Pod Insights Equity Podcast Bonus episode: What we learned from SBF's testimony with Jacquelyn Melinek from Chain Reaction About this episode Happy Saturday! We have a special bonus episode for you from our sister pod, Chain Reaction. Alex joins Jacquelyn Melinek go over the FTX/Sam Bankman-Fried trial before getting into his testimony from Thursday and Friday. They talked about:
Why the judge had the jury leave the courthouse for SBF’s testimony Thursday
The general feeling of the courthouse on the fourth week of the trial
A possible timeline for next week and what to look out for as the prosecution gets a chance to cross examines defendant
Keep up to date with Jacquie's coverage at techcrunch.com
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews foundersand more!
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
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Transcript 0:11 Speaker 00 Hey everybody, it's Alex. I have a treat for you on this lovely weekend. This upcoming audio clip is from Chain Reaction, our sister podcast on the crypto beat. But the cool thing is, I got to once again go hang out on that show and talk with this host, Jackie Melanick, all about the FTX trial and how SBF died in his first couple of days of testimony. And honestly, it was so interesting. It's a fun conversation. I wanted to share it with you here as well. So if you don't listen to Chain Reaction, well, enjoy this. It's a fun chat. We've been making Jackie go to the courthouse at abysmally early hours for weeks now. So the least you can do is come hang out with us and learn all about what it's like to watch one of the biggest financial trials of the century.
0:55 Speaker 00 What's up, Jack? How you doing?
0:57 Speaker 01 Hey. Hey, Alex. So this is a very special bonus episode. We're going to do our best to recap the Sam Bankman-Fried trial. It is the fourth week of the trial and the defendant himself took the stand on Thursday and Friday. This is the first time he has spoken publicly since the trial began. And at the beginning of the trial, all he said was yes. So this is really the first time he's spoken publicly. But the crazy part about all of this, and I'm sure me and Alex will get into this, is that the judge sent home the jury on Thursday. And we will get into the reasoning behind that and the main takeaways from SBF collecting six hours of testimony and then some. And it's not over. It's gonna go Monday, maybe Tuesday, maybe forever.
1:39 Speaker 00 Oh, God.
1:40 Speaker 01 Hopefully not. But I have the TechCrunch Plus editor in chief, Alex Wilhelm, here to help me parse through what went on in the courtroom and what can go next. Alex, thanks for being here.
1:51 Speaker 00 I mean, an absolute pleasure. It's quite literally the least I can do to work late on our Friday, given that you've been arriving at the courthouse at, it turns out, 2:30 in the morning.
2:00 Speaker 01 Yeah. And it wasn't even first.
2:02 Speaker 00 What happened? Like, it was like 6:00 AM, then it was a little bit earlier. And then suddenly you're getting there, literally, when party o'clock is still happening.
2:09 Speaker 01 So someone tweeted, "I hear you have to get there at 3:00 AM." So whoever that person is, I hope you have a bad weekend. And then also, prior to that, it was like, when it was Caroline Ellison's testimony, people got there pretty early, around like 4:30.
2:23 Speaker 00 Right.
2:24 Speaker 01 And we thought that was crazy. But I think because it's Sam... And that tweet and all these rumors about you have to get there at three, people were just like pushing the envelope of getting there earlier and earlier. And I am exhausted.
2:36 Speaker 00 Yes. Now, one thing I learned today is that the courtroom is actually quite small. So how many folks can actually fit in there in like the observation section?
2:43 Speaker 01 So for the public and media, we are pooled together. It is 21 seats, but that is assuming that the judge's clerk doesn't bring any friends, which has happened in the past. Today, the judge's clerk brought in two friends. So 21 people thought they were getting in and it actually turned out to be 19. So the last two people didn't get their seats and that's just a surprise.
3:03 Speaker 00 I've held bigger dinner parties than that by accident. Like, I mean, like, that's a crazy small number.
3:08 Speaker 01 It's tiny. So then there were overflow rooms. I think there were three overflow rooms today and yesterday. And typically there's only one or two, but because there were so many people there that wanted to see Sam Bankman-Fried testify, they opened up more rooms. And I was spot number seven today and spot number four yesterday. So.
3:22 Speaker 00 Wow. I owe you like 17 lunches at this point in time. Like, it's absolutely crazy. But what's insane to me.
3:28 Speaker 01 I'll just take a vacation day. Yeah.
3:29 Speaker 00 No, I mean, you can take as many as you would like after this, trust me. But one thing that's blowing my mind is how fast time has gone. Cause this was the fourth week of this trial already.
3:38 Speaker 01 Yeah. So this is week four and they said they're hoping to wrap it up by next week. And initially they were hoping for Monday or Tuesday. And now they're like, maybe Friday or the following Monday. And it was supposed to be six weeks. And if everything is shaking out the way they say so, it might end on like the six week mark at the beginning.
3:56 Speaker 00 Okay. Now, when the trial kicked off, tons of media attention. Everyone's super interested. The opening statements were full of fireworks. And then it did seem to kind of slow down a little bit for a couple of weeks. So what's happened recently to kind of catch us up to this key moment in which Sam took the stand himself?
4:13 Speaker 01 Yeah. So I think prior to Sam, we had someone from the FTX General Counsel come on. And he basically said that Sam wanted him to create a, quote, "legal justification for the reason they used billions of dollars of customer funds amid the collapse, because they were trying to fundraise more money to stay afloat, yada, yada." And this lawyer basically said he came up with some things, but like none of them would hold up. And Sam was just like, yep, got it, according to this guy. And then Sam comes up and he testifies. And I guess we could start with on Thursday, what happened and what we kind of talked about in the intro.
4:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, which is this insane, no jury in the room. Now, I have to tell everyone who's listening to this, if you are a legal expert and know lots about the courts and so forth, I may sound like an absolute country bumpkin here, and that's because I am. I didn't know the jury could not arrive for a day of testimony from the lead defendant. So what the hell?
5:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, we were all really shocked by it because we were basically told, you know, we have the government's last witness in the morning, and then the defendant had two witnesses, and then it was gonna be Sam. Sam was testifying, that's what we were told. That's why we got up there before the crack of dawn to hear him speak. And the judge sent the jury home because, basically, the defense's team submitted some filing the night before, saying these were the topics they wanted to talk about, and the prosecutors kind of opposed it. So the judge said it was basically to determine whether or not the testimony could be shared with jurors. And he said, "I haven't had a hearing of this nature in a long time, if ever." So it was
5:49 Speaker 01 basically like a mock hearing, but everything was on record, it counted, and it was called a testimony.
5:56 Speaker 00 Okay, so essentially, Sam arrives on Thursday, and with his first run at testimony, the room is equivalently empty because the jury is not there. So it's just the lawyers, the defendant, and the judge, and then the folks watching?
6:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, but I mean, it wasn't empty. It was full, just minus the jurors. And all the reporters were there, we all wrote it. And the judge told the jurors, before he told them to go home for the day, "Do not look anything up." And whether or not they did, who's to say?
6:21 Speaker 00 I mean, I'll say they did. Also, I just, poor jury, can you imagine, you're finally here, finally, you're like, "Oh, thank God, the defendant's gonna be on the stand," and then you're like, "Go home, don't do anything." Like, what do you do? Watch Netflix online? Turn out to think about anything that's going on in your life? It's been weeks. Crazy.
6:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, it is pretty crazy, but a lot was said on Thursday. They talked a lot about the signal situation and the data retention policies. They asked where the written policies were, and Sam couldn't really answer that. And then he said, "Oh, we asked for it, and then we never got it," which-
6:54 Speaker 00 Asked who? He's in charge.
6:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, because he was no longer at FTX. He said he couldn't get access to it. And then they talked about other like big takeaway pictures for KYC policies, like regulatory mandates and stuff when it comes to data retention. And he also just continuously kept blaming his lawyers for everything. He was like, oh, you know, people would just put things on my desk and I would sign it because I trusted them. And I kind of get that, you know, like he was juggling a million things. But at the same time, like, don't sign important documents unless you know what it is. And that's not a cop out for the reason that everything happened.
7:29 Speaker 00 Yeah, also, the dog ate my homework excuse doesn't fly in third grade. It doesn't fly when you are running a multi-billion dollar business.
7:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, I accidentally signed divorce papers, you know? Like, that doesn't happen. You gotta read it.
7:40 Speaker 00 Yeah, and even more so, like, if the defense's method here is saying Sam was too incompetent to be trusted, well, that's one way to approach this. It doesn't really fly with me, given the way the company presented itself. But what I'm really curious about, because you were there, is what was Sam like? I mean, evasive, confident, sweaty, like, what was, uh, what was the vibe there?
7:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, so on Thursday, Sam was very jittery, very happy to talk. He was like, talking a million miles per hour. I couldn't write as fast as he was speaking. And he was going on and on and on, like, he was giving like more than the questions asked for. He did that on Friday, too. And then that was with the defense. And then when it came to the prosecution's turn, he was very slow, paused a lot, said I don't recall for many, many things, and was just way more hesitant with what he had to say.
8:27 Speaker 00 So I'm curious, though, because we did this dress rehearsal day on Thursday. Sands' jury, to see how it would go, were there a lot of objections? Was it a reasonable choice in the end after the fact?
8:37 Speaker 01 So the judge slept on it. And then today, on Friday, he came in and said like, yep, we're good with everything that was said yesterday. Like, you could go ahead and like, ask Sam about it in front of the jurors. And that was before the jurors came in the room. And then they come in and everything. And so we've only gotten to Part of the defense's questioning to Sam. We haven't seen the prosecutor's side yet and they kind of already know some of the things that will be brought up, if not all, because they're watching it. So they'll just cross every single aspect that the defense has brought up. And yeah, it was a little, like Sam was still himself, but he was more composed, confident. He talked in a slower tone, even though it was still like his fast self.
9:19 Speaker 01 It was a bit slower and it gave off more sincere energy. I think he was trying to win over the jurors.
9:26 Speaker 00 That's what I was going to ask about because one thing that I recall from an earlier time, we were chatting about this was you were discussing how Sam was looking at the jurors and kind of staring at them.
9:35 Speaker 01 Oh, yes.
9:36 Speaker 00 You almost felt like, I mean, we're reading a lot into his body language here, but like almost intimidating them to some degree, but it sounds like he was more solicitous.
9:43 Speaker 01 Well, yes, in his voice, but he was staring at them while he was on the stand too. When they walked in, he would stare at them during breaks. He would stare at them when he spoke. He would like look to them. Oftentimes he would look forward, but there were other times where he would speak directly to the jurors. And sometimes like he had more of like a approachable face and then other times it was just deadpanned. And I was like, buddy, what are you doing?
10:08 Speaker 00 Probably freaking the fuck out. I mean, that's what I would be doing. Can you imagine like the sheer amount of like, okay, Jackie, are you an anxious person by nature?
10:17 Speaker 01 Sometimes, depending on the situation.
10:19 Speaker 00 Fair enough. I'm more endiantly anxious. The idea of being a high profile trial like this, when I'm the person in the dock, oh my gosh. I would be talking eight billion miles an hour, tripping over myself and pissing myself, I think.
10:33 Speaker 01 I mean, he is human at the end of the day and I think that's what he's trying to play on as well, so.
10:38 Speaker 00 Well, trying to come across as human. I mean, that's tough.
10:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:41 Speaker 00 I think in a setting like that, when you can't, it's not designed to make you look super pitiable, I don't think.
10:47 Speaker 01 And I've said this in the past, but it's like a marathon and it's an endurance game. I hope I never have to play because I can't imagine sitting on a stand for hours and hours and hours and you can't mess up anything you say or you're not supposed to lie.
11:02 Speaker 00 Right.
11:03 Speaker 01 Because who's to say with what's going on here? But it's hard. It's really hard.
11:08 Speaker 00 So the jury's there, so it's Friday and they're watching this go down. Any notes on the jury themselves? Like are they fidgety? Are they jittery? Do they want to cry? Because they've been there for a while.
11:19 Speaker 01 So I expected more from the jury today. I expected more reactions. They laughed at a few jokes that the whole room laughed at. They really didn't show any facial reactions to anything Sam was saying. And many of them did not take notes at all today. Like, in the past, I've seen jurors take a lot of notes. And some of them had their notebooks out, but they didn't write anything. So.
11:43 Speaker 00 So I feel like you're leading me towards the conclusion that you are leaving unsaid there. So how do you read that particular lack of note taking, Jackie?
11:50 Speaker 01 I feel like they want to follow his mannerisms and like actually pay attention, but at the same time, it seems like they don't want to write down anything he has to say, which I was really surprised by. And yeah.
12:02 Speaker 00 What do you take from that? You're almost, you almost said it.
12:05 Speaker 01 I don't want to say it, but I take that they probably don't buy anything he's saying. And they don't care. They've already made up their minds is how it feels. And I think maybe they'll be a little bit nicer, but it's like a lot of the things Sam has said has already been, you know, counter argued in earlier testimonies.
12:22 Speaker 00 Yeah.
12:23 Speaker 01 There was one part where they talked about Alameda, quote, borrowing money is how he refers to things. And instead of saying that Alameda took FTX customer funds, he's saying they borrowed it and they would give it back later. And it was all these things. And it's just like, he said that there was no rules against FTX doing this. But in earlier testimonies, we literally saw the terms of service that said FTX can't do this. So.
12:51 Speaker 00 Hmm. Interesting. It's almost like some things here, much like the FTX balance sheet, aren't adding up.
12:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's definitely interesting. And there were, there are some fun parts of the testimony too, or just like humorous bits. They talked about how when they were looking at sponsorships and partnerships back when FTX was still a thing, they brought up the Miami Dade Heat Arena that they bought for $135 million deal.
13:17 Speaker 00 The naming rights for it.
13:18 Speaker 01 The naming rights. Yeah, exactly. And when they asked like, why Miami, why this amount, whatever, he said, he thought it would be good to get their name on a sports arena. He said. That's really good branding and a lot of people pay attention to those types of things. And so he had his marketing team find which arenas were available for naming rights. Cause you know, a lot of them last for so many years, you can't just go and say like, I want the city fields. Like Citi Field probably has that name forever. And so they found that there were four stadiums that were up for renaming. And one of them was the New Orleans Saints. The other was the Kansas City Chiefs, the Kansas City Royals, and then Miami Dade, Heat Arena. And apparently with the New Orleans Saints and the Kansas City Chiefs, they were already in talks.
14:03 Speaker 01 So they're like, we're not going to compete on that front. And then apparently with the Kansas City Royals, he said, no offense to Kansas City Royal fans, but we don't want to be known as the Kansas City Royals of crypto exchanges.
14:16 Speaker 00 Which is just Kansas City slander.
14:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. And, and you know, everyone laughed at that point and he like, he was smiling on the stand too. So it was just like funny little moments like that, you know?
14:26 Speaker 00 I want to loop back though to what's coming up in this because I've enjoyed very much watching this unfold. But where are we on the prosecution's question of Sam? Like, do they have more time ahead of them? Like, is it a lot that's coming up? Because that's going to be spicy as hell.
14:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, the fun thing about this is you never get a timeline. And even when they give you an estimated timeline, I think they always go over it. So the defense said they would take four to five hours in their prosecution of Sam. And today they started at 9:50 in the morning and they took the whole day. And I'm not going to do the simple math on that, but it's like seven hours already, maybe?
15:02 Speaker 00 That's a lot.
15:02 Speaker 01 With the lunch break and the little breaks they throw in between. And yeah, they're not done. They got to a lot. They covered a lot of ground, but they're going to go into Monday. And then God knows how long the prosecutors are going to stay with Sam. In the past, they had Gary Wong, Caroline Ellison, and the Shad Singh on the stand for roughly like a day and a half, each of them. So those were people who pleaded guilty.
15:26 Speaker 00 Yeah.
15:26 Speaker 01 And they were part of the FTX Alameda inner circle shebang. But this is like the quote unquote head honcho, the mega don. So. Might be a bit longer and they basically said at the end of trial today that they expected to go to like the end of the week and the judge said if we have to do Friday, we'll do Friday because it's typically only four days a week. But he's like, I want to get this done with.
15:47 Speaker 00 Yeah. So I have a really silly question and this is going back to my, I'm a country bumpkin on the legal circuit. So don't judge me too harshly, but
15:54 Speaker 01 We all are.
15:55 Speaker 00 Sam got a dress rehearsal answering questions from his own team.
15:59 Speaker 01 Right.
16:00 Speaker 00 And then today on Friday, once again, he was answering from his own team and it doesn't sound like he did that well answering questions from his own crew. So when the prosecution takes over, oh Lord.
16:11 Speaker 01 Mm hmm. For what it's worth, I think he did well because it was, he was well prepped.
16:15 Speaker 00 Okay.
16:16 Speaker 01 And he knew how to answer the questions properly, but he did go on a lot of monologues. Like if I asked you, Alex, where do you work? You would tell me, I work at TechCrunch, but he would say, I work at TechCrunch and then go on for like another 30, 40 seconds about things that he just wanted to throw in. He wanted to get on the record, you know?
16:33 Speaker 00 So like instead of saying, I work at TechCrunch, I would say, well, I've worked at a variety of media companies in my life and across different roles and so forth. Now currently I do have a main gig, but I also have other ideas and interests in my mind.
16:42 Speaker 01 Prosecutors would say objection. And then he would sustain it and it would be like, answer the question. I think Sam showed his personality and I think for what it's worth, he did a good job. The defense was doing their role of making Sam look as if he wasn't as responsible as the prosecutors are making him out to be.
17:02 Speaker 00 Well, we will see the other side of that particular coin coming up.
17:06 Speaker 01 Yes.
17:06 Speaker 00 Couple more weeks of this. How are you holding up personally? Like, I mean, are you, I've never had to assign someone to a multi-month trial before. So like, I don't know. Are you just like really sick of like the smell of the courtroom at this point?
17:19 Speaker 01 You know, it's funny because in the first couple of weeks in the courtroom, we were allowed to talk when they were at sidebar or like whisper to each other or look at each other's notes to like, you know, make sure we all got the same numbers. Like when you're sitting next to other reporters and it's just gotten so, so strict. Like today, I got yelled at. I'll be honest, I got yelled at because they thought I was talking. And they're like, if we catch you talking again, we're gonna send you out. And in my head, I'm like, I wasn't talking, but you can't fight them. And it's just, I think the energy has become very sucked out. But at the same time, everyone's so excited because it's Sam. But literally, there is like, no speaking, complete silence for everyone, not just the media and the public,
18:03 Speaker 01 but like even his parents, they're not allowed to whisper. Like, they could totally get yelled at if they did. And on that note, yeah.
18:09 Speaker 00 Who yells at you? Is it the bailiff?
18:11 Speaker 01 The security guard.
18:13 Speaker 00 Is that the bailiff?
18:14 Speaker 01 And then he apologized to me afterwards, so.
18:17 Speaker 00 Well, that's nice. We had a friend in court.
18:18 Speaker 01 Well, no, no, I think, you know, I think he had to yell at someone to show the judge he was doing his job and like.
18:23 Speaker 00 Why did he pick you? Hey, this is media publication discrimination. Yeah, no picking on Jackie. Go pick on someone else.
18:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, but I also want to point out that yesterday, after Sam had his two witnesses, one of the two witnesses, who was a bohemian attorney that he worked with after FTX collapsed, came up basically towards the front of the stand, like there's a barrier so you can't cross over. And she went over to like wave at him. That was the first time I've ever seen him smile, like with his teeth. He smiled, he waved, he was like, oh my God, like it's so nice to see you, whatever. And then his parents were smiling, like everyone seemed happy with the way the hearing testimony, or well, I guess that was the actual testimony, that was pre-hearing testimony. And then today, Sam's dad smiled to the whole galley of people at one point. And it was very strange. So I think they also feel positively about how things are going for him.
19:14 Speaker 00 Well, in a sense, this is their moment to shine. This is them asking him the questions, trying to get their side of the story on the books and in the minds of the jurors, and hopefully into their notebooks for later perusal. But it's gonna flip around, because he's gonna be on the stand and gonna take questions from the other side of things, so.
19:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how the prosecutors go about everything. Like even little bits where it's not that significant, but it paints a picture of like who Sam is. Like they were talking about how much FTX raised, and he was going through all the funding rounds they've done. And first of all, He was kind of off the mark with some of the numbers. He was like, oh yeah, we were at like this valuation when that wasn't the correct valuation. It's like, surely you know your valuation. He said they had a $40 billion valuation at the end and they didn't. It was below that. And then he also said, one of the rounds was 500 million. And that round was actually 420.69 million, which was a joke round. It wasn't a joke, but it was a meme fueled round, giving a shout out to 420 and 69.
20:14 Speaker 01 And he purposely did not say that in front of the judge and the jury. And he just rounded up to 500.
20:20 Speaker 00 That's not rounding up, that's lying. You round down, that's how rounding works. Or you just round to 420 or a little more than 400 million or less than 450.
20:28 Speaker 01 I think it was like 500 million.
20:30 Speaker 00 Okay, Jackie, let's be totally honest here for a second. Given the way.
20:34 Speaker 01 Surely he knows what his funding rounds were.
20:36 Speaker 00 No, I was gonna say, given how this all worked out for FTX and his money management skills. Maybe he was being honest. Maybe he thought it was 500. Maybe that's where 80 million went.
20:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, right. He can't remember the round that he basically made a joke out of.
20:50 Speaker 00 I mean, I don't recall much when I spent on breakfast this morning. That's the same thing as getting 420 million and 500 million dollars mixed up.
20:56 Speaker 01 Yeah. A lot of the blame too, he kind of just said he wasn't involved in some things and he found out about it later. And he was quote surprised by it.
21:05 Speaker 00 Yeah. So my read of this company, given how critical the inner cabal was, is that that is not going to fly. It's not like they were distributing lots of authority down. I mean, remember what the old FTX US CEO was saying about how like clearly there was like a set of decision makers? And then there was everyone else? You can't control power and arrogate all authority to yourself and then tell everyone else later on, you had no idea what's going on. You can have it one way or the other, but you can't have both.
21:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:32 Speaker 00 I think personally, my view, just my two cents.
21:34 Speaker 01 And like when Gary, Caroline and Ashad testified, a lot of their testimony was Sam directed me to do it. Sam told me to do it. And I'm sure that's part of their cooperation agreement. And I also think there's truth to that. Like he was the CEO and he had majority stake of Alameda and FTX. So his interest was always to basically have his thumb on the scale at all times.
21:55 Speaker 00 Yeah, well, if you're the majority shareholder and you're in charge, I mean, people might expect you to actually know what's going on at the company. Shockingly enough, I mean.
22:02 Speaker 01 And there was one point where he was like, oh, I stepped away from Alameda, but I still helped out with venture investments and hedging and other things. And it's like, so did you step away? You know, like he just got rid of the title? He wears many hats.
22:16 Speaker 00 Yeah, well, I mean, it turns out most of the time it makes you more employable, or in this case, possibly more culpable, which is not quite as much fun. All right, so we're gonna do this again next week. We'll hear from the prosecution. We'll get a lot more from you. I'm expecting three, five stories a day, probably next week. How's that sound?
22:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's all right. I don't need a life or anything. It's just gonna be trial 24/7. Yeah.
22:37 Speaker 00 I don't know. I'm kind of irked about all of this because going back to the 428.69 million dollar round, like, I don't know. Be serious.
22:45 Speaker 01 He made jokes, yeah. He made jokes like casual for important, quote unquote, serious companies. He also talked about like his clothing and stuff where they asked him like, "Why did you always wear t-shirts and cargo shorts?" He's like, "They were comfortable."
22:59 Speaker 00 That's valid.
23:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, I guess that's true. And then, but they asked, "Why was your hair always the way it was?" And he was like, "I just forgot to get haircuts."
23:06 Speaker 00 Again, very, I mean, very relatable.
23:09 Speaker 01 Which is a very common thing, yeah.
23:10 Speaker 00 The only good, the only thing that I think Sam did well was he really did bring slacker casual to the apex of political and economic society. The reason why I don't find it humorous that they raised that meme round and so forth and are kind of acting like, "Oh, gosh, who knew what was going on?" It's because they took a lot of money from folks. And that involves in me, in my mind, a lot of fiduciary responsibility. And if you want to be a fuck-up, open a lemonade stand, you know? Like, don't, don't go into international finance and try to like invest in a lot, just...
23:41 Speaker 01 Hey, my lemonade stands were profitable and like FTX, okay?
23:44 Speaker 00 Oh! Actually, well, that means that they were much more a viable business and they probably would have lasted longer, too. And didn't have to register in the Cayman Islands. Bahamas, whatever, yeah. All right, well, Jackie, let's get you some rest because you've been fantastic and an absolute legend on this beat. And I guess we'll just do it all again next week.
24:02 Speaker 01 Yep, let's do it. Thanks for talking with me about it.
24:04 Speaker 00 Dude, my pleasure.
24:06 Speaker 01 We'll be back next week with conversations around what's going on in the wild world of Web 3 with top players in the crypto ecosystem. You can keep up with us on Spotify, Apple Music, or your favorite pod platform and subscribe to our companion newsletter, also called Chain Reaction. Links to the newsletter and stories we talked about can be found in our show notes, and be sure to follow us at @chain_reaction on Twitter.
24:29 Speaker 01 Chain Reaction is hosted by myself, Jaclyn Melanick, and produced by Maggie Stamets, with assistance from Yashad Kokarni and editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our illustrator, and Henry Pickavet manages TechCrunch audio products. Thanks for listening in. See you next time.
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