The Wolf Of All Streets - How One Million People Lost $10 Billion | David Bailey On What Is Going On With GBTC

Starting point is 00:00:00 There's been quite a bit of rumor about alleged bad behavior at DCG, including Grayscale and Genesis. And there's been a movement to basically get together all of the shareholders of GBTC as activists to be able to take some power over what's happening at the company. Some of that is being led by David Bailey, who also happens to lead Bitcoin Magazine, Bitcoin Miami 2023, the guy throwing the biggest Bitcoin conference in the world in just a matter of weeks. We talked about all this and more in this conversation today. So, I wanna talk about GBTC,

Starting point is 00:00:43 because I know that you've taken sort of an activist position with that for full transparency and everyone knows I'm an early investor in Valkyrie. And I know, Steve shared some of the ethos of how to handle that situation alongside you. What's going on with GBTC now in your mind and what's your approach to it? Yeah, so it's a complicated situation. You know, first off, overall, I would say like my perspective on the issue, and this is something that we got pulled into, not something that I wanted to be involved in or I intended to be involved in, but we kind of just got pulled into it. You know, what Barry and DCG was effectively doing was not very dissimilar to what SBF and FTX and Alameda were doing. And ultimately, he was taking money out of one entity to feed into another entity where, you know,

Starting point is 00:01:34 he had his own shit coin that was able to absorb that money. And then he was able to profit off the top into his slush fund, which is the holding company, and deploy that into venture bets or real estate or whatever. So the scale of the situation is roughly $10 billion has been lost to the assets that are in the portfolio. They haven't been lost, but what it's trading at is roughly a 40% discount to the assets in the trust. And so the scale of the situation is like a million people are out $10 billion. So we're talking about a situation like on the same level and scale as FTX and Alameda. So like, that's the state of play. The two, like, you know, cut to the end, I guess,

Starting point is 00:02:20 the two most pressing relevant things that are happening right now. One is you have this bankruptcy occurring at Genesis that is kind of like dates are starting to collide, where basically Barry needs to pony up money to the by DCG and ultimately a DCG bankruptcy. And the Genesis creditors will become the new owners of DCG. So from the grayscale perspective, if you're trying to get a deal done to be able to redeem your Bitcoin out of the trust right now, you have to negotiate with Barry. But in that set of situations unfolding, which like, again, the deadline for that to all unfold is like the next month, if he's going to make good on this debt or not.

Starting point is 00:03:10 Now we'd actually be doing a deal with the Genesis creditors who are easier to work with, let's say. So that's like one relevant item. The other relevant item is around litigation that's happening. Specifically, there's one lawsuit that's being brought by the Alameda State, which is now represented by John Ray of kind of Enron fame and Quinn Emanuel, which is one of the best law firms in the country. And they're basically suing on a variety of fronts. But the thing that's like relevant to all shareholders is this fee argument that basically in the trust documents, Grayscale as the sponsor had this duty to monitor and renegotiate fees consistently, regularly to ensure that shareholders were getting the best rates for everything. And if you look at the trust, like the fees are the same today, you know, with $25 billion under management as they were when there was $50 million under management. So like, this is the most

Starting point is 00:04:10 profitable trust, like in the world, these, these fees are completely whacked out. And so their argument is like, okay, Hey, show us the board minutes and the meeting minutes and the decision making process that you guys ran to determine that your rates that you're charging are competitive. Because if you didn't do that, then you weren't in compliance. You breached the contract that you signed with the shareholders. You weren't in compliance with what you said you were going to do for shareholders. And we need to claw back $1.5 billion in ill-gotten fees that you owe shareholders, which is a substantial sum relative to the total. I mean, that's almost 10% of the value of the trust right now. So that has already been filed. And there's kind of, let's say, looming deadlines for that going to court.

Starting point is 00:04:54 And that case will be like most likely resolved this year. So it's like a fairly time sensitive thing. And our kind of focus right now is getting the biggest shareholders educated about the action, talking to them about whether they want to join Alameda in that complaint. It's interesting. I spoke to Sun and Shine not that long ago, and he made the contention, which seemed compelling at the time, that they were a completely separate entity and effectively the GBTC itself had nothing to do with Genesis. There was no that there was a wall. Right. And sounds like that's not necessarily the case in your opinion. So, you know, what I was talking about with the bankruptcy, that specifically first off, all these loans that were not disclosed to investors where they're basically allowing firms like BlockFi and Three Arrows and Alameda and Celsius

Starting point is 00:05:51 to take shares in the trust and use them as collateral to borrow against, where then they could take the cash they borrowed and put more money into the trust. Every one of those transactions and the loan documents from every one of those transactions had to be signed off on by Michael Shonishine. If you look at the loan agreement from Three

Starting point is 00:06:10 Arrows to Genesis, at the bottom of that loan agreement is Michael Shonishine's signature. So how he can claim that he was unaware of what was going on or that was completely separate, he had to approve each transfer of those shares, those restricted shares. He knew exactly who the counterparties were. He knew exactly the details of the loan. So that's just bald face, not true. The second thing I would say is like, you know, if Grayscale didn't actually care about the problems of DCG, like if DCG's problems weren't Grayscale's problems, then the path for Grayscale to fix the situation is very straightforward. They're able to immediately start offering redemptions, offer redemptions on some prorated amount or some defined window, hey, 20% can redeem once a year, and it's going to take five years. We're going to lower fees from 2% of NAV, which is absurd, to 1% of NAV, which is of now, which is absurd. So 1% of now, which is still expensive. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:07:05 Slightly less absurd. Yes. But at least the investors wouldn't be like suing you for fraud and like, you know, provide basic transparency and shareholder rights so that you, you give some governance rights to, to your, your shareholders so that they can hold you like accountable and be honest. If they did those simple things, they would still be a billion dollar company. They would still be making $100 million plus a year in fees. They'd still have a million customers in their trust product. They'd still be a fantastic company. The problem is that when you're making $400 million a year in fees, $100 dollars in fees doesn't cut it for DCG because they need $1.7 billion to make good on all their debts. So like, like that's where the perverse incentives

Starting point is 00:07:50 are coming in. Like DCG needs to rob this piggy bank. And so Grayscale has to operate as a piggy bank rather than operating as an independent business that's trying to do, you know, fulfill their fiduciary duty to their shareholders and their customers. So, you know, that's what I would I would push back on. And they're going to lose the whole trust because they're exploiting it to such a vast degree when they don't have to do that. Just do the right thing by customers. It's pretty simple. So much to parse there in my mind. So when we were in Dubai at the Satoshi round table, I crashed a meeting with the three arrows guys who did not expect me to be there and weren't so happy about it. Um, because I'm a Voyager creditor. Um, but, uh, and so, uh, and I asked Kyle a lot of these questions actually. And to be honest,

Starting point is 00:08:36 I thought my bullshit meter was kind of flying left and right, but it aligns very much with what you're telling me. Yeah. I mean, so I've gotten the chance, like, first off, three arrows owes me money. So I think we lost 100 bitcoins in three arrows, which I'm not happy about. And like, I want my bitcoin back, okay? But I did get the chance to see Kyle in Dubai as well on that trip.

Starting point is 00:09:00 And, you know, as we've been kind of battling away at GPTC, he's been someone that gone to to try to ask questions about the relationship between the two entities. And, you know, for better or worse, like I would say the answers that he's given us, you know, it's like he tweeted one time. It's like, hey, if somebody called you up and was like, hey, please take a billion dollars from me and a credit line you know exactly exactly what he told me when i asked him about voyager i said i said to him what lie did you tell steve erlich to get him to give you 700 million dollars for nothing he said i swear like on everything he called me and said i have 700 million dollars please take it i need to earn yield and it seems like that's what

Starting point is 00:09:42 everybody was doing like this chase for a yield just sent all that money somehow funneling into three arrows. But, you know, so like he had a more aggressive tact than you do about DCG, to be quite honest, to the point where I was like uncomfortable sitting there hearing about. I mean, you know, I'm toning it down a little bit. But the DCG stuff is I think crimes were definitely committed and there's going to be... That's what he said. I mean, that was, yeah. And he said, yeah, I know because I saw it.

Starting point is 00:10:11 But yeah, I try not to pander and tin the hat too much. I guess that will all play out. So, but then I guess the next natural question is, what are you actually doing about it? Right? I mean, we talk about taking this activist view. Does that mean basically hoarding GPTC to become a larger shareholder to have an impact on the process and effectively be able to gain control? Well, so our goals are laid out on the website, redeemgptc.com. And anyone who's listening to this, go check out the site. It's just a simple

Starting point is 00:10:40 site. It has our four goals listed on the site and a sign up form. If you have shares to reach out to us to be connected and get more updates, et cetera. But so please go to that site and sign up. So our goals are straightforward. We just want to reduce the discount and we want to we want this thing to trade at the value of the assets that it's holding. And we think ultimately for that to be achieved, there needs to be a redemption process. And so we think, you know, we've lost confidence that the redemption strategy that Grayscale says they're pursuing, which is this FCC lawsuit and this ETF strategy is real. We don't think it's real. We think it's all bullshit. And it's a ploy to delay as they extract excessive and absorbent fees. So our strategy right now is just to

Starting point is 00:11:27 basically be a central party connected to all the different shareholders. This thing has a ton of shareholders. And before we got involved and put up this site, no one knew who the other shareholders were. You can go on Bloomberg and you can see some of them, but that's a very inaccurate list of shareholders. And so when we put up this site, I mean, we've had 4,000 investors reach out to us at this point, representing well over 30% of all the shares, 35% of the shares. And a lot of these shareholders are large institutions with fantastic law firms and lots of resources. So each of them are kind of running their own strategy in parallel of what they're trying to accomplish. So we're tiny in the scheme of things. I think we have like a $5 million position or something in GBTC compared to some of you

Starting point is 00:12:12 guys that have like- It's more about connecting the existing ones than buying it up per se and taking control. Exactly. Exactly. That makes perfect sense. And you talked about this all sort of coming due. That's because of the massive basically loans within the company they're owed, correct? Yeah, so that's on the Genesis side, the loans. And then there's litigation that's going to court. And this is like Delaware Chancellery Court.

Starting point is 00:12:35 So Delaware, there's a reason everyone incorporates their companies in Delaware. It has the best legal system for corporate litigation. It's not just the protection side, also like shareholder side. Like if you want to sue, like they take it super seriously, things move very quickly. So it's not like doing in New York where you could be bogged down in five years of litigation. Like if it's a straightforward contract issue,

Starting point is 00:12:58 like it's going to be heard and it's going to be decided on pretty quickly. So it's the right court to go to battle in. So anyway, those kind of court deadlines, like cases start getting heard, judges have already been assigned, and these things get adjudicated pretty quickly if the case is straightforward. But the overall timeline for getting this trust redeemed, it's however long it takes. If it takes three years, five years, whatever, ultimately, if we don't get this

Starting point is 00:13:26 redemptions turned on for this trust, there's 630,000 Bitcoin sitting in this trust. They're just going to be drained down to zero over time. That's 3% of the world's supply of Bitcoin. It's the single largest holding of Bitcoin that exists. So we really don't have any choice but to fight tooth and nail on behalf of shareholders until this thing is redeemed. What a shit show. Absolutely. So speaking of things that are less of a shit show, pivoting on to happier things, got a pretty big conference coming up.

Starting point is 00:13:59 Yeah. I don't know if I wouldn't say there's no shit show element involved in that. It's always when we get down to 20 days away from the conference, it's a full steam sprint to execute and get everything pulled off. But yeah, we are deep into the execution stage and now we're in the try not to drop any balls stage of the planning. Yeah, I mean, it's the biggest Bitcoin conference in the world, obviously. I guess Germano told me it'll be the second biggest because obviously, bear market versus bull market last year was going to be a bigger conference. But I have to imagine that last year became such an overwhelming beast to some degree that you're probably a sigh of relief to be able to do it the way you're doing it this year. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, like last year was like. I don't even know how to explain what last year last year's was like, but we had 26,000 people last year.

Starting point is 00:14:53 This year, we're going to be about half that size. So let's call it 13,000. You know, this conference, like I'm talking to the companies, the customers, everyone's broke. It's just like that's the thing. Like it's like everyone's broke right now. But the beauty of this movement, the beauty of Bitcoin is like we don't give a fuck if we're broke. It was never about the riches. It was never about the Lambos. Like this thing started by were started by people that were broke. You know, it was built by people that were broke. And, you know, like if like the powers that be think that, OK, price goes down and they're going to demotivate this movement. They have no fucking clue who they're dealing with, what type of psychopaths we are. Like we're all in. Like they don't understand. We're all in.

Starting point is 00:15:33 So, you know, personally, I dig the bear market vibes. I dig the builder focus vibes. And, you know, we're we're excited. We have some some juicy stuff coming out this week on speakers. There'll be some controversial speakers announced. But, yeah, it's going to be awesome. And, you know, I also, like, I'm sure your listeners have seen some of the drama online as well. But, like, we take our, like, responsibility of building a Bitcoin conference very seriously. We feel like there has to be an event and a platform for the entire industry to come started, it was like, okay, the block wars are over. Bitcoin cash is not Bitcoin. There's a lot of great Bitcoin cash, you know, developers and investors out there that ultimately are going to come back to Bitcoin

Starting point is 00:16:35 and are good people. You know, they were just wrong on it on there's wrong. That's it. People are wrong about things all the time. And so, yeah, exactly. And so we're going to build an event where like, we don't care what side of the block wars you were on. We don't care if you were pro Bitcoin cash or pro big block doesn't matter to us. All we care about is that when you come through the door and you participate in the event, you are totally focused on Bitcoin, like Nakamoto consensus, not hard fork Bitcoin. And, um, and like, not like Bitcoin.com Bitcoin. Exactly. So, but even Roger every year, I, I've been sure I give an invite to Roger to come to the conference as long as he will abide by the conditions and, you know, good on him. He tells

Starting point is 00:17:19 me I'm not going to abide by those conditions. So he doesn't come. But like like so we take that seriously, though. And so, you know, this year, you know, we we have been we've embraced ordinals. We've embraced all parts of the community that from our perspective, like it's happening on Bitcoin. It is part of Bitcoin. You may not like it. You may not get it. You may not be part of it, but it's part of the Bitcoin ecosystem. And so, you know, we are we're trying. And so, um, you know, we are, we're trying to be the place where, you know, uh, all parts can come together and then they can, they can consume the ideas that underpin Bitcoin, the, the Bitcoin OG vibes of freedom of, uh,

Starting point is 00:17:58 censorship resistance, you know, of, of fucking free market economics, Austrian economics. Like we're trying to take these old ideas and make them consumable for a new generation of Bitcoiners. And so, yeah, there'll be a little bit of drama around that because not everyone agrees with that take. But frankly, we don't care if people agree. That's our take and that's what we're going to build. That's what we think the Bitcoin community needs.

Starting point is 00:18:22 Can you give us any hints or clues as to what kind of massive announcements or guests we might see? Anyone you've announced that you can discuss that people don't know about yet? I saw you going to war with Greenpeace. That was fun. Yeah. So we actually tried really hard to get the Skull of Satoshi to the conference. And Greenpeace has locked it down. The artist is under a contract and yada yada but like evidently uh like we were down to like pay for the the skull satoshi and everything to come and bring it to the event we're we're pretty sure we're gonna get protested at the event by greenpeace and they're actually gonna bring the skull satoshi on their own dime to protest us so it's like okay like you're not gonna allow us. So it's like, okay, like, you're not going to allow us

Starting point is 00:19:05 to put it inside the conference, but instead you're going to park it outside the conference for free? Okay, thanks, guys. So, you know, they still don't exactly get that, you know, I don't think they really understand what they signed up for this whole change the code thing.

Starting point is 00:19:17 But yeah, there's some big announcements we've already put out there, like Samson Mao, I, I think is, is, I think he's the one who's speaking with, um, uh, this guy, this governor from Indonesia.

Starting point is 00:19:30 People do not want to miss this. You might have our next, uh, you Kaylee ask announcement. Um, we have a piece of content that we haven't announced yet. It's going to be on Bitcoin is uncensorable. Fuck you money.

Starting point is 00:19:43 Um, that's going to be a highly controversial discussion. Uh, we have all your, your favorite Bitcoin bulls. We've got Michael Saylor here this year, uh, you know, talking about how a micro micro strategy is definitely financially solvent, nothing to worry about. Yeah, I have a model. Yeah. We've had him on quite a few times. It's almost like he laughs that question off at this point. He's like, come on, man. Like, we just went to 15. We're fine.

Starting point is 00:20:08 Can you all not see that? The evidence is now really right out there in the open. Wasn't he supposed to get liquidated at 27, 24, 20 was it, man? No chance, right? Dude, Miami is his stomping ground. So we always appreciate him being a part of the event. And yeah, I think we have a presidential nominee that we're going to be announcing today. But I don't want to share the name. So stay looking at Twitter. To the Bitcoin Magazine account? Is that where we're going to see it? Sure. Bitcoin Magazine or the Bitcoin Conference. Or your favorite

Starting point is 00:20:45 Bitcoin personality, because I'm sure they're all going to be either cheering it on or booing it as soon as we announce it. Can't we all just get along? The old words of Rodney King. It's like, it used to just be Bitcoiners versus shitcoiners. But this year has really been the year of Bitcoiners

Starting point is 00:21:01 turning on each other and sort of cannibalizing the community for the reasons you said, whether's ordinals or yeah whenever the price is down people start feeling salty and i and i feel like you know for those that have been around a really long time like uh you don't see the same level of of division because it's like like you realize that like your journey in this in this industry, it's it's it's a journey. It's an intellectual journey and it evolves and changes over time. You learn new things and you change your opinion on things and like you realize you didn't know what you thought you knew. Like that's part of the process. But I think there's a generation of Bitcoin as something that can't be tolerated because maybe they're insecure about Bitcoin's role or maybe they're insecure about what's going to happen to Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:21:53 You can say that. I can't. I say that and I get absolutely destroyed. You're allowed to say that. You're in there. Dude, there's nothing to be insecure about. It's like conviction means bring on the hardest criticisms. Bring on like nothing's going to hurt Bitcoin. It's like uncover all the warts and the wounds and talk about it. It's like talking to myself. You know, I'm like, yeah, I had recently a friend of mine who's a, I would almost describe as toxic maxi. He might even deem himself as such. I did a panel and it was some people that were talking about the benefits of Ethereum.

Starting point is 00:22:23 And I got these very angry messages from him that it was an attack on Bitcoin. And I was like, no, actually, they're all Bitcoiners. They all like Bitcoin. I said, nobody attacked it. And he said, any talk of Ethereum is an attack on Bitcoin. And I just don't get it, man. That seems like you're coming from a position of defensiveness and insecurity rather than a position of strength. That's my opinion on it. If it's not an attack, if you, yeah, go ahead. 100%. Bitcoin beats Ethereum on

Starting point is 00:22:49 the merits. Like the more we talk about Ethereum, the more we can just make the case for Bitcoin beating it on the merits. And like the places where Ethereum maybe has a leg up on Bitcoin, like that's not an in perpetuity state. That's just like a current status. So then the conversation is like, okay, well, how do we achieve those things? And, you know, we were on Twitter spaces the other day, but together talking about this. But, you know, I fundamentally don't buy that, you know, Bitcoin lacks the ability to do anything any other protocol can do. You know, like we've battled this out.

Starting point is 00:23:24 What we determined from that battle was like Bitcoin's going to get built in layers. There's a certain way to go about development on Bitcoin, but not that like those layers aren't able to achieve the same thing people think they can achieve at these other protocols. So, you know, I think the future Bitcoin development, the future Bitcoin functionality,

Starting point is 00:23:41 like we're at the infant, like we're at like the start of human civilization. And it's like, it evolves to such an unbelievable degree. I don't understand what people are even arguing about. I mean, it's okay to disagree with people too. It's okay to disagree. It's okay to be wrong. It's okay to change your mind. I was joking just very recently. Like I consider myself a Bitcoin, a Bitcoiner because I view everything else as something completely separate. It's my own view, whatever. I'm very passionate about Bitcoin. And I said, at the very least, you have to admit that it's a test net for Bitcoin because all the things that we're now

Starting point is 00:24:18 saying, the point you just made that will Bitcoin will catch up, it will be built here. Well, it had to be tested somewhere else first, right? Because it wasn't built here in the first place. That's A. And B, I came in as a trader because I found like Doge and other complete shit coins in 2017. And that backed me into being a Bitcoiner. And if I had never found those things, I would have never gotten here. Now, listen, I don't think outright that meme coins are good because they're wrecking people. But I think there's a lot of ways to convert people to being Bitcoiners and being toxic towards all of those people is not the path. Yeah, I agree. I'm not saying that there's no place for the toxicity because I like, you know, you take you can always point examples and it's like, OK, like Craig Wrightight like is a is a like you know people like that need to be fucking yeah gone after but um yeah it's it's uh uh yeah dude i i i feel like

Starting point is 00:25:15 you know everyone wants to skip the intellectual journey and there's no way to skip it like the intellectual journey is how you build conviction and and you know i don't want people to get wrecked and i don't think people like we should be intentional for people to get wrecked. But like, getting wrecked is part of the way that you you learn what makes Bitcoin unique. I mean, I wish I could skip getting, getting wrecked as many times as I have. You know, there's a saying in Bitcoin, it's your Bitcoin genus is not determined by how many Bitcoin you have. It's determined by how many Bitcoin you've lost. And so, you know, like that's, you know, some people like maybe Adam Back is born like galaxy brain, like has it all figured out. But for the everyday normal person, it's like they learn through experience.

Starting point is 00:25:58 And like, you know, like I have made every mistake you possibly can. And that's what's brought me to Bitcoin. And to think that like you can read a Twitter thread and just skip to the end of the line and be like, okay, I had an absolute conviction on Bitcoin. I read something that Michael Saylor tweeted. It's like, no, you can't. Like that's not how it works. So, you know, I think, you know, Bitcoin is sound money. Bitcoin is, I think, humanity's only hope at building a better financial system. And so it deserves our focus and attention and it deserves to be pushed forward however we can. But, you know, I don't think we have to look at everything that's not Bitcoin as some sort of

Starting point is 00:26:36 attack on Bitcoin or some sort of, you know, threat to Bitcoin. It's like, no, like, like, Bitcoin is Bitcoin. Focus your energy there. Beats in about everything else. That's my view on the matter. I basically agree 100% with that. I was saying earlier that I was just at consensus and coming to yours. One thing I will notice that was glaring was no offshore exchanges advertising anything anywhere. When I walked into consensus consensus last year it was like the binance floor and you know like literally everything i mean i know for a fact that certain exchanges have told me that like their lawyers literally called them three weeks a month before

Starting point is 00:27:14 when they had a booth plan and said don't do anything on american soil so i i know that's problematic for you i mean i you know i've talked to mike obviously but like yeah this is this is war i mean this is war from the united states government right like don't even set foot on american soil with your booth man like that's what they told them yeah you know i mean i kind of like roll my eyes at it a little bit because it's like it's all just a game it's like you know uh bitmex can't have a foot in the united states so they have bitmex research you know and it's like okay we're only going to talk about bitmex research and you know we don't have any customers from the united states and like meanwhile people are like on their phone like vpn on like logging

Starting point is 00:27:56 it so it's like i i love bitmex i'm not saying that happens i'm just a hypothetical situation but it's just like this big game of like, yeah, theoretically, this big game. And it's just, it's, it's so silly. I mean, it's, um, and you know, that's, that's like one of the, the, the reasons I think, um, the talking points around, you know, the U S government and Bitcoin, the, the, the, they need to change because like, we don't want to create an adversarial relationship with uh with the government we want to um we want the government to see there being value in having this developed um uh on american soil and so like i'm i'm very bullish on this group uh bitcoin uh policy institute um they just did a summit in dc like last week two weeks ago it was fantastic They did a really good job. And, you know, they are

Starting point is 00:28:45 flipping the talking points back at, you know, the politicians and, you know, hey, you want to project American power? Okay, Bitcoin is your tool. You believe in the American dream and the ideas of capitalism, property rights and freedom? Great. Those are the fundamental tenets of what Bitcoin is about. Oh, you believe in environmentalism. Okay. Bitcoin is environmental technology. And so they're just like developing the academia to be able to make that case to politicians. And I think, you know, ultimately we're going to get buy-in on that view. But this whole kind of like shell game of like, hey, not on our soil. And then it's like, okay, you know, Coinbase is now in the Bahamas. How many customers do you think they have in the Bahamas? A dozen, you know?

Starting point is 00:29:32 As many as FTX apparently had. I don't know. Although there were those people who managed to like get Bahamas FTX accounts and take money out while there was no withdrawals. But I guess that's a story for a different day. You described something earlier that was just really interesting. You know, you were talking about Grayscale and you said that's still a billion dollar business, right? I mean, it's a huge business, even if they do everything 100% the right way.

Starting point is 00:29:55 I don't know why I want to talk about this because I don't, but that's FTX. Like he literally owned a casino where he could legally allow people to 100X and had free money and still somehow blew up tens of billions of dollars is it greed are these people i don't think that barry's stupid i don't think that sam was necessarily stupid like it's free money all they have to do is run all they all have to do is run straight up legitimate businesses and it's

Starting point is 00:30:21 literally free billions you know i don't i don't know per se i think i think it's it's probably greed that gets them over their skis and then once they're over their skis the decisions are locked in so like you know uh with with sam i think sam was i've been told at least that alameda was a ponzi scheme way back in the day and fx was like a way to bail out uh alameda so for him it's probably like you got to keep perpetuating the scheme because you got to keep making up for past mistakes for barry it's not dissimilar in the sense of like okay i'm sure now if he if he didn't have the issues he was dealing with that at genesis and at dcg and it was like all this litigation can go away the sec can go away gary ginsler can go away. The SEC can go away. Gary Gensler

Starting point is 00:31:05 can go away. And all you need to do is cut fees from two to 1% and open up redemptions partially per, you know, for a finite amount of time, he would do it. It's now he's just stuck. He's he, he can't do it. And so, you know, I think, I think there's some of that, but, you know, like at the end of the day, like that's's that's not the victim's problem that's your problem and like you know yeah so yeah i don't know man it's it's it's a tale of old time in bitcoin it's like yeah and in chapter 11 it seems like it is the customer's problem because we get to pay for all the lawyers right that's the problem is like yeah it's not that's your problem not the customer actually yeah when you watch half the money disappear into the lawyer's pockets.

Starting point is 00:31:47 Yeah, someone needs to tokenize a law firm, like a bankruptcy firm. And then that way, everyone can speculate on all the payouts from the estates after the fact. I would totally do that. I mean, yeah, the outright winners of everything that's happened are bankruptcy attorneys. Yeah, yeah. Those dudes are killing it. I had this guy on recently who was kind of a Celsius whistleblower. And he was like, I've been trying to get $4 million back from Celsius.

Starting point is 00:32:13 And Celsius has spent more than $4 million fighting me on the $4 million that I'm trying to get back from Celsius. Jason Stone. Yeah. Dude, these guys are good. I mean, if they just got in our industry and actually worked on industry, they would excel because we clearly have no fucking clue

Starting point is 00:32:29 what we're doing as like amateur entrepreneurs. And these guys are just sharks. So anyway. Oh man, I love what you guys are doing. I really hope that the GBTC thing gets sorted. Any, where can people A, follow you and B, get some tickets? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:32:47 Can we get that to 13,300 people or something? Yeah, let's go. So you can follow me on Twitter, David F. Bailey. RedeemGBTC.com is the best place to get updates on that campaign. And yeah, go to b.tc slash conference to sign up for the conference, see who's speaking,

Starting point is 00:33:05 see the agenda and the content. Scott, do you have a referral code? I don't, but maybe I'll get one in time or something. Yeah, you should score one. Everybody's always like, yeah, I don't know. I just wanted to buy a ticket. Just go, man. Get there.

Starting point is 00:33:20 Scott's referral code, you'll get an extra 10% off. So there you go. Oh, well, if I get people free of some money off, I'll do it. I don't want to get paid, though. It's referral code. You'll get an extra 10% off. So there you go. Well, if I get people free, there's some money off. I'll do it. I don't want to get paid though. It's fine. Cool. Well,

Starting point is 00:33:29 Scott, thanks for having me on and look forward to seeing you in Miami. Absolutely, man. See you soon. Cool. Ciao. Let's go.

The Wolf Of All Streets - How One Million People Lost $10 Billion | David Bailey On What Is Going On With GBTC

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