#1133 Frank Chaparro On The FTX Fallout

Frank Chaparro is the Editor at Large at The Block. In this conversation, we discuss the FTX aftermath, the crypto contagion, Frank's soul searching after interviewing SBF multiple times, and what he expects to happen in the crypto industry going forward ======================= Valour (formerly DeFi Technologies) represents what’s next in the digital economy -- providing simplified, trusted access to crypto, decentralized finance and Web 3.0 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. Currently listed on U. S. (OTC: DEFTF) and Canadian (NEO:DEFI) exchanges. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit our website at valour.com ======================= With a Messari Pro subscription, you gain access to exclusive industry-leading long-form daily research reports, daily crypto news & insights in your inbox, advanced asset screeners, curated sets of charts and metrics and so much more. Try Messari Pro today! Get up to 25% off their Messari Pro membership by visiting www.messari.io/pro and entering promo code "POMP" at checkout. ======================= Exodus is leading the world out of the traditional financial system by building beautiful and user-friendly blockchain products. With its focus on design and user experience, Exodus has become one of the most popular and loved cryptocurrency apps. It’s supported on both desktop and mobile, allowing you to sync your wallet across multiple devices so you can have access to your funds anywhere. You can instantly exchange around 100 different cryptocurrencies straight from your wallet. Interactive charts let you view an asset’s price history and your portfolio’s performance over time. And maybe the best part, Exodus is integrated with the Trezor hardware wallet - making advanced security easy for everyone. Visit exodus.com/pomp for your free download or search Exodus on the App Store or Playstore. ======================= This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. The Eight Sleep Pod is a tech layer that fits onto your mattress like a fitted sheet. The Pod dynamically cools and heats each side of the bed, to maintain the optimal sleeping temperature for what your body needs. With the Pod, you can start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. The result: Clinical data shows that Eight Sleep users experience up to 34% more deep sleep. Go to eightsleep.com/pomp for exclusive holiday savings and ring in the most wonderful time of night. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. ======================= The number one name in NFT domains and the world’s most powerful wallet are teaming up to bring something new to the crypto and Web3 world: That’s right, Unstoppable Domains and Blockchain.com partnered to create NFT domain names ending in . Blockchain. It’s the perfect ending to show that you’re a believer in a decentralized future. The Blockchain.com community can get one, for free by signing up for the waitlist here. Free NFT domains provide all the benefits of premium Unstoppable Domains, including fee-free, lifelong ownership. Don’t have a Blockchain.com wallet? No worries, these new domains are available to everyone for as low as $5. Either sign up for a free blockchain.wallet or visit Unstoppabledomains.com to buy your domain today. ==================

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Frank Chaparro is the editor-at-large at The Block. In this conversation, we talk about FTX, the blowups in the crypto industry, why he's still doing so much soul searching after interviewing SBF six different times, what he thinks the industry is going to go through from a change perspective, and how Frank thinks that I screwed up. No, just kidding, but that part is good, too. All right, here's my episode and conversation with the amazing Frank Chaparro. Before we get into this episode with Frank, I want to tell you about our sponsors.

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by Valor, which represents what's next in the digital economy. They provide simplified trusted access in crypto, decentralized finance, and Web 3 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, all through a single-stock purchase on a regulated exchange. They currently are listed in the US under the DEFTF stock ticker and on the Canadian NEO exchange under DEFI. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit their website at valour.com. That's V-A-L-O-U-R dot com. This episode is brought to you by Messari. Your days of spending hours scouring the

• 1:28Anthony Pompliano?

  internet for quality crypto insights are over. Messari is your one-stop-shop for all your crypto data and research needs. With Messari Pro, you can gain access to exclusive, industry-leading, long-form, daily research reports, daily crypto news, advanced asset screeners, and curated sets of charts and protocol metrics. If you try Messari Pro today, listeners of the Pomp Podcast can get up to 25% off their Messari Pro membership by visiting www.messari.io/pomp or enter promo code POMP at checkout. That's www.messari.io/pomp and use promo code POMP. This episode is brought to you by X-It Is. Web 3 across multiple networks just got a hell of a lot easier.

• 2:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Exodus is one of the most popular crypto wallets for mobile and desktop, and they just added Chrome and Brave web browsers to the lineup. The new Exodus Web 3 Wallet is a multi-chain browser extension that lets you safely navigate Web 3 and DeFi apps on Ethereum, Solana, and Algorand from one wallet. Manage MINT and sell NFTs on multiple networks in one wallet. You can swap Solana and ETH tokens natively right within the extension. And if you ever hit a snag, world-class customer service is available 24/7. More of your favorite chains are on the way, so run, don't walk, over to exodus.com/pomp to download the Exodus Web 3 Wallet right now. Again, exodus.com/pomp. Go check them out today. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep.

• 2:56Anthony Pompliano?

  The holiday season is here, so give the never-ending gift of deeper sleep. About two years ago, I started to sleep on the Eight Sleep, and I sleep on it every single night. It quite literally changed my life. I get deeper and better sleep, but don't just listen to me. Clinical data shows that Eight Sleep users experience up to 34% more deep sleep. It is not a holiday miracle, even though it sounds like one. If better sleep is on your wish list, look no further than the new Pod 3. Go to eightsleep.com/pomp for exclusive holiday savings and ring in the most wonderful time of the year. Eight Sleep currently ships with the US, Canada, the UK, and select countries in the EU and Australia. Go check them out, eightsleep.com/pomp today. This episode is brought to you by Unstoppable Domains. They've partnered with blockchain.com

• 3:40Anthony Pompliano?

  to create NFT domain names ending in .blockchain. It's the perfect ending to show that you're a believer in a decentralized future. The blockchain.com community can join a short waitlist to get one for free at blockchain.com/waitlist/blockchaindomain. Free NFT domains provide all the benefits of premium unstoppable domains, including fee-free lifelong ownership. If you don't have a blockchain.com wallet, no worries. There's new free domains available to everyone. Either join the waitlist for a free blockchain.com domain or visit unstoppabledomains.com to buy your domain today, starting as low as $5. Unstoppabledomains.com

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 4:42Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Frank here, the third best podcaster in all of the Bitcoin crypto world. I'm the first. Peter McCormick is second. You're a third. Fair?

• 4:51Speaker 02

  I think that that's debatable, but it's your show, so I can't argue with you.

• 4:55Anthony Pompliano?

  When I come on yours, you say you're first.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  I'll say I'm first and you'll be, you'll be second. I'll actually give you a spot above Peter.

• 5:01Anthony Pompliano?

  That's perfect. All right. There's all kinds of stuff going on. I figured you'd be the perfect person to talk about the events that have transpired, but then also we can kind of go back and forth, ask some questions, whatever. First, what's your read on the whole FTX situation? Like, how did this happen?

• 5:16Speaker 02

  How did this happen? I mean,

• 5:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Tell us everything.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  That's a loaded question. Well, where can we start? We can start with the fact that clearly there were a lot of things that were going on behind the scenes that gave us sort of, there were like little morsels of evidence, if we can use that word.

• 5:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Going to the fact that there were these two firms that were very intertwined and we all kind of knew that that was a little strange, but we never kind of pulled the thread. I think a lot of people asked questions about it. So that was one factor. It turns out that they were very intertwined, not only intertwined, but FTX, or rather Alameda was able to leverage the customer deposits on FTX to some, in some shape or form. It could have been a backdoor that Sam created. He claims he did not. He claims he can't even code. It could have been just the fact that Alameda was just borrowing from FTX based on the deposits there. So clearly that relationship, which a lot of people thought

• 6:18Speaker 02

  was suspect, was in fact. But even just, I think, like what I've been thinking about the last few weeks. Is just how bizarre it was for a firm to kind of grow in the way it did and have the presence that it did, right? $130 million arena deal with Miami Heat, you know, million dollar properties in the Bahamas. I mean, they literally, Sam literally had restaurants there stay open 24/7 and serve just vegan food for him. He racked up a $55,000 bill at the Margaritaville. So, a lot of these things, and that's factual, that's in the

• 7:00Speaker 02

  bankruptcy filings, a lot of these things in hindsight, it's like, actually, yeah, that stuff was weird. And we were talking about this before we turned on the mic. I asked a lot of these questions, poked at especially the relationship between these two firms. But in hindsight, I think we didn't fully get to it. And it wasn't until we had that that silver bullet, as it were, the balance sheet that brought the entire house of cards to its knees. And it's funny to sort of see, or it's not funny, it's unfortunate, but

• 7:39Speaker 02

  it is, it's, it's interesting that, for me at least, in hindsight, it makes sense that it was all kind of just a bunch of forgazy.

• 7:53Anthony Pompliano?

  So, I have a couple of questions. One is, assuming that what happened was Alameda had access to customer deposits, which I, again, it's alleged, but like, I think a lot of people believe that is the case. If they'd never touched the customer funds, would the business have been as big? Like, could it have been true in terms of how profitable they were, how much capital they raised, like all these things? And it was actually like, this one thing that they did brought it all down, but it would have been one of the great stories of entrepreneurship and kind of business creation if they never actually crossed fund, customer deposits over Alameda?

• 8:35Speaker 02

  And this is the Rubicon, which you should never cross, right?

• 8:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  In capital markets, this is the biggest no-no.

• 8:41Anthony Pompliano?

  It was, they also appear to have told, again, I went back and I read some of the user kind of terms of service. They say don't touch the funds.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  They said they don't touch the funds in the Terms of Service. They said it to me in interviews. They said it to regulators in conversations. Sam told me he told regulators that there are these strict walls between the two firms. So, yes, they were, that was erroneous. But to get to the heart of your question, which I think is deeply fascinating, is

• 9:15Speaker 02

  what could have happened here? And there's two possible scenarios, right? The first of which is it was a strong business. Alameda was printing money, doing very well as a trading firm. And then things slipped up around Terra Luna. And they had to think fast, act fast, and they made a decision to maybe borrow too much from their sister company. Or the worst-case scenario, scenario, actually tap into those funds to win it all back, as it were. That's sort of like, that's one possible situation. The other situation is, and this is where, and I talked to him about this on my show at the beginning of, or rather, at the end of last year, the 2019 story.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  And it seemed very conspiratorial at the time, because it was so outlandish.

• 10:06Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the story?

• 10:06Speaker 02

  The story was that Alameda was a trading firm that made a really

• 10:14Speaker 02

  outsized bet and did well on the kimchi trade of sort of arbing between the Western exchanges and the, and the ones in Korea, South Korea, because there was this huge premium because of capital restrictions, capital outflow restrictions in that country. And so they made it big, and then there were, there were trades that went bust. And Alameda was like in a really bad position. And so they effectively launched FTX as a way to fill a hole that Alameda had. So. Going back to what I was saying before, it either was something that the sort of turn

• 10:54Speaker 02

  of events happened either very, you know, recently, within the past six months stemming from that original capital or credit crisis that the crypto market saw, or this is a much longer story, a much more insidious story that stems back to the origin of FTX and Alameda.

• 11:12Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you think it is?

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Well, here's the thing, like, we don't necessarily have, and I don't have the facts, per se, or evidence, there are sources I've talked to within Alameda who said that this backdoor, or at least this relationship between the firms have existed since the beginning. It's hard in this market, right, to kind of discern what people's motives are, what their intentions are, and whether or not they're speaking badly about someone because of their own book, as it were. So it's difficult to say. We're going to find out a lot of interesting things in the coming days, and weeks, and months, and it's going to be, and then years afterwards.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  So it's difficult to say, but if I were to, if I were to have a gun held to my head...

• 12:05Anthony Pompliano?

  No guns here, but go ahead.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Good. I'm safe. My head is safe. I would, I think that it's been just completely mismanaged from the beginning. I think that, you know, there's a possibility of fraud, at least with respect to a misrepresentation to regulators. Let's put attentions aside, they don't really matter, right? They don't really, intentions don't really matter. People were hurt and lied to. And so that's where you can possibly run into some issues. And he, I mean, there was misrepresentations. I mean, even going back to the 2019 story that we first reported on FTX's launch, Sam said to us that they would, he would imminently step down as CEO of Alameda. He didn't do that till the end of 2021.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  So there was nothing imminent about that. He also said that they were doing in 2021, there were GAAP audits that showed the the financial stability of the business. John Ray, the current CEO, paints a very wildly different story of a lack of financial controls, a lack of basically everything you would expect from a business that's acting quasi as a shadow bank. There was nothing. I mean, they were approving, you know, expenses via via Slack emojis. And you know what is, you know, if any other company was doing that, it would just be egregious. Like, we would have maybe picked up on it a bit more.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  But what they did so masterfully was really throw a bunch of glitter into our eyes, if you think about it, right, with with with the sponsorship deals, with just the je ne sais quoi that was his bizarre.

• 13:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Did they ever send you?

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Aesthetic.

• 13:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Do they ever send you guys balance sheets or anything as like reporters?

• 13:58Speaker 02

  We never, we never got any sort of balance sheet from them.

• 14:01Anthony Pompliano?

  So no balance sheets, but also then like, what about like GAAP financials or audits or anything like that?

• 14:06Speaker 02

  So they told us that they had, they had those. And at the end of 2021, they said they were going to be releasing the GAAP financials for 2022, I think, or rather, in 2022, they were going to release 2021.

• 14:20Anthony Pompliano?

  They never did.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  They, I don't know. Here's the other thing that I've been reflecting on. I don't know if we never, we never got them. But I also think so much was happening post COVID. And I spoke to Vanity Fair about this. The go-go era of crypto without the proper like controls and like self regulation or outside regulation from from regulators, I think, allowed the market to kind of get out of control. And, you know, when you have and now, and maybe this is part of their strategy, they were announcing things every week. So as a reporter, let's say you were on the FTX beat, it's very hard to sort of sit back and think, okay.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  What, what is weird here? Like, we'd ask the questions, but to go deeper because they were constantly putting out information where we're opening up an office in Chicago. We'd have the Miami Heat deal. We're moving to Bahamas now. We're working with the Bahamian government on there. And they inundated the market with all this information. And in hindsight, it's reasonable to think that there was a strategic element there to distract while they fixed or, or, or did something else. But these are some of the things I've been, I've been reflecting on. And there, there are a lot of, lot of strange, strange stuff, right? Like even thinking about the effect of altruism. That is probably the one thing

• 15:49Speaker 02

  I would kick myself about is, you know, going to crypto Bahamas and seeing the, you know, where they lived, right?

• 15:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you go to the apartment?

• 16:00Speaker 02

  Not his apartment, but I, I sort of, you know, did a tour day, day Nassau, as it were. And, I mean, this is, this is luxury. This isn't, you know, they weren't living like Talmudic monks, right? Like this is, this is very antithetical to the sort of, I drive a Corolla mantra that, that was put out there. And I, I wish that I kind of picked up on that a little bit more. And what I thought at the time was almost, okay, like, you know, people make a lot of money in crypto. Let's say they're all living together. It makes sense that they would go all in or sort of split the, the costs, right? And, you know, if it's a $10 million house and 10 million, 10 people live in it, it's a million

• 16:44Speaker 02

  dollar house. It wouldn't, a million dollar house doesn't raise eyebrows, especially in this market, right? So that's kind of how I thought about it. But in hindsight, definitely, definitely is a bit peculiar, given the sort of effective altruism and humility that underpinned a lot of the marketing.

• 17:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think he's going to get in trouble? Or do you think that it'll be like a whoops, made a mistake? And?

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Well, he's definitely painting the, the story as a whoops, I made a mistake. That's the toughest question, right? I mean, because there's a very fine line between mismanagement, being

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Incapable of properly running a company and fraud, right? I believe that, you know, even in 2008, there was a lot of bad management. No one went to jail, right, except for that one guy who like, you know, misappropriated Goldman Sachs's proprietary trading algorithms, data, or whatever it was. And then you have Elizabeth Holmes, who is going to jail for 11 years. So I think on both sides, you, or rather, in both instances, you would say, people did things bad, but it doesn't necessarily translate into that sort of corporal punishment necessarily.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Does he get in trouble generally, like in a very like, deep sense? Yeah, I think he's in, he's in pretty big trouble.

• 18:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, he's in trouble, but I mean, like, I guess in the most extreme jail time, right? Barred from the financial industry, like you can kind of go down the line. There's a bunch of punishments that historically have been levied against.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  I mean, John Corzine didn't spend a day in jail for MF Global, and they're similar. Again, whereas Elizabeth Holmes, right, like, basically lied to her investors and she's spending quite a bit of time in jail.

• 18:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  And lied to regulators, I believe.

• 18:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What about the relationship between the Bahamas and the United States? Because I would have thought, pre this event, the United States and the Bahamas are friendly. If something happens that involves a US citizen or US customers, whatever, the Bahamas basically would say, hey, you guys are the United States, like, do your thing. But I saw a letter that was sent from like, the Bohemian security regulators. They were like, this is a Bohemian incident. You don't have jurisdiction here, basically, is what they were saying. And that surprised me. Is that, should I have been surprised? Maybe do I am not educated and didn't understand that that's the position they would take? Or what did you think about that?

• 19:19Speaker 02

  I wasn't surprised because the way that these bankruptcy proceedings work, oftentimes you have disputes between jurisdictions, especially ones that are playing a shell game, right? So I wouldn't be surprised if you see other jurisdictions try to sort of step up to the plate and carve out their part of the pie. With the Bahamas in particular, if I were to speculate. This is deeply personal, right? It's, well, what I mean by that is it's, it hits home for them in a unique way, right? It's a country of 400,000 people and they really went in there and, and usurped a lot

• 20:02Speaker 02

  of like, energy, right? There was the conference that they had. They, I mean, this is, this is a rumor. I'm going to share it because it's funny. I don't know if this is true and I hope, I hope, you know, folks forgive me for, for-

• 20:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Caveatting a rumor.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  I am, but it's a funny rumor. It's not, it's not illicit or anything, so I'm going to share it. There's a story apparently, early on when they first moved down there, Sam got all the employees to the Bahamas and so there's 100 of them and they rang up one of the local burrito places and asked for 100 burritos by lunchtime. And the restaurant was, you know, they weren't, they weren't annoyed, they were just confused and said, "We literally do not have the manpower to make that many burritos." Or, or not even the manpower, but the sort of like-

• 20:52Anthony Pompliano?

  The ingredients.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  The ingredients and like the, the, the infrastructure, capital infrastructure, infrastructure to do it. So he bought them like three more ovens or something so that they could like, or stoves so that they could produce as many burritos as needed for the FTX staff. And apparently there's another restaurant where they, he basically paid them to stay open 24/7 and offer vegan alternatives. So they really went in there and kind of like changed a bit of the fabric of the society. And, and in the aftermath of this, I think, these regulators and these government officials, like, they know how deeply impacted their constituents are. In a way that, sure, millions of Americans were impacted, but-

• 21:38Speaker 02

  I think there was a stat that like it was projected or expected that FTX contributed to 10% of the Bahamian GDP.

• 21:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  So that's, I mean, I, I'm not surprised that they're trying to, you know, puff their chest, right, to at least show, or at least exert their authority over something that so deeply was interwoven with the fabric of their small, with, with a smaller island nation.

• 22:08Anthony Pompliano?

  I went to the Bahamas once for an interview. Do you know this?

• 22:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 22:11Anthony Pompliano?

  With who? Uh, not with Sam. Uh, SBF and FTX were not there. Uh, I went and I interviewed John McAfee on his boat.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  Really?

• 22:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  Is that that infamous picture of you and his, and his wife?

• 22:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Me, John and his wife with, uh, they have guns and I do not.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  So you know what's funny is I actually downloaded, I got Snapchat again. And I had John's number from 2017.

• 22:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  I called him a few times. You know, God rest his soul. And I-

• 22:40Anthony Pompliano?

  This coin of the day? That's what he was doing back then?

• 22:43Speaker 02

  That's what, that was the good old days, but I opened Snapchat and it's like John McAfee's Snapchat, because it kind of loads your contacts. But I guess his number has gone to some kid who's like, you know?

• 22:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Who's like uploading stuff?

• 22:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, like this kid, you know, he doesn't know who's-

• 22:59Anthony Pompliano?

  You have no clue.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  You have no clue. This man.

• 23:02Anthony Pompliano?

  This man. Uh, yeah, but I, I do remember, like, uh, I have a picture. Uh, what you made me think of is, uh, so I went, uh, one of my brothers came with me and, uh, he told us where we were. And we got there and like, you know, I'm no fool. I, uh, gotta make sure that everything is, uh, on the up and up before I go walk onto some dude's boat who I know has a bunch of guns. So we kind of got there a little early and I went and I sat and there was like a bar, uh, that kind of overlooking the like harbor or whatever.

• 23:32Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, and as I was sitting there, I saw a big ass wood sign and had the name of the place on it. And I walked down and across the top, they put a second sign, like a nicely made sign to the same quality as the original sign. And it said, "Home of John McAfee."

• 23:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And I remember thinking like, how much business has he brought to this little bar?

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 23:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Now, it wasn't 10% of the GP or anything like that.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, but like.

• 24:00Anthony Pompliano?

  That was one man.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 24:02Anthony Pompliano?

  This is a whole company that was worth, you know, supposedly $32 billion that basically did the exact same thing on a way bigger scale.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  And six months ago, or however many months ago, we're breaking ground on a 1,000 person office. So.

• 24:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Did they actually break ground? Like, were they building it?

• 24:17Speaker 02

  They, you know, the, you know, where they kind of throw the dirt over.

• 24:21Anthony Pompliano?

  But they were, but they were in the motion of doing it.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  The ceremony. Is there a word for that? I don't know. Like the.

• 24:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Breaking ground.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Breaking ground, yeah.

• 24:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Cutting the ribbon, I think, also.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. But no, they hadn't laid that foundational, the cornerstone, right?

• 24:35Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think of this whole situation, what's the like, single most surprising part? Is it just that, like, it happened? Or is there something where you're like, I cannot believe this detail?

• 24:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Because there's a lot of them.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  It's all of the details, right? I mean, you know, what's so funny is when I think back about like, FTX Alameda, the most egregious impropriety that I thought could be the case would have been that maybe Alameda like, could see the order book faster, could access FTX's market faster. You know, going back to like, the IEX sort of like, story of, you know, Flash Boys, where maybe FTX, or rather, Alameda had more, more visibility into the

• 25:29Speaker 02

  market that was FTX relative to other traders. I couldn't possibly have imagined that Sam would have been so levered to the tits. I'll tell you, actually, the most surprising and upsetting, I think, fact is, is that he borrowed money, or took, rather, BlockFi customer funds, and that was borrowed by Alameda, which then, BlockFi, I mean, I don't think they would know. I mean, they borrowed it to Alameda, thinking that Alameda would use it for trading strategies. Alameda then lent that out to an entity owned by Sam, which then bought his stake in Robinhood. I mean.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  I just couldn't imagine.

• 26:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Run that back again, say that again.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Sorry, yeah. So Sam, I guess a more clear way to put it, borrowed money from a shell company, which borrowed money from Alameda, which borrowed money from BlockFi. 300 something million dollars. And it was with that money, that levered money, with which he bought his 7% stake in Robinhood. It's fucking crazy.

• 26:46Anthony Pompliano?

  That is wild. I did not know that.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, that went out like a few days ago.

• 26:50Anthony Pompliano?

  That's your job to know that stuff?

• 26:53Speaker 02

  I mean, I just have to.

• 26:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Just come here. You're a wealth of knowledge.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just, you know.

• 26:57Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So what are you gonna do different? Because I think that you've like thought a lot about, how many times did you interview?

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Six times on the show, but I mean.

• 27:05Anthony Pompliano?

  But talked to him or other people at the company many times throughout the years?

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. You know what he was really good at? And he was very good at like speaking about a wide range of topics. So it kind of was almost like FTX at a certain point became boring. It was like, all right, they're growing their market share, whatever. But there's all this stuff happening in the market. Luna is melting down. There seems to be these credit issues. And so he was good about, Solana was growing, all these different ecosystems were growing. And so a lot of the conversations were about those topics. Like, what do you think about? What's your strategy for Serum? What's your opinion on sort of even what the Fed's doing, right? And he was so willing to opine on many of these, on these topics

• 27:52Speaker 02

  that it almost sort of distracted from the core business. So when I think about what I might, like what I think is important for all of us to do, for all of us to do is to, you know, without being abrasive, like ask really tough questions. I think, I think you really, your interview with CNBC, like they were really tough. And I think you like handled those tough questions well.

• 28:19Anthony Pompliano?

  But they weren't done in a malicious way? Where it was like, I'm gonna yell and scream, I'm gonna like.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 28:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Dunk on you or try to embarrass you, but they were like, I think I said, they're fair questions.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's no animus. So with the podcast, like

• 28:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Except for it was 20 minutes?

• 28:35Speaker 02

  It was long. That was a long.

• 28:37Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't think I was, I needed like IV after that. Like 20 minutes on national television and like the heat's on, started sweating.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's tough. I think just in general, like I always, I've always viewed my job over the past, you know, I've been doing this for not that long, seven years, as kind of being a conduit for investors and clients of these companies that I cover and ask the questions that they would ask if they had the opportunity to sit across from somebody. I'm gonna, I think we need, I need to be a little bit meaner, a little bit more.

• 29:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. It's a good question, right? Because people accuse me all the time of softball interviews, all this stuff, right? And one, one of them, I had, uh, uh, let's see a good example. I had Chris Larson on the podcast and I don't think him nor I were confused that like we didn't see eye to eye on some things, but it was like a, I want to ask you these questions so that I can get the answers, other people can get the answers. And then like, people will decide what they want to decide, but like answer the questions. To his credit, he said, yeah, sure, let's do it. So he got on. I don't think I asked easy questions. Like I was like, hey, you realize that there's no one person in the world who could change the code of Bitcoin, right? And he was like, well,

• 29:54Anthony Pompliano?

  yeah, which contradicted what had publicly been said in the change the code kind of initiative. But there was other things that he explained and kind of elaborated on that people had read that maybe his view wasn't nearly as egregious as they had previously thought or whatever. And so I've always approached it as just like, it's important to have conversations with the people you agree with and the people you disagree with. And by the way, it's not like I walked out of that conversation or he walked out of that conversation and was like, oh, I changed my mind. But still getting the information is important. And so I think part of it is like, if you're an asshole to everyone, people don't talk to you.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  That's the thing. Yeah.

• 30:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 30:31Speaker 02

  So it's striking that fine balance.

• 30:33Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you find the balance? And I think to your point, like you can ask tough questions in a nice way and some people may not be able to realize that that's actually a tough question.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Because like, oh, they, he did it with a smile.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Or they're, they're laughing. But like, if you had said, hey Sam, where'd you get the money for buying 7% of Robinhood? Like, that's a pretty direct question and either he answers it or he doesn't. And almost in some way, a non-answer is telling you. Detail?

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 31:01Anthony Pompliano?

  To pay attention to?

• 31:02Speaker 02

  I mean, what I am, I'm very, I'm very proud that we did, at least as a firm, we did ask these questions. We've been asking them for years, but you always want to be, you always want to be better. So I just wish we asked them instead of on a like twice a year basis, like an every week basis.

• 31:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but like we were talking earlier and so when all this news broke, somebody on Twitter, of course, is like, you guys are all fucking morons, like you idiots.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, how'd you not know?

• 31:32Anthony Pompliano?

  That either interviewed these people or they were the US-based entity at FTX, worked with our media business as an advertiser, as did a bunch of other companies. And they were like, how did you not know? And I was like, well, what question would you have liked us to ask? And this genius slash smart ass said, you should have asked if they were taking FTX customer deposits, lending it to their hedge fund, who was then posting it as collateral, getting leverage and then buying risky assets. Okay, interesting combination of things you want to put together there in that question with hindsight. And if I asked them, then they just said, no, what are you gonna do?

• 32:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so like to your guys' point, like even if you ask the questions, if somebody just says, no, we don't do that, and it turns out they do do that,

• 32:24Anthony Pompliano?

  how, what is the expectation? How could you have known? Right? And that's what becomes kind of hard.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  It's an interesting question. I mean, and I think it forces us to, it forces people in a position like, like your position to maybe scale back from certain folks. I mean, I remember when we started the block, one thing that we, we sort of decided not to do because of how many people got burnt by the ICOs was not do any advertising with any sort of ICO company.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  Of course, token projects have come, you know, into the market that are far more legitimate. And so, you know, are probably would make folks more comfortable to, to take their ad dollars. And we're kind of, well, maybe we'll see something similar with these centralized crypto brokers and retail platforms where maybe we won't, it'll be, we'll think twice, or we'll think three times, or ask more questions. Not, I mean, I agree with, with your point that like, yes, you can be lied to, but maybe, you know, folks in media will look for other opportunities that are outside this more retail facing realm. Maybe, you know, Athletic Greens, which is a sponsor of my podcast.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  Or other brands of that.

• 33:45Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm an investor in Athletic Greens.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Are you really?

• 33:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  This is very incestuous.

• 33:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Go ahead.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  I hope they're not stealing, I hope they're not stealing customer funds. Well, the only thing they're stealing is my 30 minutes of my morning where I enjoy delicious Athletic Greens and it gets me ready for the day.

• 34:02Anthony Pompliano?

  No, one of the things, though, I do think is, it's something we're actively thinking through. I don't know kind of how we're going to deal with it. It is different, though, when you're like, hey, there's a product that is advertising. Like, you give your money to Athletic Greens or Eight Sleep, which everyone loves to give you shit about.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Why, why do they, why do they give you such a charge? But it's important, like, the market, the market changed.

• 34:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Eight Sleep was started by two of my best friends, right? Literally two of my best friends. I'm an investor in the business. I've helped them for a long time, all this stuff. And some of it was timing, like, all this stuff starts happening, whatever. But also, we had made a video.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:41Anthony Pompliano?

  For social media or whatever. And that's just me, hey, I sleep on Eight Sleep. I've talked about it. I ad nauseam, talked about this for years, right? How much? I'm like, I love this product. And so we made this video. I posted it. It did well. And they were like, hey, are you cool if we put some ad dollars behind it? Sure, whatever, right? Like, I didn't think twice about it. Next thing I know, they're very good at performance marketing. All over Facebook, Instagram, like all this shit, and it's me. Like basically like almost like a spokesperson and people are like, "The bear market is so bad."

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:13Anthony Pompliano?

  "Pomp shilling mattresses." And like, "Look, I'm a human. I love the internet." I'm like, "That's check."

• 35:20Speaker 02

  "The market is bad."

• 35:21Anthony Pompliano?

  "Yeah, you guys got me." "Like, that was a good one. That was a good one." And so, uh, like in some ways, like, the feedback, like, I listen, right? I see it. Uh, it makes you laugh, but also it's like, that's different. If somebody goes and they buy a mattress and like, "I don't like the mattress." That's different than somebody puts their assets into a platform. And you can say all you want, like, I went back and I looked. I have like tweets where people are like tweeting at me. I'm like, "Hey, I don't speak for the company, but like, here's the frequently asked questions. Do your own research, underwrite the risk, whatever." But like, still, it's a product that like, their money is sitting there versus buying a product. And I think that there's differences to that, right? And so like, we're trying to think through like, "Hey, how do you, how do you navigate this?" Especially in a world that's like, it's built on finance. There's no clear answer.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  It's, it's just, it's difficult. And I think like, our job is, it's required that we like,

• 36:14Speaker 02

  think very hard, especially about the way we, you know,

• 36:18Speaker 02

  advertise things, write about things, talk about things,

• 36:22Speaker 02

  especially as it pertains to financial services products, right? We've, we, we go through our scripts. We're very diligent and think, um, very hard about the language that we use. You know, we, we, we appreciate our sponsors, of course, but we try to, um, stray from superlatives that might be a bit, um, overstated. Um, but yeah, it's not, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not as simple as, you know, some of your trolls might think, which I think is the bottom line.

• 36:55Anthony Pompliano?

  "Meme lords," I like to call them.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  The meme lords, yes, but it's, it's, it's interesting. You've kind of gone through your own, um, transition in a way.

• 37:05Anthony Pompliano?

  This is Frank trying to change the interview.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  First off, you, um, so you were here in your lovely offices. This is the, this is the family office plus the, um, the other, the other firm that you're sort of running.

• 37:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  What's the pop empire look like today?

• 37:23Anthony Pompliano?

  That's it?

• 37:23Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 37:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's it. Run the business and invest.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 37:28Anthony Pompliano?

  It's, um, I just try to do the things I enjoy doing. Like, I think that's another thing, right? Like, if you look at, obviously, the BlockFi situation, uh, I wasn't an investor in FTX, but I'm an investor, I don't know, I've probably invested across every fund that I've managed, uh, in my own capital, maybe 200 companies, right? Or 150, 200, whatever, it's some big number. And when you look at it, I think one of the things that people forget is that, like, that's the business of investing is taking risk. And you risk capital, and if you are wrong, for whatever reason, whether it's that company's fault, somebody else's fault, whatever, you lose money. Like, that is the feedback cycle. If you're right, usually you make a lot of money.

• 38:10Anthony Pompliano?

  And venture capital tends to be an industry where it is not about being right more times than wrong. It's actually about being really, really, really, really, really right a few times and actually being wrong most of the time.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  What do you do when a bet is turning against you? I, I know one investor, not, so that's interesting, because there was one investor I know who flew to the Bahamas to get some answers from Sam.

• 38:36Anthony Pompliano?

  So, in, in that situation, right, uh, I'm assuming, I, I think he said on national television.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Oh, did he say?

• 38:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, okay, yeah, he said on national television.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 38:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, and so, like, in that situation, I think it's because, uh, there is, um, where there was smoke, there was the thought there might be fire, I think, right? But like, in other situations where a company, uh, is even struggling, like, you get on the phone, you talk to the founder, you, you try to be helpful, but like, you're not running the company, right? And every investor will tell you, I have founders I've talked to, they're like, I don't know what to do, tell me what to do, and like, I'll do it. And you give them the best information you can, or you introduce them to somebody who's been through that situation before, sometimes they follow it to a T, and it doesn't work. Sometimes they follow it to a T and it works. Most of the time, though, they're like, thank you for your opinion.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:25Anthony Pompliano?

  I'll call you if I need you.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:27Anthony Pompliano?

  And they go and they do whatever they want, right? And so, like, but like, that's ultimately what you're betting on, is like, you're betting on the people, especially if you're an early-stage investor, to run the company. And so, I think that, like, One of the promises of this whole industry is like capitalism, free markets and all that kind of stuff. And I think the FTX situation is interesting because really it was the crypto market that essentially self-regulated. Now, it was turbulent, didn't feel good, but like somebody leaked a balance sheet to a crypto reporter or a reporter at a crypto media company, which then provided the market information. And then market participants decided to take actions based on that information that ultimately led to the downfall of the second largest crypto exchange. It's not like somebody showed up from auditing firm and was like, oh, look at this

• 40:12Anthony Pompliano?

  thing. Right? So I think like that same ethos plays out when things go right or they don't. But like, the people who are investing the capital in the businesses, you don't hear them complaining. You don't hear them like being upset because I think they know what they're kind of signed up for, right?

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Do you think to an extent, though, they played a role in sort of creating a capital markets for crypto that were highly incentivized to take on a lot of risk, right? When, when the money's flowing in, you know, John Mack said this, that he was the CEO of, was it Merrill Lynch? Or one of the big banks?

• 40:59Anthony Pompliano?

  I think Merrill Lynch.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  And he said, well, the music's playing, you've got to dance. And all of these lenders, there was kind of a race to the bottom, as it were, in terms of thinking through collateral and rates and just being hyper aggressive. That was fueled in part by the ample amounts of venture funds that could sort of feed into that frenzy.

• 41:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I don't know how much venture dollars, like there's a lot invested, but if you look at these companies, like, how much total did, take FTX as an example, how much total do they raise? A billion?

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Billions.

• 41:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Two billion?

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? So like, let's say they raised two billion. That's on the higher end, for sure. But like, there are other companies that raised a billion or $2 billion in technology in general, right? If you look at other companies, it's less, hundreds of millions, but still, that's a shit ton of money, right? And so when you look at it, like, Overall, I actually don't think that much money really went into the top companies compared to what people think it is. Like, it was happening so fast. And to your point, like, prices were going up so quickly. But if you actually take a step back and you look, was it more or less than $10 billion?

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 42:14Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know, right? We'd have to go do the math. But let's say it was less than 10 billion. That is a really, really big number. But the overall market cap was hitting 3 trillion. So if 10 billion of venture went in, and you got 3 trillion from an industry, and you have to do, make sure the numbers are correct. But like, that's like a very small amount of capital to create 3 trillion dollars of value. Now, that doesn't, it's not as clear cut, because you have to look and say like, okay.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  I want to just say, though, it's not just money. I think your point is right, but also, the expectation, right, of the venture capitalists for when you raise that next round, right? You want to show hockey stick.

• 42:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, that's venture capital across the board.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  And to show that, you need to, you need to sort of undercut your competitors. And it was quite the competitive market, quite a crowded market.

• 43:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, if you look at-

• 43:02Speaker 02

  Celsius, Nexo, BlockFi, Genesis.

• 43:05Anthony Pompliano?

  So you can look at like crypto, but I would just say, zoom out from just the crypto industry. It's like, the same things that drove Uber and Lyft to fight with each other, and like, spend a shit ton of money, all of the driver incentives, the rider incentives, the rebates, like, all that stuff.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  It's the same. I think it's totally the same.

• 43:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And so like, to your point, venture capital is a home run business. It is a asymmetry business. And like, asymmetry doesn't occur because you grow 10% year over year. Right? And so regardless of the industry, like, that is the business of venture capital. And like, most things, there's a lot of good that's come out of it.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Saying like, a VC backed, venture capital backed financial markets is, can be dangerous.

• 43:49Anthony Pompliano?

  As we've seen.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  As we've seen. But also, the collateral thing, I think, is the big, is the big other boogeyman here, which is, you know, in hindsight-

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Alameda and F T or Alameda were, they were borrowing money with collateral tied to the firm themselves. So you have this wrong way collateral that effectively doubles down the risk of their counterparty, right? Because if the collateral is, let's say the collateral was Gatorade, if F T X goes down, doesn't impact Gatorade, the collateral's still good. But if F T X goes down and your collateral's serum, F T T, Solana to an extent, that's, that's not-

• 44:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Different game.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  It's bad.

• 44:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I, I do think there's a lot of people, I mean, I was a pretty big critic of the I C O mania, it sounds like you guys were as well, back in 2017, 2018. I literally got booed off a stage, I don't know if I ever told you this. There was a, a battleship, should have known already, the conference was on a battleship. And I was invited to speak, I went, it was a fireside chat, me and the-

• 45:02Speaker 02

  Was it with Ian Bellina?

• 45:03Anthony Pompliano?

  No. It was the guy who ran the conference and he was asking me questions and I was honest. I said, hey, I don't think, you know, I think that if you're doing this stuff, like it's probably going to be on registered securities or whatever. And they were like booing me. And then as I was leaving the conference, the next guy on the stage was like, don't listen to that guy, that guy's an idiot. I was like, wow. Okay. So like haters, I've been dealing with this for a long time, like, welcome to the party. But I do think your point about like, there will be changes happening in the industry. My last question for you is just like, what do you think the changes will be?

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Well, I think we're going to rethink what, what collateral is and, and the sort of parameters around how these centralized crypto brokers, lenders operate. We've tried several times in the past, and we is carrying a lot of weight, I've not been involved in sort of the self-regulatory-

• 45:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Frank is actually the pseudonymous person behind-

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I'm the hand that, that sort of, well, we could talk about the fact that I feel like a lot of the times I put out a story about a trend, and then whatever that trend is tanks, and I think there's a whale who's counter-trading my-

• 46:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Counter-trading.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  My art, my articles, my news. Be that, anyway, moving on from that.

• 46:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe it was Sam.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Could have been, could have been.

• 46:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Would you be mad if you found that out?

• 46:17Speaker 02

  No, I mean, it is, it is what it is, but it's happened quite a bit. Like, I've written, like, pieces where I'm like, just looking at the data, volatility's at an all-time high, and the next day, it just completely falls off the cliff. It happens all the time.

• 46:31Anthony Pompliano?

  You should write an article about how Bitcoin's price is going down.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, right?

• 46:37Speaker 02

  So, I think that these agencies tried to come to the fold, and they really didn't have that much success in kind of creating parameters around how these firms should engage with each other. There's been attempts by various folks, but none of them have really taken off. I think we need to get serious about that, and I think that if we don't, the regulators certainly will, will force our hand in doing that.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  I think that's the big thing, like, just, like, this was a, this was a problem of, of the way our capital markets in crypto functioned, with a lack of controls, a lack of risk management, a lack of counterparty risk management, and I think that's what changes. And if it doesn't, then, then it's, it's going to be difficult for just the, the sort of, you know, capital formation to happen in this market. I think that you'll see DeFi rail step in, right? I think DeFi lending protocols will sort of have their moment, right?

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Where people might think about the, the sort of, the element of transparency being beneficial relative to what was going on at some of these desks.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  And I'm hopeful for that. I'm hopeful for those two things sort of establishing themselves and, and creating a stronger foundation from which we can exit out of this, this crisis.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  But I'm more hopeful than I was three weeks ago. I mean, it was kind of like the fog of war had still, you know, was still hanging over our head. Now, I think, you know, especially with, you know, knock wood Bitcoin sort of keeping its price level as it is, that's, that's a good sign. It's not, it's not, you know, it doesn't feel quite, it doesn't, it feels more like dramatic and like, almost entertaining and, and bizarre.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  Emphasis on bizarre than 2017 or 2018, but it doesn't sound as, doesn't feel rather as hopeless. I mean, 2019 was pretty, pretty grim.

• 48:46Anthony Pompliano?

  But we're still here.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  We're still here.

• 48:48Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Where can we send people to find you on the internet?

• 48:49Speaker 02

  Just, you can get me at, at the, at Fintech Frank. I don't know why this is funny. So what's my Twitter handle? And then theblock.co. We changed our URL since last time I was on the

• 49:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Theblock.co. Who's got the com, dot com?

• 49:05Speaker 02

  So you know what's funny? I think theblock.com is like an Australian home improvement show.

• 49:12Anthony Pompliano?

  You have a mustache that could be the contractor on that show.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  And then there's another one, like theblock.io is like a, I'm pretty sure like a Peruvian restaurant in Arlington, Virginia. So shout out to them.

• 49:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, they probably get some traffic from you guys. Awesome. All right. We'll do it again in the future. Thank you.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 49:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to transition into a brand new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to thecryptoacademy.io. My team and I have been working with the top HR teams in the industry to develop an intensive three-week training program with over 50 live events. We teach you exactly what you need to know to break into the industry, including live interview prep and resume review. Our students have been hired at over 75 of the world's best Bitcoin and crypto companies. Go to thecryptoacademy.io to learn more. Again, that's thecryptoacademy.io. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with your friends and I'll see you all for the next episode.