YouSaid · the spoken record

Brett Harrison

lines on the record: 174
first: 2023-03-13
most recent: 2023-03-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Sure. Yeah. So Architect's website is architect.xyz. We also have architect underscore XYZ on Twitter, and I'm Brett Harrison 88 on Twitter”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually think it's the wrong conventional wisdom to think that if you are not Dane Street or a Citadel or Hutton River or Tower or jump trading, then you have no chance of being able to profit in markets except for luck. I do think there are a lot of people who trade and it's like pure speculation. It's not really on me to tell them they shouldn't speculate. They probably derive some personal enjoyment from speculation besides the opportunity for profit. But I do think The access to more sophisticated instruments and information has helped what have traditionally been players that have been unable to compete in the market actually be able to do so in a way that's systematically profitable.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a couple of thoughts about this. So, the first is that I don't think crypto markets are as efficient as equity markets. So, there's probably more opportunities for short and long term edge as a trader in crypto than there would be in equities. That being said, I think there's still an enormous amount of room in both traditional and crypto markets for even individuals to have and derive information that gives them profitable trading ideas.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And rather than try to retrofit the existing settlement technology to be faster and better, starting from scratch with something like blockchain could make a lot of sense, which is why you hear about a lot of these investment banks working on settling fixed income products on chain as fixed income products have even worse settlement cycles than equities.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's likely. I think the primary reason is that. Existing settlement systems in traditional markets seem to be very slow and built on very outdated technology. That's a highly non-transparent and very error prone. So equities are a prime example of this. It still requires two business days to settle a stock. And a frequent occurrence when I was at trading firms was that you would get your settlement file that one told you what trades were settled and two told you things like if any corporate actions had occurred overnight, like paying a dividend or a share split. And they would frequently be wrong. Like the dividend would be wrong or it would be missing or the share split amount was for the wrong amount or they missed the day that it happened or they messed up some trades and didn't get reported properly. There's frequently mistakes. And it feels like there should be some easy, transparent, kind of open, decentralized settlement layer for all things that you can trade.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There to be like a good price for Ether, that's fair. So I think it really depends on if you kind of believe in the underlying use case at all in the same way you would for kind of any commodity And sometimes there are tokens that have more security like properties where they are like trading Apple stock. Basically there is a initial offering of that token. And then if people bought it, it actually directly funded the product behind the token and then the efficient trading of that token is sort of a barometer for the health of that particular company and they can like sell more tokens to raise more capital in secondary offerings, in which case it looks very much exactly like the stock market.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think it boils down to, first of all, do you think it's important for people to be able to trade commodities? How important is it for the world that people can trade gold efficiently or they can trade oil efficiently? I think the answer is, like, if people have a use for the underlying commodity, then it's important. And so maybe then it's like, well, what's the use of crypto? Well, I think each crypto token might have its own use. I don't think everyone has a good use. I think that there's a bunch that do. But if you believe in Bitcoin as sort of like a store of value in a great medium of exchange, then it's important that there's a good fair price for Bitcoins to enable that. If you think that the Ether token is important for the gas fees required to run a decentralized computer and you think that the program is running on a decentralized computer are important, then it's important.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it is just as great as it was before. Every major investment bank in the US has announced some plan to do something with blockchain technology still, even post-FTX. The top trading institutions of the world are all continuing to trade. Think as of what we're speaking about right now, volumes are down because people are sort of generally fearful. But I expect that to turn around pretty quickly. And the institutional interest still remains really high. People are definitely expecting and waiting for proper regulatory oversight, especially in the US. That's still happening. People are waiting for higher grade professional tools that make it safe for them to trade and invest in crypto. I think that's obviously in the works for various things, architect and otherwise. But otherwise, the interest is all completely there.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're like on Twitter, I would answer customers support question at 2 o'clock in the morning. And I maintained a lot of those relationships even through the collapse. And these are the kinds of people who are reaching out and offering support, like offering to test out stuff, who want to be customers, who are also having problems with existing crypto tools and looking for something better. So all that stuff has remained intact. So I don't really have a concern there.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100% And not just at FTX. Like right now, it is March 2023, is we're recording this. There is a huge ARB in the hiring market. I mean, all the layoffs in tech and crypto, all of the fear around various financial services means that we basically didn't need to work on recruiting. I had the best people who worked at meet for me at FTX US. I had ex-colleagues of mine from former jobs that come work with me here. And we actually didn't have to do any formal recruiting efforts because of just how much supply there now is on the job market for, especially in tech and finance. Luckily, I've had a long career history prior to FTX. And even at FTX, we built really great stuff. We had a very good connections relationships with our customers and our investors. There would be time.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, on the ethics alumni side, I just personally haven't had those issues really. In recent months, as we've been building out architect, I hired almost five now employees from formerly at FTX to come work with me.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is, I think, I certainly do believe that that is a likely future for crypto. But to me, the interest in it starts with knowing that this is a huge asset class that needs better infrastructure for trading it.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Things. I mean, I feel the same way now as I did then, which is it's one to three trillion dollar asset class that is traded by every major institution that is being invested in by every major institution. And so It's totally viable and it needs good mature infrastructure to support its growth.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously, what happened with FTX, people are much less likely to trust a centralized institution with their personal information, especially things like the keys that allow you to trade on their exchange account or the keys that give you access to their wallet. And so we're thinking a lot about how to design architect such that the user can connect to all these places and hook up their wallets without needing to ever give us any of their private credentials. And so that's like another particular inspiration from everything that's happened in FDX.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Especially institutions that want to be able to trade all the time. And the protocols in some of these other exchanges aren't quite as good. So I think it's informed how much the focus of architect should be kind of wrapping up the complexity of these different exchanges and providing like a really good API for institutions and individuals on our side. And gets like thing one. Thing two is”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, first of all, working at FTX has given me an appreciation for just how behind a lot of the infrastructure is on other exchanges. People really liked trading on FTX, institutions especially, really like trading on FTX because the API made sense, really did follow kind of the standard state machine of any kind of financial central limit order book that you would see on a place like Nasdaq or CME. Whereas there are a lot of exchanges that have crazy behavior. Like you send a cancel for an order, you get acknowledged that your order has been canceled and then you get a fill and you actually get traded on your thing that you supposedly thought you canceled. And like things that you think shouldn't be possible are possible. Actually, my time at FTX is interesting with relation to architect because FTX, it gave me an appreciation for how to design a good API for”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Start to enter the game on spot trading. And where is the ultimate flow going to end up between these three possibilities? I have no idea. So I'm much more excited about providing the kind of connectivity layer to all of them and saying regardless of where the liquidity ends up, we'll be able to facilitate it.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I do think it'll change over time. I think my view is I can't predict what way it's going to change. So, you know, people after FTX had asked me, hey, why don't you try to start your own exchange? Like take all your knowledge from FTX US and maybe even raise money to buy the IP at a bankruptcy and like start a new exchange. And my feeling is I don't want to bet personally on the exact direction of crypto trading. Like I could see it continuing status quo where like your Coinbase is in binances of the world kind of maintain market share. I could see it moving significantly to DeFi where people feel like this is the true spirit of crypto. It's in this sort of non-custodial fully centralized trading environment. I could also see it going to complete opposite direction and having the existing highly regulated exchange players like NIZE and ASDAC.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, in many cases, their infrastructure is very good. It's more a question of what's the incentive of the exchange. And I think if you're, no matter what, no single exchange is going to have all the market share. So there's always going to be this market fragmentation problem. And the question is, whose responsibility is it to make software that helps solve that problem? If I'm some centralized exchange, my incentive is not to build software to make it easier for my customers to go to all the other exchanges.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you can't like connect to Nasdaq without connecting to NASDAQ. You can't go through a broker dealer. But I think that we could eventually try to get the appropriate licensing required to be an intermediary that is focused on being like a technology forward interface towards people being able to do more program trading. And so if the mission of our company is to provide better access, I think we can do so within the existing system.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're building very general infrastructure, and we think crypto is a viable asset class, but it's one of many. And our goal is to provide institutional grade connectivity and software to anyone who wants to participate in trading in semi-sophisticated way. So I think over time we'll want to grow our offering as much as possible.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you can just very cheaply and easily spin up a server in there for a couple dollars a month and have the same access as a big HFT. All the market data is free. The order entry is free. The protocols are usually fairly simple. Like you can use JSON over a web socket as opposed to speaking fix over some private line. As a result, there is this large and growing class of kind of like semi-professional individual traders that have grown where there are people who are smart individuals who have like maybe some wealth amassed and they want to be able to do kind of professional trading whether that's like manual click trading or like simple algos using Python or whatever and they can do that and experiment easily because of the open access of crypto markets. And so there's a much wider customer base for something like this, which includes these kind of like high power.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think that's like the place we want to start. Yeah. But one phenomenon in crypto that I think is somewhat new and exciting is the fact that, okay, if you want to get into sophisticated equities trading, well, what do you have to do? I mean, you usually have to either establish a broker-dealer or get hooked up to an existing broker. You need to get market data, which can be very expensive. you know, full depth of book feed from NASDAQ costs like tens of thousands of dollars per month. If you want to compete on latency, you have to get a co-located server in the Nasdaq colo, which is also going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars per month. It's a significant time and money overhead to doing all this, which is why it's so hard to compete in that space against all like the incumbent players. Whereas in crypto, many of the markets are just in the cloud, like in Amazon's cloud or Alibaba's cloud.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Choice. And the build choice looks like higher like five to ten software developers and get them to write code that understands all the different protocols and different exchanges, all the idiosyncrasies of them that downloads market data, that stores the market data, that connects to these different custodians, that kind of bridges all these things together and provides some kind of like user interface that pulls it all together. It's just a significant amount of work that up till now, basically all of these different companies are just reproducing. They're all solving like the same problem. And as a trader, you want to focus your time on strategy development and alpha and monetization and not on how do I connect to random exchange. So the goal of architect is to build this sort of like commodity software that people can then sort of deploy out of the box that gives them access.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, like, backing up very high level. So let's say you are someone who wants to trade crypto in some way or what do you actually have to do? So imagine you want to do something slightly more than just like sign up for Coinbase and like clip the buttons there. Like let's say you would like to find the best price across multiple exchanges. Let's say that you not only want to find the best price across multiple exchanges, you also want to occasionally do borrow and lending from DeFi. And maybe not only that, you also want to store your assets in off exchange custody as much as possible. Well, aside from doing all that manually by like opening up all the different tabs in your browser and like clicking all the buttons to move assets around and connect all these different exchanges, you actually want to build a system that unifies all these things. You have this build.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. So, the goal of architect is to provide a single unified infrastructure that makes it really easy for individuals and institutions to access kind of all corners of the digital asset ecosystem, everywhere from individual crypto, spot exchanges that are centralized to DeFi protocols to qualified custodians and self-custody and everything in between.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The number of the most talented people within FTX are leaving FTX in a slightly different position than the people exiting PayPal at acquisition. I would say they're In positions more like actual mafia people. But so I'm not sure it's going to be like some giant FTX mafia, but I do think there are like a ton of talented people at FTX who are going to look to do something with their careers. And also a lot of those people came from very impressive. Get back on track and build something great. And so I do think you're going to see at least a couple of people who emerge from this and do something really great.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not going to really speculate what's inside Sam's head. I think Sam had built up his empire through partly his control over media. And he did that by being available all the time and being ostensibly open and honest with him all the time and probably thought, why can't the same strategy work now? Maybe I can swipe public opinion. If I can sway public opinion, maybe I can sway regulators and law enforcement. And it turns out that is definitely not true. So, I don't really know. It could just be an addiction to the media. He couldn't stand people talking about him and him not being part of the conversation.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, Not much. And I think the reason for that is. Now, typically, when something like this goes wrong and it becomes this media frenzy, there's plenty of opportunity for misinformation to spread. To the credit of the investigators working on this case, they moved so quickly that they had unsealed indictments within, what, two months of this going down. And so having kind of a lot of the truth, you know, being able to be spelled out in facts in a public written document, I think quelled a lot of the opportunity for misinformation to proliferate. And whether that's from like a Twitter troll or if it's from Sam Begman Freed himself, you know, trying to spread misinformation about what happened, I think a lot of it wasn't really given the room to breathe.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I disagree with the premise. I don't think the point of crypto is regulatory arbitrage. I think the while crypto remains unregulated It is easier to get some things out in crypto than if it were regulated. That's sort of like tautological. I also think that most people, especially on the institutional side who trade crypto, believe that we are in a temporary state that cannot last forever, which is that crypto is largely unregulated or has a weird patchwork of regulatory authority. Maybe it's like the 50 state regulators in the US or it's some combination of like money transfer and CFD or broker-dealer activity in Europe. So I think this is absolutely worthwhile endeavor knowing that there's going to be some regulation for at least part of the crypto ecosystem to work with regulators to make sure that it's done well.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do think the auto liquidation part was the main piece that people were hung up on, which was like, how do you provably show the kind of worst case scenario in auto liquidation cascade? Then again, on large TCPs now in the US and Europe, there are margin breaches all the time. So like the current system is far from perfect.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that remains to be seen, and I think we don't have enough experience, especially in the US, with that kind of model, to be able to say whether it actually works better or worse. I think either way, it was worth a try. And I think maybe the biggest misconception about the application was that if we got approved, it meant suddenly FTX was going to list like everything from corn to soybeans to oil to S&P 500 overnight and completely destroy the existing derivatives landscape. I think what have actually happened was FTX would have gotten permission to list one contract on kind of small size, and there would have been experience with the platform and it would have been assessed compared to the alternatives on traditional CCPs. And if it was worse, changes would have been made. And if it was better, it would evolve and the market would basically decide what people wanted to trade on.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The thing I think that was novel about FTX was putting all together. It was direct to customer margining, cross-clarization, auto liquidation. And so in order for the regulators to get comfortable with the application, they had to understand that FTX is one entity, was performing the roles that typically multiple different entities perform. And you always need to ask yourself the question of like, was there something worthwhile about having those different entities be separate or not? Is it just sort of like legacy regulatory structure?”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of FCMs have auto liquidation. There is one particular one where they actually automatically close you every day at 4 p.m. And they do it in a really bad way. So the idea of auto liquidation is not new. The idea of direct to customer clearing is not new. The idea of cross-collateralization is not new.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Building a future system that can evolve with a 24-7 world is still a worthwhile endeavor and something that we should consider and pursue and be ready for. We are 3D printing organs and coming up with like specially designed mRNA vaccines, but like you still can't get margin called on a Saturday for S&P 500 future. There's some real lack of evolution in market structure in a number of areas of traditional finance. And I think it's still a worthwhile endeavor to pursue it. I think the Ledger X proposal makes a lot of sense. I think it's understandable where some of the concerns were around how that could really dramatically alter the landscape for derivatives regulatory structure and market structure. And there were still unaddressed questions there. But I Think that it was the right idea.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I definitely think it's been set back. You know, it's interesting Walt Lucan from the Futures Industry Association in a conference that was shortly after the class of FTX talked about FTX and sort of a speech, but specifically made a call to the fact that in spite of what happened to FTX, the idea of”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All the regulators were, I think, in the common belief that crypto was a large and viable asset class. And in order for it to grow in a responsible way, it needs to come within the regulatory envelopes that already exist. In whatever way that's appropriate for crypto, and crypto can mean a lot of different things. We have to maybe distinguish between centralized and decentralized finance here. I would say regulators saw FTX as at least one of the companies that was very willing to work directly and collaboratively with regulators as opposed to trying to kind of skirt around the regulatory system.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do they threaten you? Do they retaliating against you in some way? Do they start excluding you from conversations? Do they threaten to withhold pay? If you're in that ladder camp, what do you do at that point? It's easy for me to say, and I've been in fortunate positions within companies and have personal flexibility. It might not be so easy for the average person to sort of get up and leave a job. But I do think that at some point you have to start making plans. Because like what can you do in the face of a giant organization that you disagree with other than leave?”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I say within any company, and I would expect that overwhelming majority of companies, if you see badge management, it does not imply fraud. But there's lots of places with bad workplace culture and people are making bad management decisions. And it should be that if you find yourself in that position, there is someone you can go to to talk to. It might be your manager. It might be your manager's manager. It could be someone in your HR department. But there should be like a designated person within the company for you as an employee that you know you have a safe space to bring complaints about the workplace and about the company strategy. And then you should see how they handle it. Take it seriously? Do they make changes? Do they look into the stuff you're talking about? Do they encourage cooperative positive discussion?”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just thought it was not the right way to run the company. There's a very large chasm between I don't think they're doing a good job running the company. And I think that customer funds are at risk, right?”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that a lot of that has to do with where are the nexus of control of the company really is and making sure it's in a place where there is appropriate regulatory oversight and appropriate financial oversight. I think that maybe could have helped. But besides that, I think this is ultimately a job for enforcement. People will commit crimes. And there's nothing one can do to stop all people from committing all possible future crimes. What one can do is come up with the right structures and incentives so that we can build like a trust-based system where people can innovate and build great companies and people who are bad actors can get flushed out. Which is ultimately what I think is happening.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Audited financials from respective third party auditors. I also want to look into the possibility that Sam is like lying under oath in congressional hearings about segregation of customer funds. Also, I should disbelieve all of the trusted media outlets and also 100 financial institutions that have invested in FTX. It's like the chain that you have to go through in order to get to a point where you start to Able to figure out something is wrong is I think really impossible. And I think the bottom line is For sure should be mandated at certain stages of company growth. Independent boards.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. It's a good question when a major fraud happens in such a way where it was very expertly crafted to Hidden from the people who could have done something about it. What should one do? I mean, one answer is never trust anyone, right? Like every company I ever work for in the future, every time we say we've done some transaction, I will ask them to show me the bank records and give me the number of the bank teller I can call to have them independently verify every single banking transaction. I mean, this is sort of like impractical and ridiculous. It doesn't happen. And so I think it sounds like the counterfactual here is one where, okay, first, I have to believe that there is some kind of fraud, which I don't. Then I have to say, okay, I would like to start auditing all bank transactions. Oh, actually, I want to start auditing all bank transactions for the company that I don't work for. Also, I want to dis”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can you do what is one supposed to do in that situation if the public reporting matches private reporting? If investors have done their own diligence, if we've joined the company and we see nothing wrong within the company from a financial perspective, if we can see the public volume on the exchange and it all matches up with our internal reporting and we know how much fees we'll be able to collect and all that and it seems like a lot of income compared to our expenses for a two or three hundred person company at what point do you like go against all of that and say in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary I think something is wrong”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Remember, regardless of how experienced or inexperienced people in the company are, regardless of how many or few investors there are, how many senior lateral hires there are. If a very small group of individuals who are very smart and very capable Intentionally put forth schemes that deceive people within the company and outside the company about the veracity of records.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can't quite speak to whether people would think there are mental health issues of other people who are supposed to be the kind of figureheads of large companies. But remember, at this point, Sam is not leading the day-to-day operations of the company. Like many other people are, right? As the kind of public figurehead of the company, Sam was obviously doing a very good job. He was extremely successful at raising money. He was extremely successful at building a positive image for the company. And so in that sense, that was all going fine. And the rest of the company was being run by other people. So, you know, I didn't witness anything like the addiction stuff firsthand. I definitely thought he was not as happy a person as I met a long time ago, but could you blame a person for, you know, inheriting a 20, 30 billion dollar company and not taking it super well when you're 29 years old? I think so.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To succeed. There are too many people with vested interests in doing so. And so, no, I wasn't concerned that FTX wasn't somehow figured this out. I still thought FTX had an extremely bright future.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, it concerned me, and I tried to raise concerns multiple times. If you raise concerns multiple times and they don't listen, what can you do other than, you know, leave? To understand that every company I've ever worked at, and I would think any company, anyone's ever worked at has management problems and growing problems. And especially for a super high growth startup like FTX, it's a very natural progression to have the visionary CEO who brings that product to product market fit, who enjoys that sort of explosive success. The reins of the company are eventually handed over to professional managers who sort of take it into its maturation phase. And I thought, well, really, I'm not that person because Sam and I have interpersonal issues, but there's 100 plus major investors in FTX. Someone will figure out how to install the correct management of this company over time and we'll bring it to a good place, like one way or another this is going.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But remember that the thing that makes them not separate is the fact, and this was completely public, that Sam was the CEO of FTX and FTX US, and Gary was the CTO of FTX and FTX US. And Nasha was the director of engineering for FTX and FTX US. And so as long as there wasn't this completely separate walled off governance that we were trying to establish while I was there, Was never going to be perfect separation between the companies. This was like a known. And that's what makes it so difficult to sort of understand the nature of what was potentially happening behind the scenes.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We had a separate set of bank accounts, separate set of crypto wallets. The exchange itself was like a separate database of customers. It ran in like a different AWS cloud than the one that the international exchange ran on.”
2023-03-13 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brett Harrison — FTX US former president speaks out · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source