Digital Social Hour - Interviewing SBF, The Fall of BitBoy and Future of Crypto I Tiffany Fong DSH #379

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

Tiffany Fong comes to the show to talk about the interview with SBF, Bitboy and the Future of Crypto. APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And he's like, it's worth like 20, I don't remember what it was worth, maybe like 5, 10 bucks, 20. And I was just like, yeah, I don't care. Where's my actual gift? That's the best gift you ever got in low key. I know, I know. Just at the time, I just didn't know what the f*** it was. He had two computers mining and I thought it was sick. But everyone else made fun of him.

I mean, he's probably chilling now. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. It's always the people that get made fun of that end up on top. That's true. That's true. That's true. Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe.

It helps a lot with the algorithm. It helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team. Truly means a lot. Thank you guys for supporting. And here's the episode. All right, we are back. Wayne and I are here today with Tiffany.

What up? Crypto news reporter. Thank you. Crypto is back, huh? I guess we are back. Wayne and I are here today with Tiffany Fong, crypto news reporter. Thank you. Crypto is back, huh? I guess it's back. I mean, we're at 44K right now as we speak. So you're about to be busy, busy reporting on some scams, some frauds. Yeah, if anyone wants to start a Ponzi scheme, then please let me know in advance and let's get in touch.

So you can expose them. Yes. What was the first one you exposed? All of this just started at Celsius Network. I don't know if you guys have heard of Celsius or know too much about it. Okay. I mean, I wasn't talking about crypto or posting about it at all until Celsius went down because I had 3.1 bitcoins, 11.6 ETH, and some Matic and Aave and some other coins.

Which, I don't know, you guys have more money than me, so it's probably not as big a deal to you guys. No, that's a lot. But it was a lot of money for me. I mean, when I put it in, it was well over 200K for me. So I was pissed off when that went down. Was that like all your money? I still have some money on the sidelines. I have some crypto on the sidelines.

But it was a lot of my money. And yeah, I really depressed at that oh wait is this clean okay okay we'll just censor just curse the storm okay let's go let's go get that trauma out right no for real oh well if we want to talk about trauma we can talk about trauma i mean so a couple months before i lost all that money to celsius i was going through a breakup. So I was just already really depressed. Then I lost all that money. So I was just in bed really sad every day. And I was like, okay, I need to start doing.

So I just one of the random things I started doing was posting YouTube videos. So my first video was literally like, I just lost a lot of money to Celsius Network. And then that video, I mean, I had zero followers or subscribers on youtube at the time and i was like i'm just gonna put this out there no one's gonna watch it but um i think it got like 70 or 80k and like for my very first youtube video with no following yeah did you use hashtags when you just posted i don't even think i i didn't know what the f**k i was doing instagram or youtube uh youtube so i posted a tiktok and TikTok and the TikTok did it well as well. But yeah, the YouTube video got like 70 something K.

Wow. I wasn't expecting that, obviously, with no following. I think it's just that I figure a lot of other people who lost money to Celsius were looking it up.

Most typing in Celsius. And I knew I was doing that. So I was like, oh, I might as well just post updates about Celsius because a bunch of other people lost money. So that's what I started doing.

And I was posting updates about the bankruptcy. And after a couple of months of doing that, some employees inside the company started contacting me and being like, hey. Whistleblowers. Yes, yes, whistleblowers. So they started sending me leaked information. So the first thing I received was a leaked, secretly recorded internal all-hands meeting. Cheat.

Yeah, so I worked with the New York Times times a bit and the new york times did a story on it and then i posted it in conjunction on my youtube channel so i just it was i started posting leaks and that's not why i started my youtube channel or anything but that's how like how things uh snowballed Celsius was able to file chapter 11 instead of 7 right so they're still in business yes well no they're not still in business they're in we just haven't been able to get money back and for the past year and a half they've literally just been toying around with different ideas for what they could do. And telling people like, this is possible. Yeah, this is possible for a year and a half. So no one's seen a dime back. We're not in business. So we're not making money. We're literally just bleeding money to bankruptcy lawyers right now for a year and a half.

The lawyers always win. The lawyers always win. I always i didn't know any about anything about this stuff like i'd never experienced being in a bankruptcy before but um did they try to sue you for like leaking stuff they did well so i ended up leaking a bunch of pieces of leaked information um the founder alex mishinsky's wallet addresses and transaction history um some other files and um the thing that really set them off Was leaking the bids on Celsius Network's assets Like they were trying to auction off

Some of Celsius's assets And they didn't want us to know Who was bidding on our assets And I'm like, guys, we are the customers We should know who's buying our assets Or who's restarting the company But they weren't going to tell us So someone leaked me the bids

And I leaked them So did they end up selling the company Or did they just file Chapter 11? We've gone through so many iterations of it. They sold it for a bit, tried to clear this new plan with the SEC recently. SEC shot it down. So we're basically back at square one right now. At least they're not in the same predicament as Sam Bankman-Fried.

Do you think he should have went that route or was he too greedy? What did he do wrong? Well, Sam still regrets filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy so we're talking about sam bankman freed for anyone who's not aware um that's better than chapter seven right i don't know the difference chapter seven is like basically an immediate liquidation but to be completely honest some of us creditors who have been sitting through the chapter 11 bankruptcy for over a year and a half are like we should have just gone into chapter seven because that's basically like fire sale of your assets which may not be great because

you're selling at low prices the reason why chapter seven isn't good is because they can basically just walk away chapter 11 allows them to restructure the company's terms and models and come back and it gives them most of us it gives them a second chance but a lot of us are like like me for example i'm like i want my fucking money back i don't want to be a part of your new company so they're trying to start a new company like hey we can keep your eth though and then we can start staking it and earn some apy so these are the plans they're coming up with i'm like how about you don't keep my eth and give it back to me because they still have it right it's still in their wallet yeah well who knows if they have it honestly no they lost over 50 of our money so that's a state they have if they have it, honestly. Nah, shine. They lost over 50% of our money. That's a state.

They have ETH. They have all the other coins. But you heard her. They lost 50% of it. Over 50. Yeah. I mean, if it goes up over 50%, then true. Yeah.

But they're not going to give you double the ETH. No, not at all. I'd love for us to just like, well, I guess selling right now, we would be selling at a profit from the time of bankruptcy. For sure. For sure. And even for them, even let's say if they held on, the fact that it's up right now, we would be selling at a profit from the time of bankruptcy. For sure. For sure. And even for them, even let's say if they held on, the fact that it's up right now, they can still hear, hear, hear, hear, just kind of get rid of it and have this clean slate. It's true.

It's true. It's been a nightmare. How did the whole SBF thing happen? Yeah. So, Sam, I posted my very first piece of leaked information on September 13th, 2022. That was a leaked internal all hands meeting. And Sam Binkman-Fried just randomly started following me on Twitter. And at the time, Sam.

This is before everything? Before everything happened. So everything went down. Making sure you have a post-it note in the back room. Well, so, I mean, he was still the golden boy of crypto at the time that he followed me. Oh, so you were hype. Yes. Like, he was on Forbes.

He was on Fortune. I honestly. Still at the heat center. Yeah. He's an FTX guy. Yeah, exactly. So, like, I honestly didn't know that much about him because I'd never used FTX. But I was like, I've seen this guy in magazines.

Like, this is a big shot. Right, right. And at the time, I had practically no following because I had just started posting on Twitter and YouTube like a month or two prior. So I messaged Sam and I was like, hey, thanks for the follow. And we just DMed really briefly that day.

He was just like, oh, I thought it was really interesting what you posted, whatever. I didn't think much about it. He commented on a few of my posts over the next couple of months. But then suddenly in November, FTX goes down. I know you were like, no, I got to do a story on my homeboy. On my homeboy. I know.

So I was just like, okay, I've DMed with this guy one time before. I was like, our DMs are open. Company just went down. I'm just going to shoot my shot, see if he'd be willing to chat with me. There's no way this guy's going to talk to me. First of all, you shouldn't be talking to random reporters in the first place. I'm not even a reporter. He's in s**t right.

He was in s**t right. I know, yeah. It was like, this guy might get indicted. You shouldn't be talking to anyone. And if he talks to someone, I was like, he's going to talk to the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, New York Times. So went about my day, didn't expect anything. I was just like, shot my shot. And five days after I messaged him, so I messaged him on November 11th, the day they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Five days later on November 16th, I was out on a date in New York City.

I was drunk at like midnight. And I randomly see my phone light up. Sam Baikman-Fried messages me. And it's like a heart with a arrow and like a three and he's like hey free to chat for the next hour or so yeah yeah so i like ran home from a date off that date i did well the funny thing is the guy i was on a date with actually lost a ton of money to ftx because i met him through crypto and he was like he told me he lost several millions of dollars I never saw his account I know men can exaggerate sometimes so I

don't know if he was I don't know if he was being honest but um yeah he was like go home talk to Sam ask him where my money is so uh yeah I just like ran home and then that started that was I think Sam's first if not one of the very first interviews he gave after the collapse so we hopped on the phone call for like an hour or so a few days later we hopped on phone again so i got two interviews uh then he set off on like a weird little media tour so i don't know if you guys followed that but he started doing a bunch of interviews two weeks later all of those conversations yeah were you recording them or not i did record the those conversations yeah yeah um those like first two interviews and um are you interested in coming on the digital social hour podcast as a guest we'll click the application link below in the description of this video we are

always looking for cool stories cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business and life click the application link below and here's the episode guys guys. What was his mind state like? Where was he at mentally? Was he fearful? Was he like, damn, I really f***ed up? That's what I was so curious about. It was so weird. I mean, right after your company, your multi-billion dollar company collapses,

I expected him to be devastated, crying, his voice shaking. I don't know. But I guess men are a little bit less emotional. No, no, no. When you're talking about that much, especially a company scale that high, that's like, I wouldn't talk to you. I would be talking to the partners like, look, you're going to Mexico. I'm going. Dude.

We are leaving. I've been in Thailand. I think he tried to flee, right? No, he didn't try to flee. No, I'd have been in Thailand that same night. I've asked him why he didn't try to flee, and we've talked about that and stuff. But on those first two phone calls, I don't, first of all, maybe he didn't understand the trouble he was in because he hadn't been indicted yet. But he just sounded so unaffected.

He was just like, hey, it's Sam. And I was like, how are you doing? And he's like, eh, hasn't been the best week. And I was just like. Wow. It could be the autism. He might not be able to like feel. I think there is something.

Yeah. That is the thing. I mean, like the more I've gotten to know Sam, he certainly lacks the empathy. Normal. Yeah. He does lack empathy. Like he says he has difficulty feeling empathy.

And he says he has a very limited emotional range. He had autism. A lot of guys in crib though do. Yeah. A lot of guys do. Pretty much all. Yeah, a lot of guys do. Pretty much all the top ones. He hasn't been like professionally diagnosed, but I would say that most people who watch enough of his interviews are like, you could tell. Yeah, you could tell.

Yeah. But yeah, it was very strange. He didn't seem overly affected. Wow. And then, yeah, I don't think he understood the trouble he was in. And that's sort of the sense I got throughout our house arrest conversations, even after he got indicted. So Sam, when we first had those first two phone calls, he hadn't been indicted yet. He thought that there was still a shot at reopening the company and him being this.

Well, actually, he still wanted to play a role in the company. Then he set off on a media tour for a couple of weeks, then got abruptly arrested in the Bahamas and thrown in jail for eight days. And I figured this guy's not going to talk to me again because when I posted our interviews, there was one specific part of our first interview that I didn't know was going to get him into as much trouble as it did. But on our first interview, Sam admitted to me that he donated a lot of money dark to Republicans. Yeah. And I didn't follow Sam that closely. So I wasn't aware that that wasn't public information yet. And I removed everything he said in the interview that he said off the record. So I removed all of that.

And that was on the record. So I didn't think anything of it. And that got cited, first of all, all over the media, but also in the FEC Federal Elections Committee complaint against him. So it actually got him into deep shit. That's why I don't think he's going to do a lot of time in jail. Didn't he just get sentenced to a lot of time?

No, he hasn't. I think he will be. He's facing 115 years. And I don't think he'll get the max. I said I think he'll do three years. No. I don't think so.

They got a lot on him. He's not going to do three years. He's not going to do three years. Considering the people that he gave money, we don't know who he gave money to. I think that at this point. No, they know actually. We know a lot. Yeah, we know a lot.

So you don't think that'll help him? I don't think so. I think if anything, it'll hurt him because, I mean, it is public, a lot of these donations. And a lot of these politicians want to now very publicly distance themselves from him. So if anything, they don't want to look like they're cozy now. You feel like they want to make an example out of him? Yes, I think so. And with financial crimes, it's always the amount. Yes, yes. So he's, they don't want to look like they're cozy enough. Do you feel like they want to make an example out of him? Yes, I think so. And with financial crimes,

it's always the amount. Yes. So like he's going to get a lot of time. Yeah. When you look at the sentencing guidelines, the amount, like you get enhancements for the amount stolen and the- So what was his amount? 7 billion,

right? I think more than 8 billion range. you're sentenced to 7 billion years in jail. Well, the guidelines stop and cut off at 550 mil. So there are increases in the amount of. So he might get 50, 60 years. The sentencing guidelines, I believe, based on a lawyer who counted this up, said that the guideline recommendation would be life.

Jeez. So how could this have been prevented? Like, is this a preventable thing? Yeah, I think so. Because the thing is, well, first of all, a lot of people hate Michael Lewis because Michael Lewis has been

a little overly positive about Sam. But ultimately, I mean, FTX itself was a profitable company. Right. But Sam was doing some things. Like, I mean, money, I don't know, this is a really complex situation.

But from the get-go, FTX and Alameda Research were two of Sam's companies, I guess they're sister companies. And from the start of FTX, money was going to Alameda Research because FTX is a crypto company. And in the beginning, when he just started FTX, he had difficulty getting banks to want to work with a crypto company. So Alameda Research, his sister company, already had bank accounts. So he had FTX customers wire money to Alameda Research so that they could trade on FTX. So this was happening from the inception of FTX.

Which is illegal. It's probably illegal, but also doesn't look as sinister and malicious. It wasn't like he intentionally put that in place so that he could f*** around with customer funds. So I can understand why he put it in. Probably that he could f*** around with the funds. So I can understand why he put it in. Probably illegal, but the intent didn't seem to be like, I just want to ruin everyone's life.

But I think over time, he eventually ended up using that money when, like, I believe, it depends on when you want to start the beginning of the fraud, but I think a lot of that money was used in the summer of 2022 because Alameda had used a lot

of third party loans from lenders or whatever. And they were recalling their loans. FTX had used that money to put into illiquid venture investments and needed to repay those lenders. Oops. And ended up using some customer funds to cover up that.

So all the donations were basically customer funds? Yeah. It does look like a lot of the donations were customer funds. Wow. Maybe not all of them, but quite a bit of them. And he was donating to both sides, right? He was. I saw that.

I thought that was interesting. Yeah. Well, on the political side? Yeah. For real? Yeah. He didn't pick one side. He did both.

And that was the thing he told me on the first interview that got cited in the FCC complaint. What's the logic behind that? Donating to both sides? What do you think? Because obviously Sam doesn't- Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to think of a- I think he was just trying to get in as many people's pockets as possible. I think so.

Oh, just basically- Just wanted to create favor. Create, yeah, for favor on both sides. So just in case something happens, Yeah, I think so. And from my understanding, the Republican politicians he was donating to were like the more center-leaning ones.

I know that he just really hated Donald Trump. This came out in Michael Lewis's book. Sam didn't tell me this, but apparently Sam was considering trying to pay Donald Trump $5 billion to not run for president. $5 billion?

I would take it, bro. I'm taking $5 billion. I would take $5 billion. $5 million or $5 billion? If anyone would like to pay me $5 billion to not run for president. Five billion? I would have took it, bro. Yeah. I'm taking five billion. I would take five billion. Five million or five billion. If anyone would like to pay me five billion dollars to not run for president, I'd be happy.

I don't think Trump would take it, dude. Why? Trump loves the country too much. Bro, but he already took four years off. Yeah, but he's running again. Yeah, exactly. I would have ran again. Sam's in jail now.

Oh. It would have worked. Wow. True. I saw you, you got invited to the White House, actually, right would have worked. Wow. True. You got invited to the White House, actually, right? I did.

But I feel like people think that that's because the president invited me to the White House. But it's just after posting videos for a few months, I got a random email that said, invite to the White House. And I was like, this looks like a f***ing email. Yeah, that sounds sketchy. They wanted to arrest a f***ing guy. Yeah, exactly. I was like, looks like a yeah that sounds like they wanted to arrest i don't deserve to go to the white house and i responded and i was like this scene i literally said this seems like a ploy to kidnap me or is a scam if this is not a scam or a ploy to kidnap me you have to send me a picture of you holding up three fingers and your government issued id you need to send me an email from a government email address like i put this person through a bunch of hoops

yes and they did all of it wow so it was a guy that's in the presidential secret service and he just invited me to be his plus one no way so he wanted to date you i told him up front i was like nothing romantic is happening here i still have the messages i was like nothing romantic is happening here if that's what you expect, then pick someone else to go with you. But if you're okay with nothing romantic happening, I will come with you

as your plus one to the White House. I definitely would've picked someone else. Yes. Dude, that's like the hottest ticket in town. I'm like,

that's like a once in a lifetime. You could've sold that for like 50 Gs. Yeah, I would've picked somebody else. Yeah, you're like, this girl's not even gonna put out? Pick someone else. I'm good.

Go on Raya, go on Seeking Arrangements. Right, right, right. So you got to meet Biden? I did get picked somebody else. Yeah, he's like, this girl's not even going to put out. Pick someone else. I'm good. Go on Raya. Go on Seeking Arrangements. Right, right, right. So you got to meet Biden? I did get to meet Biden. We didn't have an actual conversation, but everyone gets to stand next to him and take a picture with him. What was he like?

I didn't even vote Biden. Waxy. His face looked great. Waxy. He looked wet and waxy. He looked sweaty and waxy. Like, not real. He just looked like he had been like

covered in makeup like foundation like women's foundation and looked sweaty. Did you try to hide the age now that you said that? I think they do. I think they do.

It was weird. I didn't like it. Yeah, because when you see him on videos it's always like kind of weird. You know what I mean? It looks weird in person. It was odd.

Interesting. Yeah, that was fun though. You think he'll win again? I hope not. I don't think so. I'm honestly not super political but what do you guys i think trump i think trump got an edge a lot of edge a lot but we got to see what happens with him rfk is taking votes away though yeah they were talking about rfk at the conference a lot of people like him too more concerned about his health but they really like him yeah he does sound pretty rough yeah the voice scares me a little bit it does kind of i honestly can't like listen to him speak for too long it just kind of like but oh man what do you think of um what do you think of the whole recent

bit boy stuff have you covered any of that bit boy what happened i i've i've talked to him okay you know he came on the show yeah but um it seemed like he was out of it so i don't think i don't know did he come on the show right before the collapse or not yeah he came on before the collapse it was what we'll be like three weeks it was right before yeah it was like he seemed off to be honest yeah yeah he was twitching on the interview a lot um we kind of just let him talk the whole show and he did interesting yeah yeah so did you think he was actually on drugs? Because he's obviously denied being on drugs.

After that day, yeah, dude, to be honest. I think something was off about him. I don't know what it was. But something's definitely off. Yeah. He wanted a lot of relationships, too. Oh, yeah, he did. I mean, BitBoy and I, we started off disliking each other.

Because BitBoy, he messaged me when he went to the Bahamas to try to interview Sam Bickman-Fried. And he kept messaging or he messaged me being like, get me in touch with Sam, something like that. And I didn't respond. And it became like a little dispute. Then we ended up like being on good terms because we were at conferences together. And he was always nice to me. So I don't have any like personal gripes with him in terms of like him being an a**hole to me. Obviously, a lot of people hate him and think he's a scammer but then like that meltdown i mean that was i didn't

understand it i don't know i i don't know what was going on there i do remember like a few weeks before that he was sending me like some slightly like erratic messages but i was just like i didn't think that much of it um but yeah the whole wife and um wife left thing yeah i think his company a guy from his company they separated from him yeah he lost a lot bro yeah he lost the company lost the wife lost a lot of crypto yeah that's the thing i feel like to some degree i do like feel for him and like it like he started that company himself it's called it was called bitboy crypto i was like you can really take that away from him i didn't know that you can just pull the rug out from someone he was the face of it it's gonna be hard for that company to even rebrand

honestly i think that's kind of like them taking the company away from him i'm kind of like you guys can all leave the company and start your own company i feel like to take it away but having him as the face as the face of the company and mindset, this mental mindset that he's in wouldn't be good for the company anyway. Yeah. I mean, I think he has his pros and his cons in a way. That's true. When I think of BitBoy, I think of literally BitBoy. Me too.

I feel like you can't separate the two. So I don't know. It's very strange. I mean, the whole like personal life matters. Yeah. I think he went manic, honestly very strange. I mean, the whole like personal life matters. Yeah. I think he went manic, honestly. I think so too, honestly. Well, I think in that time too, crypto is down.

I mean, I think a lot of people lost their mind when it came to crypto just because they lost a lot. But as you know, Sean's a big ETH holder that you got to hold. Yeah. So what's your mindset now on the... I've always been a holder. Like, I haven't sold... Yeah, I haven't sold... Well, because the reason I got into crypto

was because one of my relatives was a Bitcoin miner back when I was in high school. So I got my first Bitcoin as a Christmas gift in 2011. He's chilling now. He's chilling. Do you still have it or did Celsius have it? Yeah, I put it into Celsius.

Is this not your first bit? But I have other crypto that wasn't in Celsius so I'm not doing great. That was a lot of my crypto but it wasn't everything. But yeah, I hadn't sold any of it

so I'm certainly not like a day trader. I don't go and buy coins and like try to catch the market top or anything. So I'm also in the holding or little mindset.'m also in the holding or

little damn mining in 2011 he's gotta be that's crazy worth nine ten figures now i know yeah i mean who's this your uncle i he doesn't want to be known just for his like that's fair yeah wait so he still has uh bitcoin yeah oh wow i mean he certainly sold over the price was like five bucks back yeah i remember because i was in high school i didn't know what bitcoin was and he like for Yeah. Oh, wow. I mean, he certainly sold over the years. Bro, the price was like five bucks back then. Yeah. Five years. I remember because I was in high school. I didn't know what Bitcoin was. And he like for Christmas, he was like, it's a Bitcoin. It's obviously not physical, but I think he wrote me like a card that he was giving me a Bitcoin.

You probably hated that gift at the time. Yeah, I was like, what the f*** is this? And he's like, it's worth like 20. I don't remember what it was worth. Maybe like five, 10 bucks, 20. And I was just like, yeah, I don't care. Like, where's my actual gift? Wow.

That's the best gift you ever got in low key. I know. I know. Just at the time, I just didn't know what the f*** it was. And I was like, this I don't care like where's my actual gift wow that's the best gift you ever got in low key I know just at the time I just didn't know what the f*** it was and I was like this isn't a real thing you wrote that

you're giving me something on paper like what the f*** no I feel that though because kids in my high school got made fun of for like even talking about crypto

did you know kids in high school that were like mining yeah and I would be friends with him because it interested me and I even got into it I didn't mine

but he did he had two computers mining and I thought it was sick but everyone else made fun of him I mean he's probably chilling now hell yeah hell yeah And I even got into it. I didn't mind, but he did. He had two computers mining, and I thought it was sick. But everyone else made fun of him. I mean, he's probably chilling now. Hell yeah.

Hell yeah. It's always the people that get made fun of that end up on top. That's true. That's true. I wish I befriended all those weirdos. The same in that movie. It's called Dumb Money about the GameStop stock. They got a movie about that. Oh, I haven't watched that.

I've heard of it. They did the same thing with him. Oh, he got bullied, have you? Bro. Yeah, he came up crazy. He came up crazy. I remember those days. I didn't make money on that one. Doge was wild when Doge blew up.

Yeah, did you make any money off any s*** coins? I've never bought s*** coins. Well, actually, like, over the course of this, I'm now really good friends with Billy Marcus, the Dogecoin founder. So he's given me a little bit of Doge for my birthday. That's the only Bitcoin I think I own. Other than that, like ETH, Bitcoin.

I think I've bought a couple other projects along the way. Like I bought a little like Aave and Matic. Yeah. Solana. I have a little Solana. I know some Shiba millionaires. Shiba Inu. Really?

Yeah, yeah. That one took off. Did they sell? I know three, yeah. Good for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are you working on now? Now I'm just like, I don't know.

I'm still doing content stuff. And I'm just like finding my way out of the specific crypto niche. Because I don't know. I just thought about like, do I want to keep just doing the whole CoffeeZilla thing? I don't know if it's what I want to do forever. I think you should. Because it's information yeah if you're passionate about it yeah but twitter is paying well i saw you tweet a little bit

well the twitter payments are now down after oh they're down after elon said you to all the they lost the advertisers left i noticed like a drastic decrease i think that like the most i made in a two-week period was like $1,700 for two weeks, which is good for Twitter because I never even expected to make money for Twitter. Yeah, just for tweeting. Yeah, and then like my latest payment I got today was like $130.

So like we're down bad after the advertisers left. So what about TikTok? How are you doing on there? I don't actually, I should use TikTok more. It just makes me feel cringy. Why? I don't know. It just feels like something that like very,

it's Gen Z, but I know that you make a lot of shorts and you probably do really well with them yeah i mean they don't pay anything crazy but it's good for eyeballs yeah that makes the business that makes sense i'm just yeah i mean you have a team too i feel like just to go through and make every single one of these things it's like oh yeah it takes enough time to make like a youtube video just because i have to read so many documents and for me i i'm like i picked the wrong niche like a lot of the youtube videos i was making was about were about the bankruptcy filings and bankruptcy proceedings so i'm like reading 30 page court documents and trying to summarize them i'm like it's so separable so honestly i'm now in a bit of a state of limbo because i'm like i don't know if this is what I want to do forever. I need to inch my way out a bit. So no more dates with the crypto bros? I mean, my favorite scammer is going to go to jail

for a long time. So no more Sammy. Oh God. I feel like I joke around with my friends in private and I'm like, Sammy is going to jail for a long time. But I'm like, yeah, it's not going to come off well. Has he talked to you at at all recently I haven't talked to him since he went to jail in August he got thrown in jail in August it's been a while then

so I haven't talked to him and we just talked a lot before that and like in a weird way we sort of became friends you were close when I heard

yeah we did become friends yeah it was weird it's weird to be like friends with a scammer but Sam was always nice to be nice to me she said it's weird to be friends friends with a scammer. But Sam was always nice to me.

She said it's weird to be friends with a scammer. Do you believe his whole MO was to scam people or did he not know what to do? His company scaled so fast. Did he not know what to do with it? What was it? You said $5 billion? $8 billion. I genuinely don't believe that his intent was to ever hurt customers.

I don't believe that his intent was to ever enrich himself so that he could go buy yachts and like what else do rich people buy i don't know everything well yeah like party by hookers yeah that's the purpose of starting ftx what he got carried away no so the reason so people think that this is a pr this is just him trying to do pr but he believed in this thing called effective altruism this i guess belief effective what effective altruism it's funny you guys don't know because i feel like it's very silicon valley people know what he is, and I didn't know what it was going into it. But it's just this, I guess, way of life or mentality or mindset or

philosophy, where you believe that the more money you accumulate, that you'll be able to donate to whatever charities you see fit. That's the way that you can have the most positive impact on the world. Because ultimately, if you go and volunteer for a charity and put in that amount of time of your hours, like how much good are you really doing? But if you're able to make an exorbitant amount of money

and then donate that money to these charities, you're going to be able to like really multiply the amount of good that you're able to do. So is that what he was doing? That's what he was doing. And that's considered fraud? Well, that was, I think, his actual intent.

But in order to get his hands on all this money that he allegedly, I mean, that he has claimed through and through that he wanted to donate to charity, he did commit some crimes along the way. He committed some crimes. He might have done some illegal things. He committed some crimes along the way in order to donate to charity. Was he even donating though? That's really like breaking it down to simplify it. But yeah, ultimately, he was donating like quite a bit to charity. He didn't donate everything.

In terms of his personal holdings, he actually didn't come out of this with that much money. I mean, he showed me screenshots of his personal bank accounts. He had like 200K in them. Obviously, people are like he's hiding money away, which could be true. I'm sure he could be hiding money, but I don't think he's hiding billions of dollars or anything. A lot of this money. What do you think he's hiding? Hundreds of millions?

I think probably certainly some million. Some hundreds of millions or somewhere. There's no way. So it's $8 billion gone. It's missing, bro. That's the thing. The $8 billion, it's not gone. It's like he was making insane, illiquid investments.

So he was putting money into, for example, Anthropic. But one of FTX's largest investments was in insane illiquid investments so he was putting money into for example anthropic but one of ftx's largest investments was in anthropic the ai company and that investment has actually ended up doing really well so that that company is still doing good yeah anthropic i think just because the ai like there's been so much interest for sure yeah so i think it was a 500 million dollar investment and obviously you can't yeah okay so that's 500 million value it now but so we still at 7.5 billion i need to know where the other oh my god oh there's like a big breakdown i mean there were a lot of liquid venture investments where i wouldn't remember every so it's all going there was some like robin hood shares well mostly a liquid venture investments

the money that's gone i would say is like a lot of money went to politicians and they're trying to get that money back to customers but yeah claw back but uh will these politicians give us that money back i doubt it so like that's the money that i think is gone but sam didn't like he didn't own like super yachts he didn't party at nightclubs he didn't spend money on hookers and drugs so see that's why i'm thinking bro i don't think he's gonna get that much time time. I think he is. We'll see what happens. When do they sentence it? March 28th. Okay.

And I'm going to fly to New York for it. We'll see. We'll see what happens. I mean, I think if he gets sentenced, everybody would be so happy, but they still don't get their money back. That's the thing. Well, so, I don't know. What do you guys think is fair? Actually, I guess you guys don't follow what he's done.

Well, I think what's fair, I think he should minimum get probably like five to ten years. It's a white collar crime. It's a lot of money. But when you talk about what he actually spent the money on. Did he buy like houses and shit? He stole. The real estate he had, he had a $35 million penthouse in the Bahamas, which kept coming up in court and obviously looks really bad. And I'm not going to defend it, but he also had 10 other FTX employees living with him in the penthouse.

So it wasn't like – it's like these guys are all billionaires and they're sharing a $35 million penthouse. So Caroline lived there? Caroline, Gary Nishad, all those guys. I just don't feel like – because when you hear stories about everyone else, it's like they bought Isla, they bought this, they bought that. And I'm like, okay, cool. You can see where the fraud is. But in his case, I think it was unintentional. Yeah.

And I just don't, so I'm trying to just get a better understanding of what he was doing that was just so fraudulent. Plus, I know in terms and conditions, a little bit banks, crypto holding companies, in that fine print, technically you don't own those coins anymore once they're transferred in there. In FTX, though, their terms of service did say that the customers retain titles to the coins. Oh, they do. Celsius, for example, we did transfer our title to the coins, but FTX different.

But you'll probably get some, I mean, I don't know how much your audience follows or cares about this stuff, but if I say something like anything some, I mean, I don't know how much your audience follows or cares about this stuff. But if I say something like, anything remotely, not positive, but say something like, yeah, five to ten years would probably be fair. I get a lot of heat because I think there's just a lot of people with pitchforks that are like, this guy needs to die in jail. He needs to rot. I think he should get five to ten. And if he dies in jail, then so be it. But then so be it. But then so be it.

I mean, but like, I mean, to just throw him away, bro? That's crazy. He has a smart mind, but just use... To throw him away, I think they can use him.

That's what I think. I think they can use him more than anything. He's of more use to like the customer, the people who lost money. He's of more use putting him to work.

Certain criminals need jobs, bro. With the government. No, it's the truth, right? I think so too. Certain criminals need jobs. I. With the government. No, it's the truth, right? I think so, too. Certain criminals need jobs. I think he's one of those criminals who should have a job. They used to hire hackers in jail. Right.

If you put him in jail, he's going to educate them prisoners, and you're going to have a whole top row of people ready to go when they get out. I'm just trying to understand, like, why does he deserve life in prison? I understand the amount, but then there's also insurance companies, I'm sure, that was probably backing him. So, there's ways to kind of recuperate that. I would hope so, right? Let's just hope that he had insurance to back FTX just in case of loss or anything. No, there's no insurance. Okay, cool.

He had no insurance. Yeah. He had no insurance on his company. The thing is, the money that customers are actually going to end up losing after the bankruptcy is all said and done, it doesn't look like FTX customers are going to end up losing a lot because some of his insane illiquid investments that he shouldn't have made in the first place have surprisingly done really well. Like Anthropic was a $500 million investment, one of their largest investments. And people are now valuing that stake in Anthropic at potentially $2 to $3 billion. Obviously, things like that. I think customers might end up being made whole the equity from ftx and okay so he transferred their money

and made other investments so are those customers still locked in equities and shares to those other companies they're not as of now it's really messy and complicated so this is going to take like more because you're saying they're not losing that money so are they gaining like what do they actually get from those other investments that he made? I don't think they're going to end up gaining. That's more of a reason. Yeah, they won't gain, but they might be made whole. Yeah, the amount of money that they are technically owed, I think, is locked in on the date of the bankruptcy, which kind of sucks for them because crypto prices were down bad that day.

But apparently that's just the precedent in bankruptcies. You lock in that price. But I think it's very, especially with the prices right now skyrocketing. I think that customers are probably going to end up being made whole. I don't want to promise or say that.

And that's FTX. What about Celsius, you think? Oh, Celsius, we're not going to be doing so well. I mean, we're going to get back a percentage of our money. He's not going to jail? No, he's in jail.

Mashinsky did get indicted and his trial is going to be in September next year. Even though Celsius went down before FTX, they took so long to get Mishinsky. It's honestly just odd how fast they went after Sam because usually these white-collar fraud cases apparently take a really long time. Sam had more visibility and more brand recognition.

Plus, with Celsius, just like you said, you guys handed over the titles and everything to your actual coins. Yes. So his terms and conditions were actually written in a way that benefited him. Yeah. So more than likely he's going to get off. He filed Chapter 11, bro. I still think he committed

some fraud, though. Well, yeah. I mean, in that case, but what if they fine him two, three million dollars? We'll see. Or maybe ten. He still gets off.

It would be a shame if Sam goes to prison for life and Alex gets nothing because I personally hate Alex Mashinsky more. I don't know. You guys probably don't It's all about the way

your company's structured, though. Yeah, this is true. I mean, that one thing in the terms of service does help Mashinskyinsky more. It's all about the way your company's structured though. Yeah, this is true. I mean that one thing in the terms of service does help. It helps a lot. That's the whole trial. Tiffany, it's been fun. Anything you want to promote or close off with? Oh, I mean I'm on Twitter at Tiffany Fong with one underscore on YouTube at Tiffany Fong.

I mean I'm on most of the platforms. If you just look up Tiffany Fong, you'll find me. Simple name. Alright. Fong F-O-N-G. You heard it here guys. If you just look up Tiffany Fong, you'll find me. Simple name. All right. Fong, F-O-N-G. You heard it here, guys. Hopefully you guys watch and get your crypto back. Until then, see you next time. Peace.

Bye, guys. On November 13th, it's the dawning of a new era. When the NFL debuts in Germany, live on NFL Network. Brady and the Bucs. Touchdown, Tampa Bay! DK and the Seahawks. Put the ball up. Making a catch!

Wake up and watch with the world. It's Sunday morning football, live from Munich. Sunday at 9.30 a.m. Eastern, only on NFL Network.