone was working there and they were in like a business.
Everyone is rightfully so focused on the users, right?
The users lost money.
That's bad.
That's not good.
There's a lot of other people who got burnt that are kind of on the periphery.
But also, you got to remember, there's a lot of employees, even if it's only 200 employees or whatever, that work at these companies and they're in shock.
Like there's reports that they're shocked, they're ashamed.
They're like all this stuff.
And it's almost like they're let down as well.
Now, again, people aren't going to be sympathetic to them.
You're going to FTX, so-and-so and so-and-so.
How do you get another job?
And many of them had funds on the platform.
You know what I mean?
So like there's just a lot of collateral damage for this stuff.
And I think that it's just, there's no winners.
There's no winners in any of this.
That's the thing, man.
It's so tricky because nobody has any empathy for people who lose money in crypto.
I don't know why we have way more empathy for people who lose money in the stock market.
I guess we feel like there's like more work that goes into that.
But yeah, like when you lose money.
We accepted the stock market as a thing.
We had it seems like a real job where this other one, like we all have friends that were idiots and then made tons of money.
But like meme stocks and like crypto have been put in the same bucket.
And I think the narrative is just like, oh, it's young kids who are like stupid, who are like gambling.
Yes.
Right.
And so like you, if you're a professional or you're an adult, you're like, I don't feel bad if people lose money gambling.
So you never fucked with any of the other coins at all.
No, I started out mining Ethereum, right?
I didn't even know anything.
Nobody ever told me about Bitcoin or any of the stuff.
So like, I don't think there's very many people who just learn about Bitcoin, never look at anything else, learn about anything else, whatever.
I think actually what happens is most people, they're like, what's this crypto thing?
They learn about a bunch of different stuff.
And at some point, they're like, oh, Bitcoin is different than the other things.
Right.
And then they eventually kind of flow that way.
And if you look, like, there's lots of coins that went up in value.
Three or four years later, they're gone.
They're replaced by other ones.
But Bitcoin has just remained the number one for 15 years because, in my opinion, it's the one that has the most kind of sustainable, resilient value over time.
And you had said that, so Larry David had endorsed them in like a Super Bowl commercial.
Tom Brady had backed them financially.
And apparently, I think you would say that Larry David is getting like they're trying to sue him.
Class action lawsuits.
Class action lawsuits.
Against a lot of teams.
And Steph Curry, a bunch of them.
So why are they being prosecuted?
And why are they being prosecuted faster than Bankman?
I don't think it's prosecution.
For what I understand, it's like lawyers, right?
Like kind of civil stuff.
Who's got money that I can sue?
They gotcha.
Will they get any money from that?
I don't know how that stuff works.
What's going to happen with Bankman Freed and the nerd girl?
Yeah.
What are the charges against him?
What could he get?
I don't know because also they're not in the United States.
They're in the Bahamas.
Like you start getting into this weird world of just like, if you're an international legal person, you probably understand it.
But also there's other people who have gotten in trouble or accused of trouble through this whole downturn like over the summer and stuff.
And like they're not in the U.S.
So like what happens to them?
There's one guy who I think is the country of Singapore maybe that keeps saying like yo, we have a we're looking for him.
He keeps tweeting.
He's like, no, you're not.
Like he's like, I'm not aware of that.
Like, I'm going to go to this event.
If you're looking for me, I'll be here.
Like, there's like crazy stuff, right?
With Mt. Gox, did anyone get in trouble with that situation?
That's a good question.
I don't think anyone necessarily got in trouble because it wasn't a situation where, from my understanding, it's like there was like accusations of fraud and stuff like that.
I could be wrong on that.
I think it was more of just like, it was a poorly run business and there was one guy who sold it to another guy and then like that guy probably ran it even worse, it sounds like.
And so it just kind of didn't work as a business, went bankrupt.
And then it was like, okay, who has assets left?
But I don't think there's accusations like there are cases.
If he's in the States, though, what could his charges be?
Like fraud.
Oh, I mean, you kind of look at it as spectrum, right?
Like the people who are most sympathetic to him would probably describe it as like the guy made a mistake.
That's what he's saying.
Right.
The people who are the biggest critics are like, yo, you know, a million plus users is bigger than, you know, Madol, I don't think had a million people.
Not even now, he may have had more AUM.
I think he had more than 10 billion or something.
I don't remember the exact details.
So it's like, I don't know how it's going to play out.
Right.
And then also like another piece of it, right?
And I've been getting a lot of heat online.
People are like, oh, you did an advertising deal with like the media company and stuff.
And we're like, we had a framework.
It was like, all right, we're going to work with U.S.-based regulated exchanges.
Yeah.
Like seems pretty, you know, simple framework to use.
So you're not.
I don't criticize you for that.
I mean, if Tom Brady is putting his reputation on the line, a guy who doesn't need to.
Like Tom Brady has more than enough money, more than enough success.
He's not doing it for, we're all doing things for money for sale.
Like, look, Larry David, you had to probably throw that guy so much fucking money to do it.
How much do you think he got paid?
Do you know?
I don't know.
I mean, $5 million?
It had to be even more than that.
Like, it had to be like, I'm thinking about it.
I think 30.
Yeah, I think he threw out a ridiculous number.
And they said fine.
Yeah.
Because Larry has so much money.
Larry's got what?
Half a billion?
A billion?
He's got to be touching a billion.
Yeah.
He's got Seinfeld money plus curved money.
So it's like, to motivate him, it's almost not even money.
He only seems to do exactly what he wants to do.
And that's it.
Yeah.
Let him play himself and he got to roast it.
It's fine.
John's getting 30 on that.
No.
But he got paid, right?
He got paid.
Yeah.
So I think that, again, it goes to like if you want to lost some of that Larry David money, bro.
Were you asking for crazy money?
Trust me, if they were like, hey, you want to be a Super Bowl commercial?
I think there's a lot of people who would have just been like, sure.
Larry David's the one who's like, oh, that's another thing.
$10 million.
Still being in a Super Bowl commercial.
Larry don't get money.
He definitely asked for money, though.
Yeah, no, I know he got money, but yeah, I take my number down.
Yeah, like, but like Tom.
Tommy's not 30.
I guess what I'm trying to say is like these are people that can't be bothered.
Like Tom, Larry can't be bothered.
You could be more bothered.
I could be very bothered.
Yeah.
I could be very, very bothered.
You texted me and I came.
So yeah, here I am.
No, but if you also think like Tom Brady's an interesting example, because a lot of these athletes want to be tech investors.
So now they start playing this game of like, okay, cool.
I'm well known in sports or whatever my thing is.
I want to be an investor.
How about we do like a double deal?
I'll be a spokesperson.
Plus I get to invest.
Plus you get advisory shares.
There you go.
So these deals are now getting like somewhat convoluted.
And again, if you go back and you're like, if the auditors, let's say that they did get tricked, does anybody think that Tom Brady was going to be able to like figure out sniff it out?
Athletes as Tech Investors00:14:47
Right.
Oh, of course not.
He's just in a commercial.
He's like, this looks cool.
I get it like with a flamethrower.
Yeah.
Is there any, is this like a cautionary tale to any of the other exchanges?
Because I refuse to believe that none of the other exchanges aren't doing anything that's a little seedy here and there.
Do they see this and do they shape up?
Ooh, that's a good question.
Are they doing this shit?
Is the Binance guy behind the scenes doing this shit?
So there's this idea of one of my friends, Nick Carter, is like really pushed.
It's called Proof of Reserves.
Nick Carter, like the Backstreet Boy?
Not him, but same name.
He's got a cool haircut like him too.
But Nick Carter has this idea of proof of reserves.
I don't know if it's his idea, but he's popularized it where because it's crypto on an exchange, you could basically come out and be like, yo, we say we got a hundred thousand Bitcoin.
Here's the wallet address.
Like, here's proof that we actually have the hundred thousand Bitcoin.
It'd be like the bank saying we got two billion dollars of deposits.
And then they could like prove to you it's actually sitting there.
And so that's one step.
There's also this like proof of liabilities.
So it's not just what assets do you have because you have assets and then you owe it all.
Like that, you got to have both.
But that's one thing that they could do.
And then the second thing is I think that you're going to see a lot of people who are good actors being like, look, we don't want overreaching regulation.
Right.
There's a, there's an argument that's being made by the large crypto exchanges in the United States that they're like, look, the rules weren't super, super clear here in the U.S.
And so people went outside the United States doing the regulatory shopping.
And that could have contributed to this happening.
Imagine if this business was here in the U.S., we have faith the U.S. would have uncovered it.
So would you like some regulation for crypto?
This is, this is a big moment right here, Pop.
No, I think most people look at it the same way.
It's like Bitcoin already has quote unquote regulation.
The SEC, CFTC say it's not a security.
It's got this kind of self-enforced rules.
If you are a business that deals with Bitcoin, you have rules that you have to adhere to.
There's a lot of people who don't like the rules.
There's KYC, AML.
Like, does that prevent crime, right?
There's questions around that, privacy stuff, like all that.
So there are rules.
I think what you're starting to see, though is people are saying, wait, all this like recreation of finance, why do they have different rules than what's already the rules in traditional finance?
They're doing the same thing.
So like disclosure rules, right?
If you guys remember, there was a Luna, one of the coins that blew up over the summer.
It like came out that there weren't really as clear disclosures as maybe they would have liked.
And so that led to the collapse.
And so it's like, okay, like, what if we just make people say what they're doing as a rule?
Like that could be a step in the right direction.
Sounds like you want some regulation.
I don't think it's my opinion whether I want it or not.
I think it's coming because people are looking and they're like, yo, we.
And it might make it a little better.
Well, politicians, imagine if you're anti-this stuff and you see this happen, you're like salivated.
Yeah.
Regulation is an interesting thing, right?
Because regulation is great for the people who own the business and better for the people who are using the business, but horrible for the people that are trying to compete with the business, right?
Because it creates the moat.
In some cases, that was the accusation against FTX was they were trying to get regulatory capture, like basically get it so that no one else could do what they were doing.
Right.
And then it was like free and clear.
We're going to be the winner.
And then you could make the, sorry, go.
No, but you're not trying to regulate the coins.
You're trying to regulate the exchanges.
It goes back to like the dollars not regulated.
It's the business.
How do you buy not on an exchange?
Yeah.
I truly don't know any other way.
So like you can get Bitcoin a couple of different ways.
You could mine it.
You go get the machines, right?
You could mine it.
Now, there's a lot of people who like that just because they want to participate in the network.
There's a lot of people who like that because it's non-KYC'd Bitcoin, right?
So there's like a privacy element to it, but you could mine it.
Second thing is you could like work for it.
Same way somebody pays you dollars.
If you go, you know, there's websites where you could go and say, hey, I'll do some design work or whatever, get paid so you could earn it.
Or you could buy it.
You could sell pizza.
You could sell pizza.
What happened to the pizza place?
Bitcoin pizza go on Uber Eats.
Punk's been delivering for them for a long time.
I'm about to have to.
With the last one just now, you said you can buy it.
How can you buy it without a unregressed?
So you could buy it on a regulated exchange.
They have KYC, all that stuff.
There's things like local Bitcoins, which is more like peer-to-peer.
So like you could meet up with people.
Like that's how a lot in the early days people would do it.
And then there are still like unregulated exchanges.
They're not in the U.S. usually.
They're like elsewhere.
But I just tell people, like, look, unless you've got some reason from like a privacy standpoint and you understand what you're doing, majority of people, whether we like it or not, are just going to buy it on a regulated exchange, but then take it off of each.
have the coin that's unregulated use a regulated exchange put the coin on trade it pull all the funds off and self-custody then it's kind of reaching a compromise between like a compromised centralized exchange but then a decentralized currency think of like the bank the best example i have is think of like a traditional bank if i put my dollars in there uh and the bank goes bankrupt the fdic the the government will basically say we'll pay you up to 250 000 back whatever was in the account right so fdic insurance is big But the reason why nobody is like,
yo, let me take all my cash out and like keep it is because it's not very secure.
Somebody could come rob you, right?
And then two is, uh, what am I going to do if I got to send you money?
Like, I'm going to like mail you cash in the envelope.
No, it didn't make sense.
The promise of Bitcoin was that you could self-custody it.
So you could basically pull it out of the bank and that then I could, with the press of a button, send it to you instantaneously for you know, near free, whatever.
Right.
And so Bitcoin is really trying to usher that in.
It's just that, you know, there's a lot of people who are trying to cash in on the rise of Bitcoin and they're doing it with a lot of this other stuff.
Right.
Well, go.
Sorry.
No, you can go.
This is unrelated.
I have an unrelated question too.
What do you think the biggest moment in the history of Bitcoin was in terms of propelling the brand of it?
Specific thing that happened.
I'm going to say there's two things.
One is for the brand.
One is the biggest moment.
The biggest moment in Bitcoin, in my opinion, is when Satoshi walked away.
But we don't even know if that's a real guy.
That's why I think it's important.
If Bitcoin becomes what it already has, but even what I think people believe it will become, it's like one of the most selfless acts in the world.
You create this digital, decentralized, peer-to-peer software payment system.
It's like ready player one.
Yeah.
And then you have 800,000 Bitcoin.
Yourself.
And you walk away and you never touch them.
Oh, so he just still has them?
Yeah.
They're sitting in a wallet.
You can see them.
They never moved.
800,000 Bitcoin.
I don't care if that price is $10 or it's $69,000 is a lot of money.
And so like in some way, it's a system where there are rules, but not rulers.
There's nobody who's going to change the code, right?
There's nobody who is the CEO.
Like it is a truly decentralized system.
And the fact that we don't know who Satoshi is means that you can't attack it.
How do we not know who Satoshi is?
That's the crazy thing to me.
You can find anyone.
You can find the lawsuit with the guy that was in Australia that claimed it, that then got some money.
Like, what were the details with that?
He lost.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
What do you mean he lost?
I thought he won.
I think he got paid out.
Well, we may be talking about different suits.
He's got a couple of them going on, but he sued somebody who had said that he wasn't Satoshi.
And when that guy and him went to court, Craig Wright lost.
Oh, got you.
So like this guy basically was like, you're not Satoshi.
He got sued, but he prevailed.
Interesting.
And I can't believe there's no idea of who this man is.
I feel like you know.
Just blink twice if you do.
I don't want to know.
Like, that's the other thing is like, like, but I feel like it's like the, what do they call it?
Uh, my friend Marty Bent calls it the Immaculate Conception, right?
Of Bitcoin, of like the fact that we don't know is actually a huge advantage, right?
You see like Ethereum, Vitalik is one of the creators.
People like him, don't like him.
They think some of his views align with them or not.
Some people judge him on his views, right?
Like the fact we don't know Satoshi actually drastically reduces the attack surface on Bitcoin.
That's true.
It's like Elon and Twitter.
Well, no, Elon, you have a guy.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, that's we can attack him because we know who.
The second big moment, I think, in Bitcoin was in terms of like brand awareness.
Like, was there a thing that happened that you remember going, oh, shit, it's different now?
Was there an act?
Did someone rap about it in a song?
Did a famous person buy it?
Did someone wear a t-shirt?
Tigo's micro strategy, the public company putting it on their balance sheet and El Salvador buying it.
Like there's a country that's buying Bitcoin.
But I heard that's not working out for them right now because of this.
Well, it's working out as well as for you and I. Right.
Right.
Like when the price goes down.
But again, I think that one of the other things about Bitcoin that's unique is like it introduces this like long-term thinking, right?
When we all sit around all day long, what do we think?
They think about tomorrow, the next day, the next week, whatever.
But with Bitcoin, like there's price volatility.
But like, did you sell?
No.
Did you sell?
No, I didn't sell.
Did you guys sell?
Right.
I don't have any.
You guys don't have any Bitcoin?
Yeah.
Oh, you do have some?
Did you sell?
Where do you have it?
Coinbase.
Yeah.
So like, think of all of us are sitting here.
I think a lot of people would look and be like, yo, you guys are fucking crazy.
It's down 75%.
Well, we all believe that it's going to come back up, which is very interesting.
There is a confidence that people have in Bitcoin.
Because we've seen it happen.
That's what convinced a lot of the Wall Street guys.
So Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Drecker Miller, two like very well-known finance guys.
In 2020, they bought Bitcoin and then came out and said, we bought Bitcoin.
Now, part of it's like, if you already bought it and then you tell everyone other people will buy it.
So it goes up.
Right.
But the way they talked about it is like one of the numbers that convinced them was when Bitcoin dropped from 20,000 to 3,000, 85% of people who had held it at 20,000 didn't sell.
So these guys were just like, yo, these people are crazy.
The shit's going to go back up.
We should buy some because it was lower.
So it is like a little bit of like market dynamic stuff as well.
But I think it's just like, if you can weather the storm, if you can weather the volatility, be all right.
Is there any issue now that FTX is out of the conversation for marketplace?
Because it was the second largest marketplace.
Now that it's wiped away, is there an issue that Binance now has too much control within the exchange place?
That's a good question.
You've been reading.
I like it.
Come on.
Yeah.
So like it's similar to mining.
65% of hash rate used to be in China.
They kicked everyone out.
Now America has like 30 to 35%.
And people are like, oh, that's healthy.
But if all of a sudden America had 50 plus percent, even that would be bad because you don't want concentration in any one country.
Same thing with the exchange.
I think you actually want multiple players because you don't want it all centralized.
But if the number two goes down, yeah, Binance definitely got more market share out of it.
I thought Coinbase was the number one in my two in America.
They're the number one like brand.
And I think also probably by volume.
It's like iPhone Binance is like Android.
It's like the rest of the world is using Binance.
That's WhatsApp.
Yeah.
Or on IMSH.
Yeah, literally.
So like, do you think there is, can there be like a regulatory push to create or like disrupt or break up exchanges to create more?
Like, is that something that the SEC can do?
So what they probably do is they just like pull them more into like the regulatory environment.
Right.
And remember, there already are regulated.
Like Coinbase has licenses.
They've gone to different states, gotten approvals.
Like this is definitely.
But let's say Coinbase goes down.
Heaven forbid.
But like now that there's just like this one exchange that's like, is there any other exchange that's even a big player in the space?
There's a number of exchanges, but none of them are as big as Binance.
Like Binance is like the Goliath.
And then it would have like disordered control over like, it would have probably what, like 90, 95% of all like crypto transactions.
And then at that point, it's like, now it's like this decentralized currency.
All these decentralized currencies are all centralized.
Well, the trading would be centralized.
Like you could still use the Bitcoin network to send Bitcoin to each other.
Right.
But you're not trading your transportation.
But it's effectively centralized if 90% of the transactions are going through the same exchange.
Correct.
Right.
And that's where things are right now.
Yeah.
But like if, let's say, what happened to FTX happened to a bunch of other exchanges and Binance was the last one.
But if people are keeping most of their Bitcoin on storage, like they suggest, then it doesn't matter that much.
Right.
If people are doing that.
I guess I don't know.
Do you know if there's data on how many people are keeping them on exchanges versus how many are taking it off?
So you can see many of the largest exchanges.
You can see their, what they call a balance, right?
Like their Bitcoin balances.
And I forget the exact number, but I think like 100 or 150,000 Bitcoin came off exchanges during all this.
So this is people being like, oh, fuck.
Give it to me.
Which is the biggest week-long drop in history.
And so it's been going down over time.
I don't know what it is right now.
Does that help the price?
Yeah, it's illiquidity.
Right?
So why haven't we seen a little spike?
Well, if you really think about Bitcoin, yes, it's down 75%, but it was pretty much between like $18,000 to $22,000.
This happens.
It's like $16,000, $17,000.
But if I had told you a year ago, hey, the number two exchange in the world is going to go down.
Like, you probably would think there'd be this massive sell-off, like whatever.
We really didn't get that.
Now, it helps we're already down so much.
But like, okay, like actually it's showing a decent level of resilience.
It could go down more, which scares people.
But like, I think it's the lowest it would go in the, you think we get single digits?
It's just hard to see an, let me knock on wood, but like it's hard to see another catalyst bigger than the number two exchange.
Like the number one exchange goes down.
Yeah.
But like other than the number two exchange going down, the government could outlaw it or something.
You know what I mean?
Like you start getting into kind of like conspiracy land.
Yeah.
Other than the number two exchange going down.
So like if that's the price, like last time he was on, we were like, how much is it going to go to?
We're like 100,000 by the end of the year.
Now we're like, how low is it going to go?
How low?
You want to know something hilarious?
It's going to get in 2020.
I wrote a piece publicly and I was like, it was at like 10,000.
I was like, it's going to go up a lot.
I think it's going to go to 100K, 10X.
And the shit went up 7X.
People were so mad at me.
You said it was going to 100.
And by the way, like, yeah, correct.
I was wrong.
I came out.
I'm wrong, right?
Like, yeah, I'm a moron, whatever.
But like that, like, that's what you got to remember is that like all these young kids, they're like, I wanted to go up 50x.
I wanted it to like go up whatever.
And that's the other thing.
That's why they all go and buy all the other coins is because like Bitcoin's not going to go up 50X.
That's what gives you the big reaction.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Treat it like the lotto.
Like literally.
Literally.
I thought about that.
When we were down there, I was like, does it make more sense for me to just put $1,000 in 20 different fucking shit coins and hope one spikes?
Young Kids Wanting 50X Gains00:15:19
Yeah.
Like I'd be way more rich.
Yeah.
No, you wouldn't.
Well, in my mind.
Yeah.
You're going to say he's down now.
I'm down.
I know he's down, but he would be down more.
All those things are down even more.
Are they?
Yeah.
Like, the other crazy part is there's stocks in the stock market that are down more than Bitcoin.
Like, Shopify is down like 75, 80%.
Really?
Yeah.
Right?
So it's like, again, like, yes, it's bad that Bitcoin's down.
What do you say?
No, I said, yeah, because I have market shit.
Mark, Mark, what?
No, I mean, there's definitely stocks in the stock market that are down more than Bitcoin.
It's funny, right?
It's being like, yeah, I'm broke.
But if this other guy's broke.
No, it's just like the whole market is down.
Did you just do the, I have a black friend with stocks?
Yo, I told him, I said, when you had Huberman, he looked like a strawberry.
He was his face was so bad.
You got him.
I was like, oh, they got that guy.
Real estate's down.
Stocks are down.
Everything's down.
It's just like, yeah, like, of course, Bitcoin and crypto's down too.
So are you going to buy more?
Damn.
No.
If that shit goes up, you're going to buy more.
Are you going to buy more?
If it starts to.
If Akash, if I find out Akash is significantly more Bitcoin than me, I'll probably buy it.
Are you going to buy more?
Yeah, I'm going to buy more.
I just need permission at this point.
Very reasonable.
Very reasonable.
I don't know, man.
I was unhinged.
Yeah, you were going crazy.
You were a wild boy.
Can we tell him the wallet thing that happened with you?
Oh, son.
I had money.
I put money on a storage wallet and then I've made a hidden wallet and I didn't even know how.
And then I forgot what the password was and I couldn't find it in my phone notes.
So I thought about 60% of my Bitcoin was just gone in the fucking ether for months.
I was just trying to rack my brain to figure out what the password was.
Found it randomly.
A lot of people lost crypto on FTX.
He lost it in his brain.
Like, think about that.
Ain't that crazy?
Just like in his own mind.
This is actually, all right.
So there's a limited amount of Bitcoin.
It's like customer service for Bitcoin.
There are some people like Akash that forget the password and then they just never can get to the point.
That's what happens to that shit.
Where's the lost and found?
No, this is important.
Look, there should be a loss and found.
It's on the blockchain, right?
Siat does not have lost and found.
Yeah, it does.
No, it does not.
If you drop $20 outside, I gave a woman her purse once.
Full of cash.
I don't know there was cash.
Yeah, because I looked in that motherfucker.
I took her out before I gave it.
You stole the purse in the first place.
No, no, no.
I gave it back to her with all the cash in it.
Did you add any?
I added cash.
I gave it back.
No, no, no.
I do give it back.
But then she gave me a little money.
And she gave my friend money who didn't even find the shit.
He just walked there with me.
And then he kept the goddamn money, son of a bitch.
What'd you do?
You looked in the purse, like got her address, and they showed up to her house and like knocked on the door and you were like, here's your purse back, old lady.
I'm a good person, bro.
And I was a kid when I did this.
Middle school kid.
If only you started tipping.
Yeah.
I tipped her.
Why are we acting like I don't tip?
Why don't we put in this house?
I tip better than you.
I tipped her.
Oh, yeah.
You put it out really bad.
They found a thing.
They found a thing.
Divorce tipper.
It's crazy.
Hold on.
He was a great tipper when he didn't have money.
And now that he's got money, all of a sudden, very tightly.
Wait, why?
Why?
Tight with it.
It's ineffective.
I can't say that I do tip because then the game doesn't work because it looks like I'm being defensive.
He's doing it for us.
This is good.
This is good.
Can I tell you what my rules would tipping?
Okay, tell me.
Just tell them.
In your head, just come up with whatever the 20% is and add a couple of dollars.
And always just say to yourself, like, it means more to the other person than it does to me.
Stop doing that at some point.
I don't know what's going to happen.
That's a great thing.
If you found a purse on the train today, what would you do with it?
Say again?
There's a purse on the train.
That's all we need to do today.
He's like, wait, give me some more time to think about that.
I already said a person.
If I found a purse on the train, it would be too inconvenient for me to go to their home.
I have things to do, but I would make sure it got to their home.
I'd put it into the mailbox.
I'm going to put it on my place.
Oh, yeah.
Put it into the mailbox.
You're going to put the purse into the mailbox so you get it back.
That's how it gets back.
That's how you get back, bro.
Really?
If you find someone's wallet, you put that shit in the mailbox so I get it.
You have to have a person who would like call an Uber and be like, hey, take this purse.
Don't look in it to this person's house.
I mean, I know.
And then they never get the person you're doing.
You feel good, but then that's not crazy.
I've done that with many things before.
Yeah.
Have you ever sent an Uber package?
No, but like a purse?
Nah, not a purse yet.
But one day, maybe.
I trust Uber, bro.
I'd also look at the purse.
Like, do they need it?
Like, if they had like credit cards or ID, if they had like a license in there, if they had like a Macy's gift card, I'm not going to do nothing.
Prove it.
Was Andrew returned the purse?
Yo, new troops.
This is too much for you.
Hey, don't worry about it.
Hey, hey, hey, hey.
Let this be a public service analysis for the service industry.
It was a public service analysis for the service industry.
I used to tip y'all good, but because of this incessant bullying, I have to live up to this reputation.
Now he's going to buy it.
I just want to let you know.
I just want to let you know.
Y'all knew how much I used to tip you.
You knew how much I used to tip you.
I was popping up 30%.
It's going down to 10.
It's dropping like Bitcoin.
That's what's happened.
FTA, you call my tip FTX.
Hey, Washington, they can't afford internet with them kitty ass tips you be giving us.
You see this?
You see how they speak about you?
I would never speak about you like that.
Spit in his drink.
Spit in his food.
I'm ordering what I was ordered.
I'm ordering what I was ordered and we're mixing plates.
Okay, that's just happening.
I'm ordering what I was ordered.
And we're mixing drinks and mixing plates.
You guys asked for this.
There's going to be a lot of people out here that make a lot less money because of you guys.
Don't separate yourself from him.
Don't separate yourself from him.
All of them.
Are the same.
No, that's what you do.
You know.
Hey, don't try to get it.
It's Christmas time.
They're not going to get their tips.
My whole building.
Hey, build it.
Hey, Juan, Juan.
I was going to break you off, and you already know I was going to break you off.
Juan, I was about to break you off.
This step right here.
This motherfucker right here, cheap motherfucker, he doesn't think that you deserve it.
He doesn't like going to Carbone and 11 Madison.
Y'all just want the sweet greens.
Yeah, how much is y'all tip of sweet greens?
How much y'all tipping?
This is the saddest thing ever.
Y'all put on all your winter coats along across the street.
Got your little sweet greens, came back and said, Dennis said, Our life sucks.
They call Bitcoin's looking right now.
I didn't go to sweet greens because I got no money.
I can't even afford double chicken ass sweet greens.
I know, bro.
I'm out here on single chickens.
God damn.
Single chicken dog.
Sweet green cracks.
Sweet greens going to have their shareholder calls and be like, the economy's down.
We're not seeing the double farm.
Yeah, bro.
We're not seeing double chicken ass.
But for real, though, fuck you and fuck you.
Genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, you're going to make it fucked up in my building, man.
You're going to make it fucked up in my building.
Yeah, no, you don't.
Blame on us.
No, no, no, for real.
Hey, you know what we're going to do?
Hey, Juan.
Accept responsibility for your own actions.
Yeah, that's Juan.
Don't try to put the action on it.
I'm going to tell you.
I'm not trying to relate to Juan.
Don't try to relate to Juan.
Sorry, Jordan.
John, I mean this sincerely, John.
I'm going to find out the doormen from their buildings.
Yeah.
I'm going to tell you their building.
You find it out.
I know that y'all talk.
Listen.
Yeah, holler at him.
I need to know how much they tip.
I need to know how much they tip.
Right now, Quad each.
So how much?
$100 each.
For Christmas?
Yeah.
Oh, fuck.
That's not good.
This guy.
$10 back.
Hey, I'm not in like someone.
It was $100.
He thought he was balling.
That's not good.
In this economy?
Oh, shit.
He's $100.
Damn, Al, you got to be choice.
Mad doormen.
How many doormen you got?
Son, it's mad of these motherfuckers.
And then holiday time, they put out a little fucking thing with their names on it and then faces and shit.
They're like, yo, we all getting this.
Miles hit me, huh?
You see what was being projected?
You see what was being projected?
Service industry?
You trusted these motherfuckers.
You guys all have doormen?
God damn it, bro.
Not many.
100 dot good.
Yo, how many doormen you got?
The blackest you ever been on?
How many doormen you got?
Seven.
Yo, Alcash all of a sudden act like he's not the cheapest motherfucker on a goddamn planet.
How much you give your doorman?
200.
How many doormen you got?
A lot, and you give them all 200?
Watch this.
Yeah.
Sometimes he lies.
He's trying to be like extra serious.
How much you get the porter?
How much you get the guy was cleaning up?
200.
200, 250.
Some people got 250.
Sorry.
Sorry.
I don't know.
I don't believe it.
I don't think this guy ever tipped more than $100 in his life.
You out of your mind.
I don't think you ever tipped $100 in your life.
You don't got it in you, bro.
Well, wait, $100 is not customary, bro.
Everybody ain't doing $100.
Now you're going to make me feel bad.
I ain't going to lie.
I tip about $100.
That's what I'm saying.
I'm like, wait a minute.
This fucking idiot.
250?
250?
I don't give my kids that much presence.
250 for Christmas?
I'm a gift man.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, you want to hear some funny ass shit?
No, because he can't open doors when it's windy.
That's why.
You need a little help when that gust comes.
You don't think we got automatic doors in my building?
Excuse me.
I want no problems, bro.
I don't want no problems.
When I was in New York, I walked downstairs one time and I was like, I forgot bomb.
And I was like, hey man, no, I'm going to get coffee.
You want anything?
The dude was like, yeah, give me like a, what an iced coffee?
I'm like, all right, cool.
Came back.
Next day, I accidentally said it again.
And then it just became a thing.
Like, he just said it.
And then after like a week, I was like, oh, shit, I'm in a bad situation.
Like, am I an asshole if I walk by him and don't ask him if he wants coffee and come right back?
You got to cut that shit off.
Nah, so then I just kept calling.
It's like happening in me.
Nah, I moved.
That's the only way out.
This shit went on for like three months.
I was like, bro, come on.
You got to get him fired.
You're like, he's stealing packages.
He's stealing packages.
It started out in so small.
He started asking for largers.
That's crazy.
That's a bill right there.
Yeah, that's a lot.
I was like, damn, the bill.
$250, you suckers.
For what?
I don't believe it.
I don't believe it either.
I don't believe it.
That's cash.
Let's audit this.
What's your guy's name?
Joelle.
Holler.
Can we audit?
We're going to audit his building.
No, we're going to ask.
And everybody in the building gets swear on your wife.
You give every single person $200.
I gave every single person $200.
I swear.
It works in the building.
It works in the building.
I say life.
No, no, he was a square.
It's coming out of your building.
Not every person that works in that building.
Oh, really?
So you give your favorite guy $250.
Wow.
And then the rest of them what?
So that's like $200.
Every doorman got $200.
Yeah.
Every person in the building got paid by you.
The doorman, yes.
And the porter.
What else?
What happened?
Eight of them.
The late shift.
We got a cleaning stab and shit like that.
Hmm.
You don't pay them at all?
You don't want to get it.
You don't get like the leasing office.
You don't hook them up?
No, no, no.
Y'all got me already, motherfucker.
Come on.
Yeah, I'm going to tip the leasing office.
Bro, I hate this because this guy would cry over the littlest shit when we were going out to eat.
I know.
Because I didn't have money at the time.
Yes.
No one had money.
And you still looked at that bill a little heavy.
You're a bill detective.
You would stress.
Oh, he's a bill detective.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm still a bill detective.
You're not going to charge me some shit and pay for it.
Yo, you got it like that, bro.
You got it like that.
Why can't you give him a little extra?
When it's dark in the restaurant, you pull out the lights off your shit.
You pull the light out.
I bust the light out.
Yeah, yeah.
What's the lady mean?
What are you looking for?
So look at the bill, bro.
It ain't for me.
It's my wife.
Got to see how much this shit costs.
You ever see like the old glasses on?
They get the flash.
Just like that.
My dad will turn up the fucking whole lights in the restaurant and turn the music down.
It'll ask for those things.
It'll be like, I can't even talk.
And then boom, we're talking.
But for real, I put the light on so my wife could see how much them appetizers cost because they think appetizers are free.
Why don't we order some apps?
Okay.
I just will, let's see how much.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's just see how much it costs.
Yeah, exactly.
So she needs to see.
And then I sign.
And then that's good.
How much should I tip on that every time?
How much should I tip on?
Ask other people.
No, ask my wife.
How much do you tip on 700?
So you're saying that she's cheap?
Say again?
So you're saying she's cheap?
She's not cheap.
She just needs to know.
How much?
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
See?
Everybody got to know.
No, they're accusing you of being cheap, but it sounds like now you're saying that she's the one telling you what to write.
Wow.
I mean, yeah, she runs it.
You know what I mean?
My wife runs it.
That's his name.
You don't move.
My wife runs it.
Y'all don't let your lady run the house.
You don't trust your lady?
Wait, wait.
So you say you're not the cheap tip, but your wife's the cheap tip?
That cheap.
Let me tell you something.
Let me tell you something about my wife.
My wife.
I knew I shouldn't have come with her.
Let me tell you something about my wife.
My wife not tipping none of y'all if there's something to her.
Coffee, she goes, for what?
My wife will slide three screens to get to no tip.
You know how that shit starts off at like 18%, 20%, 25%.
She's back.
Whoop, 30%, 35, 40%.
Whoop.
No tip.
Boom.
Right in front of a full eye contact, not give a fuck.
She don't believe that they deserve to get tipped.
She's like, she's like, they just made me a coffee.
What's the point?
Damn, shit.
Yeah.
100%.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
She's out here.
She's out here putting pressure on motherfuckers.
Calling the business managers.
None of this gets cut.
None of this gets cut, bro.
We're going to cut you.
We're going to cut none of this gets cut.
We're going to cut one word.
We're going to bleep a word.
We're going to believe a word.
We're going to believe a dime.
We're going to keep it on the drive.
None of that.
Everybody need to know.
She comes correct.
She comes.
She comes.
Correct.
His holiday trip is going to be horrible.
It's okay.
It's going to be fine.
I'll be like, so what's the tip?
It's going to be fine.
No, no, no.
They're not charging us at the restaurant.
She's going to get coffee in front of you and put $100 and then just watch it.
She knows.
She knows.
She's proud of me.
In this moment, she's proud of me.
Yeah, this moment she's proud of me.
This moment she probably said, thank you, Andrew, for standing up for me and what I do.
She'll never tip for coffee.
I had to bully her into tipping.
You got to leave something.
She said, right in front of Barista.
She goes, for what?
I'll go work.
They got the coffee.
And then she goes, that's their job.
Son.
She's right, dog.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hey, she's right.
You know what I'm saying?
Thank you.
Yo, not tipping is the shit, bro.
Yo, tipping is coming.
Self-Custody and Phone Safety00:04:13
Y'all are caught me.
That's what I'm saying.
You guys are coming.
Andrew shows and Andrew shows a lot.
Y'all are coming.
Hey, Joelle, you're going to get less money this year.
Damn right, Joelle.
It's because of these guys right here.
Yeah, damn right, Joelle.
Joelle, you don't deserve it, your electric doors.
That's a good point.
He got an electric door.
What's he?
He's not even a doorman?
Yeah.
He's not even the doorman.
Doorman's AI.
Just say hello.
Okay, listen.
Listen, before we end all our friendships, we have to end this podcast.
Pomp, is there anything you'd like to tell us?
Is there anything you'd like to tell us?
Pomp, you want to wrap this up for us?
Yeah, why don't you wrap this up?
I'm fucking shook right now.
How much am I getting back, Pomp?
You look like a teenage girl sitting on her bed listening to pretty stuff.
Tell me pretty things.
I'm still buying.
Hey, hey, hey, hey.
Last time that we did a podcast here at the end of the podcast, I had to buy a whole Bitcoin.
Yeah, but you didn't do it that way.
Don't get button.
Don't get butt me.
I'll go home and I'll buy one.
No, no, Right.
I can't do it on my phone though.
Why not?
Because I don't put that shit on my phone because you can't find the password.
You don't even know where your phone is.
Where do you do it?
On the computer.
We'll get you a computer.
I call it bullshit.
You sounded like Akash right now in my tips, bro.
That's all I got with those tips, bro.
I'll buy more tonight.
Why don't you buy a whole coin right now, bro?
Come on.
You can sell if you lose money.
You get it back in taxes or something.
By the way, we're going to get done.
He's going to have text from his accountant being like, yo, talk to me before you do it.
I'm not buying nothing.
But seriously, the pomp army is listening.
They want to see a whole coin.
They want to see a whole coin.
I'll do it when I get in front of my computer.
I'll buy something right now, Pomp, if you buy some.
One full coin.
I'm not buying no full coin.
Buy two.
I'm not selling one.
If you buy a full coin right now, then we're even.
But mine's way cheaper than yours.
If you were smart, you would tell me I got to buy like four.
No, but I know it's hurting you more right now.
Yeah, I'll buy one.
No, no, but you buy one full one.
I'm looking at Coinbase right now.
You know how to open that shit?
How you open that shit?
Help me.
Help me.
All right, Pop.
Last chance.
Last chance.
Nah, I think the big thing is obviously situation.
Fiat.
Maybe Fiatia.
Maybe.
How many people would just say to me in the street of bags?
How many people won't buy a Bitcoin right now?
That's right.
How much is four of the five of us ain't buying shit?
I'll buy.
They weren't screaming fiat.
They were calling me something else.
You're costing them thousands of dollars in Bitcoin.
Pop, we just need one buy, bro.
One buy.
You could spike it up.
I don't have anything on my phone.
You seriously don't put it on your phone.
Nah.
Why?
It's too big of a security thing.
Damn.
I got to take this shit off my phone.
You could lose your phone and someone could hack it.
Is that your argument?
No, it's just like, you guys ever, you get all the text messages now?
Like, people just text you randomly.
Dad?
No, y'all don't know what that is.
Right?
Like, you can always tell me, I don't put anything on my phone.
Think about the risk reward to put it on your phone.
There's only a couple things that you should tell people.
It's like you should do self-custody.
I'm going to listen intently so you could dig yourself out of this.
Don't put this shit on your phone.
Right.
And then the third thing is just don't trade.
Don't trade.
The trading shit's crazy to me.
I know so many people who were like, oh, I bought, you know, five Bitcoin.
It was 500 bucks each or whatever.
Now I got one Bitcoin.
I'm like, oh, damn, did you lose them?
They're like, nah, I was trading.
So it's like, it's real because it's denominated in Bitcoin.
So just don't trade.
Take it off the exchanges, self-custody.
Don't trade.
You bought it on your phone.
I bought out my phone with you.
With you.
Yeah.
And then you don't have your phone now.
No, no, your other phone.
Damn it.
Why You Should Not Trade00:00:49
So like, you're actually a great example.
You're a good example of how not to tip, but a good example also of what not to do with Bitcoin.
Damn.
Man, what?
Did I get attacked twice right there?
Bang, bang.
Yeah, that was DP.
That was DP.
Okay.
Y'all should have never told me the tipping thing.
That's old tip, bro.
Yo, you're a great example of something you put the tip in.
All I know is that the waiters and waitresses are going to be standing over there looking around the corner and be like, I can't lounge.