YouSaid · the spoken record

Zeke Faux

lines on the record: 137
first: 2023-11-02
most recent: 2023-11-02
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

“So, the crypto guys would say, hey, the scams existed before crypto. This isn't really crypto stuff. But I think that crypto made all this a lot easier, made it possible on a bigger scale. I spoke to a veteran human trafficking investigator from Taiwan who'd been to Cambodia to rant some young women who'd been tricked into going there from Taiwan. And he told me, it used to be these human traffickers use banks and like maybe they'd set up give fake names or whatever when they opened their bank accounts, but those were clues. Now they use Tether. What am I supposed to do? I can't try. You know, he was like, this is making my job of investigating human trafficking a lot harder.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's like dozens of towers. Each of them filled with people, thousands of people who are sending these spam messages who can't escape. Obviously this doesn't prove anything, but what really seemed quite telling to me, I get to Chinatown, the most famous of this scam compound site where this Vietnamese guy I interviewed had escaped from, where people were tortured, people were killed. What do I see right at the entrance to this compound a closed shop that was a currency exchange and it says right on the big sign out front USDT like we will trade your tether four dollars right here”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're going to beat you. We're going to shock you with these electric batons. And there's actually entire office parks. In the book, I go to one called Chinatown in western Cambodia.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's kind of weird that way. I mean, it's pseudonymous, right? So everybody's wallet has an address that's not associated with their name. It's just like a string of random numbers. And you can see all the transactions. If I know, hey, this string of random numbers is Barry's address, I might even be able to go see what exchanges you used or where you sent your money. But if I don't have that first clue that says this is Barry's address, then it might as well be anonymous. These messages are coming from Cambodia or elsewhere in Southeast Asia. And I learned that the people sending them are often victims themselves. I mean, I spoke with one guy. He's a young guy from Vietnam. He'd been lured to Cambodia thinking that he was going to be doing something else. When he gets there, they're like, no, you're going to scam 24 hours a day. You're not leaving this building unless you pay us thousands of dollars. If you don't scam enough.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's pretty accurate. I mean, it's really crazy. We all get these spam text messages, right? Like they're like, Sam, did you pick up the milk on your way home for the dog? They're not like that great at English. They don't always make sense. These messages I learned, they will try and make friends with you and they'll eventually try to get you to trade crypto with them to try out some new hot crypto app. And they always use Tether. They'll say, hey, I got this great trade idea for you. Just go buy some tether on Coinbase or some regular app and send it to my special app where we'll make lots of money.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, Caroline, the head of Alameda, Sam's ex-girlfriend, she cried on the stand when she was talking about how bad she felt about participating in this fraud. I don't think they're trying to minimize their own involvement. They're just saying this guy was the boss. And we did it with him.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The problem is that if the more they hammer in that these witnesses committed fraud, that would show that these people know a lot about the fraud, and they're all saying that they did it with Sam. A lot of times they have a lot of details about which fraud they worked on and how they did it. They pulled out like Google Docs that show them doing the fraud. Some of them even have comments from Sam on the Google Doc. And it's not like you get a free ride just because you plead guilty. They're probably all going to jail for a couple years at least. But not 20.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What the trial has been so far is Sam sitting there and there's been a parade of his best friends, his colleagues, and they've each been saying, I'm really sorry, I committed fraud. I did it with that guy over there. And the jury has been falling asleep for some of the details.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't deny if we had a Bitcoin, if we had Michael Saylor here, he could probably talk quite convincingly about how great Bitcoin is in theory. And I would just say, look at what's happened in practice. Nobody's using it for anything. Even in El Salvador, where it was really promoted as this great success story where we would see Bitcoin in the real world, nobody likes it. Nobody's using it. And if this crypto stuff was so great, it would sell itself. You wouldn't need to be pushing it on people. The technologies that people like just spread virally.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's this whole other complicated system set up to figure out how you get in there. And I think a lot of this stuff sounds good in theory, but wait till my mom buys her Taylor Swift tickets for $2,000. She tries to send it to the Foxhead, and then she can't remember where she buried the password in her backyard. Like, nobody's going to like that. People like customer service. They like, you know, to use their credit card. They get a refund if they get scammed. I'm not even sure that the idea that there really is demand to have concert tickets be controlled in some decentralized database. You know, I think there's a reason why for all that we complain about Ticketmaster, there's a reason why a central authority has grown to dominate this market.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and even, I mean, even that use case, I was frankly surprised, continually surprised to the downside in this crypto world with Ape Fest, you would think that this is like the premier NFT event. There's all this talk about how NFTs will be good. The blockchain will be good for ticketing. It turns out they do not use the NFTs for ticketing.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah. Even people who like NFTs will tell you they're basically coins with pictures on them. And so ICOs are like the previous iteration of this technology. Back in 2017, you could just say, hey, I'm going to put dentistry on the blockchain. I got Dentacoin. That's like a real one.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I would say that, I mean, people in the most recent bubble, people talked about coins. And even in sort of like a loving way, they'd be like, oh, I'm buying the latest coin. It's going to the moon. Literally.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so this was the last bubble. It's important with crypto. You need to keep coming up with like a new twist on the story.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and a lot of these insiders, I'm not saying him with Luna, I don't remember the details, but they get special deals and they get the tokens at like for a penny. It can rise and fall and they're still sitting pretty. And so these guys, by promoting these bubbles, are bringing in new people who are going to lose real money.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's promoting it and he's bringing in people who, because the way to really make money on crypto is to get in early, right? Find.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but Novogratz was a big investor in it, and he got the Luna logo tattooed on his shoulder. And I don't want to totally let him off the hook because what he said in his quote and also by tweeting about this, tweeting his tattoo.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that you could earn if you deposited your Terra coins into the Anchor protocol And now, unlike Tether, which is backed by Real Dollars in the bank, or so they say, the Terra coins were backed by Luna coins. And you could always trade your Terra coins for $1 worth of luna coins. Now, you might ask, why do I want any luna coins? And the answer is Don't ask about that. They're back like hero coins. No, Luna coins. Actually, there was no story for why you should buy the Lunar Coins. And a lot of people in crypto, even Windows was going on were like, Zeke, you might want to take a look at this Terra Luna one.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my god. So it was run by this guy, this South Korean guy named Do Kwan, who is very mean on Twitter. He'd always just be insulting people if you ever questioned Tether. But the pitch was a lot like Celsius. You could earn 18%. I think it actually was also 18 or 19%”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Novocrats back a few years ago, he gave an interview to our colleague Eric Shatsker, where he said something that I thought was very honest and that I really liked this quote. And he said, listen, this crypto thing is the biggest bubble of our lifetime. There's great fortunes to be made on the way up. And like, I'm going to get mine.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and I hated to find myself. I was over at Mashinsky's apartment on the Abreast side, and I found myself defending Wall Street, being like, listen, JP Morgan is very safe, even in the financial crisis. People didn't lose their deposits. But he's like, somebody's lying. Either JP Morgan is lying or Celsius is lying. And even in the moment, I was like, this is a great line. It's definitely Alex that's lying.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is that all it is? Maybe he bought a lot of those shoes and he had a whole army of people walking in circles. But he told me I had the same reaction. Even when things were going great, this seemed very fishy. And I was shocked when he told me he had $20 billion. But he told me the banks are the scammers. They're taking your deposits and they're earning huge profits and they're lying to you and they're saying they can't pay you any interest.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He had a kind of Celsius was like a crypto bank, and he was saying send me your stable coins and I'll pay you interest on them. We met at Bitcoin 2021, my first crypto conference. And I was there. I wanted to gather info on Tether. Celsius had done business with Tether. So I set up a meeting with this guy, Mashinsky. He was a big hustler. He was at every conference. He was the one giving all the speeches. He always wore this t-shirt that said banks are not your friends. We sit down. He told me his, I asked, I'm polite. So before I get to the investigative questions, I'm like, so what's your company do? And he's like, well, it's sort of like a bank. Give us your coins. We'll pay you up to 18% interest. But if you want a loan, we'll give that to you for free. We don't charge interest or a very low rate.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah. You can't really blame CZ because, I mean, fraud is a fraud. You know, if he, but he's the one who made a tweet that got people starting to pull their money out of FTX, which revealed the hole at the center of the exchange. But the other people Binkman Fried said had $510 billion were Tether. They said, no, we're not bailing you out. And this guy, Justin's son, who has this coin Tron and is like a crazy character in himself missing chapter from the book.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Around cash. But it was interesting to me, I was like, so who's got $510 billion? He'd already tried CZ. That didn't work”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's got to be. It's down to him and Justin's son from the Tron blockchain. Both of whom. Show a notable reluctance to enter U.S. soil. Yeah, Sun's been sued by the SEC, and Finance has a number of cases. These guys do still have...”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, which, to be fair, they were the victims of one of the biggest attacks ever. So I don't know if they're that trustworthy on that front. But yeah, even if, let's say, just hypothetically, let's say they had been a billion dollars in the hole, they could easily earn their way out of it now. Their interest rates are higher”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that was another reason to be suspicious of them. I found evidence they'd invested in Chinese commercial paper. They'd been making loans to other crypto companies. It seemed like not riskless. But now, yeah, you just put it in treasuries, earn 5%. If you believe their numbers, they're one of the most profitable companies in the world. And it's a shoestring operation.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Model. So, when I started looking into Tether, interest rates were zero. And so Tether was sitting on this huge pile of money, and they had incentive to put it at risk. Right. Because they needed to earn interest.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He totally bought into it, and he was like, well, it's easy for Sam Bankman Freed. You know, he started his company more recently. You know, Tether, we had to get a bit of a bit of a bit of”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We had, we spent hours talking in the casino. Me and Jail, and had a conversation, another conversation that was very funny in hindsight. I was telling him, I was like, listen, man, I just spent a couple days at Sam Bankman Freed's office. That guy doesn't have anything to hide. He just let me walk around the whole office and see everything. Nothing to hide. Yeah, how come you're being so secret?”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I see this tall Dutch guy with silver hair, kind of a funny scar on his nose, and Jean introduces me and he's like, Zeke, if you screw this up, I'll kill you. Really with a smile, like he's not killing me, but good line. I appreciated it. So this guy, JL, he's a CEO of one of the biggest companies in crypto. Most people in crypto love to promote themselves. The skeptics like this guy, Bitfinexed, would say that there was so little out there about JL. They were like, we don't even think he's a real person. So I go to Sheikh JL Vanderveld, the CEO of Tether's Hand, and I'm like, nice to meet. And then he says the man who doesn't exist. I'm like. Wow, I just love these guys.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the co founders was this Mighty Ducks guy, Brock Pierce. And I had a lot of fun meeting him on his Mega Yacht off the coast of the Bahamas. He sent a speedboat to pick me up. So, you know, I don't know how often that's going to happen in my journalistic career. But in the CEO was this guy, Jean-Louis Vanderveld. And we also... Met in the Bahamas. The meeting was brokered by Jean Chalapin, the inspector gadget guy. So I'd gone to the Bahamas hoping that I would meet one of these tether guys. And I didn't see any of them there, even though it was a big crypto conference. I thought they'd come. But then finally, Shalapin is like, get over here. JL is he of Vanderveld's here.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, crypto, it's always sold as trustless, and in reality, it turns out you keep having to trust these people who prove themselves to be totally untrustworthy.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, even if it was like a tenth of a percent, they could do it. So I think that accounts for why they were using so much tether. He did not disclose that at the time. If you think of all the crypto exchanges like different casinos, Tether is basically like the cashier. And it's like in the early years of crypto, these casinos had trouble receiving dollars. Like banks did not want to open bank accounts for crypto companies. So instead, the crypto companies would say, hey, customers, go to Tether, send them some real money, get some Tether tokens, then you can bring them over here and gamble with them.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so Alameda, his hedge fund, could buy Tether's, they had a relationship with Tether, the company. They could buy Tethers for a dollar and then go sell them for a little bit more. The profits are very small, but Alameda's cost of capital was very low since they were borrowing all the customer money. So a zero.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Them now, what I've learned more recently is that a lot of that came because there was actually during the crypto boom, there was demand for there was so much demand for Tether that on exchanges like FTX it often traded slightly above a dollar.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Met SBF because I wanted to ask him about Tether. They were one of the biggest users of Tether, something like 35 billion of Tether passed through.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, look at Sam Bigman Freed. He's trying to use the terms of service of FTX as a defense now and basically trying to argue that they allowed him to lend all the customer money to his hedge fund. So, you know, you never know. Maybe it could come in handy one day.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I will say this, it kind of worked on me. It was like I'm authentic. I don't care. I'm being myself. I'm not going to pretend. He didn't come off like this slick salesman. He was like, I'm just the guy who, you know, spends all my time thinking about how to make money trading crypto. I went down to shadow him at his office when things were going great. And I was just like, I'm not leaving till he falls asleep on that beanbag. I want to see him nap on the beanbag. And he did. And he slept there for a couple hours and he at one point, he woke up a little bit, opened a package of nutter butters, ate them, and kind of made a mess on the beanback, and then went back to sleep.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love that photo because it must have been taken backstage before they went out to speak at this conference. And Sam just looks like a deer in the headlights, like the flash has caught him off guard. And Giselle, like, you're never going to catch her off guard. She looks great in all situations. She”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, that was sort of Sam Bankman's freed thing. It was this thing I don't dress up for anybody. Congress, he put on a suit, although he didn't tie his shoes famously. But at this conference, the Mooch, I mean, he looked great. Bankman Fried was wearing, you know, khaki shorts and a t-shirt. His hair all messed up even when he was on stage with Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Tom Brady. Yeah.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were at Crypto Bahamas, the big conference to celebrate the success of Sam Bankman Freed. He had just made this partnership with FTX, and the Mooch loves a press conference. So he called, there were a lot of reporters there at the conference, and he had this sort of press conference at the beginning. But it seemed like, I mean, the only thing he wanted to talk, he just kept talking about how good he looked and how bad Sam Bankman Fried looked. The point of the press conference.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the book was thoroughly fact checked. And not only did the mooch confirm that, I believe that that was, if I remember correctly, he announced this at this event. Oh, he did. Yes. He was like, check out my hair. I got a new. I know he likes to say.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. It was like a real company that was making a decent amount of money. And in recent years, he's changed the company to be all about Bitcoin. He's sunk all the profits into Bitcoin. He's levered up and borrowed money and bought Bitcoin. So now if you want to invest in micro strategy stock, it's just a bet on Bitcoin. And he's also become like the craziest Bitcoin maximalist out there who these are the guys who are like the priests of the Bitcoin church. And he says things like, Bitcoin is a flock of cyber hornets stinging the financial system to death. Honestly, the real quote is crazier than that. But it's people like him that are really, they actually are key to bringing in new people into this Bitcoin world. And it's actually why I would hesitate to bet against Bitcoin because it's become this cult and the people who love it just love it so, so, so much.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sailor said that to the New Yorker in an amazing profile about his dot-com riches. He's the biggest loser of the dot-com bubble, but micro strategy plugs along. They had some”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or not so secretly because you could track all this on the blockchain. Yeah, his fund had sold crypto and it only came out after that speech.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that was at Bitcoin 2022 in Miami. He played the Max Kaiser role of the guy who yelled the craziest stuff on stage. Right.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, his like me, we both started out looking at Tether and it turned out that Tether has held up pretty well. It's actually only grown since I started investigating it.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Since it was formed. Yeah, dozens of times a day. And he seemed to have some pretty. Sometimes he'd tweet photos or things that seemed like he was an insider. And I arranged to meet him. And what I realized, when I met him was, oh no, this is like a dude who lives in his mom's basement.”
2023-11-02 · Masters in Business · Zeke Faux on Crypto and the Digital Asset Frenzy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source