Sam Bankman-Fried on Life in Prison With Diddy, and How Democrats Stole His Money and Betrayed Him

Sam Bankman-Fried is doing 25 years behind bars, and is now sharing a cell block with Diddy. He joins us from prison for an update on his new life. (00:00) What Has Prison Been Like? (02:28) Was SBF Ever on Adderall? (04:42) SBF Meeting Diddy in Prison (07:00) How Prison Has Changed SBF’s Perspective (16:24) The Future of Crypto Under Donald Trump (22:57) Does SBF Have Any Money Left? Paid partnerships with: iTrust Capital: Get $100 funding bonus at https://www.iTrustCapital.com/Tucker PureTalk: Switch your cell phone service to a company you can be PROUD to do business with at https://PureTalk.com/Tucker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tucker Carlson?

  So where are you?

• 0:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm well, I'm in MDC Brooklyn, um, in a little side room.

• 0:09Tucker Carlson?

  What's it? How long have you been there?

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Uh, I've been in prison for about, uh, oh, boy, what's it been now? It's been about two years.

• 0:19Tucker Carlson?

  So what what's it like?

• 0:22Speaker 01

  It's, I mean, it's sort of dystopian. You know, the fortunate thing, the place I'm in, I'm not in sort of, I'm not in physical danger. Um, and, you know, frankly, a lot of the staff, they're trying to be helpful. They're trying to, you know, do what they can, given the constraints. Um, but, you know, no one wants to be in prison. And you can imagine what happens when you take sort of forty people, um, you know, all of whom have been at least charged with crimes and lock them in a single room for years on end and throw out the key, which is the the the most trivial things become all that people have left to care about.

• 1:05Tucker Carlson?

  Yes. Have you had any problems?

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Not of the sort of acute kind. Like, I haven't had, you know, I haven't been attacked or anything like that. I've had a lot of logistical problems. And, you know, the biggest, frankly, was when I was on trial, trying to get access to legal work was nearly impossible. I would, you know, on a typical trial day, they'd wake me up at 4:00 a.m. I'd spend five hours in various buses, vans, and holding cells uh, until my trial started in the morning, then trial straight through to 5:00 p.m., another four hours in holding cells and vans. You know, and get back at 9:00 p.m., way after any access to legal work was cut off for the day. So that was the biggest problem.

• 1:56Tucker Carlson?

  So what do you do all day when you're not on trial?

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Well, it's a really good question because there's not a whole lot to do in prison. Um, I read books. I've, you know, started reading novels again. I, I play some chess and I work on my legal case to the extent I can, you know, there is, there's appeal, there are other things. I do what work I can from inherent on that, but the lack of other meaningful things to spend my time on is one of the most kind of soul crushing things about prison.

• 2:28Tucker Carlson?

  I gotta say, we, we've never talked before, but obviously I've, I've watched you from afar. And, and I, I just also say, I feel sorry for every man in prison, no matter what he's accused of or did. I just, I don't think we should be locking people away. I know, I guess we have to, but I, I feel sorry for everyone in prison. I'll just say. Call me liberal. Um, but you, you do, you do seem kind of healthier and less jumpy, I have to say, after two years in prison.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  You know, I've had a lot of time to reflect on how to communicate. And in retrospect, you know, I was, I think I was not effective at communicating, especially when the crisis first hit. And, you know, in the, in the months thereafter, um, I made a mistake I often make. I get swept up in, in details and I forget to communicate the bigger picture.

• 3:22Tucker Carlson?

  You, you seem like you were just flying high on Adderall. Every time I saw you on TV, you don't seem that way now. Were you?

• 3:30Speaker 01

  No, I wasn't, but I was, um, my mind was freezing because there were, you know, a billion things to keep track of. You know, we sort of typically I have, and back when I was running FTX, you know, I, I go on to have an interview, but you know, while on the interview, there'd be two issues I'd have to resolve with the company. So I'd have sort of one eye on Slack open, responding to messages. And I, I knew that I had something else I had to do right after the interview that I hadn't had time to prepare for yet, that I was sort of preparing for in the back of my mind.

• 4:03Tucker Carlson?

  So maybe like the digital world is bad for us. Is that, I mean, like, what's your view of that? You've been taken away from your phone. So that's kind of big.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, it is. Um, I, I prefer having the digital world. Um, that, you know, at the end of the day, like, it's, but, but I will say that when I say that it's less from a perspective of like enjoyment or, or, or, you know, pleasure or leisure, and it's more from a perspective of productivity and ability to have impact in the world. Um, you know, from that perspective, it's so hard to do anything. We don't have the digital world.

• 4:42Tucker Carlson?

  So like, have you made friends there? How, are you hanging with Diddy? I think he's in there with you.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Uh, he is, he is. Um, and I, it's, I don't know, you know, he's been kind. Um, the, I've made some friends. It's, it's a weird environment, you know, it's sort of a combination of a few other high-profile cases and a lot of, you know, ex-gangsters or sort of, you know, alleged ex-gangsters.

• 5:11Tucker Carlson?

  Definitely alleged. So what's Diddy like?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  I, you know, obviously I've, I've only seen one, one piece of him, um, which is, you know, Diddy in prison. And, you know, he's been kind to people in the unit. Um, he's been kind to me. Um, it's also, it's, it's a position no one wants to be in, you know, obviously he doesn't, I don't, as you said, it's, it's kind of a soul-crushing place for the world in general. Um, and, you know, what we see are just the people that, that are around us on the inside, rather than

• 5:50Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  who we are on the outside.

• 5:53Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, I'm, I'm sure. And it, I mean, you're two of the most famous prisoners in the world in the same unit. What are, what are the other, what are you like, what do the armed robbers think?

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Well, it's a really interesting question. And if, of course, some of them are, I, I think you're thinking like, wow, this is sort of a big opportunity, like, you know, to meet people they wouldn't otherwise get to meet, which is, it shocked me the first time I heard that, right? It makes sense of their perspective, but like, boys, I don't know how, not how I think about prison.

• 6:26Tucker Carlson?

  Sorry, sorry to laugh. No, that's it. I bet it's not how you think about it. No.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  It's not. And laughing is all you can do sometimes. You know, there's, there's no better alternative. Um, they're good at chess. That's one thing I learned. Like, you know, former armed robbers who don't speak English, um, and you probably didn't graduate middle school are a surprising number of them are like fairly good at chess. Like, you know, not, I'm not saying they're grandmasters, but like, you know, I always games to them all the time. Um, I was not expecting that.

• 7:00Tucker Carlson?

  Wow. So how is it? That's so interesting. How has that changed your, your views?

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I would say it's part of a larger whole, which, you know, it's one of the most sort of profound things that I've come to learn over my life, but still something I don't fully understand, which is obviously, you know, what we call intelligence or IQ or whatever. It matters. It's important. Um, uh, working hard matters. It's important. But there are other things, things that we don't have good words for. I still haven't found the right words for. But things that can make someone an unbelievably impressive and successful and productive person. Um, that seem to kind of outshine

• 7:46Speaker 01

  what our others would expect of them. And obviously not everyone, you know, everyone's in different places, but you know, something is a lot enough. Yes, we find someone with an absolutely shit resume. I mean, just nothing to recommend themselves, no real relevant experience. And all of a sudden we'd realize they're outperforming almost everyone else at the company. Just because they had the grit, they had the instincts, you know, they had the dedication. They, they knew how to work, um, how to interface with others and how to see solutions to problems.

• 8:23Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, I mean, I've known on the flip side, a number of extremely stupid people have gotten rich in finance. They're clearly have a kind of brilliance that I can't see.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:31Tucker Carlson?

  They seem like morons to me.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  I'm interested in what types there are. I was on Wall Street in a former life and there are a variety of people there.

• 8:40Tucker Carlson?

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• 9:37Speaker 02

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• 10:37Tucker Carlson?

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• 11:22Tucker Carlson?

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• 12:07Tucker Carlson?

  You're hardly the only businessman who's done that. It's actually kind of par now. But you gave so much to Democrats that I kind of thought they would rescue you in the end. Where, where were all your friends in the Democratic Party? They usually keep their friends from going to jail. Tony Podesta never went to jail. Why did you?

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Oh, it's a really good question. Obviously, I can only guess at the answer to that. I can only speculate because I'm not in their minds. But, you know, one fact that might be relevant is, you know, in 2020, I was my center-left and I gave to Biden's campaign. I was optimistic he'd be a sort of solid center-left president. I spent the next few years in DC a lot. I mean, made dozens of trips there and was really, really shocked by what I saw, not in a good direction from the administration. By late 2022, I was giving to Republicans privately as much as Democrats.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  And that started becoming known right around FTX's collapse. So probably played a role.

• 13:17Tucker Carlson?

  Why were you shocked? I know you spent a lot of time in DC. There are pictures of you with, you know, everything. You met everybody. What was shocking about it?

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Some of it was just more extreme versions of what I worried about. Crypto regulation is a good example. You know, I never thought that frankly, the Democrats in general would be the party taking the lead on good financial regulation. But you know, there were good and bad people in each party and a lot of thoughtful players. But Gensler's SEC was something out of a nightmare. I, you know, a company would go offer something in the United States, Gensler would sue them to the ground for not registering. So go to Gensler to register, say, hey, you know, we'd love to register. Office says what you want, we register us. And the SEC would say, well, there's nothing for you to register as. We don't have any ideas.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  And there's just no solution. They required licenses that they didn't know how to give. And every company in crypto ran into this. You know, they basically failed to register a single person ever. Um, that was like one pretty disturbing thing that I saw and, you know, go for it.

• 14:29Tucker Carlson?

  So can I just ask you to explain a little bit there? It's obvious to non-experts like me that, you know, Gary Gensler is obviously corrupt. I mean, that was clear, but it was his motives were less clear. Like, what was that? What was his goal?

• 14:43Speaker 01

  It's a really good question. And again, I'm not in his brain, but sure, some impressions I had.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  You know, he, I, he really liked being in the center of things. Power, everyone likes that.

• 14:59Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Not every, most people, he's no exception. You know, part of this is a turn forward. He wanted his agency to get more power, even if he didn't want to do anything with it, except block industries. I, you know, why did he make everyone register with him? Well, he loses power, you know, otherwise, even if he didn't know what to do with them. I, you know, he had, there are lots of stories about him, you know, being very politically ambitious and feeling like if he could, you know, get on CNBC enough, make a big enough stink about things, raise his profile, that, you know, maybe be Treasury Secretary, um, something like that in the future. I mean, I mean, he's remarkably successful.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Like, he, he became sort of one of the few faces of democratic financial regulation.

• 15:49Tucker Carlson?

  Interesting. That sounds right to me. I mean, tho- those sound like Washington-type goals. I've seen those before.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:56Tucker Carlson?

  So, um.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  He wasn't moral. It's not like he had, like, deeply rooted communist beliefs or anything like that.

• 16:02Tucker Carlson?

  Right. No, no, I, I knew that. Right. No, no, it's not like, or any beliefs, self-advancement. Um, so, of, when things started to go south and you were criminally charged or thought you might be criminally charged, you know, you've given so much money to the Democratic Party that I think it's pretty, leaving aside moral judgment here, but it's pretty normal in business for the donor to call the person he's donating to and saying, "Hey, I'm in trouble, can you help me?" Did you call Schumer or any of the people you had supported and say, you know, "Hey, I need your help. It's the Biden Justice Department, help me."

• 16:35Speaker 01

  I didn't, um, for multiple reasons. One was, you know, I didn't want to do something inappropriate. A second was, I, that many parts of it very quickly made their positions known and were running away as, as quickly as they could. Um. You know, I had a, I had a good relationship, probably better with Republicans in DC as with Democrats by that point in time. Although that wasn't, wasn't public, it's not, it wouldn't have been easy to see that from the outside.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  And at the end of the day, there's a long story here, involves a law firm that took a pretty unusual and active role in the case. But before I even gave up control of FTX, before it was ever filed for bankruptcy, the DOJ had already made up its mind.

• 17:31Tucker Carlson?

  And so there was, you didn't call in any favors or try to?

• 17:34Speaker 01

  No.

• 17:36Tucker Carlson?

  Interesting.

• 17:39Tucker Carlson?

  What, what do you think of the future of crypto? I mean, obviously you're, it must have complicated feelings since you ran a crypto company or in jail because of it. But you know a lot about the topic. You, you sort of feel like things are moving very fast on crypto. Do you think they're moving in a good direction? I know it's sort of weird to ask you this question, but I can't resist.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  No, um, hopefully is what I would say. You know, you look at what the Trump administration said, you know, going into office. There are a lot of good things. There are a lot of things that, you know, were very different from the stance that the Biden administration took, that, that, you know, the SEC took. Obviously the, you know, the follow through is what matters. And that's the stage that we're at now, which is what will come of this. And, I mean, not surprisingly, like, changing the guard helps. But financial regulators, they're big, giant bureaucracies in the federal government. They're not used to changing overnight.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  And they have been playing a really obstructive role for, you know, a decade in crypto. You have, US, it's 30% of the world's finance. It's about 5% of the world's crypto. And the reason it's entirely regulatory, it's just, the US was unique in its difficulty to work with. So I think the big question is, will, you know, when rubber meets the road, like, will the administration do what needs to be done? And figure out how to do it?

• 19:19Tucker Carlson?

  I mean, I remember when the concept of crypto first arrived in the popular press and the whole idea was that this was a currency that could restore to the individual his freedom of commerce. I get to buy and sell things without the government controlling me and I could do it privately. It would restore my my privacy as well. And that obviously has never happened. It doesn't seem like it's ever going to happen. And I don't hear anybody say it anymore. And now it just seems like it's kind of another asset scam. Whatever happened to, I mean, these are broad brush statements, but whatever happened to the privacy thing?

• 19:56Speaker 01

  It's a really good question. And there's sort of a legacy thing about the technology, right? payments, remittances, like all the things that are not just an investment, but ways that crypto could actually be useful for the world. You know, they happen on longer time scales than investments do, basically. You know, with what social media has become, you see bubbles, you know, grow and pop and grow and pop on a daily to monthly basis. Technology is built out on a decade basis. So, you know, right now, crypto is not quite at a point where it could become an everyday tool of, you know, a quarter of the world

• 20:36Speaker 01

  or something. The tech isn't there yet, but it's not that far away. And if, and this is an if, if the industry keeps making progress rather than getting distracted too much by market prices, then, you know, five, 10 years from now, you could imagine a world where all of a sudden, it is the case that anyone can have a crypto wallet, you know, billion people could use it each day, with privacy, with security, fast, cheap, international, all the things that, you know, that was promised and that absolutely get, are distracted from by the latest meme points.

• 21:16Tucker Carlson?

  You think world governments would allow that? I mean, if you actually allowed the world's population to conduct financial transactions without the control of governments, then governments would collapse instantly, wouldn't they?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Well, it's an interesting question. And there are a lot of degrees here about the level of overseeing control that they have. You look at something like Bitcoin and the wallets are anonymous, but there is a public ledger of every transfer that happens. So it is possible for governments to have some level of knowledge without having control of it. That being said, not all the governments in the world view this the same. And the United States government over the last 30 years has taken one view towards control of, you know, the, not just the United States, but the world's monetary dealings.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  And you see, I mean, a different viewpoint, much more authoritarian, but also much more insular in a lot of sort of dictatorships. But half the world doesn't try to have nearly the level of government involvement in day-to-day financial transactions that the United States has.

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• 24:02Tucker Carlson?

  Company. Do you have any money left after all this?

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Well, basically, no. Um, the company that I I used to own, um, my base still do own, I don't know. It's in bankruptcy had had nothing intervened. Um, today it would have about $15 billion liabilities. Um, and about $93 billion of assets. So the answer should be, in theory, yes, that, you know, there was enough money to pay everyone back in kind at the time or today with, you know,

• 24:50Speaker 01

  plenty of interest left over and tens of billions left for investors. But I that's not how things worked out. And instead, it all got grilled up in it again, world in in a bankruptcy where I the assets were dissipated incredibly quickly by those controlling it. Um, they're siphoned off tens of billions of dollars worth. And I it's been a colossal disaster. And I mean, not stopping that from happening is by far the biggest regret of my life.

• 25:32Tucker Carlson?

  So you knew everybody else in the crypto business. You're one of the most famous people in the business before the charges, before, you know, all of this happened.

• 25:42Tucker Carlson?

  Being as honest as you can, do you think you were the biggest criminal in the crypto business?

• 25:47Speaker 01

  I don't think I was a criminal. So certainly the answer to that is no. I mean, I think the DOJ thinks that I may have been, but I don't care.

• 25:55Tucker Carlson?

  Well, yeah, you're in jail. They definitely, that's their claim anyway. But, but I wonder, and I'm not, you know, I certainly criticized your business and other businesses like in, in the past. And again, I'm not even getting into the details of your case because it's like Byzantine, but um, I'm, I'm just wondering, like, do you think there's a lot of shady behavior in the crypto business? Being honest?

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, 10 years ago, the answer was clearly yes, or at least yes, relative to the scale of the industry. You know, you look in the mid, you know, 2014 to 2017 sort of era, and there is not, you know, the industry is a lot smaller than it was today. Um, and, and a lot of the transactions I saw, or at least a higher fraction of them were, well, different people use different words for it, but Silk Road, you know, as an example, right? People purchasing narcotics online was a common use of crypto back 10 years ago or so. Obviously, there are always going to be criminals in any

• 27:02Speaker 01

  industry, but over time, the fraction of the industry that that represents has fallen off really substantially, both because of sort of growth of other areas of interest in crypto, and also because of more government involvement on the anti-money laundering side.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  So yeah, there's still some, but not, it's not as, as prevalent as it once was.

• 27:28Tucker Carlson?

  So you were famously identified with a worldview and ideology, maybe even a religion called effective altruism. And the idea was that, as I understand it, that you, you know, do the greatest good for the greatest number. You make money in order to help the maximum number of people. And some have pointed out the irony that in the collapse of your company, like a million people lost their money. So there were a lot of individuals hurt in an effort that you described as like the greatest good for the greatest number. And I wonder if all of this has made you rethink the precepts of effective altruism?

• 28:02Speaker 01

  It hasn't made me rethink the precepts. Obviously, I feel terrible about what happened. It's not at all what I intended. And whatever one's intentions are, I You know, if you screw up, then the results might be different. You know, people have their money back at the end, but it is too excruciating years waiting for it. They got it back dollarized rather than in kind. And I, and certainly all the good that I've been hoping to do for the world ended up dissipating, or at least most of it did, when the company collapsed.

• 28:41Tucker Carlson?

  I guess what I'm saying is, do, I mean, I think it's hard for most people to understand the idea that it's more virtuous or valuable to help people they've never met than it is to help the people right in front of them. In other words, like, it's way more virtuous to help your wife, girlfriend, mother, daughter, brother, college roommate than it is to help, like, a village in a country you've never visited. I think that's how most people feel intuitively. But you disagree?

• 29:13Speaker 01

  I disagree, although there is a caveat to it, which is that, you know, a classic mistake which people make, and I may have made at some points, is with people who you don't know, who are distant from you, thinking you know what they need when you don't. You know, being paternalistic, kind of condescending, and, you know, there's so many foreign aid-type projects that have gone awry and ended up being complete wastes of money because no one knew the people they were getting to, no one knew what their lives were like. And

• 29:44Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  They're just guessing at what they're speaking, and it's just wrong. And, you know, they show up with, like, a bunch of water pumps to a village that has plenty of water and no food. And like, you know,

• 29:53Tucker Carlson?

  Right, exactly.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  People shipped in from Harvard to go hand out these water pumps no one wants. And, you know, there's, like, example after example of this going awry, whereas, obviously, like, when you're dealing with people you know, um, you know, you have a much better sense of how to help them. And that's real, like, that effect is absolutely real. And, you know, even if I think the life matters as much in one place as another, that doesn't mean that you knew as well how to help one as you do the other.

• 30:21Tucker Carlson?

  Well, see, I think you're sort of making a counter case. You're arguing against your own position. I mean, isn't it? I mean, I guess the problem I have with effective altruism is just too easy. I mean, it's like, it's easy to cure polio. It's really hard to make the same woman happy for 30 years. And so maybe it's better to do the hard thing.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Well, I think what I'd say is, look, you look at, I mean, malaria is a good example here, right? No one dies of malaria anymore in the United States. I mean, basically, no one does. But globally, it's what, like a million people a year or something die of it? And that's horrible that it happens. Like, this is just a disease people shouldn't be dying from anymore. We know how to basically eradicate it. And we should absolutely be doing that as a world. But, you know, because it's sort of like, easy in some sense, that shouldn't stop us from being able to help people, you know, at home. You look at, like, the scale of resources that would be required to many of these interventions in the poorest part of the world. And it's not that big. It's not making, it would not take a big

• 31:23Speaker 01

  bite out of our domestic health if it were done efficiently. But the efficient part is a big piece of this. You can throw as many useless water pumps at villages without food as you want, without curing anyone.

• 31:35Tucker Carlson?

  No, I think, I mean, you make a, I mean, that's demonstrably true. And 60 years of aid to Africa has shown that as life expectancy has declined. But I guess as a moral matter, how can you justify worrying about malaria when your cousin is addicted to Xanax? Shouldn't you fix that first?

• 31:55Speaker 01

  If I could. But, you know, at the end of the day, we have responsibilities to each of us. And, you know, if I know my cousin well, and I know how to solve his problem because I'm his cousin, then absolutely, like, I have a responsibility to do that. But if I've tried and I'm flailing at that, I can't figure out how to make progress. But I can figure out how to save lives internationally, or if someone can, then I don't think it takes away from the good that they can do internationally, that they couldn't figure out how to solve their cousin's problem.

• 32:27Tucker Carlson?

  Right. So do it again. I don't think that's a crazy point. Last question on this topic.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:31Tucker Carlson?

  Can you think of a big recent international aid project that was an unequivocal success?

• 32:38Speaker 01

  So, sort of, but I'm not gonna name the... It's not gonna be a government aid project, to be clear. They're private projects that have been.

• 32:49Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  You know, I think malaria is a good example, where a substantial fraction of the world's malaria has been cut down already by mostly private contributions from people to South Saharan Africa and India. That, you know, saving probably hundreds of thousands of lives a year right now for, you know, thousands of dollars per life on average, which is, you know, sort of a stunning success on a relative scale. Now, we're not talking about a trillion dollars. We're talking about single-digit billions of dollars, directed by really careful work by philanthropists.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  And, you know, of course, you can look at gigantic government programs that did absolutely nothing.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  You know, if you want the government approach, I mean, I don't know, the Marshall Plan? Like, it's sort of digging pretty deep in history, but rebuilding Germany after World War II was probably a huge success on many fronts.

• 33:51Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, I think we've undone it by blowing up Nord Stream, but, you know, I think it's a fair point. So, how old are you now?

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Ah, you know, I... The funny thing, it took me a second to think of the answer that it... Prison, time changes when you're in prison. It becomes sort of an amorphous concept. Whenever it is, is sort of like the last, and they just blur together. The answer is, I... Well, I guess my birthday's tomorrow, so as of, as of right now, I am, I'm 32, but I will be 33 soon.

• 34:35Tucker Carlson?

  How are you gonna celebrate your birthday?

• 34:38Speaker 01

  I'm not. I was never big on birthdays on the outside, and celebrating another year in prison just doesn't feel like all that exciting to me.

• 34:47Tucker Carlson?

  So you're not gonna tell Diddy it's your birthday tomorrow? I don't believe you.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Someone else might tell him, but I don't plan to.

• 34:55Tucker Carlson?

  So, okay, so you'll be thirty-three tomorrow. If you are not pardoned, all things being equal, how old do you be when you get out?

• 35:05Speaker 01

  It's a complicated calculation, which I don't understand all the details of because of like first step back stuff. And if you just add, you know, my prison sentence, my age, so to speak, um, you know, then the answer is I in my late forties.

• 35:20Tucker Carlson?

  Wow. Could you handle that?

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Um, uh, sorry. What I said was wrong. I misspoke. If you add my prison sentence, my age, the late fifties, if you include all of the possible decreases, it might be the late forties. But, but the raw answer is, I mean, it's thirty-two when I was convicted and I got a twenty-five year sentence. So that's fifty-seven.

• 35:44Tucker Carlson?

  So having done two out of the twenty-five so far, do you think you could, could you make it?

• 35:53Speaker 01

  It's a good question. I'm not sure. I mean, the, the hardest thing is just not having something meaningful to be doing in here. Um, and, you know, and you can look at their studies. I have no idea how good they are, but they show, you know, you age at roughly three times the normal rate in prison. So, you know, you had three times twenty-five to my thirty-two years. Um, when I was convicted and I, you know, that gets you an answer of maybe.

• 36:25Tucker Carlson?

  So, I mean, it strikes me, there's a kind of weird, it's, I mean, you went maybe more than anyone I've ever talked to from one world to a completely different world. So you were in the world of digital money. Now you're in a world with no money. What's the medium of exchange in prison?

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, it's whatever people have and, you know, muffins, like these little, so like little plastic wrapped, you like, you go to like a, like a gas station and like on the counter, there might be like a plastic bowl with little individually wrapped plastic muffins that have been sitting there for a week at room temperature. You know, imagine one of those. That's sort of, that's like standard. Is that a packet of ramen soup? Or a kind of disgusting looking little foil package of fish in oil at room temperature?

• 37:12Tucker Carlson?

  Ooh.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:13Tucker Carlson?

  You went, you went from crypto to mu- to the muffin economy.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 37:19Tucker Carlson?

  How would you, how would you compare them? Obviously, it's harder to move muffins internationally, but

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Right. I don't think they're gonna be

• 37:25Tucker Carlson?

  As a currency.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Anytime soon globally. Uh, I don't think it's gonna be a strategic must spend reserve. Um, so,

• 37:34Speaker 01

  um, you know, they're in a, they're a currency of need. They, they wouldn't be anything else. They, they don't have that much to recommend themselves. But at the end of the day, they're kind of fungible. They're not exactly fungible, but they're close enough. You know, two muffins are kind of similar, so you can kind of trade them for each other. They, they kind of work as long as you're never go dealing with more than like $5, right? Because if, if you wanted to do a $200 transaction in muffins, like what, you know, like the, I mean, it doesn't work physically, right?

• 38:03Tucker Carlson?

  It's unwieldy. Yeah.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  It's unwieldy. And so one of the things that like you realize really quickly is, I mean, the scale of everything is so diminished in prison, you know, you see people getting into a fistfight over a single banana. Um, not because they even care about it that much, but because what else is there to channel your caring into?

• 38:29Tucker Carlson?

  Ooh, that's grim. Have you, do you eat the muffins, by the way?

• 38:34Speaker 01

  I don't eat.

• 38:35Tucker Carlson?

  Or them?

• 38:35Speaker 01

  I, I, no, I just heard them and yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't actually eat them. I, I mostly eat rice and beans and ramen.

• 38:43Tucker Carlson?

  Wow. Well, it looks like it's been, it's been good for you. Do you, have you gotten any tattoos?

• 38:48Speaker 01

  I, I have not. I, I know some people who have, but I have not gotten any prison tattoos.

• 38:53Tucker Carlson?

  Have you thought about it?

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Though, you know, there's a part of me that's always like, thought about getting a tattoo, but talking with the inmates about their, you know, sanitization procedures or lack thereof for the needles, sort of, you know, that, that cured that idea in my mind. Not, no, no interest anymore.

• 39:14Tucker Carlson?

  It's not worth the hep C.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  It's not worth the hep C. It's, you know, I would say like, maybe they go through like four people or so before bothering to sanitize. I need.

• 39:23Tucker Carlson?

  Oh.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:25Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, okay. So you're not, you're not doing that. So since, since you've been away and you're facing, I guess, 23 more years. I always wonder, like, the people you helped, I mean, you're in prison because you hurt people, but you also helped a lot of people in Washington, like giving them many, many millions of dollars. Did any of them call you to say, you know, good luck? I hope you're doing okay. Don't join a gang or say anything to you at all?

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Right when the collapse hit, like in the immediate wake of it, I got a number of really nice messages from a lot of people, including some in DC. By six months later, none. And so by the time trial happened, whereas, you know, put in prison, nothing. And it's, it became too politically toxic. It became, the incentives were too skewed against people. You know, risking their necks. I even heard frankly about people saying third hand, like nice things about me, but no one wanted to be in contact with me directly.

• 40:33Tucker Carlson?

  Did anyone contact you? I mean, I, I noticed that your, I thought was your girlfriend testified against you. Like, you know, there, did you have any friends who stayed loyal and supported you or, and continue to?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Barely. Um, yes, but very, very few. I was surprised. It makes sense in retrospect. Um, anyone who was close to me ended up with a gun to their head. You know, being told that they had two options and one of them involved decades in prison. And, I mean, I, I think Ryan Salem is sort of.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  The saddest example of that, the most disgusting example from the government's perspective, where, you know, they charged him of totally bogus crimes. Um, he, he said, no, I'll see you in court. This, so they went back and said, all right, well, how about your pregnant wife? Um, what if we put her in prison? And so he pleads guilty because they're his wife in prison, which no sane legal system would make that a permissible thing for a prosecution to do. And then, and he wasn't even charged with most of what the other people who pled guilty were charged with.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  You know, Ryan, he doesn't testify at trial because he hasn't wanted to lie. He hasn't wanted to say what the government wants him to say. And he ends up getting four times as much prison time as the other three guilty pleas combined. And like, it couldn't send a clear message. Is it because he was a Republican or is it because he refused to parrot the government's lies at trial? Like, those are the only things I can imagine. Why they give him seven and a half years in prison?

• 42:25Tucker Carlson?

  It's disgusting. And I had him to my house and I interviewed him and I think they charged his wife as well. It's totally immoral what they did.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Totally right. They went back on their promise and charged his wife anyway. Like, you know, just, just to sort of disprove any notion of them sort of like operating in good faith. It's, it's disgusting. He's, he's a good guy. I, you know, he didn't serve any of that.

• 42:49Tucker Carlson?

  Has it dawned on you, you know, I don't know what kind of news coverage you're getting, kind of contact you have with the outside world, it sounds like not too much, but that things are moving so quickly out here.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:03Tucker Carlson?

  By the time you get out, I mean, AI, for example, it sounds like we're reaching uh, AGI or some

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:10Tucker Carlson?

  Singularity uh, soon. Yeah. That you may emerge whenever you do into a world that, that doesn't look anything like the world you left.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. I feel it pretty acutely. And it's, you know, the sort of feeling of the world moving on uh, without you.

• 43:27Tucker Carlson?

  Oh. Is um, having children part of your effective altruism philosophy?

• 43:37Speaker 01

  No, different people in the community have different views on it. And at the end of the day, I mean, for five years, I felt like I had about 300 children, most days, my employees, like it was, obviously, I couldn't be a father in the same way to all of them, but I felt responsible for them. I mean, feel terrible about all their work being

• 44:02Speaker 01

  tossed down the drain. Um, but I, I have time for my personal life at all, basically, when I was running FTX. And I mean, I certainly am not in a position to have kids from in person, so.

• 44:16Tucker Carlson?

  Have any of those 300 employees visited you in jail?

• 44:20Speaker 01

  I

• 44:23Speaker 01

  no, I think the answer is, is no to that. You know, there's one or two.

• 44:28Tucker Carlson?

  Probably ought to have some real kids at some point, don't you think? Cause they, when things go bad, they stick around.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  You know, it, it's got me thinking about what it means to have real friends. And it's, and, and about the amount of power that some systems in our country end up having and the amount of intimidation that can be achieved implicitly, but I, but also about, yeah, having people I know I can count on.

• 44:59Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah. Other people are all that matter. Sam Bankman Fried, I, I'm grateful that you did this and probably the only interview you ever do where you don't get pressed on your business, because there are other people to do that, but I was glad to talk to you and I hope you'll give our best to Diddy.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  I, I will absolutely do that.

• 45:15Tucker Carlson?

  I can't believe you're in jail with Diddy.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  It's, you know, if someone told me three years ago, like you'll be hanging out with, with Diddy, you know, every day, be like, oh, that's interesting. I wonder if that's gonna happen. I guess he gets into crypto or something.

• 45:31Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, life is so weird. Godspeed. Thank you.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 45:35Tucker Carlson?

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