Unchained - Zeke Faux's Crypto Adventures and His Relationship With Former FTX CEO SBF - Ep. 545

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

Zeke Faux, author of 'Number Go Up,' shares his findings after making a deep dive into the world of crypto. From skepticism to a full-blown investigation, Faux recounts his journey that led him to the heart of crypto, meeting some of the most eccentric characters in the industry. As a Bloomberg investigative reporter, Faux brings a critical eye to the crypto sphere, unearthing the bizarre, the risky, and the downright astonishing facets of what the crypto community calls a financial revolution. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights: what the book 'Number Go Up' is about Zeke's background as an investigative reporter for Bloomberg whether Zeke is skeptical about crypto  why Zeke thought it was a big deal to investigate Tether, the issuer of USDT whether he had a conclusion on the fact that he couldn't find anything big about Tether why Zeke says that Sam Bankman-Fried had a sloppy approach to risk management why Zeke believes that SBF did not give so much money to charity even though he's an effective altruist how projects like STEPN and Axie Infinity are 'clearly not the future of finance,' according to Zeke how SBF had such an open relationship with the media that helped him when the FTX collapse happened what Zeke found out investigating pig butchering scams in Cambodia how Zeke’s attempt to buy a Mutant Ape to get into an Ape Fest in New York City taught him about crypto’s bad user experience Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com Arbitrum Foundation Toku LayerZero Guest: Zeke Faux, author of ‘Number Go Up’ Bloomberg: 11 Hours With Sam Bankman-Fried: Inside the Bahamian Penthouse After FTX’s Fall Links Tether Unchained:  Is Tether a Fraud? Its Bank Says It's Not  Tether, the Multibillion-Dollar Stablecoin at the Heart of the Crypto Ecosystem Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX Unchained:  Sam Bankman-Fried on How to Prevent the Next Terra and 3AC SBF Behind Bars: Why Revoked Bail Is a Big Deal for Crypto’s Biggest Trial Pig butchering scams Unchained: How This Prosecutor Is Spearheading the Fight Against Crypto ‘Pig Butchering’ Scams Crypto in developing countries Bitcoin in El Salvador: Why Would Cypherpunks Support Government-Mandated Bitcoin Adoption? Anita Posch on Why ‘Bitcoin Is a Tool for Freedom’ – Especially in Africa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everywhere I went in Crypto land, I always thought people would say like, basically everybody bought into this number go up philosophy. People try to pretend that they have some other plan for their business. And time and time again, I would find that their business plan boiled down to number go up. And that's what Alameda's business plan was. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no-life resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin.

author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto eight years ago, and as a senior editor of Forbes, was the first mainstream media porter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the September 19th, 2023 episode of Unchained. Toku makes implementing global token compensation

and incentive awards simple. With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Make it simple today with Toku. The game has changed. The Google Cloud Oracle built for Layer Zero is now securing every Layer Zero message by default. Their custom end-to-end solution sets itself up to bring its world-class security to Web3 and establish itself as the HTPS within Layer Zero messaging.

Visit Layer0.network to learn more. Arbitrums leading Layer 2 scaling solutions can provide you with lightning-fast transactions at a fraction of the cost, all while ensuring security rooted on Ethereum. Arbitrim's newest edition, Orbit, enables you to build your own tailor-made layer three. Visit arbitram.io today. Buy, trade, and spend crypto on the crypto.com app. New users can enjoy zero credit card fees on crypto purchases in the first seven days.

Download the crypto.com app and get $25 with the code Laura. Link in the description. Today's guest is Zeke Fox, author of NumberGo Up. Welcome, Zeeke. Hey, thank you so much for having me, Laura. Yeah, I'm excited to chat. You just came out with your book, Number Go Up. Congratulations.

Tell us what it's about. Number Go Up, I've started out as, it's my, the story of like the two years I spent going down the crypto rabbit hole. And when I started out, I was just kind of curious and skeptical. And I was arguing with my friend about the reasonableness of a betting on on Dogecoin. It's like the height of the pandemic. And I don't know, I got kind of sucked into investigating crypto. Two years later, I was cut to I'm in the Bahamas going to Sam Bagman-Fried's penthouse just before the cops showed up interviewing him about the collapse of FTX.

And so, you know, you said that this was your period of going down the crypto rubbinhole. What had you been doing before? So I've been an investigative reporter for Bloomberg for a long time. And at Bloomberg, I generally write about kind of the shady side of Wall Street. So I'd written exposés of predatory lenders, penny stock scams. One of my favorites was about a Patriots fan who stole the New York Giants Super Bowl rings after the 2008 helmet catch game. So I'd always say, I'd always been looking for like wild stories to tell in this world of business and finance, but I kind of resisted crypto as a potential topic. I just didn't really see it as like, I mean, you're going to

laugh at me now, but I just didn't really see it as like a good target for an investigative reporter. And it wasn't because I thought crypto was like the future. It's just like this may be hard to believe if you're like a big time crypto guy, but actually maybe not because I'm sure you talk about it with their family and everybody. But like outside in the traditional finance world, people were actually, a lot of people are so skeptical about crypto that they were like investigating a crypto company

and finding out something bad about it, you wouldn't find anything surprising. I don't even care about that story. But what I realized was that my first crypto conference was Bitcoin 2021 in Miami. And I showed up there. And I just met, I realized there were so many crazy characters

in crypto. There were so many people that I'd love to write about. And I'm like, these are the kind of people who I need to get to know. One of the first people I sat down with was I met Sam Bankman Fried there. I met Alex Machinsky of Celsius, who was very prominent there. Had Michael Saylor saying all sorts of crazy things about Bitcoin. And I came back and I told my editor, like, I was wrong. There's all sorts of weird stuff. going on in crypto. This would be a great topic and it'll be, you know, it'll be a long time before. There's too many stories to choose from it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny in terms of the years that you quote unquote went down the

crypto rabbit hole. Those were two of the craziest years and in a way like some of the more unusual years of crypto, I would say. So before we dive into, you know, the different Escapades you underwent in your book. You mentioned earlier that you were both curious about crypto, but also skeptical. So, you know, before we, yeah, dive into what you were looking into, I wanted to hear your overall take on crypto. You know, when you say you're a skeptic, how much of a skeptic? Because there are some people who are skeptics and they completely dismiss crypto, but I didn't get that feeling from reading your book. I'm sort of like a skeptic in general. I'm skeptical of everything.

That's why I'm an investigative reporter. So if somebody tells me, hey, like Alex Machinsky did, hey, I'm going to pay 18% interest. And if you want a loan for me, I charge like as low as 0%. This is like in the world of traditional finance, a very backwards business model. When you say something like that to me, I'm going to say, yeah, I'm kind of, can you provide some evidence? like what how are you investing your money how does this uh how does this make sense but i tried to keep like an open mind and the question i was always asking was what does your product do can't when i meet crypto founders can i see it in action can i talk to your users is it being used in the real

world somewhere that's one of my favorite questions because as a writer it's hard to write about things if you can't see them being used and so that took me to you know el salvador to see the Bitcoin experiment there, but it also took me to, you know, ape fest to see what it was like to be a member of the Ford Ape Yacht Club. And I was pleased, I got a, one of the first reviews for the book the other day from John, Jeff Roberts, and Fortune. And he's, I think, feels fairly positively about crypto. He thought that my take on crypto was a little shallow, but that the book was so funny, he didn't care. And I'm like, you know what? I'll take that. I think we can all enjoy reliving these last two crazy years.

And like, whatever your take is on crypto, like, there are crazy things that happened that we have all just like, so much has happened. There's no way to like remember at all. But I have done the work of writing it down so you can go read it. Yeah, yeah, no, it was definitely, it covered the range of events. But let's actually talk about one of the main through lines. And I believe, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, that this was actually meant to be a book about Tether. And because I remember like a long time reading that it was coming out and they think that's what it said. And you kind of keep saying this to yourself that, or you keep saying it yourself in the book that, you know, you're just.

getting these tips about tether and you're trying to investigate them, we keep coming up against these dead ends. So before we go into all that, want to you at least just tell us, so what do you feel were your main findings about tether and what were you trying to resolve? So probably old for like most people listening, but tether's a big stable coin. Each coin is supposed to be worth a dollar because each coin is supposed to be backed by real dollars that are held in a bank somewhere. And when I started out, I wrote like a story for Business Week about Tether. That was sort of the start of this project. I always saw it as kind of like a good jumping off point.

I pitched the book as like, this is the craziest financial mania we've ever seen in the world. And it's not going to last. And I want to be there to chronicle it. and I see this like interesting central mystery that is going to like take me through. And that was Tether. At the time when I started, Tether said that they had, I think it was around $50 billion in the bank. It was weird because on the one hand, it was pretty widespread to be, and correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm describing what crypto people think, because you probably know better than me.

But like even people who are pretty into crypto in general, even like major users of Tether, when they were talking to me, they'd be like, yeah, I'm not so sure about their assets. Like this, I don't know what's going on with Tether. This is like a good question to be asking. And it was being asked at like the highest levels of the U.S. government. Like Janet Yellen called a meeting of all the top financial regulators. And the topic was like, what's going on with Tether? And like, could this affect the world financial system?

And I just thought it was a little, when I started looking into Tether, and I saw that, you know, among its co-founders was a child actor from the Mighty Ducks. I was just like, like, what is this in that? The company, I write in the book, the company was quilted out of red flags. Like in the world of traditional finance, you would never find a company with so many weird things to look into. And yet here it was, like at the center of the crypto world. And I just thought it was funny to me that the heads of state. were discussing this coin that was like dreamed up by a child actor from from the mighty ducks

and I was like this is my kind of mystery I'm going to dive in I'm going to try and find tether's 50 billion dollars I see so you know as we mentioned at different places in the book you do talk about how you feel like you keep coming up against dead ends in your investigation so what's your conclusion about that fact? Do you think it means that concerns about Tether are overblown? Does it make you more convinced that the company is just really hidden everything really well? What are your thoughts? Right now, Tether has only grown bigger. Midway through my reporting, I found that Tether had invested a lot of its assets into Chinese commercial paper. And there's kind of like this conflict of interest at the heart of Tether's business model, which is that

if you give your money to Tether, you want them to keep it really safe. So it's there when you go to cash in your Tether tokens. But Tether doesn't pay any interest. And the way that Tether makes money is they can take the money that you trusted them with and they can go invest it. And so there was this theory that especially when interest rates were very low, they might be doing weird things with your money in order to earn higher profits. So I found that they were doing some unusual things. That included the Chinese commercial paper and also making loans to crypto companies like Celsius and others. So to me, that seemed like that's kind of risky. What's going to happen there? And as I followed along in the summer of 2022, like crypto companies felt

one after the other, and Tether did not. There was even like a little run on Tether where users cashed in, I don't know, $5, $10 billion of Tether. And I'm sure if those people did not get their money back, like we would have heard about it. Right. So now Tether still hasn't satisfied like the truthers. Like they haven't produced the audited financial statements that the Tether's critics have been asking for.

But if you believe the like attestate. that they're putting out there, they're sitting on like $80 billion, and now they can invest those in treasury bills. Interest rates have gone up. They can earn 5% a year, and they're just clipping $4 billion a year in practically pure profit is a small operation. So the way the tether story ends is that, at least in the book, is that the guys who run it are all presumably billionaires.

Tether, again, still just like kind of funny to think about. It's one of the most profitable companies in the entire world. It's like a more profitable company than Nike. And definitely not what I would have predicted at the beginning of this quest. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't even know if like Nike is the greatest comparison because I feel like anything involving physical goods just is going to have a lower profit margin.

but yeah, you're right. Like for such a small team. I'm just talking about like the absolute profit, like the amount of money they make every quarter. Oh, got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, one thing. So I did wonder, you know, you spent a lot of time in the book trying to get the executives to talk to you. You do partially succeed in a way, like maybe with just a couple people.

But I wanted to hear your take on why you think it is that number one, they were so hard, you know, for you to pin down. Why do you think they kind of were super cagey? One of the things that I wanted to talk with the Tether founders about was about the evidence that Tether is being used by criminals for illicit activities. And I had learned a lot about its use in these pig-butchering romance scams. In the book, I even described like going to Cambodia, to investigate some of these scam compounds where workers are trafficked and forced to work in these crypto scams.

Like, these are some tough questions to answer. And so it does not surprise me that the Tether executives would not want to sit for an interview about them. Have you had any of them on your podcast? That's a good question. I don't think so. like 700 of these shows. So I remember what I don't think so.

But anyway, so yeah, so assuming no, then what were you going to say? Look, I mean, a lot of corporate executives don't want to sit for an interview with an investigative reporter and will only speak to friendly outlets. It's more an outlier, the kind of person who will sit with the reporter, even one who does investigative stories. That's more surprising to me. like when Sam Bakeman-Fried was like, sure, come on down to the Bahamas, sit with me at FTCS, like meet all my employees, see everything that's going on, just hang out and wander around.

Like, that's the weird approach. The tether approach is like the standard one. Oh, okay. So you feel like it doesn't necessarily indicate anything sketchy. You feel like they're just following the traditional playbook for handling media. Is that what you're saying? I do not get offended if someone doesn't want to talk to me. That's what I'm saying.

Okay. But what I'm asking is, you know, again, like, what is this say about tether? Does it say that they're a company on the up and up? It's just, you know, they, you know, it's privately run. They don't want to really reveal too much. Or, you know, do you still think there's more you could dig into there? Are you going to try to still do that? You know, or do you think, I mean, because you full on admit in the book, like, you talk to somebody. people that are like that like a lot of people say oh I think tether's probably fine like I don't think that there's a major hole in their reserves or anything like that there were a few different people sam was one of them forget some of the others i actually wouldn't i wouldn't characterize sam's comments that way actually he was like he was like their their portfolio is probably full of all sorts of weird stuff but i don't really care and to me i took that more in hindsight that's like more a sign of his sloppy approach to risk management, which we've since seen demonstrated, than like some sort of really big endorsement of tether. I do have to say that, like, towards

the end of the book, we're doing a lot of spoilers here, but I promise the book is actually really funny and, like, read the whole thing. I flew down to the Bahamas, like, when things were crashing. I sat with Sam. And, like, as I did think, you know, maybe now's the time when he's going to tell me the big secret. I was still hopeful that he would and he did not. But I don't take that really as proof that there is no big secret, especially because at that time, he had just tried to get bailout from Tether and had been rebuffed, but maybe was still hoping that Tether would come through. Because they're like, you know, if you need five, 10 billion dollars, there's not that many people in crypto you can call. That is true. But you're right, that Tether would be one of the few,

although, you know, if they really are handling their reserves the way they should be, then yes, they would not be lending that money out. Well, they were lending to Celsius. They were lending to like a lot of crypto companies. So I don't think it was like a, it was like a, yeah, crazy thought. I mean, where do you come down on Tether? What do you think? Well, I should make the disclaimer that I have not investigated it.

You know, back in 2017, VipFinext was reaching out to me a lot. And I talked to a few different people. who you know work at places where they would use a lot of tether and I got some opinions and like pretty much nobody really thought there was anything to it. So in your book when you said that you met with him I was interested to hear and then you know what you say sort of largely comports with what they had said to me. So I was like oh okay like I definitely like do not intend the book as an endorsement of tether if that's what you're getting at. No, no, I don't think so.

Everyone should, you know, other reporters should pick up the ball and keep looking into their claims. No, I would say clearly it's not. But what I kind of feel like I was asking a few times is, like, what do you think it means that, like, you didn't come up with a smoking gun? Like, do you have a conclusion? Or do you, like, would you still look into them? Or do you feel like you kind of exhausted all that? Or do you have, maybe you don't even have an opinion? and maybe you haven't decided yet.

What I would say is that I'm saving space in the paperback for an epilogue. Oh, interesting. It does happen that after you publish a book, sometimes people come out of the woodwork and reach out to you. So you're just smiling. You're not really responding to what I just said. Well, what I guess, like, what I'm saying is that at this point, I almost as a writer, find this question.

less interesting. And like, as you can tell in the book, I got really interested in like, how is Heather being used. There's certainly enough reasons why someone might worry about trusting Tether with a billion dollars. At this point, there's one big strike against Tether as a potential thing where I would keep my money. I can keep my money in my, like, Apple savings account and they'll pay me 4% interest. So, like, why are people still? keeping their money at this stable coin that doesn't pay interest. I mean, you know, you're an American. And as you know from the book, like Alanda, the people that are using Tether are not necessarily

American. They're not necessarily people who can have an Apple savings account. Yes. And as I found in the book that many of them may be like Chinese gangsters who are running crypto scams in Cambodia, although like I, which I was skeptical. This could be like a major use case. until I flew to Cambodia and saw that like the scale of these crazy operations where people run these pig butchering scams.

Yeah, yeah, I know. This is just a terrible, terrible story. But we're going to get to that later. We had started a segue to SVF, but why don't we go there first? You know, you meet SVF, Sam Bingman-F, the former CEO of Outtiex, Well's all the times. and obviously your impressions of him evolves throughout the book. So tell us what your impressions were the first time you met. When we met, he explained his sort of effective altruism thing.

And I thought, just as a writer, this is a fascinating story. Like here's a kid, he's like 19, 20 years old. He's at MIT. He's into philosophy. Like, we know these things are true. We can go read, like, his blog from that time. And he's thinking a lot about how to, do good for the world. He's giving out pamphlets for like a vegan charity or something. He meets

this philosopher, Will McCaskill who's pushing this thing called Earned to Give. Will McCaskill is like, hey, you're pretty smart. Wouldn't it be better if you made a lot of money and like give it to charity? Then we could hire lots of people to give out pamphlets. Sam's like, hmm, that sounds good. And then like, less than 10 years later, he's sitting in front of me and he's one of the richest people in the world. And making the story even more interesting, even though he says, yeah, that's the only reason I got rich was to give it away. At that point, he had not given away very much money at all. When we first met, it was at Bitcoin 2021 in Miami, he was there to have the Miami Heat arena renamed FTX Arena. And they sponsored that e-sports team. They're spending tons on

marketing, definitely more than he was giving to charity. So I thought that was a really interesting question. And right away, my mind was filled with like really intriguing possibilities. And in one of our first conversations, I was like, Sam, so like if you don't, you're not familiar with like the basics of utilitarianism, the idea is that each action should be judged by the what does the most good for the greatest number of people. and that can like quickly lead you to some tricky places like like laura if i stole like a thousand bucks from you and gave it to like a panhandler on the subway that might be net positive if like the

panhandler really needs the money and you're doing pretty good and so i was like sam i understand this philosophy that you're saying but like you know what about that sort of thing and i said something along the lines of like, this is like mid to late 2021, I think. And I'm like, you've got a lot of credibility in the crypto world. I think that right now you could do some sort of shit coin. You could rug everybody. You could probably clear several, several billion dollars. I mean, how much do you think he could have cleared in like a rug situation at that point? I mean, he was kind of doing it with his Sam coins. Yeah. They were all a little pump and dumpy. And then apparently, you know, Alamedo was like listing them and screwing over the founders.

And so it was sort of already doing it. So I don't know how much you would add up like the maps and the oxy. At that point, it was not clear that he was already doing it. But I was like, I think you have a lot of credibility. If you were willing to blow it all, you could probably clear several billion dollars. You could feed, you know, a whole country worth of starving people. Why don't you just do that right now instead of this sort of long game where like you're not, you're just always thinking that, oh, in the future, I'll give you.

it away and you're not really giving very much away at all. And he said to me, first of all, like most CEOs hang up the phone when they realize they're talking to some jerk who ask questions like this, right? He's just like, oh, interesting question. I love thinking about things like this. Yeah, like you're probably right, like about that I could do make some money with a scam. But I actually think that FTCS is such a good business. It's valued now at 32 billion. I think I could get it valued at $100 billion. I can make more money the honest way, and that will do more good for the world in the long run.

And I was like, I sort of was doing the math in my head, and I was like, based on what you've done so far, that kind of seems right. Like if you are really an effective altruist, it would not make sense for you to run a scam. But clearly, like, there was some error in my logic. And I think the error in my logic is this. In my scenario, the scammer gets caught.

They do the scam. They get like $3 billion. They give it away. And then they're caught and like they can't do any more scams. I don't think that scammers expect to get caught. I think they expect to get away with it. In which case, the profits from scams could just like keep going and like the logic might be different.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, you talk about this in the book multiple times. about his expected value equation. And I think there is some, like when you use that equation too much in the wrong places, it can lead you to a sort of twisted morality, I think. And so it's sort of like it can end up being

and justify some means type of philosophy. So. Totally. Yeah. But so do you feel that like effective altruism was kind of the catalyst for what ended up happening with FTX? I'm really looking forward to hearing all these guys and women talk at the Bain Fried's trial. But yes, like as I write in the book,

I feel like Sam and his lieutenants were truly committed to effective altruism and utilitarianism. And that actually made them more dangerous and made them willing to do things that violated traditional rules of ethics, such as don't use your hedge fund to borrow huge sums of customer money from your exchange and then lose it. Yeah. And in a way, like borrow is almost not even quite the right word, but yeah. The bankruptcy examiner was like, this is straight up embezzlement. It's not even, it's that simple, you know?

It's not even sophisticated. He wanted to give it back, which maybe he did. Well, I, this is, so the title of the book is number go up. And like, I go into the book, my friend, the argument that starts off the book between me and my friend Jay about Dogecoin is he's basically like, you should buy Dogecoin because other people are going to do it and the price is going to go up. And I'm like, that's not a good investing strategy. But he does do it and he makes money.

he goes to Disneyland. He's taunting me. He's like, I'm freaking Nostradamus. He's sending me pictures. I mean, he wasn't really trying to be mean, but like, you know, I was jealous. Everywhere I went in Crypto land, I always thought people would say like, basically everybody bought into this number go up philosophy. People try to pretend that they have some other plan for their business.

And time and time again, I would find that their business plan boiled down to number go up. And that's what Alameda's business plan was. And so when you say they didn't intend to give it back, like, I don't know, I don't know what they were thinking. But I kind of think that they got caught up in this number go-up philosophy and we're like, where genius is, we'll make it back, you know, when the price of serum hits like 173 or whatever. Yeah, yeah, I didn't mean to say they didn't intend to. It's more that if you specifically say borrowing, it assumes that they intended to and it's just not clear.

But anyway, small point. So in a moment, we will talk also about something you alluded to earlier, which is SPF's relationship to the media. But first, a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Toku makes managing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. Are you designing your token compensation plan and grant templates with multiple law firms? Are you managing cliffs, vesting, and taxable events in a spreadsheet? Are you distributing tokens to your team manually? With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens.

Easy to use token grant award templates, vesting tracking via online dashboard, tax withholding integration with payroll, automated distributions, great employee experience. Make it simple with Toku. Learn more at Toku.com slash unchanged. The game has changed. The Google Cloud Oracle built for layer zero is now securing every layer zero message by default. Their custom end-to-end solution sets itself up to bring its world-class security to Web3 and establish itself as the HTTPS within Layer Zero messaging. Visit Layer Zero.network to learn more. Join over 80 million people using Crypto.com, one of the easiest places to buy, trade,

and spend over 250 cryptocurrencies. With the Crypto.com Visa card, you can spend your crypto anywhere and get rewarded at every step. Up to 5% cashback instantly, plus 100% rebates for your Netflix and Spotify subscriptions, and zero annual fees. New users enjoy zero credit card fees on crypto purchases in their first seven days. Download the crypto.com app and get $25 with the code Laura. Link in the description. Arbitrum stands at the forefront of innovation as the premier suite of layer two scaling solutions, bringing you lightning-fast transactions at a fraction of the cost, all with security rooted on Ethereum.

From defy to gaming, Arbitrum 1 plus Nova is home to over 500 projects, and with the recent launch of orbit, Arbitrum welcomes you to build your very own tailor-made layer 3, or, as the Arbitrum ecosystem calls it, an orbit chain, directly on the Arbitrum tech stack. Designed with you in mind, Arbitrum empowers you to explore and build without a lot. compromise. Propel your project and community forward by visiting arbitram.io today. Back to my conversation with Z. One other part of the book that was just like a funny moment for me, because so, you know, as you just discussed, you first meet him and your thought is, hey, I should dig into, you know, is he really going to be as charitable as he's claiming, blah, blah, blah. I don't remember

if it was the second time or the third time, but there was a point where you meet him again, and you ask him, did I go too easy on you? And he kind of says yes. So tell him. Yeah, how did that happen? And what were your thoughts at that time? So I published this profile of him. It's not my proudest piece.

I don't think it's like the worst one ever. If you go and read the piece again, the sort of like the nut question at the center of the piece is like, will he give this money away? or will the quest for money and power corrupt him along the way? And like, it's not like the worst question to be asking. It seems to be you could encapsulate what happened with FTX with that question, actually. So I actually think it's a good question.

Yeah. But like, let me tell you what would have been a lot cooler. It had been if I had uncovered what was really going on behind the scenes and had exposed it all to the world before FTX collapsed in the world. November. So, like, as an investigative reporter, I have to, like, kick myself that I did not do that. Even though, like, he tricked a lot of people, I don't really care. I'm the person who's not supposed to get tricked. You know, that's my job. So. I mean, yeah, but there are a lot of investigative report, you know, I do investigate reporting too. You know, obviously with my book,

I did a lot. But I think we all know now that only a very small number of people knew what was going on. And well, yeah, but I even, I met those people. Like I should have, I should have got them to slip me the secret documents and tell me what was going on. But okay, the scene that you're describing is after I published the story, I went to Crypto Bahamas, which was like the big conference celebrating Sam. And it was sponsored by FTX. All the celebrities came in. He paid Bill Clinton to speak, Tony Blair, Anthony Scaramucci was the host. At this conference, I met all these other crypto founders who were kind of in the FTX orbit. And I got pitched all sorts of like crazy stuff. And one of the things that was like hot around that time was step in. This was like

the move to earn app where you bought like a digital shoe for like a thousand. thousand bucks or something. It lived on your phone. And then it was sort of like this janky health app that paid you green Satoshi tokens if like you walked enough that day. And it was just so obvious to me that this was a bad idea. It was unsustainable. There's no way that like this is not like a system that will produce money for me in the long run. This is like an unsustainable bubble. and so many of the web three pitches that I heard were just like that. It was like I had been learning a lot about Axi Infinity. And by the time of the Cryptobahamas conference, Axi Infinity, like if you're not familiar,

it's like step in, but instead of walking, you have to play this sort of Pokemon-ish game on your phone. And instead of buying a shoe, you got to buy your Pokemon thingies. So I was like, this is clearly not the future of finance. This is like a series of ridiculous ideas that seem totally unsustainable. And so by the time I met with Sam at that conference, I'd just been hearing, okay, maybe I'm like I'm a sucker, but I went to that conference and I'm thinking I'm going to hear some interesting ideas. Like these are the grownups in the room.

I'm going to hear about like some really interesting use cases for crypto. And instead, I'm just getting pitched all these different versions of step in. So by the time I sat down with Sam again, I was just feeling very, I don't know, I was just kind of depressed that this was what was going on. This was like, these were the big ideas that were supposedly going to like revolutionize the world of finance. And I was wishing I had written more about that in the initial story rather than this effective altruism thing.

And Sam had just gone on the Oddlots podcast. And this was the interview where he's speaking with Matt Levine, my colleague at Bloomberg, and this is where he's describing how Defi works. And Matt Levine is like, it sounds like you just described a Ponzi scheme. And Sam Bingman Fried is like, yeah, kind of. And like, so that's the context. At that point, I was feeling kind of bad about my article. And I was like, Sam, did I go too easy on you?

And he's just like, yeah, maybe. And then he went to lunch with Tom Brady. And so the reason I am asking about these encounters is because it's just so interesting to me to see your evolution in terms of your relationship with him. And it made me wonder, you know, so obviously, you know, you also spent that really long time with him when he, you know, the insolvency of the exchange had been found out. It was before he'd been arrested and sent to the Bahamian jail. So, you know, you kind of saw him at these sort of pivotal moments. And I wondered if you had thoughts on either how he treated you or what his attitude was toward you or the media, you know, throughout.

Like, do you feel that he was like using the media a lot or tell me a little bit about what you think his relationship was to the media? He was super accessible. Like I said before, like when I. wanted to go profile him, him and his people were like, come on down, sit with him, see him do his thing. And like, there was no minder sitting with him while we talked. And I know from talking to other reporters that he was very open to like, I'm just using this as a hypothetical, but like if CoinDest called and they needed a quote about like Ethereum prices today, like he'd do that too.

And even now it's come out that while he was on house arrest, he made something like 1,000 calls with members of the media. So this is like a very unusual strategy. This is why I think he did it. In his rise to power, this strategy worked great. Like he would talk to reporters and they would write stories about him. It raised his prominence. And he became like a darling of Silicon Valley of like traditional finance guys were like

dying to talk to him. Like while I'm sitting with him in the Bahamas, the CEO of some bank is like, like, hey, can I get five minutes with you? Like, I've flown to the Bahamas. And he's just like, meh. So, like, he always made time for the press. He was able to get good coverage, and it made him more famous. And then when things were going poorly, like, a lot of people were like, well, why would he talk so much to reporters when things look so bad?

My thinking is that it worked for him on the way up, and now things look like horrible. So, like, how much worse can it get? Give it a try. That's basically my theory of his media strategy. Interesting. Did you talk to him much? I wouldn't say that I talked to him much, but obviously I have talked to him multiple times. You know, honestly, what my take is on that is that, at least just from my interactions with him,

you know, he, first of all, he's on, like, all these different drugs for his depression and his ADD and, you know, whatever. he clearly has not been sleeping properly. Like, you know, he was doing the beanbag sleeping and he was sleeping for like a few minutes here and there in between meetings. He was sleeping with the lights on overhead. I just feel like he wasn't in his fully right seat of my, this is, by the way, I'm not trying to justify what he did at all. This is not where I'm going with this. I'm just saying in that period when, you know, they'd already declared bankruptcy. he hadn't been sent to jail yet and he was doing so many interviews.

I feel like he was just kind of doing these habitual behaviors. He was so used to just doing these media interviews. And I think he was like overwhelmed. And I think because, you know, because of like I said, all these things like the lack of sleep, you know, being on some mix of drugs that who knows really what effect that was happening on him. You know, as everybody has pointed out, if you're like in your truly right, mind, like every lawyer is going to give you the opinion that you should not talk. And the reason that they all do that is because that probably is the best strategy. And the fact that he so

completely went against his own interest, I feel like is kind of probably a function, like I said, of him not fully being in his right mind. And then second, having that habitual behavior of like talking to the press and just rather than the cognitive load of like having to think should I change my strategy, he just kept doing what he'd always done. Does that make sense? Like that's also a plausible theory. I mean, I think you could justify talking to the media in logical terms. But I also have like a third theory that's kind of sad, which is that like I've spoken to people who worked with him and said that they actually had a lot of trouble getting time with him, that he was kind of distant.

And it occurred to me that, like, if he's speaking to reporters a thousand times while he's on house arrest, having them come visit him, then he might just be bored or want somebody to hang out with. But he would choose a reporter over his own staff. Well, at this point, the staff doesn't want to hang out with him because they are. Yeah, that's true. Yes, I have heard that, like, he was always had time for the media. but not for all of his colleagues.

Huh. Well, yeah. I mean, and I don't even want to say, I feel like I went too far in my theory in the sense that I do think that Sam can take that calculating attitude or mode. I mean, it's all the EV thing, right, the expected value. It's literally a calculated frame of mind. So it's probably a mix of things. But, yeah, we're actually, you.

you know, getting close to time. And there's just so much more in your book that I want to cover. So let's... We haven't even gotten to talk about Dr. Scum, my mutant ape. Well, so I was going to end on that because it's a little bit more fun. But since we're on the subject of like alleged frauds and scams, let's talk a little bit more about the pig butchering, which you had brought up. Because I also agree with you.

Like, this is such a huge problem. I mean, and it's really a tragedy in so many ways. And you are at least so far, the only person that I've talked to who, you know, has, like, physically gone to very near to where these scams are being perpetrated. So tell us about your experience of investigating the pig butchering scams. I teamed up with two reporters in Cambodia, Meg Dura and Danielle Keaton Olson. They worked for this publication called Voice of Democracy. and for like a year or more, they're writing stories like,

hey, in this town, Cianukville, there's like whole compounds and, like, people who are inside them are trapped, and there are people who've escaped tell us that, like, you can't leave unless you pay ransom, and we're getting tortured, and we're getting tased, and people, there's like a string of suspicious deaths in the area.

The police find, like, an unmarked body outside. Like, they're reporting all these horrible things about these scam compounds from which, And I feel like I kind of short-handed this a little bit. Like, if you're not familiar, essentially, these are the people who send you the spam text messages. Like in many cases, those spam text messages that are like, hey, Bill, did you, like, get the milk yesterday? Those are coming from someone who has, like, let's say, like someone from Thailand who got tricked with the offer of like a good paying job in customer service. Flew to Cambodia to take this job or traveled in a van or whatever.

And then when they get there, they're stuck in like this tower. They're not allowed to leave unless they pay ransom. And they're like forced by these gangsters to run scams, which often involve cryptocurrency. So by the time I get there, I don't want to claim that it was like super groundbreaking work because these two reporters had exposed the scam. It had become their work also a lot of other reporters had reported on it too. It had become like a national embarrassment.

As I write in a book, like if this. This was the United States. Danielle and Darrah, maybe some of these other reporters, would be given prizes, you know. There's like investigative reporter of the year. In Cambodia, the president ordered their newspaper closed. So they're like practically unemployed by the time we got there. And I'd already been talking to a lot of people who'd escaped from these compounds, like Americans or people from other well-off countries who had lost their money in pig-butchering scams.

but I just really wanted to see it for myself. One of our first stops was this place called Bocor Mountain. And it's honestly, like, everyone told me it was weird. This is like the spooky, like I'm getting, it's like the spookiest, evilest, weirdest place that I've ever been in my life. It was way weirder than I even expected. It's at the top of a mountain in a national park. There's this hotel, a big, big hotel, like 400 rooms.

fully staffed, no guests. So I'm just, like, walking in, and the clerk's eyes are all, like, looking at me, you know, like, owls. Like, they're, like, looking at me as I walk around. There's, like, a restaurant. No one's in it. All the rooms, we walk through, like, the corridors with the rooms.

They're all dark. It's like we're in the shining. Like, the casinos got no one in it. The, like, spa's got no one in it. And there were, like, two confused tourists who were, like, why did we come here? Like, this, we should have checked Yelp. And but I know I'm joking around, but like behind this hotel were eight buildings where

another reporter in Cambodia, Jack Brooke, had written about how these buildings were full with trafficked workers who were running scams. This was like one of these big compounds. And I interviewed a police officer from Taiwan who had come to Cambodia to rescue Taiwanese people who'd been trapped there. And he was like, yeah, it's still going on. Like, these girls were brutally tortured. It's like a horrible. I think he said people were killed there. Like, it's like a horrible, horrible place. And I mean, this is where like, I mean, he was like, I've investigated. So a lot, like, a lot of people have said, hey, like, is this really all about

crypto? Like, isn't human trafficking like an age old problem? And so I asked that to this Taiwanese police officer and he was like, I've investigated human traffic thing for a really long time. It has always been a problem. The human traffickers, when they would buy and sell people in the past, they used bank accounts. And in order to open a bank account, you have to leave your name or your address. Maybe it's like some money mule or something, but at least that's a clue. Now they're using tether. This is making my job a lot harder.

Like, it's like, you know, this wallet addressed means nothing to me. But this is where I'm saying, like, my ability to investigate is pretty limited. Any information you get from these compounds comes from, like, people who escaped. So my idea was that if I'm just like a stupid tourist, nobody's going to care. So I snapped on my fanny pack. I bought an ice cream from the hotel. and Danielle had warned me this would be like the worst ice cream you ever had because like they sell like one ice cream for six months. It's like 10 year old ice cream. So it was. It was like both

gritty and chalky. And so I'm thinking that this will help me as I walk to the scam compound to appear extra dumb. So I'm sort of like eating my ice cream as dumbly as possible. And I walk up to the, I mean, I could only laugh because it's like so terrible and insane. But I'm walking up to the guards and this big scary dog comes out barking at me. He's on like a big fat chain and they're just like, no, you can't come in. And I'm, I mean, I'm not like sneaking in there. And meanwhile, Dara, while I was acting dumb, Dara had actually speaks, Khamai and had spoken to some other guards who had said that like, yes, these buildings are all still full of workers who can't leave.

Like, I'm thinking to myself, shouldn't we do something about this? Like, like, should we like call the police or something? But Dara and Danielle are like, no, like, essentially there's a lot of corruption in the country and the authorities make some token efforts to stop these scam compounds and shut them down. But in reality, are not interested in helping the workers.

And in fact, often, even if they do rescue workers, arrest them and charge them with immigration violations. And that reporting this is hopeless. And that's also what the Taiwanese police officer said to me. He's like, they helped us rescue like the Taiwanese people, but they weren't interested in like arresting the bosses or shutting these places down. And it's like the government's benefiting in some way or like why, why aren't they interested?

There have been a lot of reports that the people who own these properties who are renting them to these like gangsters who run the scam compounds have high up connections to like, you know, the most powerful people in the country. Yeah, one of the other compounds I visited, the street that run through the middle of it is named after this Chinese oligarch who is on the, there's like an Interpol red notice out for him, but he's, you know, lives openly in Cambodia. Yeah, and like I cannot claim to be like an expert on

Cambodia or how all of these things work. I just sort of went there because I was like, I need to see this with my own eyes because it's so hard to believe. It sounds like some sort of conspiracy theory. And yeah, I'm glad that there are reporters out there who are like continuing to investigate this and that it's now come to the attention of the UN who put out a big report about what a huge problem this is. Interpol has also recently put out a report about it. And it seemed the number one movie in China right now, or at least until recently, was about young people who'd been trafficked into working in like a scam compound. So I'm hopeful that in cooperation, like some of these Southeast Asian countries will

like crack down on this for real. Yeah. One other aspect of the story is that you had, I mean, we all get them. You know, I literally think I got one today and then one yesterday. But, you know, you get one of these text messages and you just decide to respond. And you end up sending a little bit of money into the app. that the person who was texting you, who was some kind of slave label or tracked in one of these compounds was, you know, sending you. Like, I guess, quote, quote, she, who knows if it really

was a she, you know, wanted you to send Tether into the app. And later, I think you approached Tether about either freezing the funds or I don't remember exactly what your request was, but they refused. So talk a little bit about that. I mean, if it's not clear, I wasn't legit tricked by this person. I was sort of playing along to like see how it worked. And if she would really like ask me for Tether, because all the victims, the money victims were telling me like they asked for Tether, because which it wasn't really clear to me exactly why they would prefer Tether. But I did see that some of these victims provided copies of exchanges that they'd had with Tether's customer service where they'd be like, we've been scammed, can you freeze the account or whatever?

And Tether's customer service had like a number of excuses for why they couldn't. And one of them that I thought was really ridiculous was like we would only intervene in cases of violence. And I'm like, first of all, what kind of like quasi bank gets to make up rules like that? And second of all, there's actually a lot of violence in pig butchering. So, I'm not even sure that applies under your own made-up rule. Yeah, is interesting because it is contradictory when you look at how they do freeze funds for, like, defy hacks and stuff like that. So, you know. I think they would say, if they were here, they'd say we comply with law enforcement requests.

Oh. Like, I think that's their position is that if that get a letter from, like, a valid authority, they will comply with it. Although wasn't there that instance where they said they would not comply with like a certain sanction order recently? Wasn't that morning? I don't remember. I don't remember. Yeah. So like it, my feeling is it seems like they sort of pick and choose how they how they want to handle it.

I joke in the book that like, you know, I knew that the one of the gangsters involved in this Bocor Mountain compound went by the nickname Big Faddy. And I say in a book, like, kind of joking, but like, I mean, it's real. You know, I had no reason to think that I would find Jean-Carlo DeVicini, you know, the CFO of Tether, you know, having dinner with big fatty on top of the mountain. Like, I don't think that Tether necessarily has anything to do with any of these people. They've just created a system, which is very useful for gangsters who want to, like, have Americans zap their life-saving. to, you know, a scam compound in Cambodia. And I thought it was like, this 100% does not prove anything, but I'd spent like a long time investigating crypto by this point.

And when I'm on the bus to Cambodia from Ho Chi Minh City, across the border, I get off in a vet, which is like a casino town, real dusty, kind of a dump. It's known to be a headquarters for many scam compounds. I'd watched videos of like workers trying to escape and getting beaten at this from this one scam compound. Literally in the parking lot, I just got there and there's like a money exchange place in that like a little booth where you can trade exchange currencies that's advertising like we take tether. And I'm like literally I had never seen that anywhere in the world. And this is this is the first place that I see it.

And, like, again, just like, I don't know, it just struck me as something that was very strange. Not as like, I don't like to, like, jump to conclusions to suggest that really means anything. But I just thought it was like very weird that this is the place where I see it actually being used. Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally get that because obviously just from the physical description of your environment, it would be a little bit jarring. However, I do think, you know, tether is widely used in Asia generally, but I do, you know, like I said, from what you unearthed. It does sound like there's a lot of feathers circulating in that area for various reasons. Yeah, I even in Phnom Penh, in like a neighborhood where there's a lot of Chinese residents, I found another money exchange place where I was able to exchange, you know, tethers on. on my phone for crisp $100 bill.

No questions asked. And I was like, hey, like, because a lot of the book I'm trying to use to see how crypto is used in the real world. And like I'm kind of disappointed to, you know, frankly. But in this one, I was like, okay, like I can see why people would want to do that. I mean, he did charge me more than the ATM, but like, and I had to wait for a long time.

Well, okay. I'm waiting there for like, you know, the guy to come back who has the right, like, app on his phone or whatever. And while I'm waiting there, this, like, really hungover-looking Chinese guy wearing, like, pajama pants and a t-shirt walks in and goes behind the counter and just walks out with a brick of money that the clerk later told me was 50 grand. And I was like, I get it. One of these things that, like, just like an odd scene to observe as I'm off, uh, investigative. or whatever. Well, speaking of odd scenes, you also ended up at 8 Fest. It took you, you had to overcome some hurdles to get there.

But I think for you, at least, just from other interviews you've done and also something you said earlier, I feel like this was in some ways, I don't know, it's sort of like epitomized your time down the rabbit hole or was definitely one of your more fun escapades. So tell us, yeah, what happened? And that enabled you to go to A-Fest. A lot of people in a crypto world would ask me, well, how are you writing about crypto? Do you invest in crypto? Do you know about crypto?

And I would always just tell them, I'm a hexacon. But they didn't like that. Oh, my God. I did not actually say that, but I am a hexacon. That's hilarious. Okay, okay. Well. I'm just trying to get some like crypto jokes in for the people.

for like the, you know, the real engaged audience who's on like crypto Twitter all day. I think for you to be a and you'd have to be wearing a lot more Gucci than you are right now. I wanted to do a Richard Hart chapter, but Richard Hart had a different media strategy that did not involve people flying to come see him. So, okay, so people, but people started to say. say like you don't you're missing out if you don't try it for yourself and i'm like you know what maybe they're right i should try it for myself and that the person specifically who kind of got to me was telling me i needed to buy a salana monkey business nft which like literally i had to go like double check this

it's hard to believe even as i say at night now these cost 25 000 at the time and i'm just like how much are they now how much are they now i mean there's still something That's actually, it's surprising to me that, I don't know, they could still be like a thousand bucks or something. But I'm like, I'm like, all right, like, this is just like, if I'm paying that kind of money, I want a good one. I don't want like some knockoff. Come on. And at the time, board apes was the one that had all the celebrities. And I was like, if I want to join a club, it should be like, yeah, it should be the number one club.

And I'm like, at the time, like a floor board ape was maybe like 500 grand or something like maybe 300. I forget. That was not, that was out of my budget. And you needed an ape to go to ape fest, which was going to be like this week-long party in New York, headlined by Snoop. Eminem showed up. And I'm just like, this would be a great way to meet some of like the people I see on crypto,

Twitter and like some of the I mean anybody who's there is a pretty big crypt has a you know has at least one ape and is like might have an interesting story it'd be fun to see how they hang out when they're like when it's just apes um so I'm like I want to go so one night after bedtime I was like said to my wife Nikki I got I got to talk with you about something important for the book and she's like all right what is it I'm like I explained all this I was like I want to go to the party but you need an ape, they're kind of expensive. And then she's like, how much is it? She's thinking she told me,

she knew it was going to be a lot, but she was thinking maybe five grand. And I'm like, so for the ugly image of the cartoon monkey, the absolute cheapest one I can get that'll still get me into the party, going to be $40,000. And she's just like, oh, she's not happy. She's just like, her face looked horrified. But she's always been really supportive of the project.

And, like, I had an advance to write the book. And I explained that, like, these trade all day. Like, every, I mean, not all day, but every day, like, several apes do trade. And that it was unlikely that I would lose the whole $20,000. And that I could go to this party and see what it was all about. And she was like, all right, that sounds pretty good. And, like, hey, you know, you never know. Maybe it'll go up, right?

I mean, that would be cool. I've spent like a year learning about all these people who got rich off crypto. It would be cool if that happened to me. So when I went to go buy the ape, the price of the Floor Mutant ape had dropped to like, it had been a couple weeks before I got around to it. And the Floor Mutant now cost like 20 grand. And that was cool because I didn't want to spend $40,000. But it was also not cool because that meant the price, in fact, could drop quite a lot in just two weeks.

And this is the part of the book that I feel like you, I'm curious what you thought of because I feel like it's the part where you're like, this guy is so dumb. He can't even use a computer because I actually found the process of sending my money into like metamask into like. Because so many people say they've like got some crypto, but I would say that like in my informal surveying like a very low percentage have actually ever used any decentralized products. Would you agree? Oh yeah, yeah. And, you know, like your experience, when I go to use them, I'm scared and like I've definitely lost money from using them and it's confusing and, you know, like, I don't know, you especially know with all these layer twos and stuff, that whole thing. And I just, I'm like, you guys, you got to make this easier because I live and breathe crypto most of the week and I can barely do the thing. I mean, I'm so relieved you said that because I felt like people were just going to make fun of me. Because I'm like, I'm telling you this is very hard. Like you might do it every day.

To the people who are thinking it's not hard, it is hard. And like when you install Metamask at the time, it made you watch this video that was like just trying to scare you about what would happen if like you typed the wrong numbers or lost your password. the video literally suggested that I should write the seed phrase, I should engrave it on a metal plate and like bury it in my backyard. And I'm like, I just want to go to the party with Snoop Dogg. There's no way that I'm doing that. Like, and also, and so like, yes, advice is that the user experience, if you want my mom, I was barely able to do it and I had to do it for my book.

Like if you want my mom to do it to like get you know Tickets to the Red Sox game You're gonna have to make it like one million times easier And so I actually found this to be quite instructive Because I'm like wait I felt like nobody had really told me Just how horrible it was And I was just like by doing this I was like

Oh no one will do this The only reason that anyone is doing it Because I think they're going to get rich And like this idea that there would be widespread adoption of this is like a pipe dream. So the actual process of like buying the ape, just the big people tease me and they're like, you don't know how it is unless you try it. They were right. I did try it. And I was like, whoa, I just, I didn't. It was a lot worse than even though my expectations were kind of low. It was a lot worse than I expected. And then I got to

ape fest and, you know, it was pretty good for like a crypto conference. But like everybody's wasted People are stoned. But here's the problem, too. Everyone's telling me this stuff about community, right? And I'm like, I want to be part of a cool community. And they're like collective storytelling. I'm a storyteller. That sounds cool.

And so coming into it, my mutant ape, he was smoking a pipe, and he had like a sweater made of maggots. And it was the floor mutant ape. And his name was Dr. Scum. You named him Dr. Scum. Yes. So I created some lore. I was like, I'm going to name him Dr. Scum, and, like, he's tormented by the maggots,

but, like, he smokes weed in this pipe, and that gives him superpowers. He's, like, a Sherlock Holmes of the board apes. And I was hoping that by giving him some lore, maybe he would become more valuable, and this would prevent, like, too many losses on when it came time to sell him. But this is the problem, okay? So I told all my friends and family that I got this mutant ape, and I'm like, look at my mutant ape and my mom is like,

I sent her the picture of it and she just like sent the picture back and is like it's my mutant ape now and I'm like, or something like that and I'm like, it's not it's because of the blockchain, it's mine, it can never be yours,

but it's very complicated to explain why but it's mine. You can't have it even though you do have it on your phone. And then I get to ape fest. I'm showing people with my mutant ape. And there is sort of this like love bombing thing where people will kind of pretend to be interested in your mutant ape. Like people didn't want to talk about their apes because it's boring. We all have apes. There's nothing to talk about. So like, I would try and talk about Dr. Scum and like, I don't know, I pull them out. People didn't really

care. And then like even like pimply teenagers, oh, people would insult Dr. Scum. They'd be like, that's a floor ape. Like pimply teenagers would be like, look at mine. It's worth like a million dollars. Your sucks. It's like the ugliest one I ever saw. And but also like there was nothing to do with Dr. Scump. I didn't even bring him to eight fest because everyone said he would get stolen if I did. So like I there was a rumor going around that there was like a tell me if this is true or just a rumor you may remember. There was like a billboard in Times Square that was an ad for a dating app. and it was like for hot girls to meet people who own board apes. But if you took a picture, if you used the QR code, it just stole your apes.

This was like a rumor that I heard. I don't know if it's true. But lots of people did get their apes stolen. So I didn't bring Dr. Scum to ape fest. I left them at home to not get stolen. So if there had been any like activations where you got to use your board ape in cool ways at ape fest, I wouldn't have been able to do it because I didn't have them with me. But also there weren't.

There was nothing to do with Dr. Scum there. I did get to meet Jimmy Fallon and discuss the logic of Epe investing with him. So I did feel like that was worth the price of admission. Wow, $20,000 to see Jimmy Fallon. I sold him and I only lost like $2,000 mostly in transaction fees. But the other funny thing about it was not only did you not bring it, but I can't remember what the reason was. but in the, like, I think like you actually couldn't use your mutant ape for admission. And so in the end, somebody just had to make you their plus one.

So like you went through this whole rigourable roll. And then in the end, there was like no need. Yeah. I mean, I wanted to buy that mutant ape. Like I wanted to see what it was like. I'm glad I did. And I was not like mad that I had to be somebody's plus one. There was this like tricky thing where you had to use this like other app.

to get the tickets. Like the NFT was not the ticket. There was maybe like a second NFT that was the ticket. Oh, wait. So this is kind of funny though, because it was like open C. I could see who bought my board ape. And I am, all right. Once I bought the mutant ape,

I immediately was filled with like panic that I would be the last idiot who paid 20 grand for one of these. Like I could see on my screen that people were buying and selling them. But I just felt like, I don't know, like once it was mine, I was like, nobody will take this off my hands. I knew that somebody would, but I still didn't feel like they would. But this one guy did buy it, and I could see on the on-chain who it was, and he had his wallet, like, labeled. And we actually had a little chat, and I started, I was feeling guilty.

And I was like, I'm sorry for selling you this terrible mutant ape. But he actually, they'd gone up a little bit, and he told me he was up five grand, and he didn't mind. So, like, my anxiety was relieved. and I felt like I could leave the ape world with like a clean conscience. All right. Well, that's a good way to end for listeners who, as I did very much enjoy that mutant eight story, it gives you a taste for what the book is like. I mean, I agree with you that, you know, it is sort of like you are escapades through

crypto for these last two years. And it's just so interesting kind of the extremes. It's like at the one end you have, you know, something super lighthearted like this. At the other hand, it's like, you know, these big frauds and like basically slavery and going on. So, yeah, I mean, and everything in between there's like Celsius. There's just a lot. So people should check it out. Zika, are there any other, you know, last thoughts you would like to give the audience?

No, I've always wanted to write like a crazy adventure story, like something like bringing down the house by Ben Messrich or like, into thin air by John Crackauer. I never thought I'd find the right story. And like, you know, I'm like 15 years into my career as a reporter or whatever. But when I got into the crypto world, I was like, oh, like this is the adventure you've been waiting for. This is what you got to write about. And I was at first, I was a little scared when I found out that Michael Lewis was also

writing a book about crypto. But after like, after writing the book. and putting these stories out into the world. I'm just like, I'm really so excited about it. I think it's really fun. And I'm more worried about where am I going to find a story that tops this? Like, I don't even really care what he does. I'm just like, this was, these two years were insane.

I don't know where I'll ever find something like this again. I'm just really glad that I was there to like to write about it. Yes, yes. It clearly you had a lot of fun. All right, well, where can people learn more about you and your work? You can follow me on Twitter at Zeke Fox, Z-E-K-E-F-A-U-X, and Number Go-U-U-U-U-U-U-S available wherever you get your books. Perfect.

Well, it's been a pleasure having you unchained. Thank you so much, Laura. It's like a big honor. I appreciate you having me on to interview me. Yeah, yeah, I really enjoyed it. Thanks so much for joining us today to learn more about Zeke and Number Go-Up, Check out the show notes for this episode. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin,

with help from Kevin Pukes, Matt Pilchard, Juan Aranovich, Megan Gavis, Ginny Hogan, Shashonk, and Margaret Correa. Thanks for listening. Unchained is now a part of the Coin Desk Podcast Network. For the latest in digital assets, check out Markets Daily seven days a week with new host, Noel Acheson.

Follow the Coin Desk Podcast Network for some of the best shows in crypto.