Latest / The David Rubenstein Show / Sam Bankman-Fried

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Sam Bankman-Fried · The David Rubenstein Show

0:03
Speaker 1: One of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world of
0:05
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency is Sam Bankman Freed. He's created the ft x platform,
0:10
Speaker 1: and that platform has been so successful in the cryptocurrency
0:13
Speaker 1: world that Sam has become one of the wealthiest men
0:16
Speaker 1: in the world. As a result of this, he's now
0:18
Speaker 1: focusing a lot of his energy on philanthropy. I sat
0:21
Speaker 1: down with him at the Bloomberg headquarters in New York
0:23
Speaker 1: recently to talk about the future of crypto and his
0:26
Speaker 1: desire to change the world to make it a better place.
0:29
Speaker 1: So is crypto down for the count or is it
0:32
Speaker 1: coming back? I think it's coming back. And obviously a
0:35
Speaker 1: lot of this is just going to have to the
0:36
Speaker 1: macro environment. You know, if we see markets crash again,
0:39
Speaker 1: we're going to see crypto crash along with it. If
0:41
Speaker 1: we see a market recovery, we're going to see a
0:43
Speaker 1: crypto recovery along with it. But I think this is,
0:46
Speaker 1: you know, it's flushed out a lot of the things
0:48
Speaker 1: that needed to be flushed out from the crypto space anyway.
0:51
Speaker 1: Right when the when May of this began, I think
0:56
Speaker 1: a meltdown in tech values and also crypto. Did you
1:00
Speaker 1: get nervous that all of a sudden the world was
1:02
Speaker 1: going to fall apart. Not super nervous, It's like it
1:06
Speaker 1: was definitely gonna be a rocky road for the industry.
1:08
Speaker 1: And you know, you saw some businesses blow up when
1:10
Speaker 1: bitcoin hit twenty k. Um. I think you know, if
1:14
Speaker 1: we saw things meltdown much further than they did, right,
1:17
Speaker 1: if we saw you know, nazac trop from here in
1:20
Speaker 1: bitcoin go down to ten k per token, I think
1:23
Speaker 1: you would see another round of pain for the industry
1:25
Speaker 1: that would potentially be more of a medium to long
1:29
Speaker 1: term problem. So it didn't give you any gray hair
1:30
Speaker 1: I can see, so oh well a little bit, but
1:33
Speaker 1: you know I plucked those out to keep up appearances. Um.
1:36
Speaker 1: So let me ask you this. When the bitcoin world
1:39
Speaker 1: was kind of going down a bit, I think a
1:41
Speaker 1: bitcoin peaked at sixty one or something. Now it's at
1:45
Speaker 1: as low as when I did. Um, a lot of
1:49
Speaker 1: other cryptocurrencies went down as well. Um, you bailed out
1:53
Speaker 1: some companies. What money did you use to do that?
1:57
Speaker 1: So there there are a few different versions of it,
2:00
Speaker 1: and um, you know, one piece of this was basically
2:03
Speaker 1: FTX balance sheet, like we keep our corporate cash just
2:07
Speaker 1: in dollars and so you know, we've raised a few
2:09
Speaker 1: billion dollars over the course of the last last couple
2:12
Speaker 1: of years and we're profitable business. Um. Now we we've
2:15
Speaker 1: also done some acquisitions which partially balances that out, but
2:18
Speaker 1: you know, we had some some cash left and with
2:20
Speaker 1: the Block five you know deal for instance, UM that
2:24
Speaker 1: was on f I think f x USS balance sheet.
2:27
Speaker 1: Well on Wall Street has had its problems early in
2:30
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, um shape Mr JP Morgan himself. Yeah,
2:34
Speaker 1: I used to go out and say I'm going to
2:35
Speaker 1: bail out certain companies and you were called the JP
2:37
Speaker 1: Morgan crypto. Does that bother you or not? It doesn't
2:41
Speaker 1: bother me too much. I mean think it's something I
2:43
Speaker 1: thought was the right thing for the industry. And you know,
2:46
Speaker 1: are very explicit mandate that we sort of gave to
2:48
Speaker 1: the team of people working on this was your goal
2:51
Speaker 1: is not to make a fortune for us doing this,
2:54
Speaker 1: like your goal is to do okay deals. Your goals
2:56
Speaker 1: for us to knock get our faces ripped off. But
2:59
Speaker 1: contingent on that, you know, do as much as we
3:01
Speaker 1: can to bail out the industry, and that that was
3:03
Speaker 1: the higher goal, was trying to backstop places rather than
3:06
Speaker 1: maximizing on on these deals. No, I would have loved
3:09
Speaker 1: other people to do it, Like I think I've been great.
3:11
Speaker 1: So you went in, you bought some companies where those
3:14
Speaker 1: investments profitable. I mixed is basically the answer. I think
3:18
Speaker 1: some are going to turn out to be profitable, some
3:19
Speaker 1: won't be, like one of them, certainly. I mean with Voyager,
3:23
Speaker 1: I think, you know, there's seventy million dollars there that
3:25
Speaker 1: that that we put in that I'm not sure ever
3:27
Speaker 1: seeing that seventy million again. And so you know, we
3:30
Speaker 1: actually make snap judgment calls, and we made them such
3:32
Speaker 1: that if things turned out well, they'd be good investments,
3:35
Speaker 1: and if they turned out badly, they'd be bad investments.
3:37
Speaker 1: But we sort of limited the amount that we could
3:39
Speaker 1: lose from it. Why if so many young people seem
3:42
Speaker 1: so attracted to crypto. I mean, I know the people
3:44
Speaker 1: from all over the world, of all ages, but it
3:45
Speaker 1: seems like young people particularly are very interested. Why is that? Yeah,
3:49
Speaker 1: I mean, partially, it's a new thing that's going to
3:50
Speaker 1: appeal to younger people. But I think another aspect of
3:53
Speaker 1: this is if you're you know, twenty one years old
3:56
Speaker 1: and you're trying to get access to markets you want
3:58
Speaker 1: to be able to to train aid to invest. You
4:01
Speaker 1: can sign up for an account on the Crypto Exchange
4:03
Speaker 1: and get full market access. If you try and get
4:05
Speaker 1: that same level access in equities and commodities, you can't
4:08
Speaker 1: get it. You're gonna end up with heavily intermediated access
4:11
Speaker 1: that has like pretty limited amounts of real interactiveness, limited
4:16
Speaker 1: amounts of liquidity, limited amounts of size, limited amounts of
4:19
Speaker 1: market data. And so I think for a you know,
4:22
Speaker 1: natively digital generation that's looking to take more control of
4:25
Speaker 1: their finances actually being able to do it with crypto.
4:27
Speaker 1: It is a big, big difference. So in your own case,
4:31
Speaker 1: you got involved with crypto at what age I was, boy,
4:35
Speaker 1: I guess there's twenty five or so. And did you
4:37
Speaker 1: ever imagine that at when you got involved you would
4:40
Speaker 1: now be one of the most important people in the
4:42
Speaker 1: crypto world. I have become a multi billionaire. No. Well no,
4:46
Speaker 1: although the crypto worlds also grown quite a bit since
4:50
Speaker 1: I got involved. But I was surprised at how big,
4:54
Speaker 1: how how big things you're in general, how big you know,
4:56
Speaker 1: I was able to grow things. I thought there was
4:58
Speaker 1: a chance of it, like I did see pretty high upside.
5:01
Speaker 1: When I got involved, I was surprised that we actually
5:03
Speaker 1: got there. So today you're running ft actually start ft
5:07
Speaker 1: X in what year? And what does it actually do?
5:11
Speaker 1: So it's a encryptocurrency exchanges is what we call it.
5:14
Speaker 1: But really it's a combination of a few different businesses.
5:17
Speaker 1: If you compare it to traditional finance, right, you have
5:20
Speaker 1: you know, the New York Stock Exchange, y nastact, ice
5:22
Speaker 1: and C and me as the exchanges and that that's
5:25
Speaker 1: where bids and offers cross. But you don't go to
5:27
Speaker 1: New York Stock Exchange dot com to send an order there.
5:31
Speaker 1: They are primarily the sort of back end trading infrastructure.
5:34
Speaker 1: Separately have brokerages, fcms and other businesses that sat in
5:38
Speaker 1: the front that you know, consumers access, and then you
5:41
Speaker 1: have different settlement and sort of custody parties sitting in
5:44
Speaker 1: the middle. There in crypto, all of that gets squashed
5:47
Speaker 1: traditionally into one entity. And so what what FTX is
5:50
Speaker 1: it's sort of all of those things. It's a back
5:53
Speaker 1: end you know, match engine, risk engine, custody system. It's
5:56
Speaker 1: a front end mobile app, website, API and everything in between,
6:01
Speaker 1: so that you know, if you want to buy or
6:02
Speaker 1: sell a bit cooin. You can go to ft x
6:04
Speaker 1: dot com and you know, we offer all the services
6:07
Speaker 1: necessary to do that except for buying and selling. So
6:10
Speaker 1: you got involved because you thought it would be in
6:13
Speaker 1: a creative new area to to get involved with. But
6:15
Speaker 1: was making a lot of money at one of your goals? Yeah?
6:18
Speaker 1: It was. And in particular, when I was in college,
6:20
Speaker 1: I started went to a lot of charities that I
6:22
Speaker 1: really respected and said, Hey, what can I do to
6:25
Speaker 1: help you guys out, Like, do you want me to
6:27
Speaker 1: work for you? And they basically not really. I mean
6:29
Speaker 1: you could, but they'd be kind of mediocre. Um. You
6:32
Speaker 1: know what they say is they they'd rather my money
6:34
Speaker 1: than than my time. And so I ended up going
6:36
Speaker 1: on to Wall Street and then getting involved, you know,
6:38
Speaker 1: with crypto, with the goal of donating what I made.
6:40
Speaker 1: So let's go back to your youth. Not that you're old,
6:43
Speaker 1: now you're how old? Thirty years old? Thirty years old?
6:46
Speaker 1: So let's go back to let's say when you were
6:49
Speaker 1: growing up. You grew up in California on Stanford campus,
6:53
Speaker 1: and your parents were both professors at Stanford Law School. Yeah,
6:57
Speaker 1: and one's name was Professor Freed and one is professor Bankman.
7:03
Speaker 1: So whose idea was it to combine the two into
7:05
Speaker 1: one name. I think they kind of both had the idea.
7:08
Speaker 1: I think there's a little bit hashing out of exactly
7:10
Speaker 1: what that would look like. Would it be Bankman freed?
7:12
Speaker 1: Would I be free bankman um? But I think they
7:15
Speaker 1: kind of mutually came to that decision. So if you
7:17
Speaker 1: got married someday and you yeah, so you'd have two hyphens, right, well,
7:21
Speaker 1: especially if if I'm married someone with a hyphenated last name,
7:25
Speaker 1: right then you've got four names. I think at that
7:27
Speaker 1: point we just have to roll a die and choose one.
7:30
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Okay, so you've thought about that. Yeah, I
7:32
Speaker 1: mean you can also just choose a totally new name.
7:34
Speaker 1: But would it be particularly attracted to find somebody had
7:36
Speaker 1: a hyphenated name or not? Really? Oh, I think it
7:39
Speaker 1: would be. It would be worth one good story. That's
7:42
Speaker 1: why I get out of it. On the scale if
7:44
Speaker 1: life partner is not the most important criteria. Okay, So
7:46
Speaker 1: you're growing up, your parents are distinguished professors at Stanford
7:49
Speaker 1: Law School. Were you interested in the law at any
7:52
Speaker 1: point or not not at all? Growing up? I think
7:54
Speaker 1: I'd become more interested in it recently, but you know,
7:58
Speaker 1: and when it's growing up, my parents told me you
8:00
Speaker 1: can do whatever you want with your life. We don't
8:02
Speaker 1: particularly recommend that you become a lawyer, but you know,
8:05
Speaker 1: you're welcome to do whatever you want. So we were
8:07
Speaker 1: a bit of a math prodigy when you were younger.
8:09
Speaker 1: I was certainly better at math than I was at
8:11
Speaker 1: at a reading or literature. So you went to M
8:15
Speaker 1: I T. Yep. And when you got there, did you
8:17
Speaker 1: find that people were smarter than your thought or not
8:19
Speaker 1: as smart as you thought? I think smarter than I thought.
8:22
Speaker 1: I think maybe some part of me had hoped that
8:25
Speaker 1: I would, you know, be able to live a life
8:27
Speaker 1: where I, you know, was always clearly sort of like
8:30
Speaker 1: you know, uh, an outlier on that, And I think
8:33
Speaker 1: M I T. Taught me that wasn't true. That there
8:35
Speaker 1: were a lot of other really smart people in the world, um,
8:38
Speaker 1: and you know, was really interesting and cool getting to
8:42
Speaker 1: know them. So when you get the M I T.
8:44
Speaker 1: Did just say, Look, I'm going to go out and
8:45
Speaker 1: become a multi billionaire before I'm thirty. No, I had
8:48
Speaker 1: no idea what was gonna do. I mean, I I
8:50
Speaker 1: weekly thought I was going to become a professor, not
8:52
Speaker 1: for any particular reason. I realized I didn't really like
8:55
Speaker 1: academia when I was there, and that left me kind
8:57
Speaker 1: of a little bit lost about what I would actually
8:59
Speaker 1: do with my life. So what did you major in physics? Technically?
9:03
Speaker 1: I I took about the bare minimum that you could imagine.
9:06
Speaker 1: It took maybe seven or eight physics classes my whole
9:08
Speaker 1: time there. So what did you really take courses in math?
9:10
Speaker 1: Or I took some my minor in math, but I
9:13
Speaker 1: took a kind of popourri of classes, um, you know,
9:16
Speaker 1: some policy classes, some econ, some psychology, But really I
9:20
Speaker 1: also didn't take that many classes and and sort of
9:22
Speaker 1: got a little burnt out of academia. And so when
9:24
Speaker 1: you graduated, what did your parents say you're to you
9:26
Speaker 1: about what you should do upon graduation. I mean mostly
9:30
Speaker 1: they said a should do what I wanted, and what,
9:31
Speaker 1: like I thought was whatever I thought would be exciting,
9:34
Speaker 1: and you know, they're going to support me with whatever.
9:36
Speaker 1: But I, you know, going to like junior year of college,
9:40
Speaker 1: I had no idea what that was going to be.
9:42
Speaker 1: Always sort of had just ruled out or soft ruled
9:45
Speaker 1: out academia and didn't know what was going to replace it.
9:47
Speaker 1: I ended up interning at Jane Street, a finance firm,
9:51
Speaker 1: after my junior year, and I really liked it there
9:55
Speaker 1: and was starting to chart a path forward of donating money. Okay,
9:59
Speaker 1: so did you do upon graduation? You took a job
10:01
Speaker 1: in finance? Yep, went back to Jane Street work there
10:04
Speaker 1: full time. And what did they do? They're quant trading firms.
10:07
Speaker 1: So I was on the internationally t F desk. Basically
10:10
Speaker 1: that means you have a US listed fund that owns
10:13
Speaker 1: a lot of foreign stocks. So you know, you could
10:16
Speaker 1: look at e m U S listed ETF that owns
10:19
Speaker 1: a bunch of emerging market companies, um, you know across
10:23
Speaker 1: uh Asia, across lot M, and you know a few
10:27
Speaker 1: places in Europe. And it's basically a combination of like modeling,
10:31
Speaker 1: computer trading, and real time intuition kind of jumbled together.
10:35
Speaker 1: And how many years were you doing that? About three
10:37
Speaker 1: three and a half years, all right? Then after that
10:39
Speaker 1: you said I'm going to go start something in the
10:41
Speaker 1: crypto world. Not quite so I left in late in
10:45
Speaker 1: Let's says fall, roughly, not sure what it was actually
10:48
Speaker 1: going to do next. What I'd really done was sort
10:51
Speaker 1: of written down like twelve things I could do with
10:53
Speaker 1: my life, and I felt like a lot of them
10:56
Speaker 1: were compelling, and I didn't know what was going to
10:58
Speaker 1: be best, but that you know, the only way to
11:00
Speaker 1: try would be to to to leave and just dive
11:03
Speaker 1: into some of them. And so you started your own company.
11:05
Speaker 1: What was it called? So Alameda Research is the first
11:08
Speaker 1: company started up, and it was a crypto quand trading firm.
11:10
Speaker 1: And you know the sort of founding if it was
11:13
Speaker 1: basically well, you know, bitcoin was trading on a lot
11:15
Speaker 1: of different crypto exchanges and it was not trading at
11:17
Speaker 1: the same price on all of them. So you might
11:19
Speaker 1: see it training for ten dollars on coin base and
11:22
Speaker 1: ten tho on bit stamp, and you know, in theory
11:26
Speaker 1: there's a one percent arbitrage to do their trading those
11:28
Speaker 1: against each other, all right, So she decided to mirror
11:31
Speaker 1: less trade bitcoin or other cryptos and take some arbitrage advantage.
11:36
Speaker 1: And it was a profit of white presume, Yep, it was.
11:39
Speaker 1: It was a huge amount of logistical work, like finding
11:41
Speaker 1: the trades was the easy part. The hard part was
11:44
Speaker 1: getting the account sending wire transfer, was opening up entities
11:46
Speaker 1: and all of the other sort of operational work that
11:49
Speaker 1: went into actually being able to execute normally. Then people
11:52
Speaker 1: start companies, they get venture capital money, and those venture
11:55
Speaker 1: capital's own a piece of it. Did you get venture
11:56
Speaker 1: capital money? Not for Alameda? And part of this was,
11:59
Speaker 1: you know, we talked with some VC firms and our
12:01
Speaker 1: petrits basically, hey guys, good news. A bunch of twenty
12:04
Speaker 1: five year old UM, we don't really know what a
12:07
Speaker 1: big poin is, but we're trading it. Also, this is
12:09
Speaker 1: all crypto um and uh, you know, we got a
12:13
Speaker 1: startup together. None of us has run a company before,
12:15
Speaker 1: and we'd like a hundred million dollars by next Tuesday. Ideally.
12:19
Speaker 1: It was not a very compelling pitch turned down. Oh yeah,
12:23
Speaker 1: I mean no one. You know people are like, oh
12:25
Speaker 1: that's so cool, like I hope you find success, and
12:28
Speaker 1: you know, no one was. And it's what we ended
12:30
Speaker 1: up doing is basically cobbling together lines of credit and
12:33
Speaker 1: other things from various sources, trying to sort of snowball
12:37
Speaker 1: and be able to to to build on ourselves. Okay,
12:39
Speaker 1: so after that, you've started another company, f t X. Yeah,
12:42
Speaker 1: Now what is ft X do that your first company
12:44
Speaker 1: didn't do? So Alameda is buying and selling like it's
12:47
Speaker 1: trading for its own book and you know, trying to
12:50
Speaker 1: to do profitable trades. F t X you can think
12:53
Speaker 1: of it as infrastructure. It's markets infrastructure, so everything that
12:56
Speaker 1: sits between a buyer and a seller. So ft X
12:59
Speaker 1: doesn't buy in cell itself. Um, but it's a venue
13:02
Speaker 1: where people can go to trade crypto and and you
13:05
Speaker 1: know that that aims to solve sort of every piece
13:07
Speaker 1: in between those two parties from you know, the clearing
13:11
Speaker 1: and settlement and custody, the you know, anti money laundering.
13:14
Speaker 1: You know, your customer policy is the compliance uh you know,
13:17
Speaker 1: the match engine, the risk engine, the front end and
13:19
Speaker 1: everything else. Right, So why does somebody come to ft
13:22
Speaker 1: X and use you as opposed to one of the
13:24
Speaker 1: other uh similar exchanges. Yeah, I mean, you know, to
13:27
Speaker 1: each his own. But the things that I think we've
13:29
Speaker 1: particularly specialized and been good at one, we've been pretty
13:34
Speaker 1: you know, fast moving and innovative, you know, where a
13:36
Speaker 1: relatively new venue. But we've put a lot of thought
13:38
Speaker 1: into exactly how our products are designed. Where's the company based.
13:42
Speaker 1: So we have we have a lot of offices for
13:45
Speaker 1: regulatory reasons. So as an example, we have a new
13:48
Speaker 1: Tokyo office with a bunch of people in it because
13:51
Speaker 1: we now have a jfs A Type one financial services
13:55
Speaker 1: license there. So we have like little bases in a
13:59
Speaker 1: number of the Jersey dictions that we are licensed and
14:01
Speaker 1: regulated in. But our biggest offices in the United States,
14:05
Speaker 1: in Chicago and outside the United States is NASA on
14:08
Speaker 1: the Bahamas, Right, So you live in NASA and is
14:10
Speaker 1: that a tough place to live? It's it's really tough.
14:13
Speaker 1: It's a hard life. And so how do you put
14:15
Speaker 1: up with the pleasure of going to the beach or
14:18
Speaker 1: not versus working? I'm uh, you know, for better or
14:21
Speaker 1: for worse, not the person most tempted in the world
14:24
Speaker 1: to go to the beach. I enjoy it being there.
14:26
Speaker 1: I like going there once every couple of months, but
14:28
Speaker 1: I don't I don't spend a lot of time outside.
14:30
Speaker 1: I'm pretty much just in the office. So you don't
14:32
Speaker 1: look like you have a tan or anything. No, not
14:34
Speaker 1: so much. So what is your interest in philanthropy? You're
14:38
Speaker 1: one of the youngest people to sign the Giving Pledge
14:40
Speaker 1: you were at the most recent meeting. What propelled you
14:42
Speaker 1: to do that? It's always been in theory of goal
14:45
Speaker 1: of mine to figure out how it can have positive
14:47
Speaker 1: impact on the world, and how it can have the
14:49
Speaker 1: biggest possible impact, not just you know, some some random
14:52
Speaker 1: amount of it. I didn't actually put that into action
14:55
Speaker 1: for a little while, but when I got to college,
14:57
Speaker 1: I sort of came to terms with the fact that
14:59
Speaker 1: there were really things that I could do that would
15:01
Speaker 1: have impact, that it was worth doing those, and then
15:04
Speaker 1: started to think more critically about what should I do
15:07
Speaker 1: with my life that would be the best for the world, Like,
15:09
Speaker 1: what what would maximize that? What is effective altruism, which
15:13
Speaker 1: is something you have pursued. Yeah, so the effect of
15:16
Speaker 1: altruist community is the community people doing basically that, looking at,
15:20
Speaker 1: you know, how can you maximize your positive impact on
15:22
Speaker 1: the world? What should you actually do with your life?
15:24
Speaker 1: And it looks at it both from the lens of like,
15:27
Speaker 1: you know, should you be you know, earning TV, which
15:29
Speaker 1: is say, making money with the goal of donating it
15:31
Speaker 1: to effective causes? Um. Also you know, it looks at,
15:35
Speaker 1: you know, should you be working directly for some of
15:38
Speaker 1: these foundations. In addition to that side, it also looks at,
15:41
Speaker 1: you know, what causes are the most impactful? Right? Should
15:44
Speaker 1: you be thinking about global poverty, about you know, animal welfare,
15:47
Speaker 1: about climate change, about pandemics, like what are the areas
15:50
Speaker 1: that are most impactful, you know, to focus on. And
15:53
Speaker 1: I got involved in the community in college and it's
15:56
Speaker 1: been a really big part of how I've decided what
15:58
Speaker 1: to do with my life. What do you hope your
15:59
Speaker 1: impact society is. I mean, in the end, obviously there's
16:02
Speaker 1: an impact from the day to day work. UM hoping
16:04
Speaker 1: to make financial markets more efficient, more inclusive, you know,
16:08
Speaker 1: from what I do with my donations. We'll see in
16:10
Speaker 1: the end, but you know, right now, I think I
16:11
Speaker 1: would say biggest things like getting the world to a
16:14
Speaker 1: place where we're actually ready for the next pandemic, even
16:17
Speaker 1: if it's nasty, even if it's bioengineered, that we can
16:20
Speaker 1: shrug it off the way we failed to shrug off
16:22
Speaker 1: covid UM would be one of the primary goals. And
16:25
Speaker 1: I think, you know, helping DC become more constructive UM
16:29
Speaker 1: is a big goal. So very often when people get wealthy,
16:32
Speaker 1: they buy fancy suits and so forth. You haven't gone
16:35
Speaker 1: to that phase yet, right, Not so much. Your outfit
16:38
Speaker 1: is pretty much standard. It's some kind of T shirt, shorts,
16:41
Speaker 1: tennis shoes. Is that what you wear all the time
16:44
Speaker 1: When I go to Washington, d C. I have a
16:46
Speaker 1: suit there because I have to wear it on the hill.
16:48
Speaker 1: But outside of that, Yeah, So you're thinking of buying
16:51
Speaker 1: a house to live in or where do you live? So?
16:54
Speaker 1: I live in uh, the nine nine colleagues and I
16:58
Speaker 1: bought a large apartment together near office that that that
17:02
Speaker 1: that we live in. UM and I don't. I mean,
17:05
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sort of really fortunate to be able
17:07
Speaker 1: to have a really comfortable life and not have to
17:10
Speaker 1: worry ever about, you know, money for myself. But I'm
17:13
Speaker 1: not particularly excited, you know, to to to dive into luxury.
17:18
Speaker 1: I'm not excited about yachts. UM and I both think
17:21
Speaker 1: it's not what I should do with my money. I
17:23
Speaker 1: think I should be thinking about how I can help
17:24
Speaker 1: the world with it. And also just isn't who I am.
17:27
Speaker 1: So do you go to Washington much to lobby with
17:29
Speaker 1: members of Congress and or regulators? And is an uplifting
17:33
Speaker 1: experience for you? It's so, I I go a lot.
17:36
Speaker 1: I'm there probably every few weeks, and it's been a
17:37
Speaker 1: surprisingly uplifting experience. I was not expecting that I was
17:41
Speaker 1: expecting it to be a real slog and I think
17:44
Speaker 1: it could have been in a slightly different universe where
17:47
Speaker 1: you saw continued wards going on between regulators and the industry.
17:51
Speaker 1: What we've tried really hard to do over the last
17:52
Speaker 1: year is to get the industry to a place where
17:55
Speaker 1: it is happy to accept sensible regulation. And I think
18:00
Speaker 1: that's that's helped turn down the volume a little bit
18:02
Speaker 1: on the arguments and due to a place where most
18:05
Speaker 1: people are honestly trying to engage on what's the important
18:08
Speaker 1: federal oversight that we need to give to the industry.
18:10
Speaker 1: How can we do that in a way that makes
18:12
Speaker 1: sense given how the industry operates. The crypto industry seems
18:15
Speaker 1: to want to be regulated by the CFTC and some
18:19
Speaker 1: people want the SEC to be the principal regulator. UH,
18:22
Speaker 1: do you have a view on this? So in the end,
18:24
Speaker 1: both are going to be regulators. And you know, the
18:26
Speaker 1: CFTC is going to regulate commodity future, so it's going
18:28
Speaker 1: to regulate very likely futures on tokens that are not securities.
18:33
Speaker 1: The SEC is very likely going to end up regulating
18:36
Speaker 1: UH spot UH security token markets. And there's some territory
18:41
Speaker 1: in between there. When you look at spot commodity markets,
18:44
Speaker 1: when you look at what security token futures regime might
18:47
Speaker 1: look like, those may end up as joint regimes. They
18:49
Speaker 1: may end up in one place or the other. In principle,
18:52
Speaker 1: I'm fine with either regulator or any combination of them.
18:55
Speaker 1: You know, I think that the non security token aspect
18:58
Speaker 1: of this is a nice fit for the CFTC's regime
19:01
Speaker 1: now in our country, when you want to have some
19:03
Speaker 1: influence with government, very often people make campaign contributions as
19:07
Speaker 1: they're called, and you've become a large donor to political candidates.
19:12
Speaker 1: Is it because you want some influence on the policy
19:15
Speaker 1: of crypto or is it issue I think these candidates
19:17
Speaker 1: are good public servants. It's mostly just looking for good
19:20
Speaker 1: public servants like that is by far the most important
19:22
Speaker 1: thing to me. And look, there are a lot of
19:23
Speaker 1: issues that matter, but there's also just this correlated aspect
19:26
Speaker 1: of like are they going to be fighting too what
19:28
Speaker 1: they think is right for the country in general? And
19:31
Speaker 1: you know, the single issue that I have sort of
19:34
Speaker 1: spent the most time, uh you know, thinking about the
19:36
Speaker 1: most money, uh you know, donate to on the political
19:39
Speaker 1: side is pandemic prevention. Which has nothing to do with crypto. Um,
19:43
Speaker 1: but it's you know, ultimately, what I think is, you know,
19:45
Speaker 1: one of the most important issues for the world over next,
19:49
Speaker 1: So how do you find political fundraisers? They come to
19:51
Speaker 1: you directly? Is it easy to get to you and
19:53
Speaker 1: say we need this money for this candidate and what
19:55
Speaker 1: type of candidates you tend to support? Oh? Yeah, well
19:57
Speaker 1: if you if I pulled out my phone here and
19:59
Speaker 1: just looked at my last ten text messages, you know
20:01
Speaker 1: about half of them are going to be people asking
20:04
Speaker 1: for you know, politicians asking for for contributions. But um,
20:08
Speaker 1: you have a political expert advisor. Yeah, so obviously ignore
20:12
Speaker 1: the text messages. Um, I've i've I've got a few
20:15
Speaker 1: people on the ground in DC whore sort of actually
20:17
Speaker 1: running the operation stage. So when you give money to
20:20
Speaker 1: a candidate and he or she gets elected, do they
20:23
Speaker 1: respond to you when you call them later or not? Really?
20:25
Speaker 1: Some do, some don't, And it's you know, always super
20:28
Speaker 1: happy to talk, but it's not generally the primary goal, Like,
20:31
Speaker 1: the primary goal is generally that I thought they would
20:33
Speaker 1: be a good legislator. Do you get involved with presidential campaigns?
20:36
Speaker 1: You're gonna be involved in this campaign that's coming up
20:38
Speaker 1: in a couple of years. It's a good question. The answers.
20:40
Speaker 1: Maybe it totally depends on who's running, on what the
20:42
Speaker 1: race looks like. I'll give a couple of thoughts. The
20:45
Speaker 1: first is, you know, I might be very involved, I
20:48
Speaker 1: might not be involved at all. I might be involved
20:51
Speaker 1: on either side or both. And in general, my senses
20:54
Speaker 1: that primaries are really important, and I think this is
20:56
Speaker 1: true for the presidency as well. I think this is
20:59
Speaker 1: something a lot of people miss is that if your
21:01
Speaker 1: goal is partisan, then you basically have to operate in
21:05
Speaker 1: general elections. That's when you know partisan splits are determined.
21:09
Speaker 1: But if your goal is getting like good public servants
21:11
Speaker 1: and people who are really fighting forth right for the country,
21:14
Speaker 1: there are people who do don't fit that description on
21:17
Speaker 1: both sides of the aisle. And you know, you have
21:21
Speaker 1: these contests which are wing lower stakes from a partisan perspective.
21:24
Speaker 1: It gets rid of a lot of the noise and competition,
21:27
Speaker 1: and you know there are great opportunities to support people
21:29
Speaker 1: who just be good public servants. So you support people
21:33
Speaker 1: of both parties. Yeah, okay, and today you would not
21:37
Speaker 1: consider running for office yourself, right, I would be an
21:40
Speaker 1: insane thing for me to do as a fourth job
21:43
Speaker 1: to tack onto you know, the other things I'm doing,
21:45
Speaker 1: And can you see doing this for another ten years,
21:47
Speaker 1: twenty years, thirty years like this? I think. So I
21:49
Speaker 1: don't tend. I mean, when I get burnt out, I
21:51
Speaker 1: get burnt out because I'm out of useful things to
21:54
Speaker 1: do on a topic. I don't tend to get burnt
21:55
Speaker 1: out from workers stress. Crypto came along relatively recently. I
22:00
Speaker 1: guess bitcoin is invented in two thousand nine, but yep,
22:02
Speaker 1: but relatively recently it's become a big phenomena. Do you
22:05
Speaker 1: see any other phenomenon like that that you might get
22:07
Speaker 1: involved with as well? Potentially? I mean, look, eventually AI,
22:11
Speaker 1: I think, you know, right now we're at the stage
22:13
Speaker 1: of AI being mediocre chat bots instead of really bad
22:16
Speaker 1: chat box. But that's going to change over time, and
22:19
Speaker 1: you know, mark to ten twenty years from now, we
22:22
Speaker 1: may be having a very different conversation. So I I
22:25
Speaker 1: have not bought any cryptocurrencies. I have invested in companies
22:29
Speaker 1: that service the industry, but I haven't bought crypto myself.
22:32
Speaker 1: Let's suppose I said I wanted to buy some cryptocurrencies
22:35
Speaker 1: what would you recommend to me or anybody else. Well,
22:37
Speaker 1: first thing, as I try not to give an investment advice,
22:39
Speaker 1: and and you know, what I would say is the
22:41
Speaker 1: most effective and useful thing you can do is just
22:44
Speaker 1: try everything out. Take ten dollars, Feed it through every protocol,
22:47
Speaker 1: feed it through every exchange, see what it's like. Get
22:49
Speaker 1: a first endo experience of using a blockchain, using a
22:51
Speaker 1: blockchain explorer, doing trade, and that will teach you a
22:54
Speaker 1: lot about how the industry functions. You know, I think
22:57
Speaker 1: I've I've been really interested in a few different areas
23:00
Speaker 1: of the space. I think have been interested in scalable blockchains,
23:03
Speaker 1: have been interested in obviously in the exchange and platform space,
23:05
Speaker 1: especially on the regulated side. Um. And then I'm super
23:08
Speaker 1: excited about the potential for blockchain based social media to
23:12
Speaker 1: the extent that there are projects coming out, you know,
23:13
Speaker 1: in that area around remittances and payments and around market structure.
23:17
Speaker 1: Those are the places that I'm looking at the most
23:19
Speaker 1: right now. So, um, in the case of cryptocurrencies today,
23:24
Speaker 1: you say it's now the time to get in it's good,
23:26
Speaker 1: or now is the time to wait to see where
23:28
Speaker 1: the market's going. So I think what I would say
23:30
Speaker 1: is there's potentially a lot of profit you can make,
23:33
Speaker 1: you could also lose. So like things can go up,
23:35
Speaker 1: things can go down. Um, there is you know a
23:37
Speaker 1: lot of upside potential. The biggest thing I would say
23:39
Speaker 1: is don't put in more than your you know, find
23:42
Speaker 1: losing like you know, don't don't put in money that
23:45
Speaker 1: you would be really really sad to lose into you know,
23:48
Speaker 1: crypto right now. Um, you know, think of it more
23:51
Speaker 1: as an upside play. When you leave this interview and
23:54
Speaker 1: you go outside, can you walk down the streets of
23:56
Speaker 1: New York without anybody bothering you? It's borderline. So I
24:00
Speaker 1: think probably half a percenter or third of a percenter
24:02
Speaker 1: or something of people recognize me here, and so you know,
24:05
Speaker 1: the real answer is like every ten minutes that I'm
24:08
Speaker 1: walking on the streets, someone will recognize me. Roughly, it's
24:11
Speaker 1: a little bit in between. What you can do is
24:13
Speaker 1: get a comb, comb your hair, or get a shot
24:15
Speaker 1: and then people would be your disguise. It's true, I
24:18
Speaker 1: could just look look normal and that would do You
24:20
Speaker 1: haven't thought of that, That's that's beyond me. Thanks for
24:24
Speaker 1: listening to hear more of my interviews. You can subscribe
24:27
Speaker 1: and download my podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you
24:31
Speaker 1: listen