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Language: en
do you think he is incompetent insane or
evil the following is a conversation
with coffee Zilla an investigator and
journalist exposing frauds scams and
fake gurus he's one of the most
important journalistic voices we have
working today both in terms of his
integrity and fearlessness in The
Pursuit Of Truth please follow watch and
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coffeezilla this is Alex Freedman
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dear friends here's coffee
Zilla how do you like your coffee dark
and soul crushing that was the uh number
one question on the internet do you like
your coffee to reverberate deeply
through the worst of human nature is
that how you drink your coffee I've gone
through a lot of phases on coffee I used
to in college I would go super deep into
you know grinding fresh beans all of
that kind of stuff water temperature
exactly right and then I hit a phase
where I was just it was the maintenance
dose then I went to like espresso
because I could get a lot more in yeah
and now I go through phases of like
sometimes I like it with a little oat
milk sometimes a little half and half in
sugar if I'm oh you've gotten soft in
your old age I've gone a little I I have
but hey if I'm doing a SP SPF interview
it's black that day nothing less yeah
there's black no Su the lights go down
what do you actually do in that in those
situations like uh leading up to a show
do you get hyped up like how do you put
yourself in the right mind space to
explore some of these really difficult
topics I think a lot of its preparation
and then once it happens it's mostly
fueled by sort of adrenaline I would say
um I really deeply care about getting to
like the root cause of some of these
issues because I think so often people
in positions of Power are let off the
hook so I really care about holding
their feet to the fire and it translates
into like a lot of energy the day of so
I I never find myself like funny enough
I usually drink a lot of caffeine
leading up to the interview and then I
try to drink like minimum the day of
because I have so much adrenaline I
don't want to be like hyper stimulated I
have to say of all the recent guests
I've had the energy you you had when you
walked into the
door pretty excited people not excited
to be
here I don't know
deal scar I felt like you were going to
knock down the door or something you
were very excited um Like That Just
Energy um it was terrifying because I'm
terrified at social interaction anyway
uh speaking of terrifying you chose a
good living of interviewing people for
face your fears my friend uh so let's
talk about SP SPF and FTX who is uh Sam
banin freed can can you tell a story
from the beginning as you understand it
yeah so Sam bakman freed is
a kid who grew up sort of from a
position of huge privilege both his
parents are lawyers I believe both of
them were from Harvard he went to MIT
went to like or sorry backing up a bit
more he went to like this top Prep High
School then to MIT then he went to Jane
Street and after that he get started a
trading firm in I think 2017 called Alam
research with a few friends some of them
were from Jane Street some of them
worked at Google and they were sort of
the smartest Kids on the Block or that's
what everyone thought they made a lot of
their money on something called the
kimchi premium or at least this The
Story Goes which just to explain that uh
the price of Bitcoin in Korea was
substantially higher than in the rest of
the world and so you could Arbitrage
that by buying Bitcoin elsewhere and
selling it on a Korean exchange so they
made their money early doing kind of
smart trades like that they flipped that
into Market making which they were
pretty early on that um just providing
liquidity to an exchange and it's what
it's a strategy that is considered delta
neutral which means basically if you
take kind of both sides of the trade and
you're making a spread like a a fee on
that you make money whether it goes up
or down so in theory there shouldn't be
that much risk associated with it so
Alam kind of blew up because they would
offer these people you know people who
are giving out loans they'd say hey
we'll give you this really attractive
rate of return and we're doing
strategies that seemingly are low risk
so we're a low risk risk bet were these
smart kids from Jane Street and you can
kind of trust us to be this smarter than
everyone else kind of thing uh around
2019 Sam started FTX which is an
exchange uh specifically it specialized
in derivatives so like margins kind of
more sophisticated crypto
products and it got in with binance
early on so binance actually has a prior
relationship to FTX which we'll explore
in a second cuz they're going to play a
role in FTX is collapse actually binance
is the number one uh crypto exchange and
they're led by uh he's called CZ on
Twitter I don't want to butcher his full
name but um really smart guy has played
his hand really well and built up a
quite large exchange and binance was
funding a bunch of different like
startups so they funded they helped
invest into FTX early on they invested
100 million so these guys were kind of
like teammates early on SBF and C easy
and FTX quickly grew they got like
especially in 2020 20 21 they got a lot
of endorsements they got a lot of
credibility in the space and eventually
FTX actually bought out binance they
gave them $2 billion so pretty good
investment for for CZ in a couple years
um and now lead that up to 2022 what
happens Luna collapse three arrows
Capital collapse which if you don't know
there's just these kind of cataclysmic
events in crypto uh led by some pretty
risky Behavior whether Luna was a token
that promised really attractive returns
that were unsustainable ultimately and
it just kind of spiraled it did what's
called a stable coin death spiral which
we can talk about if we need to the
stable coin death spiral I I can't wait
till that like actually enters the
Lexicon like a Wikipedia page on it like
uh e economics students are learning it
in school yes that's like a chapter in a
book anyway um I mean this is the
reality of our world is this is a really
big part of our
of the economic system is cryptocurrency
and stable coin is part of that yeah
it's weird because on the one hand
cryptocurrency is supposed to somewhat
simplify or add transparency to the
financial markets the idea is for the
first time you don't have to wait for an
SEC filing from some corporate business
you can look at what they're doing on
chain right um so that's good because a
lot of big financial problems are caused
by lack of transparency and lack of
understanding risk but ironically you
get some people creating these
arbitrarily complicated Financial
products like algorithmic stable coins
which then introduce more risk and blow
everything up so anyways uh three hours
Capital blew up and all of a sudden this
crypto industry which everyone thought
was going to the Moon Bitcoin to 100,000
is in some trouble and FTX seems like
the only people who besides like binance
who's also really big and stable and
coinbase uh they seemed like they were
doing fine in fact they were bailing out
companies in the summer I don't know if
you remember that SB F was likened to
like Jamie Diamond who's the you know
CEO of Chase who like kind of was like
the buck stops here uh you know I'm like
the back stop right so SPF was
supporting the industry he was like the
stable guy so come to like around
October and November there's all this
talk about regulation everything's been
blowing up spf's leading the charge on
regulation and CZ the CEO of binance
gets word that maybe SBF is kind of like
cutting him out or making regulation
that would maybe impact his
business and uh he doesn't like that too
much they start kind of feuding a little
bit on Twitter so when it comes out a
coindesk report came out that ftxs
balance sheet wasn't looking that good
like it looked pretty weak they had a
lot of coins that in theory had value if
you looked at their market price but for
a variety of reasons if you tried to
sell them they'd collapse in value so
it's sort of like this thing a house
built on Sand and uh a friend of mine on
Twitter he goes by Dirty Bubble media he
released a report and he basically said
I think these uh these guys are
insolvent well CZ saw that and he
retweeted it and started adding fuel to
the fire of like the speculation because
up to this point everyone thought FTX is
super safe super secure there's no
reason to not keep your money there Tom
Brady keeps his money there whatever and
CZ kind of fuel adds fuel to the fire by
saying not only am I retweeting this
adding kind of like validity to this
speculation but also I'm going to take
the ftt that I got which part of their
balance sheet was this ftt token which
is FTX is like proprietary token and
Alam and uh FTX controlled A lot of it
they were using this token to basically
be a a large amount of collateral for
their whole balance sheet so it
accounted for this huge amount of their
value and the CEO of binance had a huge
chunk of it as well and he said I'm
going to sell all of it and the the fuel
that that introduced to the market is if
he sells all this ftt and this ftt is
underwriting a lot of the value of FTX
does ftt is almost approximate like uh
similar things if you were to buy a
stock in a public company is that kind
of like a stock in FTX it sort of was
this proxy because what FTX was
committed to doing was sort of like
buying back ftt tokens they would do
this thing called the buy and burn I
think there was some amount of sharing
in the revenue fees of FTX it was kind
of this convoluted thing in my opinion
the exact value of ftt was speculative
from the beginning and it was clear that
it was very tied to the performance of
FTX which is important because we'll get
to later FTX sort of built their whole
scaffold on ftt which meant that this
scaffold was very wobbly because if FTX
loses a little bit of confidence then
your value goes down when your value
goes down you lose more confidence and
this goes down so it was kind of like
this thing that this flywheel that when
it was going well you got huge amounts
of growth when it's going bad you get a
uh exchange death spiral s so to speak
actually this structure it's a pretty
non-standard structure did the uh
architects of its initial design
anticipate the wobbliness of the whole
system so putting fraud and all those
things that happen later aside do you
think it was difficult to anticipate
this kind of ftt FTX elemented research
weird dynamic no because I think
sophisticated Traders always think in
terms of diversification and correlation
so if you're trying to the way to think
about risk in investing is like if I
invest in you Lex fredman and then I
also invest in some product you produce
those those the performance of those two
things will be pretty correlated so
whether I invest in you or I invest in
this product that you like are
completely behind I'm not drisking I'm
basically counting all on you doing well
right and if you do bad my investments
do very bad so if I'm trying to build a
stable thing I shouldn't put all my eggs
in The Lex Freedman basket unless I'm
positive that you're going to do well
right and these people as your financial
adviser I would definitely recommend you
do not put all your eggs in this basket
right and so so you can think about it
like if I know that these people were
trained to think like this and so the
idea that you could start this exchange
you're worth billions of dollars and you
underwrite your whole system by betting
putting most of it on your own token is
is insane and what and what's crazy is
we'll later find out that they were
basically taking customer assets which
were real things like Bitcoin and
ethereum with with risks that were not
so correlated to FDX and were swapping
them out they were using to go go
basically gamble those and putting ftt
in its place as quote value so they were
increasing the risk of the system in
order to bet big with the idea that if
they bet big in one we'd all be singing
their praises if we bet big and L if
they bet big and lost I don't know if
they had a plan but I think they were I
think they were being extremely risky
and there's no way to avoid their
knowledge of That So when you say
customer assets is I come to this crypto
exchange I have Bitcoin or some other
cryptocurrency and this is a a thing
that has pretty stable value over time I
mean Rel as crypto relative relatively
so and I'm going to store it on this
crypto exchange and that that's the
whole point this is
uh so this thing to the degree that
crypto holds value is supposed to
continue holding value there's not
there's not supposed to be an extra risk
inserted into the thing right and FTX
was pretty clear from the beginning that
they wouldn't invest your assets in
anything else they wouldn't do anything
else with it they wouldn't trade it
that's what made FTX so such like a
horror story for investor confidence is
basically they made every signal that
they would not do anything nefarious
with your tokens they would just put
them to the side put them in a separate
account that they don't have access to
and they just kind of wait there until
the day that you're ready to withdraw
them uh that's explicitly what they told
their customers so going back to the
story a little bit CZ then says hey I'm
selling this token that underwrites the
value of FTX there's a total panic SPF
during this time makes said says several
lies such as FTX assets are fine we have
enough money to cover all
withdrawals um and a day later he
basically admits that that wasn't the
case they don't have the money they're
shutting down and then a few days later
after that they declared
bankruptcy there's I should be clear
there's Alam research FTX International
and FTX us which is the US side of
things these are three different
entities all of them are in bankruptcy
and it's not clear to the extent that
they were co-mingling funds but it's
clear that they were co-mingling funds
to some extent so they kind of were
taking from each other and that is where
the fraud happens right because if going
back to our earlier analysis if you're
supposed to set funds aside and I find
out you were using it to go make all
these Arbitrage trades or do Market
making or all these activities you were
known for for your like hedge fund
trading firm thing that's a huge problem
because you he basically lied about this
and uh especially when he's saying
explicitly that we have these things we
have these funds and these things turn
out to be lies well again the question
of fraud comes in and it's just like
there's no way he didn't know so the
obvious question might be well why isn't
he locked up why why is he running
around and it's because um really his
story is that he didn't know any of it
he found out that they had to steal
man's position he would say he was
totally disconnected from what Alam was
doing he had no idea that they had such
a large margin position that they had an
accounting Quirk and that accounting
Quirk hit 8 billion from um
from his View and so when he was saying
that they had money to cover it he was
saying that truthfully to the best of
his ability and he just was so
distracted at the time that he made a
series of increasingly embarrassing
mistakes and now he owes it to the
people to write those wrongs by publicly
making this huge apology to her you
might have seen him on I mean he's been
talking to nearly everyone um about
basically how he's just didn't know what
he was doing he's the stupidest man
alive uh basic what what what are some
interesting things you've learned from
those
interviews I think I've appreciated why
you don't talk in that position uh most
people wouldn't talk most people would
listen to their legal counsel and and
not talk I do not think he's any lawyer
what their Sal would tell him to talk
because right now I think the danger of
what he's doing is he's locking himself
into a story of how things happened and
I don't think that story is going to
hold up in the coming months because I
think it's impossible from The Insider
conversations I've had with Alam
research employees with FTX employees
it's impossible to square what they are
telling me with no like incentive to lie
with what SPF is telling me with every
incentive to lie which is fundamentally
that he didn't know they were comingling
funds he didn't know they were gambling
with customer money and it was basically
this huge mistake and it's alam's fault
but he wasn't involved in Alam a company
he owned so like a compassionate but
heart hitting gangster that you are uh
recent very recently you interacted with
SBF on I like how you adjust uh the
suspenders as you're saying this
um you interact on Twitter spaces uh
with SP
SPF and uh really put his feet to the
fire uh with some hard-hitting questions
what did you ask and what did you learn
from that interaction sure I should say
first this was not a willing interaction
I mean I thought that was kind of the
funny part of it cuz I've been asking
him for an interview for a while he's
been giving interviews to nearly
everyone who wants one big Channel small
channels um he didn't give me one but I
managed to get some by sneaking up on
some Twitter spaces and dming the people
and like being like hey can I come up so
I didn't get him to ask everything that
I wanted because he like would leave
sometimes uh you know after I asked some
of the questions but really what I asked
was about this eight billion and zooming
in on the improbability of his lack of
knowledge um it's sort of like if you if
you run a company and you know the
insides and outs and you're the top of
your field top top in class and all of a
sudden it all goes bust and you say I
had no idea how any of this worked yeah
I didn't I didn't know it's like the guy
who runs waterburger saying I didn't
know where we sourced our beef I didn't
know where we that's a Texas example
actually thank you I appreciate uh let's
let's take it like world Walmart like I
didn't know we used Chinese
manufacturers it's like that's
impossible to become Walmart you have to
know how like how your supply chain
works you have to know even if you're at
a high level you know how this stuff
works can I do a hard turn on that and
go sure as one must to Hitler uh
Hitler's writing is not on any of the
documents around as far as I know uh on
the final solution so in in some crazy
world he could theoretically say I knew
I didn't know anything about the death
cams uh so there's this plausible
deniability in theory so that's but that
most people would look at that and say
uh it's very unlikely you don't know
well especially if all the Insiders are
coming out and saying no no no of course
he knew he was directing us from the top
I mean um what was clear what's
interesting about the structure and like
I love the nitty Sor we're back to SPF
we went to Hitler now we're back to I
wanted to turn us as fast as possible
away from um I yeah I I so the Insiders
in what ala research Alam research what
was interesting is that there was this
sort of one-way window going on between
Alam and FTX where FTX employees didn't
know a lot of what was going on Alam
insiders and I would say by Design knew
almost everything that was going on at
FTX um and so I think that was really
interesting from the perspective of a
lot of the so-called like what you could
what he's trying to ascribe to as like
failures or mistakes or ignorance and
negligence when looked at closely are
much more designed and they sort of
don't arise spontaneously because like
let's say so there's this thing in
banking and like trading where if I run
a bank and you run like a trading firm
we need to have informational walls
between us because there's huge
conflicts of interest that can arise
right so the negligent argument might be
that like oh we just didn't know we're
sort of these dumb kids in the Bahamas
so we shared information equally but
when you see a one-way wall that starts
to look a lot different right if I have
a backend source of looking at or sorry
you're the trading firm so you have a
backend way to look at all my accounts
and I have no idea that you're doing
that that all of a sudden looks like a
much more designed thing when it would
be plausible let's say going to to to
use another another analogy too if
you're saying look I comingled funds
because I was so bad at corporate
structures you would expect those
companies to have a very simple
corporate structure because you didn't
know what you're were doing right but
what we see with FTX and Alam is they
had something like 50 companies and
subsidiaries and this in impossibly
complicated web of corporate activity
you don't get there by accident you
don't wake up and go oh I designed like
this watch that ticked a specific way
but it was all accidental if you really
didn't know what you were doing you'd
end up with a simple structure so even
just like from a fundamental perspective
what SPF was doing and like the
activities they were engaging in were so
complicated and purposely designed to
obfuscate what they were doing it's
impossible to subscribe to the
negligence argument and I want to
quickly say too like I don't think a lot
of people have honed in on this there
was insider trading going on from From
alam's perspective where they would know
what coins FTX was going to list on
their exchange there's a famous effect
where let's say you're this legitimate
exchange you list a coin the price
spikes M insiders told me it was a
regular practice for Alam insiders to
know that FTX was going to list a coin
and as a company buy up that coin so
they could sell it after it listed and
they made millions of dollars how do you
do that accidentally yeah and that's
that's a Al totally illegal so that's
illegal from like and if an individual
does it it's illegal it's fraud what if
a company is systematically doing it and
you can't tell me that
FTX or someone at FTX wasn't feeding
that information of to Alam or somehow
giving them keys to know that and that
would happen at the highest level it
would happen at SPF level and this is
why his arguments of I was dumb I was
naive I was sort of ignorant are so
Preposterous because he's dumb and
ignorant the second it becomes criminal
to be smart and sophisticated right but
then also coming out and talking about
it which is um it's a bizarre move it's
a bizarre almost a dark move uh can you
tell the story of the 8 billion you
mentioned 8 billion what's the 8 billion
what's the missing 8 billion yeah so
it's really interesting because it's
sort of like wire fraud you're sort of
he's sort of copping to like smaller
crimes to avoid the big crime the big
crime is you knew everything and you
were behind it right the smaller crimes
are like a little wire fraud here little
wire fraud there so what the 8 billion
is is that FTX didn't always have
banking it's hard to get banking as a
crypto exchange there's all these
questions of like where's the money
coming from is it coming from money
launder so for a variety of reasons it's
always been hard for exchanges to get
bank accounts so before when FTX was
just getting started they didn't have a
bank account so how do you put money on
FTX well they would have you wire your
money to their trading firm their wiring
instructions would go to their trading
firm it's easier to get banking as a
trading firm so you'd put your money
with the trading firm and then they'd
credit you the money on
FTX okay first of all this is a whole
circumvention of all these banking
guidelines and
regulations that's the first like thing
that I think is legal
but basically what SPF argued is that
there was an accounting glitch error
problem where when you'd send money to
Alam even though they credit you on FTX
they wouldn't Safeguard your deposits
like your deposits would go into what he
called a stub account which is just like
some account that's not very well
labeled um kind of like a placeholder
account and he didn't realize that those
were alam's funds or they were playing
with those funds and that they basically
should have safeguarded that for
customers that's his explanation it's
Preposterous because it's $8 billion but
anyways um just poor labeling of
accounts of an eight billion dollar
account I mean a billion a billion this
is I do this all the time this is the
craziest thing like he Wasing he was
talking to me and at one point in the
conversation he's like yeah I didn't
have precise because he said I didn't
have knowledge of alam's accounts and I
said well Forbes a month ago was getting
detailed accounting of alam and he goes
oh that wasn't detailed accounting I
just knew I was right within 10 billion
or
so what is that error margin $10 billion
for a company that is arguably never
worth more than 100 million yeah
probably never never even worth more
than 50 billion your error margin is $10
billion you have to be this is a guy who
is sending around statements that like
there was no risk involved and you're
telling me he had a error margin of $10
billion that is the difference between
like a healthy company and a company so
deep underwater you're going to jail so
it you have to believe that he is
impossibly stupid and square that with
the sophistication that he brought to
the table it's I I think it's an
impossible argument I I don't even think
it's do you think he is incompetent
insane or
evil if you were to
bet money on each of those incompetent
insane or evil insane meaning he's lying
to everyone but also to
himself uh which you could which is a
little bit different than incompetence
he's not in
competent so the I think he's some
combination of insane and evil but it's
impossible to know unless we know deep
inside his heart how self like diluted
he is versus a calculated
strategy and I think if you look at SBF
he's such a I think he's a fascinating
individual just I mean you know he's a
horrible human being let's start there
but he's also somewhat um interesting
from a psychology perspective because
he's very open about the fact that he
understands image and he understands how
to cultivate image the importance of
image so well that I think a lot of
people even though they've talked about
it aren't emphasizing that enough when
interacting with him this is a man whose
entire history is about cultivating the
right opinions at the right time to
achieve the right effect why do you
think he would suddenly change that
approach when he has all the more reason
to cultivate an image so he is extremely
good naturally or uh I don't know if
he's good but he's like he's a hyper
aware so he's deliberate in cultivating
a Public Image in controlling the Public
Image you you know about the like
Democrat donations like he he knew to
donate to the right people $40 million
he says on a call that we released with
Tiffany Fong he says on a call that he
donated the the same amount to
Republicans there's speculation on
whether this is true cuz he's a liar
whatever so cave out there but he said
he donated to Republicans the same
amount but he donated dark because he
knew that most journalists are liberal
and they would kind of hold that against
him so he wanted all the all the sides
to be on in his favor in his pocket
while
simultaneously understanding the entire
media landscape and playing them like a
fiddle by cultivating this image of I'm
this Progressive woke billionaire who
wants to give it all away do everything
for charity I drive a Corolla while
living in a million dollar prin housee
multi-million um but but that was sort
of the angle he he understood so well
how to play the media and um I do I
think he underestimated when he did this
how much people would put him under a
deeper microscope and I don't think he
has achieved the same level of success
in cultivating this new image because I
think people are so skep now no one's
buying it but I think he he's trying it
he's doing it to the best but it has
worked leading up to this particular
wobbly situation so before that wasn't
there a public perception of him being a
a Force for good a financial Force for
good 100% yeah somebody from seoa
Capital you know wrote this glow glowing
review that he's going to be the world's
first trillionaire there's so many
pieces done on he's the most generous
billionaire in the world that um he was
sort of like the Steelman of you know
it's possible to make tons of money this
is like the effective altruism movement
make as much money as you can as fast as
you can and give it all away and he was
sort of like the the poster child for
that and he did give some of it away and
got a lot of press for it and I think
that was kind of by Design I want to
address a real quick Point yes a lot of
people have said that like binance
played a role and while they catalyze
this
insolvency is a problem that will
eventually manifest either way so I
don't put any blame on CZ for basically
causing this meltdown the the underlying
Foundation was unstable and it was going
to fall apart at the next push I mean he
just happened to be the final kind of
like uh I don't know the straw that
broke the camel's back yeah the Catalyst
that revealed the yeah but it's like I
don't I don't think he's culpable for
ftxs like malfant and how they handled
accounts if that Mak sense so what what
what role did they play could they have
helped alleviate some of the pain of uh
uh investors of people that held funds
there yeah I I
mean
probably uh I don't know I I would see
some kind of weird obligation like with
the two billion they made on FTX
remember they got two billion some of it
in cash some of some of it in FDT tokens
so I don't know how much actual cash
they had have from that deal but they
have billions from the success of what
seems to be a fraud seems to have been a
fraud from early on they had the back
door as early as 20 early 2020 from what
I can tell so the the back door between
FTX and el el research uh do you think
CZ saw through who SPF
is what is he's doing no I think I think
CZ is like he's a shark I think he's
he's good at building a big business um
like a good shark or a bad shark I don't
know I don't know I think sharks just
eat I mean I I don't I don't know I
think uh my relationship with shark has
like a Finding Nemo there's a shark in
that I don't know I think like Jeff
Bezos is a shark okay so whether you
people have loaded connotations of like
how they feel about Jeff Bezos I mean I
I would say like I think CZ is a
ruthless businessman I think he's cold
he's calculated he's very um deliberate
and I think uh what he should do in this
position is forfeit the funds that he
profited from that investment because
largely I think it was um it's owed to
the customers there's so much hurting
out there so I think I think they could
do a lot of good around that um I don't
know if they will because I don't know
if he sees it in his best interest I
think that's probably how he's thinking
but yeah I I think uh they could have
helped or they could still help there
who do you think suffered the most from
this so
far the little account holders this is
always true so one of the big
Temptations with fraud I've covered a
lot of scams frauds is everyone looks at
the big number everyone that's the
headline billions of dollars the top 50
creditors or what everyone thinks at
first uh but quickly when you dig down
you realize that most people who lost
$10 million I mean I'm sure that's
terrible for them I wish them to get
their money back but uh it's usually the
people with like 50,000 or less that are
most impacted usually they do not have
the money to spare usually they're not
Diversified in a phisticated way um so I
think it's those people I think it's the
small account holders that I feel the
worst for and unfortunately they often
get the least press time or airtime
that's the really difficult truth of
this is that especially in the culture
of cryptocurrency there's a lot of young
people who are not Diversified they're
basically Allin on a particular crypto
and it just breaks my heart to think
that there's somebody 50,000 or 30,000
or 20,000 but the point is that money is
everything they own right and
now now what their life is basically
destroyed like you know imagine you're
18 19 20 21 years old you saved up
you've been working you saved up and
this is this is it this is basically
destroying a life what's so brutal about
this is that this all comes on the back
the entire crypto Market comes on the
back
of comes from the deep distrust of
traditional Finance right you
2008 everybody lost trust in the banking
systems and they lost trust that if
those banking systems acted in a corrupt
way that they would receive the Justice
it turned out that the banks received
favorable treatment people didn't so
people lost faith in the the structure
of our financial system in a way that is
we're still feeling the reverberations
of it and so when crypto came along it
was like kind of this way to reinvent
the wheel reinvent the world for the
the like sort of lowly and the like less
powerful and kind of level the playing
field so it's so sad about events like
this is you see that fundamentally a lot
of the the power structures are the same
where the people at the top uh face
little repercussions for what they do
the people at the bottom are still
getting screwed the people at the bottom
are still getting lied to and law
enforcement is way behind the ball do
you think this really uh damaged people
Trust in cryptocurrency for sure way
bigger than uh Luna way bigger than
three capital it's because of who SBF
was it's not just the dollar figure
behind it it's because he woed so many
of our media Elites who should have been
calling him out or at least
investigating him and not rubber
stamping him it's an indictment of our
financial system even our most
sophisticated people in Black Rock in
seoa who didn't see this coming who also
rubber stamped him um and you just
wonder like if you can't trust the top
people in crypto who are supposedly the
good guys the guys saving crypto I month
just a month ago or two months ago he
was the guy on Capital Hill that was
talking to Gary ginzler to all the top
people in Washington he was
orchestrating the regulation of crypto
if that guy is a complete fraudster liar
psychopath and nobody knew it until it
was too late what does that mean about
the system itself that we're building so
you are one of if not the best like
frauder investigators in the world did
you sense did you uh was this on your
radar at all SPF in the over the past
couple years were any red flags going
off for you yes so funny enough like one
of my videos from six months ago or so
blew up because um I got to give a lot
of credit to Matt Lavina BW blomberg
great journalist great Finance
journalist and I want to say when I like
talk about media Elite there are people
doing great work in these mainstream
institutions it's not a monolith just
like Independent Media isn't all doing
great work and all the corporate media
is bad or whatever there's like these
overarching narratives that I don't
subscribe to so Matt lavine's great
journalist he he did an interview with s
SPF where he got Sam to basically
describe a lot of what was going on in
defi but at kind of a larger philosophy
around crypto and he described a Ponzi
scheme where he just described this
black box it does nothing but if we
ascribe it value then we can create more
value and more value and more value and
it kind of was this ridiculous
description of a Ponzi scheme but there
was no moral judgment on it it was like
oh yeah this is great we can make a lot
of money from this and Matt is like well
it sounds like you're in the Ponzi
business and and business is good I made
a video about that I said this is
ridiculous this is absurd whatever it's
obscene but um I didn't explicit call
SBF a fraud there and I think if if I'm
being I think I saw some of it but like
many people I think a a lot of us were
kind of
like I think a lot of us missed how
wrong everyone could be at the same time
I did notice leading up to the crash
what was happening and I and I called it
out a day a day or a day and a half
before it happened
cuz I saw my friends post Dirty Bubble
media and this was the first real look
into the heart of their finances cuz
there were this black box you just kind
of had to evaluate
them without knowing
much and once we got a peak under the
hood of what their finances were I
realized oh my gosh these guys might be
completely insolvent so I made a tweet
about it I hope some people saw it and
got their money out um but pretty
quickly after that I caught The
Narrative of what was really going on at
Alam that it was basically this pondi
scheme that that they had built do you
ever sit like Batman in The Dark since
he fight crime and wonder like sad just
staring into the darkness and thinking I
should have caught this
earlier yeah I think in your in your uh
10 billion dollar 10 million million
we're working our way there um with with
a bunch of the table it's never enough
it's Never Enough like you always could
be catching stuff sooner you always
could be doing more I mean the
fascinating thing you said is that one
of the lessons here is that a large
number of people influential smart
people could all be wrong at the same
time in terms of their evaluation of SP
SPF this is this is one thing that I
don't understand too is like I think
it's one thing to not see something I
think it's another thing to like rubber
stamp or explicit L endorse I feel like
a lot of people didn't look too close
ATF because I think a lot of the warning
signs were there but my feeling is if
you're a sequoia if you're a black rock
wouldn't you do that due diligence I
mean like yeah like before just
endorsing something especially in the
crypto space this is just why I don't do
any deals in the crypto space ever
because it's impossible to know which
ones are the going to be the like big
hits or the big frauds or you know
whatever um but if you're going to make
that bet if you're going to make that
play you would think that you would do
all the research in the world and you
would get sophisticated looks at their
liabilities at how they were structured
all that stuff and that is the most
shocking part is not that you know
people missed it because you can miss
fraud but that there was so much so many
glowing endorsements like this guy is
not going to be that thing we explicitly
endorse him I saw a Fortune Magazine he
was called the next Warren bu
it's just crazy do you think it's
possible to have enough like Tom
Brady uh endorsements that you don't
really investigate so like yes that
there's the kind of momentum like
societal social momentum yes I think
that's the problem I actually think
that's hugely a blind like a a blind
spot of our society is we have all these
heuristics that can be points of failure
where like a rule of thumb is if you go
to an Ivy League where you must be smart
mhm right a rule of thumb is if your
both your parents are Harvard lawyers
you must not you must know the law you
must like kind of be sophisticated the
rule of thumb is if you're running a a
billion dollar exchange you must be
somehow somewhat ethical right and all
of these heris can lead to Giant blind
spots where you kind of just go oh we'll
check like I don't really it's a lot of
energy to look into people and if enough
of those rules of thumb are met we just
kind of check them off and put them
through the system so uh yeah it's been
hugely exposing for sort of like our are
blind and you don't know maybe how to
look in for example there's a few
assumptions now there's a lot of people
are very skeptical of institutions of
government and so on but for um perhaps
too much so AG but for some part of
history there was uh too much faith in
government and so um right now I think
there's faith in certain large companies
there's distrust in certain ones and
Trust in others like uh people seem to
distrust Facebook extremely skeptical of
Facebook mhm but trust I think Google
with their data I think they trust apple
with their data much much more so like
search people don't seem to be your
Google search like I'm just going to I'm
going to in there have you ever looked
at your Google search history your
Google search history has got to be the
some of the darkest things oh I don't
think I've ever looked at my Google
search history I'm pretty careful with
uh like browser hygiene and uh stuff
like that because I think it's well
Google search has unless you explicit
delete is there I recommend you look at
it it's fascinating look because it goes
back to the first days of you using
Google search history fun fact actually
about that no no no I I I I am I am
aware of that um I just mean for like
certain sensitive topics where like I'm
investigating some fraud and I go sign
into their website right log in I won't
use like a traditional browser I'll use
a VPN and I'll like put it on like Brave
or something like that you log in you
create an account as Lex fredman yeah
exactly you start exactly exactly
uh you mentioned effective altruism yes
you know SPF has been associated with
this effective altruism which made me
look twice at EA sure and see like wait
um are the what's what's going on
here uh is this was this used by SPF to
give himself a good Public Image or is
there something about effective alism
that makes it easy to misuse by bad
people what do you think yeah it's
interesting he could have endorsed a
wide range of philosophies and I guess
you just have to wonder are all those
would those philosophies also be tainted
if um he had gone bad I guess effective
altruism is sort of unique because he
used it as part of his brand it wasn't
like he was he described himself as a
consequentialist and like that ended up
mattering it was like he described
himself as an effective altruist and he
used that part of the brand to lift
himself up I guess that's why it's
getting so much scrutiny
um I think the merits of it should speak
for themselves I mean I don't personally
I'm not personally an effective altruist
um I personally am motivated by giving
in part emotionally and for some reason
that I can't exactly describe I think
that's somewhat important I don't think
you should detach giving from some
personal connection I I I I find trouble
with that and and like I said it's for
reasons I Can't Describe because
effective altruism is sort of the most
logical Ivory Tower position you could
possibly take it's like strip all
Humanity away from giving let's treat it
like a business and how many people can
we serve through the McDonald's line of
charity for like the dollar right um I
just personally don't resonate with that
but I don't think the entire movement is
like indicted because of it typically
most people who care about giving and
charity on the whole are nice people and
are so I can't speak for the whole
movement I certainly don't think SPF
indicts the whole movement even though I
personally don't subscribe to it yeah
that it made me pause reflect and step
back like um about the movement and
about anything that has a strong
ideology so if there's anything in your
life that has a strong set of ideas
behind it be careful yeah I mean look I
kind of feel like what it teaches me and
what I kind of think about when I think
about systems is that no system saves
you from the individual no system saves
you from the individual their intentions
their their lust for power or greed I
mean I think one of the great ideas is
the
decentralization of power and like this
is why I think democracies are so great
is because they decentralize power
across a wide range of like interests
and groups and that being an effective
way to kind of try as best as you can to
spread out the impact of one individual
because one bad individual can do a lot
of harm as I mean clearly as seen here
but um now I don't think it has anything
to do with ideology because it's not
like being an effective altruist made
Sam bankman freed to fraud he was a
fraud who happen to Be an Effective
alterist makes sense so there is
something about yes no system protects
you from an individual but some system
enable or serve as a better Catalyst
than others for uh for the worst aspects
of human nature so for example communist
ideology I don't know if it's the
ideology or its implementation in this
in the in the 20th century it seemed
like such a sexy and powerful and viral
ideology that it somehow allows the evil
bad people to like sneak into the very
top and so like that's what I mean about
certain ideas sounds so nice that allow
you like the the lower classes the
workers the people that do all the work
they should have power they they have
been screwed over for far too long they
need to take power back that sounds like
a really powerful idea and then it just
seems like with those powerful ideas
evil people sneak in to the top and
start to abuse that power yeah I think I
mean I don't have a lot of probably big
brain political takes but what I can say
is that you can never get away from both
the system and the individual mattering
for sure some systems incentivize some
behaviors in certain ways but some
people will take that and go okay all we
need to do is design the perfect system
and then these individuals will act
completely rationally or responsibly in
accordance to what our incentives say
that's not true you could also say all
we have to do is focus on the individual
and all we have to do is just create a
society which raises very well adjusted
people and then we can throw them into
any system with any incentives and they
will act like responsibly ethically
morally and I also don't think that's
true so incentives are real but
also the individual ultimately plays a
large role too so yeah I don't know I
come down sort of in the middle there
and some of that is just accidents of
History to which individuals finds which
system you know uh become the face of
that yeah with FTX versus uh coinbase
versus
bance which
individual which kinds of ideas and uh
life story come to power that matters
it's kind of fascinating that history
turns on these small little events done
by small little individuals that um you
know Hitler is a failed artist or you
have FDR or you have uh all these
different characters that do good or do
evil onto the world and it's like single
individuals and they have a life story
and it could have turned out completely
different it's I mean it's the flap of
the butterfly wings so yeah you're right
it we should be skeptical is attributing
too much to the system or the individual
it's all like a Beautiful
Mess The Lex fman
podcast that's like a that was like a
Lex line I've heard I've heard quite a
few episodes and that's like such a Lex
line it's a beautiful M beautifully said
all right sorry I'm a fan of the show
okay all right I love you too uh all
right can you think of possible
trajectories how
this FTX SPF Saga ends
uh and which one do you hope for do you
hope that SPF Goes to Jail that's the
individual and in terms of the investors
and the customers what do you hope
happens and what do you think are the
possible things that can
happen so a yeah I definitely think SPF
should go to jail um for nothing else
for a semblance of Justice the fact
simil of Justice to occur for all the
investors um I also think there are
people probably several steps down the
chain that probably knew at least
Caroline Ellison you can have questions
about sort of their you know Dan
Friedberg who I'd love to talk about as
well um there were a lot of people in
that room who I think knew I think we do
so much of like the one guy is All To
Blame let's throw everything at him when
clearly this was a companywide issue so
everyone who knew I think should face
the same punishment which I think should
be jailed for all of those people um in
part to send a signal to anybody that
tries this kind of stuff in the future
yeah abolutely I mean one of the big
things that you saw like okay take a
microcosm of all of this action and just
look at like the influencer space right
there's a ton of deals that were done
that I've covered at nauseum about
influencer finds out they can make a lot
of money selling a cryptocoin the first
thing they wonder is am I going to get
caught
if I do this is there a consequence and
if the answer is no then it's a pretty
easy decision as long as you don't like
have any moral Scruples about it which
apparently none of them did or a lot of
them didn't I should say so as soon as
somebody steps in and regulates that
math changes and all of a sudden there's
a self-interest reason to not go do the
bad thing so for ex and I can give a
concrete example of
this there was a nft the first ever nft
sort of Like official indictment or the
doj released this press release that
they're charging these guys who ran a
nft project that they didn't follow
through on their promises they made all
these promises lied and then ran away
with the money first ever consequence
for anyone in the nft space that day
that that press release came out I saw
several nft um projects come back to
life from the dead why because all those
Founders are freaking out and they
realized we scammed people we have to go
at least make make it look like we're
doing the right thing right even just so
that's on the optic side but there's
also tons of people who now go oh the
basically law enforcement is on the
scene we can't do the same thing so
there is a very pragmatic reason to for
this punishment it's very much just
because people work it into their math
of should I commit fraud and the last
several years have been very um sort of
been like a little bit of a
nihilistic landscape where no one was
getting punished and so there's this
question of you're almost an idiot if
you didn't take the deals um so I think
it's really important extremely
important for kind of law enforcement to
play a role regulation to play a role to
make it harder to commit those crimes
and if you commit those crimes there's
actual real world punishment for it to
your point about like what's going to
happen to the investors I think that was
kind of your question it's tough because
the if the money's not there the money's
not there I mean there's going to be the
guy they got the best in class guy it's
the guy who ran the dissolving of Enron
so I mean I can't imagine someone better
equipped to run a complicated corporate
fraud like dissolution but yeah it's
it's it's tough because everyone's going
to get probably I don't know 10 cents on
the dollar maybe less I wonder if
there's a way to do a progressive
redistribution of funds so I just I'm
just really worried about the pain that
small investors feel I yeah I think um
there's a lot of thought around that I
forget
if if they actually do do this I mean I
know there's a lot of law about like you
can't treat creditors differently you
have to treat them all the same so I
think it'll be some kind of proportional
payback it's certainly not going to be
that the guys at the top get you know a
significant amount of their money back
and the rest get nothing unfortunately I
think there's such a small amount of
assets that backed this whole thing in
the end and that value is actually
declining every day because it was
inextricably tied to F SPF it was like
the Ft tokens which now what are those
worth the serum tokens that was his
project or the project they made what is
that worth basically nothing so you know
it's a very it's a hard situation and
you know there's a bigger ethical
concern which is FTX us it's unclear how
backed it was but it was clearly more
backed than FTX International do you
take all that money and throw it into a
big pot and give people money back or do
you give the US people back their amount
of money which is probably going to be
significantly more and leave everyone
internationally out in the cold and to
add to that ethical issue let's say
you're a liquidator and you're us-based
there's a
tremendous question like legal questions
about you know how do you ethically do
that it's not it's not clear there's a
tremendous incentives to just favor the
US people over everyone else cuz it's
our country America whatever but um I
don't know if that's necessarily Fair
it's it's really hard it's like it's
impossible and some uh I forget where
you said this but one of the I mean it
probably uh permeates a lot of the
investigations you do which is this idea
that it's really sad that the middle
class in most situations like this get
fucked over so the the IRS go after the
middle class they don't go after the
rich is basically everyone who doesn't
have a lot of Leverage in terms of
lawyers money get fucked over yes and
then they're the ones like it's always
the rich and Powerful who get the
favorable treatment as a like a
microcosm of this funny story so one of
the big criticisms of crypto and I think
rightly so is the irreversibility of the
transactions so if I accidentally send a
transaction somewhere it's gone right
yeah so crypto.com accidentally sent a
lady t
million and now they want the money back
and they're suing her but the funny
thing is is if you are on crypto.com and
you send let's say I accidentally send
you money and I come knocking on your
door Lex I didn't mean to send you you
know like uh $1,000 I need my money back
or if I go to crypto.com and I said hey
I sent that to the wrong person can you
reverse it they'll say screw off no way
if I go to court they'll kill me in
court because they're going to go look
this is how the blockchain works but
then they do it they do the exact same
thing they send this lady $10 million
they're suing her they're going to win
now it's now what's in court is not
whether they get the money back it's
should she be liable for theft I believe
so and that's just another case
of the same rules apply differently to
different people whether you have the
money to back you or not it's a very sad
thing and that's why I think people like
you
need journalists fighting for the little
person we really need it and it's kind
of like this unfor thing where that's
the most risky thing to do like legally
you should not be doing that but um I
think it's important to do it's the
ethical thing that's the right thing to
do uh what do you think about
influencers and celebrities that
supported FTX and SPF do they should
they be punished yeah I think I think
they should take a huge reputational hit
I mean I think they should be
embarrassed I think they should be
ashamed of themselves but it was really
hard to know sorry to interrupt to for
them to know like for examp ex Le I I
think about this a lot yeah is
like who do I because I don't
investigate you know like uh sponsored
by athletic greens okay it's a
nutritional drink should I investigate
them deeply I don't I don't know you
just kind of use reputational like it
seems to work for me should I like I
think I think it really depends on I
think your credibility hit will depend
on what domain you're an expert in if
you're sponsored by a robotics company
and you're an expert in robotics if that
company turns out to be a disaster and
fraud then you should have looked more
deeply we're talking mostly about like I
hold Tom Brady a lot less accountable
than financial advisers Financial
influencers because that is their world
of expertise and you treat their Rec
recommendation differently
proportionally to what you think their
expertise is so in some ways I don't
actually think Tom Brady I'm sure he
reached a lot of people I personally
didn't feel at all moved by his
recommendation because you know it's
just m
but when you hear somebody who should be
an expert in that thing endorse a
product in that space you hold that
opinion to a higher standard and when
they're completely cat cataclysmically
wrong it's going to be a different level
of accountability and I think rightfully
so when um Jim Kramer in was saying Bear
Sterns is fine he made that terrible
call in with be Sterns in 2008 he was
rightfully reamed for all of that even
though it could be considered that like
well you know did he have all the
information maybe not but he's a
financial adviser he does this for a
living if you go on and you make a big
call and you turn out to be wrong and
people lose tons of money you are going
to take a hit and I think rightfully so
but no I don't think these people should
go to jail or anything like that like oh
but it's such a complicated thing I mean
I just feel it personally myself I get
it but you still feel the burden of the
fact that your opinion has influence I
know it shouldn't I know Tom Brady's
opinion on financial investment should
not have influenced but it does that's
just the reality of it right that's a
real burden I didn't know anything about
SP SPF or FTX it wasn't on my radar at
all um but I could have seen myself like
taking them on as a sponsor I've seen a
lot of people I respect uh Sam Harris
and others like talk talk with s SPF uh
like he's doing good for the world so I
could see myself being Hoodwinked having
not done research and the same thing
makes me wonder
like I I don't want to become cynical
man uh but it makes you wonder who are
the people in your life you trust that
are like that could be the next SPF or
or Worse big powerful leaders Hitler and
all that kind of stuff um to what degree
do you want to investigate do you want
to uh hold their feet to the fire see
through their bullshit call them on
their bullshit and also as a friend if
you're happen to be friends or have a
connection how to help them not slip
into the land of fraud I don't know all
of that is just overwhelming yeah I mean
I mean we should be clear like Finance
is sort of a special space
where you're talking about people's
money you're not talking about whether
PE someone takes a bad supplement or
like a supplement that is just they're
$50 out right I think the scale of harm
and therefore responsibility escalates
depending on what field you're in just
like I wouldn't hold Tom Brady as like
if he gives a bad football opinion right
and he should have known better that is
a different scale of harm than a doctor
giving bad advice right like life like
he tells you a pill works and the pill
kills you or something like that there's
just Le different levels of
accountability depending on the field
you're in and you have to be aware of it
Finance is an EXT you have to be
extremely conservative if you going to
give Financial advice because you're
playing with people's lives and you
cannot play with them half-hazard you
cannot gamble with them you cannot play
with them on a bet because you're
getting paid a lot of money
it's just the nature of the space and so
with the with the space comes the
responsibility and the accountability
and I I don't think you can get around
that who was uh Dan Friedberg that you
mentioned some of these figures in thef
realm that are interesting to you super
interesting kind of subject because Dan
fredberg is uh the former general
counsel for ultimate
bet ultimate bet is a was a poker site
where famously they got in a scandal
because uh the owner Russ Hamilton was
cheating with a little software piece of
code they called God Mode God mode
allowed you to see a the guy across from
you hand obviously you can imagine you
can win pretty consistently if you know
exactly what your opponent has very
unethical they uh I should be clear that
for some inexplicable reason I don't
think they were ever charged and
convicted of a crime but they were
investigated by a gambling commission
that found they made tens of millions of
dollars this way for sure and
Dan fredberg is the general counsel he's
caught on a call basically conspiring
with Russ to hide this fraud he's saying
we should blame it on a cons you know a
consultant third party and Russ Hamilton
famously says you know like it was me I
did it I don't want to give the money
back find basically a way to get rid of
this so that's Dan friberg's big
achievement like that's what he's known
for he's most known for and this is the
guy they pick as their Chief regulatory
officer for FTX why do you hire some who
I I get it the not formally charged and
convicted investigated there's all the
and there's tape out there so I want to
be clear about what's actually available
evidence but someone whose seemingly own
achie only achievement is hiding fraud
why do you hire that guy if the
intention is not to hide is not to hide
fraud so this is a question I put to you
know Sam Bank M freed and his answer was
well we have a lot of lawyers well and I
said well it's your Chief regulatory
officer he's like well wasn't we we did
regulate a lot and it was just this big
dance of you know basically he's done
great work he's a great guy and I think
that tells you everything you need to
know and there's figures like that
probably even at the lower levels like
just infiltrate the entire organization
well was just like why yeah why wasn't
there a CFA why why wasn't there anyone
in that space who could
seemingly be the eyes that goes holy
whatever we need to we we're in
dangerous territory here right um so
yeah it seems very deliberate I mean I
talked to one FTX employee that they
talked about who's told me they talked
about taking I think it was taking FTX
US public and Sam was very against the
idea and the employee in retrospect
speculated that it might have been
because You' face so much scrutiny like
regulation wise like you'd have to you
know go through a lot like more thorough
audits all that kind of stuff that
basically he knew they would never
pass um so yeah I mean it's it's red
flags all the way down with that guy and
you hope all of them get punished
everyone who knew I mean I think for
sure there are people at FTX who didn't
know I think there are some people at
Alam who didn't
know there's degree sorry to interrupt
but there's degrees of not knowing yes
there's a looking away when you kind of
know Shady stuff that's still the same
as knowing right that's might be even
worse well yeah like I was talking to
one Insider and we were talking about
the trading he they were telling me
about this insider trading and I said do
you think this was criminal and they
said it was probably criminal in
hindsight yes and the question is
someone who answers a question like that
what does that like mean you know like
it was probably so you're right there
there are different degrees I mean I'll
say at the most basic I would be very
happy if everyone who had Direct
knowledge went to jail which I don't
think will happen to be clear I think a
lot of people are going to cut deals
prosecutors are going to cut deals so
they actually nail Sam bankman freed I
think that's their only focus what about
his reputation what do you think about
all these
interviews um do you think they are
helping him do you think they're good
for the world do you think they're bad
for the world like what's your sense and
like say you get a sit down interview
with him for 3
hours and I'm holding the door closed
what uh what kind is that a useful
conversation or not or at this point it
should be legal
and that's it I think it's useful I mean
I think with it's all it's all about how
you interview them you can interview
someone responsibly you can interview
him irresponsibly I think we've seen
examples of both what's an irresponsible
I keep interrupting you rudely that's
okay no it's unacceptable no no no I
think it's fine um there was like a New
York Times interview which spends an
amount of time any amount of time
talking about his sleep and he's like
yeah I'm sleeping great I me I think
that's so deeply disrespectful to the
victims and especially when you're
you're not even releasing an interview
live it's like you have time to triage
what you're going to talk about why
would you spend any amount of time
talking about the sleep that a
fraudster is get get it's just so weird
and well it's can I steal man in that
case I don't I don't I don't think it
turned out well I think that's I think
that's I I think okay here's the
thing I could see myself talking about
somebody's sleep or getting in
somebody's mind if I knew I have
unlimited time with them if I knew I
like four hours because you get into the
minds of the person how they think how
they see the world because I think that
ultimately reveals if they're actually
really good at
lying it reveals the depths the
complexity of the mind that through like
osmosis you get to understand like this
person this person is not as trivial as
you realize also makes you maybe realize
that this person is has a lot of Hope
has a lot of positive ambition that's
like uh that has developed over their
life and then certain interesting ways
things went wrong they become corrupt
and all that kind of stuff you just
that's all fine but this was this
conversation was not properly
contextualized yes in the world of what
he
did it and I you know I've I've asked
about this interview because I was like
so curious it was out of the New York
Times and there was not much mention of
fraud or jail or the the big crimes like
misappropriation of even client assets
it was just sort of this you know Sam
sat down with me he's he's under
investigation but there's not much
specifics and then it's like yeah he's
playing storybook brawl he's sleeping
he's and it's just like okay this isn't
adding to the conversation especially
when the New York Times it's like uh you
should be grilling right right exactly
so um but as I said I mean it's it's all
range the gamut and some interviews like
some of it's okay and then some of it's
weird like the Andrew sorin interview he
asked some hard-hitting questions which
I really appreciated and then at the end
he goes ladies and gentlemen Sam bankman
freed and everyone gives like a like an
ovation for Sam I mean the Steel Man of
that of course is like they're actually
applauding Andrew sorin but the way you
like lay it up I wouldn't go like ladies
and gentlemen it's like an Applause line
it's like ladies and gentlemen the
Eagles Elton John Lex fredman and so to
go to so you have this like dealbook
Summit where you have all these
important figures that are positively
important and at the end you have Sam
bankman fre of fraudster and you go
ladies and gentlemen Sam bankman fre
everyone's applauding that I think is a
net like I think that's a negative I
think the way that the Optics of that
just were all wrong yeah and so I think
um yeah you have to be very responsible
I think it's useful going back to how
you can usefully do this you can even
when somebody's determined to lie to you
it's always important to pin them down
to a an accounting of events because
that is unimaginably helpful when it
comes to a prosecutor trying to prove
this guy's guilty
is if you say you didn't do a crime but
you don't tell me any de details about
it day of the trial you can basically
make up any story right but if you tell
me in detail where you were that day I
can go hunt down you say you were with
Joe I go hunt down Joe and he says he
wasn't with you boom you've lost
credibility and now you're much more
you're much more um likely to be
convicted so it's really important to
get S spf's exact accounting of how
things went wrong because right now now
he's positioning himself to throw his uh
Alam CEO Caroline Ellison under the bus
like she did everything she knew
everything I knew nothing well is
Caroline Ellison's going to take the
stand and go well I have all these text
messages and this is all a lie and then
Sam bankman freed is going to be
completely you know uh ruined like self-
ruined by his own design so I think it's
more like a legal type of uh like get
the details of where he was what he was
thinking what the I think it's like yeah
I think it's I think the public probably
cares to get to know what happened to
and and again I think if you're if
you're careful you can expose someone
for as they lie to you without giving
into those lies right like without
capitulating to oh I'm just going to
assume you're correct I think you can
point to well Lex you say it happened
this way but you've lied about X Y and Z
why should we believe you that's a
suddenly a totally different
conversation than just being like Oh
okay that's how it happened the thing I
caught that bothered me and the thing I
hope to do an interviews
if um if if I eventually get good at
this thing is the human aspect of it
which is like which I think you have to
do in person is he seems a bit
nonchalant about the pain and the
suffering of people that I have red
flags about in the
way he's he communicates about the loss
of money like the pain that people are
feeling about the money I I get red
flags like you're not uh for forget if
you're involved in that pain or not
you're not feeling that pain well he'll
he'll say he is but he'll be playing a
game of League of Legends while doing it
no but I I you see from his face the D
and that's needs to be grilled like that
little human dance there that's I I mean
I um I considered I talked to him I
considered doing an inperson interview
with
him
um and you still are you still
considering it
I don't know do you think do you think I
I should in person I think it depends if
you think you have anything to add to
the conversation a lot of people have
yeah this been already you did an
incredible job
thanks I think I I think I would like to
grill the shit out of him as a fellow
human but not investigative coffe
investigative yeah yeah yeah like like
another human being another human being
who I can have compassion for who has
caused a lot of suffering in the world
like that that grilling like
basically convey the anger that people
and the pain that people are feeling
right like that yeah I
think I think it'd be really hard I mean
like that guy is sort of a master dancer
and what he would say at the end of it
because I've listened to so many
interviews of him um I probably am like
a GPT model for Sam I think he would do
some kind of thing about like yeah I
really um I really um hear you and um
you know it's it's it's just terrible I
feel such an obligation to the people
who've lost money and you know it's just
it's a lot of money it's a lot of money
you know he'd do something like that and
it would be very superficially like okay
but when you g when you drill down to
the details of what he did it's just
impossible that he didn't know and one
of the things that I wish I had asked
maybe I can talk about like I wish I had
gone on this it's just so hard when
you're doing a live interview to kind of
focus on one thing everyone's asked
about the terms of service so in the
terms of service there was like we can't
touch your funds your funds are safe
we're never going to do anything with
that anytime anyone brings that up he
says oh well there's this other term of
service over here with margin trading
accounts remember we talked about it's a
derivatives platform if you're in our
derivatives side you have you're subject
to different terms of service which kind
of lets us like move your money around
with everyone else okay so we treat it
as one big pull of funds and that's sort
of the explanation of how this all
happened is we had this huge leverage
position and we lost everything but what
no one has sort of done a good enough
job getting to the heart of is that this
pool of funds never was segregated
properly it was all treated under the
same umbrella of we can use your funds
there was no amount of we have the
client deposits which were just
deposited with us and not like used to
margin trade or do anything over here
these funds over here we have saved they
didn't fundamentally they lied from the
get-go about how they were treating the
most precious assets which is your
customer deposits that you said you
didn't invest clearly you put them all
over here you YOLO gambled them and then
when everyone starts uh withdrawing from
here they don't have any money over here
so that is like one one of the most
fundamental things that I haven't seen
anyone Grill him on and uh the next time
if I get the chance to Ambush him again
that's that's what I'm going to drill
down on because it's impossible for that
not to be
fraud there's no world where you had a
pool of funds over here and now you
don't have them without you somehow
borrowing over here because if you
deposited one Bitcoin and I never sold
that Bitcoin and it's earmarked Lex
fredman and you come and it's not there
something had to happen right well so
this is so interesting so for
me the approach that like you said the
most important question of uh because
for you it's like were those funds
segregated for me the question is as a
human being how would you feel if you
were observing that so like you know
that like marshmallow test with the
babies like it's the human thing it's a
human nature question like uh I can
understand there's a pile of money and
you uh the good faith interpretation is
like well I know what to do with that
pile of money to grow that pile of money
let me just take a little bit of that
like how willing are you to do that kind
of thing how able are you to do that
kind of thing and when shit goes wrong
what goes through your mind how does it
become corrupted how do you begin to
delude yourself how do you uh delegate
responsibility for the failures like as
opposed to getting
facts try to sneak into the human Mind
of a person when they're thinking that
because the facts there's they're start
going to start waffling they're going to
start like trying to make sure they
don't say anything they get them
incriminated right but I just I want
understand the human being there because
I think that indirectly gives you a
sense of where were you in this big
picture I think I've talked to so many
people who have sort of committed some
range of like outright fraud to like
misleading
marketing no one thinks they're a bad
person nobody admits that they did it
and they knew they or almost nobody does
there's actually one funny exception but
um I had a guy who admitted like yeah I
did it it was wrong and uh you know but
I did I wanted the money which was kind
of like almost refreshing in its honesty
but um the reason I focus on like the
facts is Because unless you find a
bright red line humans can rationalize
anything I can rationalize any level of
like well I did this because I had the
best of intentions and if you play the
intention game you'll never convict
anyone because everyone has good
intentions everyone's honest everyone's
doing the best they can and got
misleaded and got misguided and da da da
da ultimately you have to drill down to
the concrete and go look I get it you're
just like the last 50 guys that I
interviewed you had the best of
intentions it all went wrong I'm very
sorry for you but at the end of the day
there's people hurting and there's
people that that have significant damage
to their life because of you what did
you actually do and what can we prove
taking intention out of it taking
motivation out what can we prove that
you did that was unethical illegal or
immoral and like that is sort of what
usually I try to go to because I will do
those human interviews but um you know
it's just like it's just a it's like the
same record on repeat I mean a lot
of I I'm with you I'm with you on the
everything you said but there is ways to
do to avoid the record on repeat I mean
those are a different skill set you're
exceptionally good at the investigative
like investigating I do believe there's
a way to break through the the re the
repeat there's the different techniques
to it one of which is like taking
outside of their particular story yes
when everyone looks at their own story
they can see themselves as a good player
doing good but you can do other thought
experiments I mean there's uh but
they'll follow you they'll know what the
thought experiment is no well it depends
it depends my friend I mean the like uh
you know to me there there's a million
of them but of just exploring your
ethics would you kill somebody to
protect your family and you explore that
you start to sneak into like what's your
sense uh of the ingroup versus the out
group how much damage you can do to the
out group and who is the out group and
you start to build that sense of the
person are we like the two Mobsters that
we're dressed as do we protect the
family and fuck everyone else you're
with us and the ones who are against us
fuck them or do we have a sense that
human human all human beings are all
have value equal value and we want to
we're a joint Humanity there's ways to
get to that and you start to build up
this sense of
like some people that make a lot of
money are better than others they
deserve to be at the Top If you have
that feeling you start to get get a
sense of like yeah the poor people are
the dumb asses they're the idiots if you
believe that then you start to
understand that this person may have
been at the core of this whole corrupt
organization to yes two things one I
think you should join me on this side of
the table we'll put s SPF over here yeah
we'll good guy bad guy human facts like
you're you're the bad guy I'm like no no
no slow down coffee what is your feeling
about
Humanity yeah I have you been getting
enough sleep yeah right so I so I think
no I think there's a lot of Truth to
what you said one thing I've noticed
that is hard to combat is sort of like
preference falsification and just like
just the outright lying about those
things is tough to kind of pin down but
yeah you're absolutely right right
there's ways to interview people there's
all sorts of interesting techniques and
yeah I don't disagree good good cop bad
cop we we should do this should be like
a sitcom okay you uh did an incredible
documentary on safe Moon uh the title is
I uncovered a billion dollar fraud uh
can you tell me the story of safe Moon
sure so uh safe moon was a cryptocoin
that exploded on the scene in um 2021 I
think at this point sorry losing track
of my years one year in crypto is like
five years in real life um but it kind
of gained a huge amount of popularity
because of this idea that it's in the
name you go safely to the Moon how they
were going to do this is with sort of a
sophisticated smart contract idea where
there's I kind of have to explain the
way some contracts get rug pulled for a
second or there's scams happen so in the
uh sometimes it's called like the
shitcoin space the altcoin space
anything like below Bitcoin ethereum and
maybe the top five or 10 is kind of seen
as this Wasteland of gambling and like
you know you don't know if they're the
developers going to become anything or
not you're kind of like reading the
white paper trying to figure it out so
there's this big question about like how
can you get scammed how can back to the
interests you don't want the the
developer to have some like parachute
cord where they can pull all the money
out so one way this happens is that that
in decentralized decentralized finance
there's something called the liquidity
pool okay it's basically this big pot of
money that allows people to trade
between two different currencies so
let's say like safe Moon and Bitcoin
right or ethereum or it's actually on
the binance smart chain so it'd be
B&B um and this pool of money can be
controlled by the developers in such a
way they can steal it all right they can
just grab it I don't want to go too much
into details because I feel like I'll
lose people here but the point of safe
moon was the core idea was we're locking
this money up you can't touch it and
actually every transaction that you buy
safe moon with will take a 5% tax of
that we'll do a 10% tax but 5% of it
will go back to all the holders of safe
Moon okay and 5% of it will go back into
this little pool of money okay so the
idea is as you trade as this token
becomes more viral two things will
happen one the people who are holding it
longterm will be rewarded for holding it
longterm by receiving this 5% tax that's
distributed to everyone and two you can
kind of trust that your your money is
going to have this stable value because
this pool of money here in the middle
that's kind of guaranteeing you can get
your safe Moon out into this actually
valuable currency it's not going to move
so the story of safe moon was that
fundamentally this was not the case uh
they promised that this money was going
to be locked up it was not actually
locked up at all they said it was
automatically locked up you don't have
to worry about it well it was very
manually locked up and they didn't
actually lock a lot of it up um they
took a lot of it for themselves for the
developers so there's a lot of players
in this um some of the a lot of them
have left by now there's kind of this
main CEO that everyone knows John coroni
now and you know despite saying that
they were going to lock up all the funds
for four years somehow he's gone from as
everyone else in the in the token has
lost 99% of the value of the token so
they've lost 99
% he's
gotten uh like a $6 million crypto
portfolio multi-million doll real estate
portfolio invested Millions into various
companies so he's he's acrew this huge
wealth and so I made a video basically
exposing that and showing how this this
coin which once had a $4 billion doll
market cap is just viral everywhere
everyone was talking about it because of
these viral ideas of like it is sort of
a captivating idea that by holding it
you could get returns right like you
just hold on to it you automatically get
money and it's a viral idea that this
money in the middle in the pot isn't
going to leave you when those things
turned out to be false this community
has had a slow death as a lot of people
realized it was a scam and there's been
a core part of the community which gets
to an interesting Dynamic we can talk
about if you want to where they have
like doubled down on the belief in
coroni and so part of it was out of a
hope to let those people know what was
really going on in their coin and like
hopefully save some of them
um not in like some altruistic sense but
like or not in like some like I'm like a
hero since but in the sense of um like I
think a lot of them didn't know like
literally didn't know so just sort of
like as a public service letting them
know so they could get their money out
and hopefully save themselves uh a lot
of pain and suffering so yeah so they
really dug in so some did some did some
did some left I mean a lot of people
have left but the people who are left
are people with large amounts of safe
Moon Holdings that are down immensely
and you can imagine at a certain point
in
losses there's a tremendous
psychological pressure to go look I'm
I'm in it I got to go for the Long Haul
and then you want to believe that this
thing is legitimate and will succeed
because a there's an ego component
around I haven't been scammed I'm too
smart to get scammed it's tremendously
uh you know it's it hurts
psychologically to acknowledge you've
been taken for a ride
and also you just want this thing to
succeed for your financial wellbeing so
you like want to believe it so there's
tremendous psychological pressure to
build cult-like communities around these
tokens and I've noticed with the
incentive of like community-built it's
sort of new to finance there's like
these meme coins or these these Colts I
don't want to it's not really fair to
call all of them Colts like some of them
are open to criticism but one of the
things that defines Colts is they're not
open to sunlight or criticism there's
these Financial communities that are
opening up with crypto with a few stocks
where if you criticize them you are
attacked and the entire Community has
every incentive to kind of like downplay
your legitimate criticisms or kind of um
go after you And So It intro it creates
this interesting Dynamic that I'm
fascinated by what do you think
about Bitcoin then do you think it's one
of those communities that does attack
you when CRI ized so which I guess which
coins do you think are open to criticism
and which are not it's kind of tough
like no Community is a monolith so just
like it's just a spectrum of how open
they are there's just like there's
always this core contingent of extreme
believers who will go after anyone who
criticizes them and it's just about how
wide of a band that makes up of the
entire token sure how intensely how
active that small community is so it's
in Bitcoin they're called Bitcoin
maximalists but you can also call any
any community's subgroup like that
maximalist whatever the belief is I
don't know uh Dunkin Donuts maximalists
uh that Community is probably small in
terms of attack you online if you you
know which Community has a very intense
following so I got attacked on the
internet when I said Messi is better
than Ronaldo oh yeah it's controversial
and so that's that's a very intense
maximist Community there uh the other
one that surprised me is when I said now
I did it in just okay folks I said emac
is a better ID than Vim I love emac I
agree listen I have trauma I wake up
sweating sometimes at night thinking emx
Master is the the Vim the Vim people are
after me they're everywhere they're in
the shadows no Vim is an amazing and
it's actually surprised I've recently
learned that it's um still even more so
than before an incredibly active
community so a lot of people wrote but
do you use space Max it's just emac and
Vim no I haven't I use raw uh I have old
schoem but but oh you got to use yeah
hold on a second I actually recently I
have recently said you know what um
Let's Make Love Not War and I went to vs
code I uh I went to a more modern ID I
put uh cuz I did most of my program emac
I did most of anything as one does in
emac just cuz I also love lisp so I can
customize everything then I realized
like like how long will vim and emex be
around really well I I was thinking as a
programmer looking like 10 20 years
out you know I should challenge myself
to learn new IDs to learn uh the the new
tools that the majority of the community
is using so that I can understand what
are the benefits and the cost I found
myself getting a little too comfortable
with the tools that I've grew up with
and I think one of the fundamental ways
of being as a programmer is anyone
involved with
Technology based on how quickly it's
evolving is to keep learning new tools
like the way of life should be
constantly learning you're not a
mathematician or a physicist or any of
those disciplines that are more stable
this is like everything is changing
crypto's like you said a perfect example
that you have to constantly update your
understanding of the of of digital
Finance constantly in order to be able
to function in order to be able to
criticize it uh in order to be able to
know what to invest in so yeah that that
was why I did uh I tried pie charm a
bunch uh the whole jet brains uh uh
infrastructure and then also vs code cuz
that's really popular and you know Adam
and um U Sublime all of those I've been
I've been exploring I've been exploring
code is amazing you should check out
space Max I'm just going to give one
more pitch for it it's just basically
like a customizable customizable
configuration well emac is already
customizable but it's uh it's pretty
useful I'm not even much of a coder but
for like certain journaling applications
or like time management like I find it
really useful so but anyway but we're so
like in I feel like half this podcast is
what it should have been and the half of
it's just us nerding out about our own
engineering like idiosyncracies sorry
sorry guys um all right so what were we
talking about safe
Moon and Bitcoin Bitcoin what do you
think is there
uh have you made enemies in certain
communities what do you think about
Bitcoin so I've made certain enemies in
the sort of crypto Skeptics space
because there's sort of this range of
skepticism you can have about
cryptocurrency I'm obviously a skeptic
of a lot of it um but there are certain
aspects of crypto that I think are
inevitable and I'm going to do my best
to kind of describe those here but I'm
not committed to any crypto specifically
but there are some I've taken a lot of
heat ironically for not being skeptical
enough there's some people who believe
that like the entire thing is a complete
waste of time they're uh r/ buttcoin on
Reddit it's a amazing Community actually
it's very funny they have what's a
buttcoin is like is that it's like a
play on bitcoin they're like oh they're
just like at least we admit it's a scam
very funny guys uh very funny people
there so but they like but they'll
they'll be like you know coffee AA
should just admit that all of it's a
giant Ponzi scheme all of it's a
basically like not real so everything
including Bitcoin includ yeah it's all
it's all basically all the pony nomics
it's all it's it's Pony nomics all the
way down it's like there is no
fundamental use case that uh is that
useful I don't know if I guess I don't
want to straw man them here I don't want
to say that I don't know if they're
saying that it's all useless at minimum
they're saying the level of interest in
cryptocurrencies is far the actual
usefulness of it is far less than
the amount of attention and time and
money that's being poured into it so
like the the Revolutionary of this
technology is not at all revolutionary
let me kind of Steelman what I think the
pro crypto take
is I think that Technologies are sort of
this inert thing and the success of them
in my opinion is not based on PR it's
not based on marketing it's based on
cheaper faster better fundamentally the
success of any technology relies on
those three things
and longevity of it so I have two
employees and both of them are out of
the country so I have to frequently make
international wire payments to them um
he one of them SPF just um as a reporter
I have to ask no okay all right he's not
on the payroll yeah I think he'd have to
pay me I'm trying to do my best
coffeezilla where it's like an hard
hitting investigative question good so
with these International payments you
face all sorts of
slow fees and you fa you face like kind
of like this time thing yeah and it's
this painful
process
so if I use different cryptocurrencies
some of them are like really fast some
of them have really low fees I just
believe in a world
where digital currencies with fast
payments with cheap payments
revolutionize the global exchange of
currency and I don't know if this if
this is going to include the blockchain
it's just that the blockchain is the
first thing that's really embraced truly
digital currency which doesn't need to
go through this complicated system of
wire transfers and just happens so I can
send you let's say I want to send you
ethereum or Bitcoin I can send it to you
just as fast if I send you a dollar or a
billion dollars and I can send it to you
just as fast if you're across from me or
if you're across the world from me that
I think is a
step change and easier faster better in
terms of like just this really basic
International payments kind of idea so I
think at like its core if the the lowest
form use case of cryptocurrencies is
that I think it will um change the world
in some variety it's just kind of the
larger question is is that going to is
that technology going to include the
blockchain
specifically or not the other benefit is
transparency which I personally like as
an investigator it's just that
previously it's like hard to describe
how opaque our financial system is until
you've tried to investigate someone or
something understanding finances unless
you have a subpoena unless you're like
the FBI or like the SEC and you can get
a subpoena for someone's finances or
you're going through Discovery you don't
know what someone has you're basically
playing poker with everyone and the
cards are faced down for the first time
the blockchain to some extent cuz there
are ways to obfuscate it and in some
ways cryptocurrency has enabled more
fraud which is kind of this irony but in
some ways it's enabled people to also
audit a lot better and in real time and
I think that is a structural
change that is fundamentally for the
better the question of all this is do
those betters outweigh the cons that
this introduces and how much can those
can regulation mitigate those cons some
of those cons being like fraud money
laundering all these negative
externalities that are easier with
cryptocurrency why do you think
cryptocurrency in particular seems to
attract fraudulent people uh like uh
scammers and frosters and cuz it's
unregulated it's the wild west and you
can transmit large amounts of money very
quickly across the world what about with
very little oversight creating new
crypto projects like uh new coins uh
because you have to show very little
actual use case you can just promise so
it's like true of any emerging
technology
so much Vapor Weare happens at the
beginning when it's all promise because
fundamentally let's say you're
legitimate I'm
illegitimate we look the same at the
start of a technology because both of us
are promising what this can do and in
fact the less Scruples and morals I have
in some ways I can out compete you
because I can say mine does what Lex's
does but like way better and way faster
and it's going to happen in a year
rather than 10 years you're being honest
I'm playing a dishonest game I look
better once this space matures and you
actually have some people actually doing
the thing things that they say they're
going to do suddenly this equation
changes now you're Amazon you're
delivering in two days I can say
whatever I want you do the thing you do
and I have no credibility so I think the
like part of part of the fraud is you
know just the ability to transmit so
much money so quickly with such little
oversight part of it is like this just
happens with any emerging technology
vaporware is a real thing and hopefully
as the space matures as regulation comes
in things will improve
well let me ask you your own psychology
sure you're going after some of the
richest some of the most powerful people
in the world do do you worry about your
own Financial legal and psychological
well-being uh yes yeah I do I mean I'm
not totally oblivious to the
precariousness of like any kind of
Journalism like this obviously there's
risks I've always believed there's a
quote and I'm going to butcher it but I
hope you guys understand the spirit of
it um you know news is when you print
something someone else doesn't want you
to print everything else is public
relations I really believe to do
meaningful
journalism you have to go after people
like it's not inherently a safe
profession I mean if you're going to do
important work you have to have risk
tolerances and I think everyone has a
line of what that risk tolerance is and
it's different for everyone I don't
think I could do what Edward Snowden did
I think that would be my bright red line
is going against my own government it's
such a in my opinion I really see him as
a hero like it's such a selfless Act of
self-destruction you know that the the
party you're going after has all the
power and will crush
you and you do it anyway out of the like
the true I don't know platonic ideal of
Journalism I think that's beautiful I
don't think I could do that I think I
need some ability to live and subsist in
the society that I am
in and I think my bright red line would
be like if I'm forced to flee the
country for my work I think I'd finally
have to say no but for as journalists go
I'm pretty risk I take risk pretty well
um I especially like think risk is
important to take when you're young and
when you can do that I think when I have
I mean I'm married so when I have a
family I think I will probably dial this
risk thing down just being honest I mean
I think you you kind of have to um but
right now I mean I'm kind of like
running on all cylinders I'm willing to
take on quite a quite a range of people
but um well you're also think a lot
about it wolf pack of one or small yeah
wolf pack as opposed to having like a
New York Times behind you or a a huge
organizations with lawyers with a team
with a history with these people are
less courageous this is the this is the
dirty truth the bigger the organization
the more conservative a lot of them are
it it's true that sometimes they like
and this is not to bash big
organizations I'm just saying this as an
observation of someone who's talked to a
lot of people and especially in the
world of fraud a lot of them are scared
to engage in fraud that is obvious but
hasn't been litigated yet this is why
you'll never see documentaries about
ongoing fraud on Netflix it's too much
of a liability they'll Sue Netflix to
hell and they know that if they win
Netflix has the money to pay it so
corporations like the New York Times you
know a lot of these some of them are
very C like they're as courageous as
they can be but at the bottom line if
someone sues you to hell and back and
you have to pay up you will disappear
and you're relying on liability
insurance which you're already paying
out the ass for to try to cover you if
you get sued but if you get sued even if
you win that liability insurance now
goes up in price the next year and if
you're the New York Times it goes up by
a lot so I mean um I think there's work
that independent journalists can do
uniquely that they can actually take
like in some ways more risk than a giant
institution which has a lot more in my
sense to lose even though it would
appear like they have more in terms of
Defense too but you get uh you can be
bullied legally yeah do you get afraid
of that sure I mean I just uh all these
things are things you have to be aware
of and then forget to do your job like
you have to be you know it's like it's
it's like being like a snowboarder and
it's like do you realize you could hit
your head and it's like yeah of course
but in order to go do the like the flip
or whatever you have to just accept the
risk mitigate the risk as much as
possible and move on so we have um we
have like insurance we keep like a pool
of funds for that kind of thing like I'm
I'm very conservative with how I I spend
my money basically all on production and
like trying to make my life as secure as
I can and then I just do the work that I
you know I I want to do
because so 99% of your fun goes into the
in the studio into the studio and then
into into that elaborate space of yours
yeah of course
um how many kittens had to die to
manufacture that studio but anyway
that's that's my investigation for later
um what what keeps you mentally strong
through all of this what's your source
of mental like strength of your olical
strength through this uh I think there
was a time when I was getting a lot of
cease and assists some people were like
actually like like saying like they're
going to show up to my house all that
kind of stuff I don't think I was that
um I think I was pretty worried about
that for a while my wife was huge s
source of strength here where she was
like hey if you're not comfortable with
it you need to get out of the game or
you need to basically like suck it up
and like this is what it is if you're
going to go after these people you have
to
basically um be mentally strong around
this and seeing her have that
realization helped me have the same
realization and I really deeply admire
and respect that about her and it solved
a lot of my concerns around that it's
just it just made me realize every
profession has risks it is what it is
you mitigate and then you move on why do
you think there are so few journalists
like you you you're basically the embody
at least in the space you operate of
what great journalism should
be why do you think there's very few
like
you that's such an enormous compliment
and probably overstatement but
um I first want to pay respect there are
a lot of great journalists and a lot of
them are like I don't want to just kind
of take it and go yeah you know it's
just me there's so many great
journalists
Matt LaVine Kelsey Piper um you know
you've got Anonymous journalists like
Dirty Bubble you've got citizen
journalists like Tiffany Fong but who
yeah
but I think if you going to be in the
space in the long term you do need to
accept certain risks and I think in the
long term it's like I don't know how
easy it is to play that game for a long
period of time because you make
to do great journalism you don't get
paid a lot compared to what you could
get paid if you did press pieces or
anything like that you take a lot of
risks legally you take physical risks
you take it's just like if you care
about money it's not the profession and
I feel like a lot of people when they
get notoriety they move to like well I
can just maximize the money security
side of things and I think it takes out
a lot of would be great journalists
and also so first of all comfort of a of
physical and mental well-being yes and
also being invited to parties with
powerful people uh you
um you make enemies rich and Powerful
enemies doing
this yes but that's why it makes
it that's why it's admirable I mean you
know uh it's it's an interesting case
study that you've been doing it as long
as you have and I hope you keep doing it
but it's just interesting that it's
rare I'll say I want to make a call like
I think societies can
create better journalists and worse
journalists in so far as they support
the journalists who are doing great work
and I want to call out Edward Snowden
specifically because what we have done
to him is such a travesty and the only
lesson you can learn if you're a logical
human being is that you should never
never whistleblow on the United States
Government after looking at what they
did to Snowden so as a
society we can put pressure on lawmakers
to make it easier for people to do the
great work by not punishing the people
who do great work if that makes sense
and drisking it for them because we
shouldn't expect journalists to be
martyrs to do great work right to do
important work and part of that comes
from protecting
whistleblowers there's like very common
sense things I love like it's great to
heroici you know people like Edward St
and stuff like that but we shouldn't
expect them to be heroes to do that work
do you ever think about going you've
been focused on financial fraud mhm do
you ever think about going about after
other centers of
power uh like uh government government
politics politics it seems to me you
can't do good work um like everybody
doing good work in politics is to some
extent
from my limited perspective as I as I
said I'm not that into it it seems like
everyone has to take a side because even
if you do great work whoever you're
exposing half the other people no matter
how good your work is are going to claim
it's just for partisan hackery and
they're going to malign you so it seems
like a lot of journalists have to take a
slant even if it's not explicit like
bias they have to take a slant on who
they expose I hate that I would really
like a world where you could freely
expose both sides without having a
constant malalignment of like you
know who are you working for or you did
this for XYZ or whatever like I really
find that deeply problematic about our
current uh like journalism in the
political sphere as far as Government
stuff I think it's easy to do not easy
but like it's much more enticing to do
foreign journalism than to do local
journalism on positions of power because
if you
question it's so easy to just get the
bigger you the bigger cases you expose
locally you're you get in danger like
it's just like very very clear-cut the
bigger the case the more your your
financial wellbeing your access your
entire life is like sort of in Jeopardy
whereas if you do foreign journalism you
can do great work and largely you're
protected by your own government so it's
kind of this weird thing where if you
want great journalism on America
sometimes going abroad might
be but the politician thing that's
that's interesting you mentioned that
and going
abroad I think the way you think about
your current work I think applies in
great journalism in in politics as well
so what happens I I have that
sense because I aspire to be like you in
the in the sort of in the conversation
space of like uh with politicians I
tried to talk to people on the left and
the right and do so in nonpartisan way
and criticize but also steal me on their
cases what happens i' I've learned is
when you talk to somebody on the
right the right kind of brings you in
it's like yes we'll keep you comfortable
come with us and then the left attacks
you and and so uh and the same happens
on the left you talk on the left the
right attacks you and the left is like
come with us so like there's a there's a
Temptation and mo uh a momentum to
staying to that one side whatever that
side is um the same with foreign
journalism you can cover Putin
critically there's a strong pull to
being pro Ukraine pro zalinsky pro
basically really covering in a favorable
way to the point of propaganda to the
point of PR the zalinski regime if you
criticize zinsky regime there's a strong
pull towards then being supportive of
not necessarily the Putin regime but a
very different perspective on it which
is like NATO is the one that created
that war there's a there's a there's
narrative is that pull you and what I
think a great journalist does is make
enemies and pul siiz and walk through
that fire and not get pulled in to the
protection of anyone's side because they
get so harshly attacked anytime they
deviate from the center well and I think
also like there's a criticism of all
centrists which I think in some way is
fair and I say that as someone largely
who's this interest which is that this
what about is or like this like what
about the left or what about the right
can skew when it's not a one it's not a
both sides issue so in the case of like
Russia Ukraine I think like I'm strongly
in favor of Ukraine even though I tend
to go like on both sides and that might
be partly because one of my employees is
Ukrainian um and I think what a great
journalist does especially like in
politics is I think they
criticize the regime that's most in
Power most controls the keys and is the
most corrupt at that time and they might
appear to be like let's say during the
realm of trump a great journalist would
criticize Trump but that same journalist
who held Trump's feet to the fire should
be capable of holding Biden's feet to
the fire four years later if that kind
of makes sense that's exactly right yeah
yeah so any uh revealing any so
attacking any power center for the
corruption for the flaws they have uh
irrespective of like your political
agenda or your political ideas
yeah so that and that's what I mean
about sort of the war in Ukraine there's
several key players NATO Russia Ukraine
China uh India you I mean there's
several less uh important players maybe
some of the like Iran and like Israel
and maybe
Africa and what great journalism take
requires is basically revealing the
flaws of each one of those those players
irrespective of the attacks you get and
you're right that throughout any
particular situation there is some some
parties that are worse than others and
you have to um weigh your perspective
accordingly but also it requires you to
be Fearless in certain things like for
example I don't even know what it's like
to be a journalist covering China now oh
that's an exact case of like China has
made it so difficult to be a good
journalist that they've effectively
squashed criticism because to be a
journalist in China means constantly
risking your life every single day to
criticize that government and so the
best journalists are a lot of times
outside the country um or they have
sources inside the country who are like
there's like this you know different
there's layers to the journalism where
there's insiders who are leaking
information but they themselves cannot
publish because it's like it's you know
it's it's extremely risky so yeah I
think I think as a societ
one measure of how healthy the political
structure is is how well you can
criticize it without fearing for your
safety in that sense the chaos and the
bickering going on in the United States
politics is is a good thing that people
can criticize very harshly very harshly
and be in terms of safety are pretty
safe yes absolutely I think our only
challenge is like where it gets
dangerous is around like top secret
information the government comes down so
hard
that the danger in in covering politics
here is you can expose something that's
top secret that should be exposed and
they'll ruin you so that's where you
again give props to Snowden for stepping
up 100% 100% what's uh the origin of of
uh the suspender wearing Batman what how
did you come to do what you do like what
we talked about where you are and how
your mind works but how did it start
I've kind of always been interested in
fraud or or at least I saw fraud early
on and I was just like curious about
what is this I didn't know what I was
really looking at so basically my mom
got cancer when I was in high school and
it was pretty traumatic I mean she's
fine she had thyroid cancer which is I
we didn't know it at the time it's like
cancer is cancer but it's fairly easily
treatable with surgery uh it's one of
the better you know survivable ones and
I just watched her get like bump Ed with
all these like phony Health scams of you
know just like collodial silver you know
all these different like remedies and
she was very into you know all the
different ways that she might treat her
cancer and obviously surgery is very
daunting and you know I was just
confused I was like why are we doing so
many different remedies that all seem of
very dubious health value later I'd find
out that these are like all grifters I
mean they they take advantage of free
speech in America to like advertise
their products as you know life-saving
Miracles whatever when they're of course
not um eventually she got the surgery
thank God but I know people in my life
who their parents passed away because
because they didn't have the surgery
they
instead took the alternative option I
know like I don't want to go into
specifics because I don't want to
mention their specific like case but
their uh family member went to Mexico
for some alternate treatment health
treatment instead of getting an easy
surgery and they died and so it's like I
realized you know where is the outrage
about this where's the who covers this
stuff and I realized well not many
people do then I went to college I was
getting a chemical engineering degree
and all my friends were like telling me
you know hey you should come to this
meeting you know we don't need this like
you're doing this engineering stuff
that's great you're going to make like
70k a year but don't you want to get
like rich now like why wait till you're
60 years old to retire like you can be
rich now Lex so I'd go show up to a
hotel and there'd be an MLM like multi
marketing you know pitch for uh Amway or
whatever it was that day and I was once
again fascinated I didn't know what I
was looking at but I was like what is
this weird game we're all playing where
we sit in this room we're looking at the
speaker who says he's so successful
right but why is he taking a Friday or a
Saturday to do this you know pitch at
night and they're going to telling me
I'm going to be financially free but
they're working on their Saturday and
Sunday and so it's like how financially
free are they so I just like confused I
was like you know none of my friends
were rich they all said they were going
to be rich no one ever seemed to get
rich and so I was sort of baffled by
what I was looking at later I graduate I
had no interest in doing engineering
which we can kind of get into but I
wanted to do something in media um and I
started covering a variety of topics but
eventually I sort of Revisited this
interest in fraud and I started talking
about these kind of get-rich quick
grifters that were online sort of the
the Tai Lopez variety you know 67 steps
or you know whatever like five steps to
get rich coins to 5 million you know
these get-rich quick schemes that a lot
of people were interested in no one
seemed to get rich once again except for
the people at the tippity tippity top
selling the get-rich quick thing and I
was like fascinated by the structure of
it I was like does nobody see what this
is like does nobody get it so I started
making a series of videos on that and
the response was like palpable I mean it
was like I've made a lot of stuff before
that i' had made stuff that got a
million views I'd had like some marginal
success but the response of like the
emils that came in the I could tell this
work even though it had far less views
at the time was having a different level
of impact and that's what I was really
interested in one of my problems with
engineering was from my standpoint I did
chemical engineering at Texas A&M and
like I was like is my future just going
to be in a chemical plant improving some
process by 2% and that's like my gift to
the world like I just I didn't see the
hard impact and that maybe that's a lack
of imagination cuz chemicals matter but
I needed I wanted to see an impact in
the world and so when like I did started
doing this fraud stuff exposing fraud I
like clicked in my brain I was like whoa
this is kind of doing what I want to do
and so I started posting videos at first
it really focused on like get-rich quick
scheme grifty advertising which I think
is super predatory and we can go into
why but um it eventually graduated to
crypto and it's snowballed I guess cuz
now we're talking to Sam
freed okay grifty advertising so
actually just a step back what what is a
multi-level marketing scheme like what
because I've I've experienced a similar
thing I I remember I worked at I sold
women shoes at Sears uh and a in a bank
and I just remember like some kind of I
forgot the name of the company but you
like you can sell like knives or
whatever like that's a oh uh I know what
you're talking about I'm I'm sure
there's a lot of things like this right
and I remember feeling a similar thing
like why to me what was fascinating
about it is like wow like human
civilization is a interesting like a
pyramid scheme like I didn't maybe
didn't know the words for that but it's
like it's cool like you can like get in
a room you convince each other of ideas
and you have these ambition there's a
general desire especially when you're
young to like like life sucks right now
nobody respects you you have no money
you want to do good and you want to be
sold this dream of like if I work hard
enough at this weird thing I can
shortcut and get to the very top yes I
don't know what that and it I also in me
felt that like life really sucks and I
could do good and I'm lucky I I found a
way to do good I'm like and I don't know
you connect with that somehow I think
there's like this weird fire inside
people to like to make better of
themselves right I don't know if it's
just an American thing or if it but
anyway that was fascinating to me from a
human nature perspective grifters play
on this though right like this is so the
best salesmen play on true narratives
that you already believe so the true
narrative is you know life is unfair it
is tough um The American Dream as
described by go to a job work at the
same company for 40 years and then
retire to a safety net that your
positive is going to be there that is
largely dead and so they like play on
those fears and those problems to then
sell you a pill a solution a thing and
this the problem is that is that the
solution is usually worse than even the
problem they sketched out like you will
do better most of the time by going with
the regular company than you will by
going with these goofy multi-level
marketing but let me answer your
question what is a multi-level marketing
so there's a criticism first of all that
um well let me get to what it is in
theory like at its most ideal
multi-level marketing is where you have
a product that you're selling and one of
the ways ways you help sell it is by
rather than going through traditional
marketing like where you go and you put
out print advertising it's like sort of
a social network of marketing I sell to
you and then actually Lex not only can I
sell to you you can then go sell this
product and you'll make money selling it
and you know what to incentivize me to
get other salesmen because when I get
another salesman I'm actually giving
myself competition so that's bad so to
incentivize me to do that they'll pay me
part of what you make right and then you
go out and you go okay well I can sell
this product I also can get new salesmen
to like sell for me and I'm going to
make money from you whatever so it goes
down the line of you create multiple
levels where you can profit from their
marketing right the problem with this
system is that however well-intentioned
it is is that usually the emphasis of
that selling and making money ends up
not being about the product at all and
ends up entirely being about recruiting
new people to recruit new people to
recruit new people that's the real way
to make money in multi-level marketing
this is where the very true criticism of
most multi-level marketing if not all
are pyramid schemes in structure because
what a pyramid scheme is is it's all
about I put in $500 and I recruit two
people to put in $500 and that comes up
to me and they put in they get two
people to put in $500 and it goes to
them and the reason it's a it's a flawed
business model is in order for it to
work and everyone to make money you'd
have to assume an infinite human race
and so that's not the case most people
end up getting screwed in multi-level
marketing and in pyramid schemes that's
what that is that's that thing and the
quality of the product it doesn't
necessarily matter what you're selling
to people who are financially
incentivized to like buy this thing yeah
and so you're um you're selling the
dream of becoming rich yes to the people
down in the pyramid that's the real
product of multi-level marketing
unfortunately um and so you look at the
statistics of these companies and
although they'll make it seem like it's
so easy to be the top you know 0.1%
who's making all this money the stat
statistics are that
97% make less than a minimum wage doing
this they spend an enormous amount of
time and just what's so cruel about it
is that's not advertised up front I mean
it's like if I go work at McDonald's I
know what I'm getting if I go work at
Amway I have visions of they've sold me
visions of beaches and whatever and more
than likely I'm losing money so better
than 50% of people lose money but 97% of
people make less than minimum wage it's
like it's such a bad business uh for the
vast majority of people who join it and
the people at the very top who are lying
to the people at the bottom saying they
all can do it when they can't are making
all the money so it's it's yeah it's
really messed up and the interesting
thing I've I've noticed maybe myself too
because I've participated in that knife
selling for like a short amount of time
that's probably the experience that most
people not Cutco is it I don't know I
don't think it was Cutco I I I know what
you're talking about it's killing but I
think there's several variations of it I
think I was part of an um a less popular
one it doesn't I keep wanting to say it
was called Vector yeah yes I I I
something with a V was what I was going
to say it might be Vector um yeah I get
what you're saying though it's a
multi-level marketing knife selling but
the the the thing is I just remember my
own small experience with it is I was
too I was embarrassed at myself for
having like
participated I think there's an
embarrassment that's why you that's why
people down in the pyramid don't like
speak about it right that you're part
like I don't I'm trying to understand
the aspects of human nature that
facilitate this well this is one of the
problems with fraud is there's a
tremendous embarrassment to being had
yeah also if you buy so slightly
different human nature is that if you
buy into a get-rich quick scheme and
then it doesn't deliver you're more
likely to blame yourself than blame the
product for not actually working you go
well there must be something flawed With
Me true and they constantly reinforce
this they go well it's all about your
hard work the system works look at me I
did it so if you're failing it must be
some indictment of your character and
you have to always double down you have
to D the system can't be flawed you must
be flawed and so yeah it's a it's it's a
really messed up system it really prays
on people's psychology to Pro to keep
them in this Loop and that's why in some
ways these things are so viral even
though they don't actually get most
people a significant amount of wealth
and they cost most people money so very
unfortunate most people do have the
dream of becoming rich most young people
right and the thing thing is is that
everyone knows in business what do you
sell you sell solutions to problems so
if so many young people want to get rich
the product is that pitch it's you sell
them the dream why this gets so grifty
and so cruel and predatory is because
there is no easy solution to this there
is no solution that people are going to
buy um because the real solution people
want is no work no education no skills
required no money upfront and
people will pay any price for that magic
pill and people are happy to sell that
magic pill and I think those people are
very cruel and I I think deserve to get
exposed for it so somebody that's been
criticized for MLM type schemes is uh
Andrew Tate uh somebody that I'm very
likely to talk with so for people who
have been telling me that I'm too afraid
to talk to Andrew T first of let me just
say I'm not a
afraid to talk to anyone it's just that
certain people require preparation and
you have to like
allocate your life in such a way that
you want to prepare properly for them
sure and so you have to kind of think uh
who you want to prepare for because I
have other folks that have more power
than this particular figure that I'm
preparing for so you have to make sure
you uh allocate your time wisely but I
do think he's a very influential person
uh that raises questions of what it
means to be a man in the 21st
century um and that's a very important
and interesting question because young
people look up to philosophers to
influencers about what it means to be a
man they look up to Jordan Peterson they
look up to Andrew Tate they looked up to
others to other figures I think it's
important to talk about that to uh think
what does it mean to be a good man in
the Society of course in the other
gender there's the same question what
does it mean to be a good woman
I think obviously the bigger question is
what does it mean to be a good person
but
podcast I swear to God
um uh did now interrupt
okay uh so on that said one aspect of
the criticism that Andrew's received is
not just on the misogyny is on the MLM
aspect of uh the multi-level marketing
schemes they done so is is there some
truth to that is there some fraudulent
aspect to that so yeah I I definitely
think so I mean that's the main reason I
criticized him
um so let's back up there's a few
clarifications I need to make what
Andrew Tate is selling is not
multi-level marketing although he is
selling the dream he's selling an
affiliate marketing thing which is
slightly different so in multi-level
marketing if I sell to you and then you
go sell to two other people I make money
from those two other people down the
chain multi-level affiliate marketing is
sort of like one level I only make money
so Andrew Tate had this affiliate
program where if you sold Hustler's
University to somebody else which sounds
like something people would Boomers
would put on Facebook in like 2010 like
I went to Hustler's University um School
of Hard by the way you were a member of
Hustler's University so yeah I joined I
joined I became a hustler that's that's
in large part due to my why I'm so
successful is because of my Hustler
University membership I'm just kidding
um but so it's an affiliate program so
you'd sell like I sell to you this $50
course and I make like $5 and Andrew
Tate in perpetuity makes $50 a month off
of you okay what does this course
actually sell right because ultimately
he's selling the dream he's selling hey
The Matrix has enslaved you he's really
gone down this like Neo Rabbit Hole um
so the Matrix has enslaved you your life
is controlled by these people who want
to keep you like kind of weak you know
lazy whatever you need to break out and
you need to achieve
the new dream which is sort of like
hustling your way to the top you don't
need the Antiquated systems of of school
you can just pay me $50 a month and I
will teach you everything okay so what
do you actually get well and why is it a
scam so you actually I think it's just a
scam in terms of like value and like
you're selling based on these completely
unrealistic things he's like let's get
rich okay you get a series of Discord
rooms you you know what Discord most
people know what Discord is it's like a
bunch of you know chat rooms basically
right so it's like AOL or is it like
yeah yeah yeah right right talking to
the guy who who uh quit emac so I don't
know there's Discord servers and in
these like there's like there's like
seven uh different rooms you can go in
or there's several rooms and each one is
like a different field of making money
yes Ecommerce trading
cryptocurrency um I think fulfillment by
Amazon like
copywriting okay so I went to all of
these I checked them out I checked out
all their money making tools the first
funny thing is that Andrew Tate is
nowhere to be found the supposed
successful guy that you like bought into
is nowhere to be found it's these
professors that you have now he has
hired and said these guys are super
qualified so like looked up some of what
some of these guys have done and some of
them have launched like scammy crypto
coins the cryptocurrency professor was
like Shilling a bunch of coins that did
bad and then like deleted the tweets I
mean just completely exactly what you'd
expect behind the pay wall it's nothing
of substance you're not going to learn
to get rich by Escaping The Matrix and
going to work for Jeff Bezos fulfillment
by Amazon is not Escaping The Matrix
right like that's not the way to hustle
to the top it's literally a field of
making money that everyone in the world
has access to if you want to
differentiate yourself and make money
the first thing you realize is going
into skill sets that literally anyone
with an internet account can do is a bad
way to do that because you have to have
some differentiating factor to add value
so so it's just such a obvious and
complete scam because there is no value
to this like so-called education the
professors are crap the advice they're
like hiding some of the bad things
they've done and Andrew Tate's nowhere
to be found ultimately that's why
everyone joins what he's done is very
interesting because and I'll give him
Credit in his marketing he's been very
Savvy to like make the reasons you
admire him not the thing he's sort of
selling which is weird like he's selling
get-rich quick which seems like it
relates to his persona but is actually
very orthogonal to it his Persona is
like the tell it how it
is like tall buff rich guy it's like
actually his Persona that you're buying
into and then he's selling you this
thing to the side which when people get
in there and they're not delivered on
the product he still is those things
that you first thought he was so it's
like I think it's to some extent he's
made a lot of money by making the thing
that he makes money on not the thing he
gets so much push back online for and
what he's also loved for so people will
push back for his misogyny but the real
way he's making money is just like basic
get-rich quick schemes that are super
obvious to spot but everyone's
distracted by like oh he said some crazy
stuff about women or you know all these
various other scandals he's gotten
himself in to get more and more and more
attention so with the with the
Persona uh is the Hustler University
still operating I think they've
rebranded cidate I'm part of their pitch
now I'm like they put me on as like I
mean as like the Matrix is trying to
take us out Lex and then it's me saying
like you know they put me in like saying
I'm part of the Matrix they put me in
saying oh this guy sucks you know I
joined it sucks and so they'll play that
and they do like a bass drop and it's
like you know don't listen to people
like this da d d i mean it's I'm
basically like a by The Matrix to attack
yes you're an Insider threat that
infiltrated and now is being used by The
Matrix to attack him well to everyone
who criticizes him is part of the Matrix
he won't say who the Matrix is it's just
it's just the shadowy cabal of Rich
powerful people it's just like the easy
narrative for people who are disaffected
and who feel cheated by the system you
just collectivize that system and you
make it the bad guy and you go look look
those guys those guys who have been
cheating you they're the bad guys they
want me shut up and then now the person
that the the people who harmed you they
want this guy shut up you're going to
listen to him so that's like it's like
the ba most basic psychological
manipulation that everyone seems to
constantly fall for it's it's really uh
trivial and stupid but can you
Steelman the case for husters University
where it's actually uh giving young
people
confidence uh teaching them valuable
lessons about like actually
incentivizing them to do something like
fulfillment by Amazon the basic thing to
try it sure to learn about it to fail or
maybe see like to try to give a a
catalyst and incentive to try these
things as much as it pains me I will try
to give a uh a
succinct maybe Steelman of it as best as
I can thinking that it's such a Griff
but um I think what you would say is
that some people in order to make a
change in their life need a someone who
they can look up to
and men don't have a lot of like strong
Role
Models like big male presences in their
life who can serve as a proper example
so the most charitable interpretation
would be Andrew
Tate would encourage you to go Reach for
the Stars I guess my problem is I have a
deep like I have a deep issue with the
like lust and greed that centers all
these things it's like this glorify ific
ation
of wealth equals status wealth equals
good person wealth and Bugatti equals
you are meaningful you matter and like
the dark underlying
thing is that none of that none of that
matters like none it matters that you
make a decent living but past just like
that I think the like lust for more
stuff and the idolization of these
people that is just like opulence is a
net bad so that's like I my Steelman has
to stop there because I really disagree
with like the values that are pushed by
people like that yeah no I agree that
that's the thing that should be
criticized I I shouldn't say it doesn't
matter I think it's uh just like a an
amazing meal at a at a great restaurant
it matters it's money and Bugattis for
many people make life beautiful like
those are all components but I think
money isn't the you can also enjoy
beautiful life on a hike in nature you
can um there's a lot of ways to enjoy
life and one of the deepest that's been
tested through time is the intimacy
close connection friendship with other
people or with a loved one like they
don't talk about like love Yeah like
what what it means to be deeply
connected with another person it's just
like get women get money all those kinds
of things but that that I think I I
don't want to dismiss that cuz there's
like value in that there's fun in that I
think the the positive I I haven't
investigated hostage University but the
positive I see in general is young
people don't get much respect from
society uh it's easy to call it the
Matrix and so on but there's a kind of
uh
dismissal and uh of them as human beings
as capable of contributing of of doing
anything special and then here's you
have young people who are sitting there
broke um with big dreams they need the
mentors they need somebody to inspire
them so like um I would criticize the
flawed nature of the message but also
it's just like you have to realize like
there needs to be
institutions uh or people or influencers
that help like Inspire right the the
problem is though is the people who are
pitching unrealistic versions of that
are getting a lot of attention whereas
like there's so many great free courses
where you can learn everything and more
about
fulfillment by Amazon or about
copywriting or all these different
things that I think like so often the
air is just the oxygen is sucked up by
all the grifters who promise everything
it's back to what we said about
vaporware this is one of the reasons
that um like educational products can so
often be co-opted by grifters is
vaporware is very hard to distinguish
because PR like the feedback loop on
education is not clear it's not obvious
immediately so I can sell you a book and
I can say this is going to change your
life if you apply it if you don't CH if
your life doesn't change I just say well
you didn't apply it right like it's it's
there's this weird relationship it's not
clear the value it's not so easy to like
quantify education so that gets co-opted
by people who make all the promises they
get a ton of attention a ton of money
and then those people are often left
left confused and like kind of
disillusioned maybe thinking well this
didn't work in one year so it's not
going to work at all um and so I think
yeah there there are problems there
there's certainly a need for like male
role models there's certainly a need for
somebody kind of to speak to a younger
generation I just think that person
shouldn't shouldn't be maybe Andrew Tate
like personally yeah there so you have
to criticize those particular
individuals uh I also and yeah I I think
the like the Bugatti aspiration is so
stupid like it's like it's so well let
me steal man so I'm a person who doesn't
care about money don't like money um the
women maybe I appreciate the sort of the
the beauty of the other the other sex
but like um yeah cars in particular is
like really is this really the
manifestation of all the highest
accomplishments a human being can have
in life yes I can criticize all that but
the to steal man that case is
um a young person
a dreamer has ambition and I often find
that education throughout my whole life
there's been people who love me teachers
who saw ambition in me and Tred to
reason with me that my ambition is not
justified looking at the data look kid
you're not that special look at the data
right you're not and they they want it
they want you to like not dream
essentially and then again I look at the
data which which is all the people I
just talked to hajer Gracie this hajer
Gracie is just a person widely
acknowledges probably the greatest of
all time dominated everybody but for the
longest time he
sucked and he he was surrounded by
people that kind of you know don't don't
necessarily believe in him so he had to
believe in himself you have to it's nice
to have somebody I just as as older I
get and I've seen it it's so powerful to
have somebody who comes to you an older
person whether it's real or not that
says you got this kid I believe in you
you it yeah it does I
mean I think
so I think dreaming is actually really
important I'm more protective over
People Co-Op those dreams for money yes
yes and like I do think it matters so
much that we encourage people to take
risks it's one of the great things about
America is it lionizes like sort of
people who have taken risks and
won but I think it's just a
weird vapid thing when like the reason
you do all of it is for this thing you
can get out at the end of the day when
we all know and you like you've just
heard a million interviews like nobody
ever is gets the Bugatti and goes this
now completely fulfills me everyone
knows the the Beauty and the like
fulfillment actually comes from becoming
obsessed about what you're doing for its
own sake sort of the joury Journey the
beauty of that thing um and I think
money is just this thing we have to deal
with to be able to do cool stuff like I
acknowledge that you know you need money
to build the $10 million Studio like you
got to get the cameras you got to get
the lights and I'm very blessed to be
able to have gotten that but past a
certain point like I think that is
really the function of money is to just
do cool stuff but ultimately if you
can't fall in love with the process and
like the craft itself you will be left
very unhappy at the end of it and so to
start people off on that journey by
pointing to the shiny object and going
like that's what you should care about
seems to me so backwards we should learn
from the actual people who have done it
and said that shiny thing did nothing
for me learn to love the journey and
like that's the thing we pitch people
yeah as unsexy as that might be yeah
absolutely that that's what and the same
applies to like the red pill community
that talks about dating and so on
there's uh there is uh it's not just
about the number of hot women you go to
bed with it's also about intimacy and
love and all those kinds of things and
so like there there's components to a
fulfilling life that uh is important to
sort of educate young people about
totally but at the same time feeding the
dream and saying take big risks sure and
you the little you that has no evidence
of ever being great can be great because
there's evidence time and time again of
people that come from very humble
beginnings and doing incredible things
that change the world yeah and there's
just a tremendous like funny thing where
you can't become great without having a
willful denial of the statistics like in
some ways you have to take the chance
even if that chance is so improbable and
it's always those people who did take
that chance who end up winning so I
agree probably SBF and FTX is the
biggest thing you've ever covered but
previously you've called the save the
kids scam the world's influencer scam
the like the the the the the biggest in
the world influen scam you've ever seen
uh can you describe it sure so save the
kids was a charity coin that was
launched by a number of extremely
popular influencers I think they had
over 50 million followers together huge
names and they basically said hey guys
invest in this coin we're going to save
the kids a portion of the proceeds go to
charity
and this coin it's unrug so rugging is
the term for remember earlier we talked
about safe Moon you just grab the pool
of funds in the middle and you take them
out okay it's unrug because we have this
smart code that is going to prevent
people who are quote whales which is a
crypto term for saying you have a large
portion of the tokens it'll prevent
those people from selling a large amount
of that at one time right and so
basically you don't have to worry about
trust in US it just is what it is join
and we will you know change the world
save the kids whatever the the it was
really skey from the beginning and
sketchy because their logo matched the
save the children logo which is like an
actual charity that you know so they
basically copied it and said we're
saving the kids um like a knockoff brand
and almost immediately the the project
rugged the they stole the money and
tracing back through the code was
changed the last second before launch
like if you looked at their code that
they launched as a test versus the code
they launched in actuality they changed
only like two lines and it was the whale
code to basically make the whale code
non-existent like you can sell as much
as you want as fast as you want um and
it turned out that some of the
influencers had not only sold that and
made money but also had a pattern of
pump and dumping tokens so we can talk
about what that is like yeah what's pump
and dump a pump and dump is just where
you know know you have a huge following
you promote your little Lex coin to
everybody while holding a big portion of
it and as everyone rushes into buy it
the price is going to pump and you dump
at the same time so that's where the
name comes from pump and dump you pump
the price sell all your tokens make a
lot of money so I traced basically their
Wallets on the blockchain and found that
two of the actors specifically had had a
long history of doing this um which
really proved malicious intent and why
called it the worst is not it certainly
wasn't the worst in terms of like the
amount of people affected it uh
relatively was like a small pump and
dump because it rugged almost
immediately but in terms of the amount
of people that were involved in it in
terms of the amount of malicious
behavior before it that like sort of
proved that this wasn't an accident the
fact that there was like this whale code
it was one of the most cynical attempts
to just take the money of the followers
you had and just like that's mine now so
that's that's why I I called it that but
that's to save the kids so that was uh
that was a lot of the FaZe members and
uh it was I think Addison Ray there were
a lot of people who seemed like they
were kind of taking shrapnel on it there
was like this guy too who he didn't even
sell the tokens he just like held on to
it the entire time and lost like a few
thousand dollars or maybe even I forget
the exact amount he lost a lot of money
a decent amount and so like he took a
lot of shrapnel with that but there were
also people who were maliciously doing
this so
in that investigation like several of
the members of FaZe got kicked out one
of them got like permanently banned and
then this other guy that I talked about
fled the country like he sold all his
belongings and like fled the country and
you know hit out in in London or
wherever he is now I don't really know
where he is somewhere in the UK area so
the basic idea there is to try to
convert your influence into money
correct okay that's the basic idea
behind a lot of influencer crypto
promotions
well
but right but that that little word
influencer means something because there
are most crypto scams influencer scam
they're not right most most right the
most high-profile ones like just by
Nature they tend to be made high-profile
by the influencer so sometimes they are
but you're right a lot of money has been
lost and like nobody finds out because
there's no one big sort of attached to
it they just steal a lot of money but um
influencers are great salespeople
because like in order to overcome the
resistance of getting you to buy some
random coin there has to be a reason and
so much of the 21st century content
creator generation is defined by these
strange parasocial relationships where
people feel like they know you not the
character you play but you and you have
some friendship with them when an
actuality you don't know the viewers you
know you have a sense but you don't
actually know all of these people and so
that relationship is extremely powerful
in terms of persuasion yeah so you can
say I believe in this and I've watched
you years for years and all of a sudden
I say Lex if Lex believes in it I
believe in it I trust him as a human and
so that differentiates these coins and
all of a sudden the coin blows up gets
really popular you made this side deal
and you make a ton of money I have to
say podcasting in particular is an
intimacy like I'm a huge fan of
podcasting I feel like I'm friends with
the people I listen to right and boys at
a responsibility
yes and that's that's why it it uh
really hurts me to announce that I am
launching Lex coin
no no man I this the I hate money I hate
this kind of the schem of all of this
the the use the use of any kind of
degree of Fame that you have for that
kind of stuff there's something makes it
so like frustrating is these people I
have a general sense of what they were
like sort of what I'm I'm I'm in the
even though I wouldn't describe myself
as an influencer I make content on
YouTube I know that especially since
they were taking these huge corporate
sponsorships they were making tons of
money they didn't have need for these
scams I mean I think it's one thing to
scam if you're like broke on the street
you know and you're playing three card
Monty to like live and I think it's a
whole other eth ially cruel thing to do
if you basically trying to upgrade your
Penthouse to the building next door and
like you're already well off and you
just kind of want to get even further
ahead I think that's where well this the
fascinating thing so I've been very
fortunate recently to sort of um
get you know whatever a larger platform
and what you find out is like life is
amazing I I always thought life is
amazing but you it becomes more amazing
like you you meet so many cool people
and so on but what you start getting is
you have more opportunities to like yeah
like PE like scammers will come to you
and then try to use you right and um I
could see for somebody could be tempting
to be like o it' be nice to make some
money I wanted to say like on this kind
of we're on this topic of opportunities
you get you know kind of when you get a
platform so one of the reasons kind of I
railed a little bit earlier against um
materialism or whatever I think to the
extent to which you can moderate your
own greed
you can play longer term games and I
think so many people end up cutting an
otherwise promising career short by just
wanting it too fast so I think it's like
a huge Edge just like discipline is in
terms of like achieving what you want I
think a like a very moderate like being
comfortable with a moderate existence
and finding happiness in that is a huge
Edge because really your overhead is so
much cheaper than the people who need a
Ferrari or a super nice house to feel
fulfilled
and your over have
luyet offers you haveed that people
don't a lot of times people don't pitch
it this way they pitch a Ferrari as
Freedom or like a big house is like
you've made it in a lot of ways those
shackle you back to like you got to find
the cash flow for those things it's
never a free ride yeah that's really
beautifully put I I've always said that
I had fuck you money at the very
beginning I was broke for most of my
life the way you have fuck you money is
by not needing e much to say fuck you
that's that's that's right I mean that's
the overhead that you're talking about
if you can live if you can live simply
and be truly happy and be truly free I
think that means um that means you could
be free at any in any kind of situation
you could make the wise kind of
decisions and in that case
money uh enables you in certain ways to
do more cool stuff but it doesn't
shackle you like you said too many
people in the society you would shackle
cuz material possessions kind of like
draw you into this race um of uh more
and more and more and more and then you
feel the burden of that bigger houses
and all that kind of stuff and now now
you have to keep working now you have to
keep doing this thing now you have to
make more money and if it's a YouTube
channel and so on you have to you have
to get more and the same it's not even
just about money um that's why I
deliberately don't check views and likes
and all that kind of stuff is you don't
want that dopamine of like um of pulling
you in have to do the thing that gets
more and more attention or um more and
more like yeah like money
and wise yeah agreed it's it's a huge
negative hit on your um on your ability
to do creative work can can I ask you
about that because I always I'm always
interested in this um I completely agree
I think it's funny because when you
extract yourself out to the people you
admire and respect who inspired you to
do the Creative work you do you never
think about like the views they were
getting or the money they were making or
the influence they had all you ever
think about is the work itself and it's
funny when a lot of people get in this
position your temptation is to focus on
that which you can measure which is like
all the stuff you said like the likes
the view that's not actually the Target
or what you got into it for if you get
into it for like because you're inspired
or whatever your goal is inspiration
it's impact and like that can't be
Quantified that same
way so it's interesting you have to find
a way as a creator of any of this stuff
to like deliberately detach yourself
from the measurable and focus on this
thing which is kind of abstract and I
was wondering if you have any like ideas
for that so one yeah there's a bunch of
ideas so one is uh figure out ways where
you don't
see the number of views on things that
so I have a I wrote a Chrome extension
for myself that hides the number of
views um that's really funny that I no
what's funny is I have for me cuz it's
useful for other people's content oh my
gosh that's fre I'm going to need to
borrow this that was my problem I
actually have some Chrome extensions for
like I don't like going down like
recommendation rabbit holes when I'm at
work I just want to like search for a
video find it I don't want to see like
all the up next cuz I'll the waste time
so I use Chrome extensions for that but
the views is a problem because it's
relevant to me as a Creator like is this
a big video is it a yeah which is why I
really hurt when they remove like likes
and dislikes cuz I want to know for
tutorials and so on uh what's I mean
that's probably really useful for you
the dislikes yeah yeah do you have that
do you ever ever considered making that
Chrome extension public sure yeah
actually yeah and there would be a good
philosophy behind it right like don't if
you're a Creator I like it I love the
idea I've wanted this thing before I
don't know if it necessarily exists cuz
I don't think I've made a a Chrome
extension that would be cool I would
love to see yeah I would go to that
process of adding it to the cuz I love
like open sourcing stuff so yeah I'll go
add it to the Chrome extension like the
the store yeah cuz I I totally have I've
hated this for like a long time YouTube
made a change and they just continue to
make the analytics front and center
which makes sense from their perspective
they're trying to give people better
data on what is successful and what
makes something successful they're
trying to train their creators but in
the process it can lead to some
unhealthy habits of thinking views
Define a video and so I've long thought
okay I've learned analytics I understand
retention now I sort of want to do like
the Zen like forget it all and you can
only do that if it's out of your sight
depends how many friends you have who
are creatives the other really important
thing and I found this this has nothing
to do with creatives but uh people I
respect very much in my life some of
them people would know that they could
be famous they will come to me and say
they they will comment on how popular a
video was on YouTube they will sort of
complement the success the the the
success defined by the popularity even
for a podcast where most of the the
listenership is not on YouTube or and
Spotify now is getting crazy the they
will still complement the YouTube number
so one of the deliberate things I do is
I either depending if it's a close
friend I'll get offended and made fun of
them for that and to sort of signal to
them this is not the right thing yeah I
don't want that and uh for people more
like strangers that compliment that kind
of stuff I show zero interest I don't
receive the compliment well and I focus
on the aspects of the compliment that
have to do with like what what do they
find interesting I like you know I kind
of make them uh reveal to them that you
shouldn't care about the number the
number of views it is strange there's
like this weird hypnotism that happens
once you get past a certain number and
that number is some approximation it's
like it's like hard numbers it's like
100,000 a million 10 million people just
see a number and they just go like wow
that is and they assign a quality to it
that may not like it usually means
nothing at all so I agree I've never
I've never been good at like handling
that because you're like thank you yeah
you know it's like okay okay that said I
do admire very different from me but I
admire Mr Beast who
unapologetically says like the number is
all that matters like basically the
number shows like the number of views
you get shows like how much uh I don't
know Joy you brought to people's lives
because if they watched the thing they
kept watching the thing they didn't turn
tune out that means they loved it you
brought value to their life you brought
enjoyment and I'm going to bring the the
maximum amount of enjoyment to the
maximum number of people and I'm going
to do the most epic videos and all that
kind of stuff so I admire that when
you're so unapologetically into the
numbers
yeah he's sort of it's interesting he's
like gosh we're getting way too in the
weats am I is this a I don't know I'm
like constantly self monitoring about
like what topics we go on but if we can
Mr Beast is so interesting because he's
almost done what have you ever seen
Moneyball uh yes it's the story of how
someone brought statistics to baseball
and it revolutionized everything he's
Moneyball YouTube yeah he took
statistics to YouTube and it changed
everything and everybody now so many
people are playing catchup I think it
would be interesting in a few years to
see how he develops and now that he's
like kind of revolutionized like the
data side of things how he then
approaches future videos because there's
a point at which you've optimized you've
optimized you've optimized but
optimizing for short-term video
performance is not the same as
optimizing for long-term viewer
happiness yeah and how do you do that
assuming the YouTube algorithm does not
perfectly already do it for you which it
doesn't but they're trying to obviously
do that optimize for long-term happiness
but and also growing optimizing for
long-term creative growth sure I think
the thing that people don't I mean maybe
I don't know I don't actually don't know
enough about Jimmy that but like to me
the thing that seems to be special about
him isn't the Moneyball aspect that
that's really important is like taking
the data seriously but to me is that the
part of the idea generation the constant
brainstorming and coming up with videos
so it's nice to connect the idea
generation with the with the data but
like how many people when they create on
YouTube and other platforms really
generate a huge amount of ideas like
constantly brainstorm constantly
constantly brainstorm I at least for me
I
don't I don't like I I don't think I go
uh so many steps ahead in my thinking I
don't like try to come up with all
possible conversations I don't come up
with all possible videos I can make but
but you can't so the one mistake to make
is to and map Jimmy's philosophy onto
every genre because not every genre fits
that model your model is not an idea
Centric model it's a people Centric
model and so you
like if you were in the business of
creating just Mass entertainment for the
sake of mass entertainment you might
focus on Okay the reason going idea
focused instead of person focused is so
such a revolutionary idea in some senses
is because ideas can be broader more
broadly appealing than any single human
can
be but you're not going for that you're
going for a podcast interview and I
think for you the goal should always be
how deep can you get with interesting
guests and like finding the most
interesting guest which is a different
probably set of skills well put really
well put but I think the the right
mapping there is finding the most
interesting guest yeah and I I think uh
I don't do enough work on that so for
example I I I I try to be something I do
prioritize is is talking to people that
nobody's talked to before
so because it's like I I kind of see
myself as not a good like I know a lot
of people that much better than me I
really admire I I think uh uh Joe Rogan
is still the goat I he's just an
incredible conversationalist so it's
like all right who is somebody Joe's not
going to talk to
uh not either he's not interest it's not
it's not going to happen like I want to
talk to that person I want to I want to
reveal the interesting aspect of that
person and I
think I should do a a Mr Beast style
rigor in searching for interesting
people and you should probably find
people to help you search sure he does
that but if we're being honest he does
that of course with other other folks
but he's the main engine yeah you need
like sort of like a a prefilter you're
the final filter cuz your problem is
you're only able to think of humans that
you've thought of before or been exposed
to and most of the world you've never
been exposed to so you need people to
like pre-filter and go okay these guys
are just interesting humans Lex has
never heard of them and then you sort of
take a batch of like a hundred people
and you go who seems the most
interesting for me yeah but by the way
on that topic where we into we I I've uh
almost done I'm building up uh I I I
programmed uh this guest recommendation
thing where I want to get suggestions
from other people cuz I really want to
find people that nobody knows this is
the tricky thing like not you're not
famous you but I I the idea is there's
probably fascinating humans out there
that nobody knows correct that I want to
find those and I believe in the
crowdsourcing aspect will raise them and
now of course the top 100 will be crypto
scams no but yes so like I have to make
sure that these kinds of swarms of
humans that recommend I can filter
through and there's there's all kinds of
systems for that but I want to find the
the fascinating people out there that
nobody's ever heard from and um from a
programmer perspective I thought surely
I could do that by just building the
system um yeah that's how programmers
always think they'll just automate a
system to do it well that's the Jimmy
Moneyball right like looking at the data
yep uh
uh Weeds on Weeds how do we get to Mr
Beast exactly I'm not sure okay save the
kids influencer influence that's
probably let me ask you more on the guru
front you've uh okay let's start with
somebody that you've covered that I
think you've covered a lot and I'm
really embarrassed to not know much
about him I think this like old school
coffee Sal you've been through stages
okay I've been through stages and phases
true uh so a character named Dan lock
yeah uh who is he you uh you''ve exposed
him for a cult-like
uh human and his cult-like practices who
is he what has he done so Dan lock is
sort of he's gone through a number of
iterations but he was kind of this like
sales trainer guy who really made a hard
push into what he called high ticket
sales and he was telling people that
they could kind of escape the the
nine-o-five rat race if they just learn
High ticket sales and they can have the
life of their dreams basically it's like
I'll teach you to sell but I'll teach
you to ask like not only will I teach
you to sell sell you that pen but I'll
teach you to sell it for $50,000 instead
of a dollar right um so I talked to a
lot of the people who had taken this
course because it was pretty expensive I
think it was like $2,500 or $1,000 and
mind you the people who are taking it
are like teachers and like people who
don't have a lot of money and then you
take the course and immediately you find
out okay well there's an upsell at the
end of the the course you're not ready
you need to go from like high ticket
closer which is one of the products to
Inner Circle or like the level up right
and all of these courses are structured
like this so they spend a tremendous
amount on Google ads to get people in
the door promising the dream and then
once you're in you're actually not done
being like the product you're actually
in this system that tries to upsell you
again and again and again and again and
eventually you're paying monthly and
you're getting more and more you're
constantly paying for access to Dan
Lock's wisdom and like ideas and
fundamentally this sales system wasn't
working for people I mean I talked to
like for example a teacher who put in
like
$25,000 was in debt at one point and has
nothing to show for it I know and it was
sort of these tactics of pressuring
pressuring pressuring and then anytime
anyone would complain he would try to
silence them so I heard from like um
funny enough this was a teacher as well
she put together a Facebook group
basically saying I think this guy's a
scam his course didn't work it's not
working for a lot of people because
fundamentally the promise of turning
someone from a non-s Salesman into a
person who's making six figures selling
is not an easy thing to do it's not just
a matter of just like take my course but
anyways it wasn't working she created a
Facebook group about it and he like Su
her or and was like legally pressuring
her to stop doing that um and and I
realized like somebody has to speak out
about this and everyone who is is
getting silenced so I was like I'm going
to use my platform to raise awareness to
this and people came out of the woodwork
I mean saying that this guy defrauded me
or he scammed me and I want to just
really quickly take take a second take a
beat to explain why get-rich quick
schemes are different than let's say
selling a water bottle and saying it's
the greatest water bottle ever right
because sometimes people wonder they go
like well doesn't like
Nissan say their car is going to make
you happy and then it doesn't make you
happy like why is that different from
the kind of advertising of a get-rich
quick course I mean both of them are
sort of promising things that aren't
true but you get something you take some
kind of a training you know isn't it the
same thing no here's why there's this
concept in economics called elastic
demand and inelastic
demand what it essentially means is that
if I raise the value of this water
bottle there's a point at which you're
just going to be like no it doesn't make
any sense right but there are areas in
our lives where we have desperation
around them that can get deeply
predatory very quickly because they have
no there's no elasticity around their
demand for example your health if you
get cancer and I have the pill that will
solve it or at least let's say I don't I
have a sugar pill here but if I can
convince you that this pill will solve
your cancer or treat your cancer answer
you will pay any amount of money you
have on this Earth to get this pill that
but obviously that gets really predatory
really quick because selling something
that isn't real is almost as compelling
as selling something that is real right
so this happens in the get-rich quick
space too there's any amount of money
you would pay to make a lot more money
right so these products have inelastic
demand that's why you see what is
essentially a few webinars getting sold
for $2,500
courses that literally have identical
videos on YouTube like very similar
course curriculums that are selling for
such extravagant amounts of money
and I think there can be comparisons
made to college because obviously
there's similar like questions about
benefits but in this case there's not
even statistics available that even
shows the average person gets something
out of it that's true of like if you go
to college your average income will
improve right that's the justification
there there's none of that there's no
case study there's nothing backing their
extravagant claims of you're going to
make all this money you're going to make
all this wealth instead they're just as
we said before they're selling you a
dream so that's why I find all those
like types of get-rich quick schemes so
problematic and uh it's why I've railed
against them for significant amount of
time what have you learned from um
attacking exposing some of the things
that Dan lock is is doing what what have
you learned about human nature and and
frosters and gurus and so on it's a
great question so I think one of them is
that there's this systemic problem that
the the phrase there's a sucker born
every minute is very true there is no
end to the people who will fall for
something like this and the problem is
is because there's just no into to need
and want and like and just lack I mean
it's easy to on the one hand criticize
people's greed but a lot of times you
have to put yourself in their shoes if
you're at a dead- end job you have
nothing going for you you you don't have
the money to go to college you don't
want to get in debt fair play where do
you go right as you said there's
somebody who's there saying they believe
in you they believe you can make six
figures you know you're you're going to
believe in that and
so I really felt like it made a lot more
sense to tackle it from the other side
from the side of people that can stop
that can basically be exposed and
basically be um have sort of like a
negative put on their work I mean
they're largely going under the radar so
I kind of felt like you know do you want
to educate they do you want to like
blame it on the victims and say you
should have known better you should have
done this you should stop but there
there's no end no end to that or do you
go after the grifters themselves and so
that's what I realized I realized like
that's the tactic that I went with um
and it's tough cuz it's a little like
legally risky to do that but
um yeah you just kind of got to be smart
about it gu so your your platform has
gotten really big so there's some
responsibility to that weirdly big yeah
yeah um let's say cuz like only a year
ago it was like a lot a lot smaller and
then it's hard to make that adjustment
you know cuz like to me it's just the
same it's the same show I've been doing
so how do you avoid becoming a guru
yourself or uh your ego growing in in um
there's different trajectories it could
take one one of which is you can start
seeing everybody as a scammer and only
you can reveal it and like and like you
have a audience of people who love
seeing the Epic coffeezilla grilling and
you can destroy everyone and that power
now is getting to your head how do you
avoid that well I mean this is like less
optically obvious I think the main way
is like my circle of friends doesn't
care about any of that like and my wife
doesn't care the people that I whose
opinion I value has no relation to like
a subscriber metric or anything like
that I think that's like tangibly the
most important thing to just staying
grounded as far as like becoming a guru
I just don't have anything to like sell
I mean I'm not interested in teaching
people Finance I'm not interested in
teaching people not interested in
selling a course and I've kind of given
myself a hard line on that which I think
has helped me a bit is there's a
temptation to go well I can tell what's
a scam so let me tell you what's not a
scam and a lot of people have offered a
lot of money to do that and basically be
like hey I have such and such legitimate
product come be like an endorser and I
just don't do that because I think it
undermines a lot of what I do is if you
get like if you're taking money and on
the side to say this is legit and you're
saying this isn't legit that's a huge
conflict of interest so I think it's
about managing conflicts of interest and
keeping people around me that are
grounded and also I think
um yeah my only Interest really is just
like make cool stuff and I guess I'll do
that until people stop watching so a
question from on that topic from the
coffeezilla subreddit shout out shout
out how does coffee find the strength to
maintain his integrity and resist
temptation of being paid a great amount
of money to advertise or promote a
potential
scam uh I think that's like goes back to
what we've been talking about a lot
which is just on what you prioritize
what you value I've just never I guess I
grew up kind of lower middle
class and I had a great time like I had
a great childhood I had very loving
parents and because of
that I I guess intuited at an early age
that money doesn't do a whole lot and I
knew a lot of people who were way better
off who had miserable
childhoods because whether their dad was
always gone at work or like they just
had other family issues that just money
can't buy mhm and I realized I I guess
quickly um that money is a very like
it's a glittery object that isn't what
it appears to be and so to me I'm like
I'm having the time of my life making my
show I'm not going to have the time like
I could R you could ruin all that just
trying to go for this quick check when
it's like no I'm having a great time
like yeah it's actually uh maybe you're
you're probably the same way but uh for
me there's a lot of happiness and having
Integrity in looking in the mirror and
knowing that you're the kind of person
that has that in fact walking away from
money is also fun because it's it's like
promising your like it's showing it's
easy to like just say you have integrity
it's nice to like ah I actually I've
discovered several times in my life that
I have
integrity it's when you get put yeah you
get put like basically to the test yeah
I I I I've said like uh I don't know if
a public said but to myself I say like
you can't buy there's a lot of things
you can't buy with me like for a billion
dollars like a trillion dollars um but
it'd be nice to get tested that way it'd
be cool to see CU you never know until
you're in that room it's true um the
same with power given power I'd like to
believe I'm the kind of person that
wouldn't abuse power but you don't know
until you're tested so anyway you're in
a really tricky position because you're
doing incred I mean you are a world
class journalist straight up and so
there is pressure on that of like not
having like airing on the side of
caution with like having conflict with
interest and stuff like that it's tough
It's a really tough seat to sit
in um it's really tough it's really
tough but it's unfairly tough I feel
like um but it's good that you're sort
of um weighing all of those but that
said go donate to coffeezilla donate all
everything support him is a really a
really really important human being uh
the other guy I did I think is the first
person I discovered that you
investigated is Brian Rose of London
reel can you talk about his story um
Brian Rose he was sort of this
interesting figure because he was like
trying to be to one level or another The
Joe Rogan of London which I don't think
he did a terribly bad job of especially
initially he had some really interesting
pod
with some really interesting people and
uh it funny enough I started out as a
like I would watch him I mean I don't
know if I was like a huge fan but I was
like I I like some of his interviews he
had some really good like big gits in
terms of you know great guests um
however when kind of covid started he
went down this really
weird grifting Rabbit Hole where he did
like this interview with David Ike who's
as you know like a pretty big Co
conspiracy
theorist um and I mean like actual like
he believes some of the Royals are
literally lizards um so he got shut down
for that and uh he kind of made a big
stink which it's I think it's fine
nobody likes to be censored and I'm not
even saying that he should have been
censored but his reaction to that was to
like raise a ton of money from his
audience promising this digital Freedom
platform and at first it was like oh we
want to raise $100,000 and then they
raised it like within a day so he's like
well we got to raise a lot more money
and So eventually they raised a million
dollars and he's trying to raise
$250,000 a month to kind of keep putting
his viewers money into this stuff so I
started digging into the platform they
were building and there was nothing free
about it they had censorship guidelines
and there was nothing about a platform
at all there was no underlying
infrastructure he just got some White
Label uh live streaming thing so I
criticized him for that it was just this
ridiculous thing all the donators
expected one thing they they thought
Brian Rose was going to take on Google
and Facebook and like bring Free Speech
back for everybody and of course he
didn't um and then it kind of got worse
because he started taking a lot of heat
for that and he really pivoted hard into
like the defi grift so he started
selling this course about defi Mastery
and this is a guy who knows nothing
about crypto um or very little at the
least so it just got really kind of he
just kind of um doubled down on this
course model of you're going to be rich
if you just follow me and it was
ultimately you just type in Brian rose
on on YouTube you can see what his
audience thought of that because almost
all of them have left him at this point
he's getting like a thousand views a
video and it wasn't because of me I mean
it was like people lost taste in just
the constant ask for more money more
money more money at some point people
get sick of it and it's like everyone
has an understanding that like no one
works for free but when it starts to be
ego driven and driven around money
everything's about money it uh it drives
people away well you're part of that
sort of helping it's nice to have a
voice yeah I certainly spoke out I mean
it wasn't like I was quiet I was very
loud about it at the time um but I mean
in the sense
that
there if you look at someone like Andrew
Tate I've made a video about him even
though he's been Bann off all the
platforms he gets more views than Brian
Rose and I think it's just like it was a
testament to how much Brian Rose was
like doing like the grift that people
could even people who were fans and
didn't care about what I said like
couldn't look past you know just the
constant ask for more and more money
people just get burnt
out is there some aspect that you worry
about where with a large
audience there seems to be a certain
aspect of human nature where people like
like to see others destroyed sure uh do
you worry about hurting people that
don't deserve it or
rather sort of uh attacking people their
grifter light but they get like a giant
storm of negativity towards them and
therefore sort of uh overpoweringly
cancel them or like yeah hurt them
disproportionately sure I mean I try to
be sensitive to
my platform and as I've grown I've tried
to make sure my video topics have grown
with me and
like it does Reach This tricky point
where if you're exposing a grifter with
like 50,000 Subs who's doing some harm
are you punching down right
and so far there's been enough
high-profile things that I can distract
myself with to where this has never been
a problem you don't ever want to be
um sort of like Siran aot in retirement
um where have you heard this analogy
okay so there's this great analogy where
it's like sir lancelot's the guy who
slays the dragon right he gets a lot of
Fame and he gets a lot of Fortune for
saving the dragon or at least a lot of
you know people love
him but what happens after he slays the
first dragon he's got to go find a
bigger dragon so he goes finds bigger
dragon and a eventually depending on how
many dragons you think are there in the
world maybe he kills all the dragons and
one day people go see sir Lancelot and
he's in a field with cows and he's
chopping their heads yeah and he's he's
sort of put himself in retirement but he
can't even enjoy the fruits because his
whole thing is like I'm killing the
dragon so I try to be cognizant and I
try to always make myself willing to
hang up my my suspenders I guess hang up
my hat I I try to be aware like if I
significantly improve the problem I put
myself out of
business I want to be okay with that
basically um and just be fine with it I
don't the funny thing is I was more
worried about this as like an issue
earlier because I thought there was a
finite like I was like I'm going to
solve this faster especially as it
started gaining traction like I'm going
to solve this fast I got this you know
classic naive um you know we all think
we're so influential FTX comes along
well yeah and you just you just yeah you
just get like uh with time you get
humbled because you talk to people I've
talked to like versions of coffeezilla
that are older and it's like it's like
oh yeah they didn't solve it and they
probably were better I just imagine a
smoke filled room like of of just like
retired
Batman and you're this young
bright-eyed oh
yeah fiery spirit Ed investigator yeah
exactly what uh what's the process of
investigation that you can speak to what
are some interesting um things you've
learned about what it takes to do great
investigations sure great investigations
reveal something new or bring something
to light so I think what everyone thinks
in terms of Investigations is like a lot
of like you know Googling or like
searching through articles I think uh
that's the first thing you want to get
away from and you want to try to talk to
people doing like the non-obvious things
and just trying to get perspectives that
are Beyond just what is available so a
lot of it's just having conversations is
so enlightening um both to victims and
also obviously trying to get talk to the
people themselves secondly there's
Sometimes some analysis you can generate
that's meaningful like blockchain
evidence so in the case of safe moon for
example uh going back to that I found
someone's secret account where they were
pumping dumping coins they were saying
things like who sold I'll I'll you know
I'm so mad at the guy who sold F the guy
who sold and you look at his account and
he was the guy selling and it's like
that is just that's great stuff so
digging through the blockchain kind of
I've gained some skills there um and
that's kind of this fun I guess I would
say it's this weird Edge I have right
now because a lot of people don't know
too much about that um and so I have
this weird expertise that works now I
don't think that'll work forever cuz I
think I think people kind of figure out
how to do very similar analyses but uh
so it's it's like kind of an interesting
Edge right now that I have so that's
like a data driven investigation but you
also do interviews right yeah definitely
and then also recently I've tried to get
more respon speaking to your point about
like as your platform gets bigger you
need more responsibility I've tried to
get much more
um responsible about like reaching out
or somehow giving the subject some way
to talk because I think in early on I
was such a small channel that a I if I
asked them they wouldn't answer but B I
kind of felt like I was launching these
videos into the abyss and when some of
my videos had real traction I was like
okay hang on a second let's double check
this let's triple check it let's try to
make sure um all this stuff is correct
and there's no other side of the story
I'll say this has interesting
implications because for example I
investigated this thing called Genesis
they're a billion doll crypto lender and
my conclusion was that they were
solvent that's a huge accusation so what
do you do well I emailed their press
team everybody I said hey I think you're
insolvent I think you're this I think I
laid out all my accusations and I said
you have till I think 2 p.m. the next
day to respond
MH at 8: a.m. before I made my video
they announced to all their investors
that they're freezing withdrawals they
don't have the money so they front I I
don't know if they saw the inter like I
don't know if they actually saw that
email I don't want to take credit for
collapsing them or whatever but
my point is had I not taken that level
of kind of care and just said hey you're
a you're a scammer you're frauds
ironically could I have done more good
by allowing people to withdraw their
money early I made some tweets that
people did see that like some people got
their money out but my YouTube audience
is much larger and could I have helped
more people had I not given them
basically the ability to know what I was
going to produce when I produced it boy
your life is difficult cuz you can
potentially hurt the company that
doesn't deserve it if you're wrong or
you if you're right and you warn the
company you might hurt
the uh well I'm glad your wife is a
supporter and keeps you strong that's
the tough tough
decision um ultimately I guess you want
to air on the side of the of the
individual
people of uh the investors and so on but
it's tough It's always a really really
tricky decision to make very tricky oh
boy that's so interesting and then
um the thing I've seen in your
interviews I that I don't remember
because I I think when you I watched you
earlier in your career you were a little
bit harsher you were having you were
like
troler you're having a little more fun
sure and when I've seen you recently you
do have the fun but whenever you
interview you seem respectful like like
you you attack in good faith which is
really important for an interviewer so
then people can go on and actually try
to defend themselves that's really
important signal to send to people
because then you're not just about
tearing down you're after like the you
know it's cliche to say but the truth
like you're you're really trying to
actually investigate in good faith which
is great so that signal is out there so
like people like SPF could like he
should he should go on your platform I
think I mean now it's like
in
full not just like a half ass
conversation on Twitter space but in
full so that's that's great that that
signal is out there but of course the
downside of sort of as you as you become
uh more famous people might be scared to
sort of go on um but you're you do put
that signal of being respectful out
there which is really really important
you know what interesting it surprises
me I know it surprises other people
because other people have commented but
it consistently surprises me how many
people still talk to me um in and maybe
it's because they and I really do give a
good attempt to try to argue in good
faith I try not to just like load up ad
homonyms or anything like that I just
try to present the evidence and let the
audience make up their mind um but it
surprises me sometimes that people will
just be like yeah they want to talk they
want to talk they want to talk I
think it's very human in a way and I
think it's like
almost it's almost like good like one of
the things that is always told to
everyone who's going to talk to the cops
is like you should never talk to the
cops whatever um which is true you
shouldn't talk to the cops CU because
even if you're innocent they can use
your words they can twist your words but
there's something that that gets lost in
that like almost robotic like you know
self- that I think having open
conversations even if you've done
something wrong I think there's
something really compelling about that
that continues to make people talk in
interrogation rooms in Twitter spaces
wherever you are regardless of whether
you totally shouldn't be talking and I
don't want to downplay that that's
actually really important I mean it's
like a lot of cases get solved a lot of
Investigations go farther because people
sort of make the miscalculation to talk
but I think it's like almost important
in a way that we have that human bias to
like connect in spite of self-interest
yeah but also they they're judging the
integrity and the good faith of the
other person so I think people consume
your content especially your latest
content they know that you're a good
person I found
myself like there's a lot of journalists
that reach out to me and I find myself
like not wanting to talk to them because
I don't know if the other person in the
side is coming in good faith even on
silly stuff I'm not a same way like I'm
I'm not a I don't have anything to hide
like you don't really have anything to
hide but you you don't
know what what their like spin is can
can I tell you an example I'm Dy cuz I I
believe so strongly that journalists
have done themselves such a disservice
okay one of the truest things is that
like everyone loves journalism in theory
and almost everyone dislikes journalists
as a whole like there's a deep distrust
of journalists and there's a deep love
for journalism it's this weird
disconnect I think a lot of it can be
summarized in there's this book called
The J the oh God what it's called I
think it's called the journalist and the
murderer
it's written by Janet Malcolm the first
line of this book is that like every
journalist who knows what they're doing
who isn't too like is smart enough to
know what they're doing knows what
they're doing is deeply unethical or
something like that and what they're
talking about is that there's a
tradition in journalism to betray the
subject to lie to them in the hopes of
getting a story and play to their ego
and to their sense of self to make it
seem like you're going to write one
article and you stab them in the back at
the end when you press publish and you
write the totally different article this
is what actually everyone hates about
journalists and it's happened to me
before so I did a story like way back in
the day I got interviewed about
something that was like data with
YouTube I made a few comments about data
in YouTube and somehow by the time the
article got published it's about me
endorsing their opinion that PewDiePie
is an anti-semite and I'm like I reach
out to this person I said I never said
that like what are you how did you even
twist my words to say that and I felt so
disgusted and betrayed to have like I'm
like this mouthpiece for an ideology or
like a thought that I do not actually
agree with so J and when journalists do
this they think well I'm never going to
interview this person again so it's okay
so it's like it's almost like the ends
justify the means I get the story but
the ends don't justify the means because
you've now undermined the entire Field's
credibility with that person and when
that happens enough time times you end
up sitting across from Lex Freedman and
it's like well I don't know if they're
going to represent me fairly because the
base assumption is that regardless of
what the journalist says they could
betray you and they might betray you at
the end of the day and be saying you're
great while they're secretly writing
like a hitpiece about like you know how
much you know you're a bad Force for the
world where whereas there's an alternate
universe where if the journalist was
somewhat upfront of about their approach
or at least didn't mislead and didn't
say like I love you I I think you're
great um you would end up with less
access but you would end up with more
trusted journalism which I think in the
long run would be better I think you get
more access I think the longterm yeah
but all of these like everything we're
talking about is long-term games versus
short-term games yeah in the short-term
you get more access if you suck up to
the person if you say this say this say
this and you stab them in the back later
longterm you build a long-term
reputation people trust you it actually
matters more but and it's nice when that
reputation is your own individual so
like you have a YouTube channel you're
you're one individual so people trust
that because you have a huge
disincentive to screw people over true
be uh I feel like if you're in the New
York Times if you screw somebody over
the New York Times gets the hit not you
individually so you can like uh you're
safer but like the reason I don't screw
people over is I know that I mean well
there's my own ethics and and integrity
also there's a strong incentive to like
cuz you're now I'm going that person is
going to go public with me screwing them
over completely lying about everything
how I presented the person for example
and that's just going to you know that's
going to uh percolate throughout the
populace and they're going to be like
leex is the person is a lying lying sack
of shit and so there's a huge
disincentive to do that yeah have that
that is what's interesting about yeah
independ the move towards independent
journalism um I think we'll probably end
up at a space
where it's so interesting mainstream
journalism has so much work to do to
repair the trust with the average
individual um and it's going to take a
lot of like self-reflection I've talked
to a few mainstream journalists about
this and a lot of them will admit it
behind closed doors but like there's
there's this General sense that oh the
Public's not being fair to us like
they're very self they're defensive I
guess in a way and I understand why
because sometimes it's just a few bad
apples that ruin it for everybody but
without the acknowledgement of the deep
distrust that they have with a good
portion of our society there's no way to
rebuild that just like when there's no
acknowledgement of the corruption of the
2008 financial crash there's no way to
rebuild that even if most Bankers most
Traders are not unethical or duplicitous
or they're totally normal people with
who maybe aren't deserving of the bad
reputation but you have to acknowledge
the damage that's been done by Bad
actors before you can like heal that
system well what do you think about Elon
just opening the door to a journalist to
see all the emails that were sent the
the quote unquote Twitter files yeah
that's really interesting I mean I saw a
lot of I'm like in this weird thing
where I see I'm so I follow a lot of
independent people and I follow a lot of
mainstream journalists and the the there
very polar opposite takes on that now
people really quickly politicize it but
to me this thing that was fascinating is
just the transparency that I've never
see from one of the really frustrating
things to me because a lot of this
podcast has been about interviewing tech
people CEOs and so on and they're just
so guarded with everything it's hard to
get to and so it's nice to get
get um hopefully this is a signal look
you can be transparent like this is a
signal to increase
transparency hopefully so I don't yeah
it's it's been tribalize so quickly it's
like I've lost a lot of faith in that
right and unfortunately it's been this
like bludgeon match of like you know if
you're on the right you think it's
uncovering the greatest story ever about
Hunter Biden if you're on the left you
think they were just sharing they were
just silencing revenge porn picks of
Hunter Biden so therefore it was
justified and by the way Trump also sent
messages to Twitter so doesn't that mean
that like we should be criticizing trp
it just like this is goes back to why I
don't touch politics is because I think
as many problems as I have I think when
you become a polit like a journalist
that not even a political journalist
when you become a journalist in politics
you have like twice the problem so I'm
like I'm happy to be well outside of
that um kind of sphere but it's an
interesting um it is interesting twwiter
you know forget Twitter fils but Twitter
itself is really really interesting from
uh the virality of information transfer
yeah and from a journalistic perspective
it's like how information travels how it
becomes
distributed it's interesting what do you
think about
Twitter I'm I'm always conflicted on
Twitter because I almost hate how much I
enjoy using it because I'm like this is
like this mindless Bird app is consuming
my time mhm um it's this incredible
networking tool but what's weird is when
I think about my own presence on Twitter
they've almost made it too easy to like
say something that you've half like the
friction to send a tweet is so much less
than like if I'm going to make a YouTube
video there's several points at which
I'm like well what's the other side
what's this what's that there's no
friction there and so one thing I've
noticed is everyone I follow on
Twitter a lot of them after reading all
their tweets I think nothing more of
them nothing L of them but there's a lot
of them that I think less of and I don't
think I've ever had an experience where
I've read read someone tweets and I
think more of them in a way and I'm like
what does that say
that yeah what is that like there's so
many people I
admire that the worst of them is
represented in Twitter like um there's
there's a there's a lot of people
million examples they become like snarky
and uh sometimes mocking and derisive
and negative and like emotional
messes um I don't know yeah what is that
um maybe maybe we shouldn't criticize it
and accept that as like a beautiful raw
aspect of that human being but not
encompassing not representing the full
entire it does reflect like it's
impossible to not reflect it to some
extent or you'd have to counter that
bias really carefully because that is
them it is a thought they had it's just
probably something that should have been
an unexpressed thought perhaps
um so yeah I I I kind of Wonder like my
I'm like should I be on Twitter but the
problem is is it's such a great place
where so many like so much of the news
happens on Twitter so much of the
journalism breaks on Twitter even people
in the New York Times they'll tweet
their scoop and they'll like they'll put
that out on Twitter first so it's this
really weird thing where i' love to be
off it and it's like too useful for my
job but I kind of I kind of hate it no
no you need well it depends but from my
perspective you should be on it oh
definitely am yeah so like coffee Zilla
should definitely be on Twitter
but have uh developed the calluses and
the uh the strength to um not give into
the sort of the Lesser aspects like that
cuz you're like a you're you're silly
you're funny you can be you could be
cutting with your humor I wouldn't give
into the
um like the darker aspects of that like
low effort negativity if you're the way
you are in your videos I would say if
you're ever negative or making fun of
stuff I think that's high effort so I
would still put a lot of effort into it
like calmly thinking through that
because and also not giving into the
dopamine desire to do to say something
that's going to get a lot of likes uh
you know I have that all the time you
you use Twitter enough you realize
certain messages that are going to get
more likes than others
and uh and are usually the ones that are
Extreme More extreme yeah and like
emotional like Lex is an idiot or like
Lex say I'm the greatest human being
ever it's much better than oh wow what a
polite nuanced conversation I can tell
you right now which of those three
tweets isn't going to perform well yeah
yeah so I I think extremes are okay if
you believe it like I I will sometimes
say um positive things I said that the
the the the Twitter files release was
historic of course this before I realiz
I mean I I the reason I said it is not
is because the transparency it's so
refreshing to see some any level of
transparency and then of course those
kinds of comments the way Twitter does
is every side will interpret it in the
worst possible way for them and they uh
will run with it or some side when it's
political yeah one side will interpret
yes
uh I agree with it's historic they might
not have even read the article they just
like they literally or the Tweet thread
and they're just like it is historic
historic because Hunter Biden was
finally the the collusion or whatever it
is and then the other side's just like
no it's it's it's a nothing Burger um
yeah that that aspect of nuance and it's
frozen in time even with editing there's
a so tough it it's It's Tricky but if
you maintain a a cool head through all
of that and uh um hold to your ethics
and your ideas and use it to to spread
the ideas which you do extremely well on
YouTube I think I think it could be a
really powerful platform there's no
other platform that allows for the viral
spread of ideas good ideas than than um
than this and this is where like
especially with Twitter
spaces I mean where else would I see I
think twice in promptu conversations
with coffee Zill in SPF like never yeah
nowhere else cuz he wasn't going to come
on my show he wasn't going to come on
some big prepared thing it's like hey
YOLO let's go on Twitter space and I
like pop up and you know what's funny
and this I hope this releas is late
enough or well SPF probably won't see
this um although I'm sure he's a
unfortunately unfortunately he will yes
well hopefully I'll have time to enact
my little plan but um I'm hoping if he
goes on any f spaces I can like haunt
him from interview to interview where
just like I keep showing up and he's
like ah I hate this guy but I think he's
he's already kind of
probably um has like PTSD of like in the
shadows lurks of coffeezilla that just
would make that would just it's just
like a that really amuses me I mean
there is um I think he honestly would
enjoy talking to you there's a aspect of
Twitter spaces that's a little uncertain
of like what are we doing here cuz
there's there's an urgency because other
voices might want to butt in exactly
exactly if it's an intimate oneon-one
where you can like breathe like hold on
a second yeah I think it's much easier
so that sense qu space is a little bit
negative um that there there there's too
many voices if if especially if it's a
very controversial kind of thing so It's
Tricky but at the same time the friction
it's so easy to just jump in yeah uh
right so I I could just I mean I could I
mean you it just imagine like a Twitter
space with like zilinsky and Putin like
how else are these two going to talk
right like can't you imagine if you try
to set it up on Zoom like it never
happened too many delegates like way it
happen like sitting there like zin's
live just live right just jumping in
it's hilarious
um okay uh actually just in a small
tangent so how how do you have a
productive day do you have any insights
on how to manage time optimally yeah I I
mean I've gone the gamut of from
obsessive time tracking in 15-minute
buckets to kind of like the The Other
Extreme where it's more um kind of like
large scale some deep work here two-hour
bucket you know account for an hour of
lunch and some other thing but now now I
just roughly because I manage a team and
there's some things that kind of come up
I it's only a team of two it's not like
big but I just have things that are not
necessarily controllable by me I like
have to take some meetings or whatever
it's not as easy to plan out my day
ahead of time so I do a lot of
retrospective time management where I
look at my day and that's what I mostly
do now um and I account did I spend this
day productively what could I do better
and then try to implement it in the
future so a lot of this I realized is
very personal for me I do very well in
Long streaks of working and if I I can't
do a lot of work in 15 minutes I can't
do a lot of work in even an hour but if
you give me like 3 hours or 5 hours or 6
hours of uninterrupted work that's like
that's where I get most of my stuff done
so from the it just it' be fun to
explore those when you did 15minute
buckets so you have a day in front of
you yeah and you have like a Google
sheet or spreadsheet or something yeah I
did an Excel Excel uh and you're do you
have a plan for the day or do you go
like when you did it uh or you just
literally really sort of focus on a
particular task and then you're tracking
as you're doing that task of every 15
minutes yeah I would kind of do it live
um I'm not so one of the reasons I'm so
obsessive about it is because I'm not
organized by nature and I lost like in
college I learned how much lack of
organization can just hurt you in terms
of output and so I realized like I just
had to build systems that would enable
me to become more organized so
uh really I think I think that doing
that really taught me a lot about time
in the same way that tracking calories
can teach you about food yes like just
learning accounting for these things
will give you skills that eventually you
might not need to track on such a
granular level because you've kind of
like figured out so that's kind of how I
feel about it I think everyone should if
you care about productivity and stuff
should do a little bit of it I don't
think it's sustainable in the long term
it just takes so much effort and time to
like and I think the marginal imp effect
of it in the long term is kind of
minimal once you learn these basic
skills but um yeah I was basically
tracking like live what I did and what I
saw is that a lot of my real work would
be done in small sections of the day and
it would be like a lot of just nothing
like a lot of small things where I'm
busy but little is being achieved and so
I think that's a really interesting
Insight I've never figured out how to
busy myself and focused on the like core
Essentials I'm still getting to that but
um it is interesting realizing most of
your day is like a lot of nothing and
then like some real deep work where most
of your value comes from is like 20% of
your day yeah I try to start every day
with that so the hardest task of the day
and you focus for long periods of time
and I also have the segment of two hours
where it's a set of tasks I do every
single day well the idea is you do that
for like your whole life it's like
long-term investment of anky and is just
like learning and um reminding yourself
of facts you know that they're useful in
your everyday life and then for me also
music I'll play a little bit of music
play piano piano and so like keeping
that regular thing is part of your life
and one thing that I've really taken
from this is because I've read all the
like I had a self-improvement phase in
my early 20s um and one thing you learn
is that everyone wants to give you a
broad General solution but really the
real trick of figuring out like
optimizing is figuring out the things
that work for you specifically so like
one interesting thing you said is like
oh I like to do my hard work at the
beginning of the day um I know a lot of
people recommend this I've tried so many
times and I just do better work late at
night and so usually my streak of work
is like from like after dinner 7:30 to
like 2:00 a.m. that's my prime time um
and so like a lot of my videos which
you'll see which is like lit from this
studio which appears to be daytime it's
like shot at 3:00 am. you know just like
in a caffeine field Rush um but that's
kind of how it works for me and then
also like with the social outlets and
stuff like that which it's easy and I
know I feel like we think similarly on
this so it's easy to Discount these
things as less relevant because they
don't have
quantitative metrics associated with
them but in terms of longev it and like
I think to be able to do creative work
there's an amount of recharge and like
re inputting stuff that is frequently
discounted by People Like Us who are
like obsessed with you know quantitative
metrics and so I really found that some
of my best work gets done after I take
like a break or like I'll I'll go play
like live sets uh of music and I mean
like that's like for me really
recharging but nowhere on a spreadsheet
is is that going to show up as
productive or like meaning full but for
me for whatever reason it recharges me
in a way that like I need to pay
attention to yeah for sure I I usually
have a spreadsheet of 15-minute
increments when I'm socially interacting
with people and I evaluate how uh I'm
getting roasted right now no I'm not
it's actually I uh probably roasting
myself but I do find that when I do have
social interactions I like to do with
people that are in outside of that
exceptionally busy themselves because
then you understand the value of time
and when you understand the value of
time your interaction becomes more
intimate and intense like the the cliche
of work hard Party hard or whatever the
cliche play hard damn it whatever the
social Interac no just kidding um uh the
that I mean that cliche there's a truth
to that but the intensity of the social
interaction even like you know it's not
even the intensity like it's not not
even the party hard it's like um even if
you're going hiking and relaxing and
taking in nature so it's very relaxed
but you understand the value of that
there's when you put a huge amount of
value on those moments spent in nature
that recharges me much more so you have
to surround yourself with people that
think of life that way that think about
the value of every single moment that's
one of the things you do when you break
it up in 15minute increments is you
realize how much time there's in the day
how much awesomeness there's in the day
to experience to get done and so on and
then so you can feel that when you're
with somebody um and then for me
personally like when I interact with
people I really like to be fully present
for the interaction like I can tell this
is for anyone who had you know I've been
the audience forever so I I haven't been
on the side of the table before you're
very intense you look right in the eye
you're like well I don't know about
right in the eye eye contact is an issue
but yes A Soulful gaze guys just in case
you're wondering it's very soulful right
very it's like a back back to serious
talk okay you've uh you've studied a lot
of people who lie who
defraud uh cheat and
scam on a basic human level um how do
you have trouble trusting human beings
in your own life uh how what's your
relationship with trust of other humans
it's a great question so funny enough
before I did this I was like an
incorrigible
Optimist I everything the sun shined
every which place um I always saw like
everybody is fundamentally good nobody
was bad it just was like sort of B wrong
place wrong time bad
incentives that view has darkened
significantly uh but I just try to
remember remember my sample set and just
like I'm just sampling sort of the worst
and uh I try not to let it bleed into
my day-to-day life and I think I've I
think it's probably because I was such
an optimist early on that I've I've been
able to kind of retain some of it I call
it enlightened optimism like choosing to
be optimistic in the face of a realistic
sense of the problems in the world and
with a realistic sense of like the scale
and the challenge ahead um I I actually
think it's much braver to be an
optimist when you're aware of what's
going on in the world than to be a cynic
I think being a complete cynic is maybe
I'm not saying it's wrong but I'm saying
it's maybe the easier way just mentally
to cope with so much negativity it's
like just saying well it's all bad it's
all doomed to fail it's all going to go
bust
is
easier yeah that leap into a believing
that it's a good world is um it's a
little it's a little baby AC of
courage or at least I think
so I don't think it's
naive no it it can be some people are
naive that are optimistic but but often
times um just because someone's
optimistic does not mean they're naive
they could be be full well aware of how
troubling the world is and I also
believe some of the people you study you
know I'm a big believer that all of us
are capable of Good and Evil um so in
some sense the people you study are just
a the successful ones the ones who
uh chose sort of the dark path and were
successful at it and I think all of us
can choose the dark path in life
and it's uh that's like
the that's the responsibility we all
carry is we get to choose that at every
every moment and it's like a big
responsibility and it's a chance to
really have integrity it is a chance to
stand for something good in this world
and all us have that because I think all
of us are capable of evil all of us
could be good Germans all of us could in
atrocities um be part of the
atrocities yeah I think it's I really
have um especially in recent years tried
to somewhat depersonalize my work and
um see it almost like as like a I don't
know like a force of nature that I'm
fighting more than like individuals
because of this exact thing I think like
sort of therefore but the grace of God
there go ey is kind of a really profound
way to understand yourself rather than
as just like
fundamentally good and like in full of
Integrity acknowledging that so much of
that is a product of your environment
and your family and your upbringing and
so much of the people who don't have
that is a product of their environment
it doesn't absolve them but it gives you
more perspective
to tr like to sort of deal fairly if
that makes sense and not approach it
from a place of anger or a place of
outrage there is a sense of like sadness
for the victims there's a sense of
outrage for the victims but approach the
individual who's done the
thing from that place of understanding
of this isn't just this person there's
like a whole broader thing going on here
uh do you have advice for young people
of how to live this life
how to have a career they can uh be
proud of so high school students college
students or maybe a life they can be
proud
of it's a great well let me think about
this for a
second I
think don't be afraid to go against the
grain and sort of
challenge the expectations on you
um like you sort of have to to do this
weird thing where you acknowledge how
difficult it will be to achieve
something great while also Having the
courage to go for it anyways and
understanding that other people don't
have it figured out I think is a big
theme of my work which is that everyone
wants like the guru to show them the way
to show them the secrets so much of life
and achieving anything is learning to
figure it out yourself and like The Meta
skill of being an autodidactic where you
can I don't know if I said that word
right basically you self- Te You Learn
The Meta skill of like learning to learn
mhm I think that's such an underrated
aspect of Education people leave
education they go when am I going to use
2 plus two when am I going to learn you
know use calculus but so much of it is
learning this higher level abstract
thinking that can apply to anything
and getting that early on is
um incredibly powerful so yeah I would
say like a lot of it is
is I guess to some extent like you kind
of have to do that Steve Jobs thing
where you realize that nobody else in
the world is smarter than you and that
both means that like they can't show you
the perfect way but it also means you
could do great things and kind of chart
your own path I don't know that's so
cheesy this is why I hate giving advice
I feel like it's chees I mean and I
don't think it is I think my my journey
is so full of luck and like specific
experience I wonder how generalizable it
is but if I've learned anything and if I
could talk specifically to myself I
guess that's what I would say I mean you
you've taken a very difficult path and I
think part of taking that path like of
of of a great journalist uh frankly is
like I I can be I can be that
person like just believing in yourself
that you can take that cuz like if you
see a problem in the
world you could be the solution to that
problem like you can solve that problem
yeah I think that's like uh it's really
important to believe that
it depends maybe you're lucky to have
the belief inside yourself uh maybe the
thing that you're saying is like don't
look to others for that
strength and also and also like be
really comfortable failing I think um
one of the best things that like you
would never know about me just looking
at my background that helped me was
playing music
live I had incredible amounts of stage
fright yeah
growing up mostly because I was terrible
at piano I like sucked and I specific I
taught myself how to play and I joined
jazz band in like high school did it
through college I remember all my
recital I messed up every single solo I
ever did I never like actually nailed it
and every time I'd go up there i' like
have so much dread around
this and uh it was easier to get up
there cuz there were sort of some people
up there but eventually I started like
playing live too and I sucked at that
and I've just gone through the trenches
of like just like being publicly sort of
in my mind humiliated like that prepared
me so much for what I do now of trying
to basically being Fearless of
failure in the face of like a wide
audience I don't have that anymore cuz
kind of I've experienced so many
iterations of it at a smaller scale of
just like abject public humiliation to
where it's like not something that
bothers me I have no stage fright that
doesn't bother me anymore but you'd
think like oh maybe he just was always
good at this I was terrible at I had a
complete phobia about public anything so
um it was that rapid iteration of just
failure and eventually I just like came
to the conclusion of like I want to love
it I want to like love like getting up
on a stage and bombing if you can learn
to like love that and be Fearless there
there's almost nothing you can't do yeah
that's brilliant advice I I've I'm I'm
with you was still terrifying to me like
live performance but yeah that's exactly
the feeling is
loving the fact that you tried and
somehow failure is like a deeper
celebration of the fact that you tried
cuz success is easy but like yes failure
is like bombing I mean music yeah I on
small scale on on the smallest and the
largest of stages I I'm not going to say
who but there's a huge band huge band
that wanted to me G on
stage and it probably will happen but
like wow but I turned it down because I
was like no terrified cuz I'm going to
suck for sure so the question is do you
do do I want to suck in a front of a
very large live audience yeah and uh and
then I turned to do I was like
no but now I realize yes embrace it it's
good be good it's going to be good for
you it's going to crush your ego to the
degree it's remaining and it's just good
for you it's good not to take yourself
seriously and do those kinds of things
but honestly I feel that way in an
audience like in an open mic the it
hurts that's why I really admire
Comedians and um like uh I go to open
mics all the time with Comedians and
musicians and I just see them bomb and
or play play in front of like just a a
few folks and they're putting their
heart out and especially the ones that
kind of suck but are going all out
anyway I I think I think open mics are
the best place to learn though because
it's the lowest Stakes you can get while
still being public if you're going to
face like fears around this because
we're talking very specifically like
public speaking or any kind of like you
know being in front of a camera if
you're going to face your fear you have
to do it and the easiest way to do it is
to lower the stakes you're not going to
start being Lex Freedman on stage with a
huge band you don't want to be like it's
like in that way it is so
impossible um but the more you lower the
stakes and just like open it up to like
two strangers five Strangers Like The
the most dive bar open mic you can go to
and like start performing that's that's
really what I did is like like I love
open mics now because it's like low
stakes on the one hand but you really
get the feeling of like going for it and
you get better and better and better at
that yeah for
sure and then you'll get the strength to
take bigger and bigger and bigger risks
listen coffee I'm a huge fan of yours uh
not just for who you are and but for
what you stand for people like you are
rare and they're a huge inspiration I
just I'm inspired by your fearlessness
that you're that you're taking on some
of the most powerful and richest people
in this world and doing so with respect
I think with with good faith but also
with a with a boldness and fearlessness
listen man I'm a huge fan keep doing
what you're doing as long as you got the
strength for it because I think you
inspire all of us you're doing important
work brother thanks for having me thanks
for listening to this conversation with
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description and now let me leave you
with some words from Walter Lipman there
can be no higher law in journalism than
to tell the truth and to shame the
devil thank you for listening and hope
to see you next time