Transcripts For CSPAN2 Zeke 20240705 : vimarsana.com

Were very excited that youre all here. Its a great crowd. Im one of the hosts of the podcast. This is aaron lambert. Im also one of the hosts of the podcast. And i believe you all know zeke faux. Hi, everybody. [cheers and applause]. Were here for the launch and celebration of number go up. And this is all being recorded for the podcast. Now, normally only one host would review an author or a writer on our show. In this case, aaron and i were fighting over this book, who was going to get a chance to talk to him partly weve never had zeke on the show and hes done many, many pieces that we wanted to talk about and we waited in until this book came out and want to talk about the book so we decided to both question today. And if you havent read the book today, and youre getting a copy today. Youre in for a treat. I want to say the preamble. I did not know your name was pronounced faux until now. I thought you were a super anon who wasnt announcing his own identity and came up with a fake name. Its nice to meet you, zeke. I could have had so much credit in crypto world. And thats what i was operating under, so cool, he never revealed his own identity. If you dont know, zeke is a long time Investigative Reporter for Bloomberg Business magazine. He has done stories about fraudsters, scammers, thieves, some of my favorite types of stories over the years. And i was wondering what do you remember your first kind of story about crooks and what kind of i always like i came up through traditional reporting and i had like what i found to be kind of boring assignments to cover wall street and i was always drawn to people who worked in gray areas, and there was a moment when i realized like this was something that i could pursue as sort of like my beat. I had done an expose of some, i dont know, some shady business and there was a guy who was in the story, id written some not very nice thing about his company. When the story came out he was like, hey, you want to go out for a drink . [laughter] and i was like, i had also gotten a call from the u. S. Postal inspection service, which i think, i mean, thats like hey, we read your story, just so you know we want to arrest these guys. I was like, this is an interesting combination of calls today. [laughter] and i was like, whats going on . You know, now with this sort of thing has become more routine. But i was like younger, i was kind of worried, all right. Well, ill go out for the drink and i met the guy and he was like, you did a pretty good job with that story and like let me tell you about the Shady Hedge Fund and how they took money from harvard and secretly invested it in payday lending without telling harvard. And wow, this is a great tip. Thank you, guy who i just wrote mean things about. And i felt i was off and running. Didyou develop any kind of over the course of the stories did you develop stories about scammers and fraudsters . One thing i noticed is that they are not always that creative. Like these guys all watched the wolf of wall street. Like boiler room. Like theres one guy i wrote about had even like hed studied the films to try and figure out, i dont want it to fall into the tropes of the movies and scams looking for. And somebody who has done it differently somehow. [laughter] there is a bit after feedback. Isnt that sort of true with the mafia now that the mafia is so influenced by movies about the mafia that its dramatically changed the actual way that the mafia sort of operates aesthetically. Yeah, totally, i think youre right. They probably know more about the mafia tactics from, rewatching goodfellas. Their grandfather was probably in jail their whole life and didnt get to tell the mafia secrets. So the early part of this book, you set off to investigate. Can you give, a max 30 seconds, but what is tether and what were you like looking to find out at the very, very origins of your reporting . So, id resisted investigating crypto. I just thought like it didnt have the same kind of cool, complicated scamminess that i could entangle and write about. But tether was a mystery that appealed to me. Its called a stable coin because its a coin that you give the company tether a dollar and they give you one tether token so you can sort of think of them like casino chips that you take and gamble with elsewhere in crypto land. When i started looking into it, tether sold 50 billion worth of these chips and they had not said to anyones satisfaction where they were keeping that 50 billion. So there was this fear that, if people went to cash in their tether chips, the 50 billion would be gone and the entire crypto economy would crash. And so i felt like this is the kind of thing i could work on trying to find this missing money and that was a mystery that sucked me into crypto world for two years. When you start, if this was a bank, a proper bank, they would have a pr firm, like a pr division, who to call up at the bank. Where do you start when you enter into this world . Yeah, tether was just like compared to a traditional financial company, in crypto world, there were just so many red flags, it was laughable. Like the company it wasnt really based anywhere, they suggested they were regulated by the virgin islands. When i called there, no, the ceo had not only not given an interview, he had never really been seen in public and some people speculated that he didnt even really exist. And the guy that i was told was the real boss was the cfo, jean carlo, who had become an electronics reporter and sued for counterfeiting. So, but even as i was learning all of this weird stuff, i was constantly told by people on crypto, it was super important and central to the crypto economy, and, yeah, i just couldnt believe like crypto traders really, really trusted this company. It seems like you set off on a journey that you thought would have like a simple resolution and then it just got like more and more complicated in terms of like what you were looking for because it seems like you were able to figure out fairly rapidly that this was like a Sketchy Company that was telling lies, but it didnt lead to like a neat, simple resolution, oh, know you that people know that, they certainly wont keep their money in there. Right, like in traditional finance land. When you do an expose of a mainstream finance company, you dont usually have like conclusive proof that theyre a fraud. Like the story, if you go back and look at the stories that exposed enron, they were just sort of like, hey, you might want to look at this weird financial maneuver theyre using. With tether, you definitely had that already and anyone who invested in tether tokens had reason enough to sell them to tyrion a get their money out, but in the crypto world it didnt seem live anybody cared. How can did you go about reporting . You end up at the crypto conferences and from what it sounds like, is this an overwhelming ridiculous number of people at the conferences and how did you go about finding the threads you were going to pull to keep following the story . Bitcoin 2021 in miami . I was not okay. And in fact, i described this like to evan in a text message. Like, if you were like writing about pop music and you went to like the parking lot of like Insane Clown Posse show is like not the most like flat hearing where so okay so nothing flattering when okay. I heard that before and this is like a really crazy Conference Full of bitcoin zealous. I also feel a little like okay like superhero movies, people always like youve got to see antman. This is a good one not like the other superhero movies. Youre like great, another one. With the crypto conference and was like you didntec go to the intellectual one. Thats why i was like but you definitely right. Bitcoin 2021 conference i had s this kind of even though a skeptical of i had this impression was about to go mainstream and there were Major Players on wall street who were looking to get involved, which was kind of true it but then yeah you get there and its like all these kind of gold bugs were talking about like evils of money and central bankers and how they are ruling the world. Theres a guy giving a speech who it said that, he called grain fiat food and together with holy bitcoin like we should only eat steaks. He wasnt even the only one with that theory. So at this conference, like, but like thehe thicknesses of a good target for investigation just like some weirdo. So i set up all these meetings. I was kind of like poorly informed. Enough time to research everybody. I was basically there to ask them about tether but had to feign interest in the company. One of the ones i met with, his name was alex motion ski. You read this Company Called celsius, and when i sat down with him he was like hes real like, hes got the shirt that says banks are not your friends. He was all of the conference like iter was clear he was a big player. He tells me his pitch. Is like give me your money, il pay you like 18 interest, but if you want alone for me i charge of 0 . And like thats like a recipe to lose money. Does make any sense at all. And id like but im just was smiling because i dont want to i dont say anything rude before we get to tether. Unlike okay, thats cool. How much money do you manage . Hes like him 20 billion. And then he got arrested a few weeks ago. If you dont follow things closely. But yeah, so when i got back from the conference i told my editor i waske just like we coui do this crypto stuff, like if you dont mind that a write at crypto, theres a lot of things we could write about. One of the interesting dynamics in the book is that, i mean youre clearly skeptical of many of the boosters of crypto currency but also the skepticspe are not necessarily trustworthy people, like you meet this guy who ist like on this longstanding crusade against tether, that information hes giving is not totally verifiable either. How did you sort of like know who to trust . How do you think about like who is a worthwhile source that i can actually use what to say in this book . That was definitely a real challenge, like this the next guy, hes just an anonymous like on twitter but surprisingly influential. He would tweedledee sings about likeke tethers not that, wheres the money . He had the air like regulators. People people listen to him. So like when we met and i agree to like protect his identity, i, i dont know what expected but i think i was thinking more like like is some sort of inside, like he had and he walks in with like like this shirt e stained with tacos. He had some like maybe some swag, and yeah, i realized like he didnt really know anything. Like you might be right but hes just posting a bunch of crazy stuff online. Yeah, its on me to try and figure things out. It was very, tether especially third heart. It really got some financial records showing like what they had invested in. Im just like i dont know, could this be made up . Like, how you actually know anything . Yeah, it was, it was a real challenge. There sort of, feels like theres two challenges in there. One is the reporting challenge, collecting information, trying to get to the bottom of those mysteries. And the other one is this psychological jump challenk as cuba, which is i mean you pitch the book and you start working i on the book and crypto is at its height, bitcoins hitting whatever, 60 plus thousand or whatever the limit was that kit. As you were doing it and you just talk aboutit this a littlen the book, like how did it feel to kind of anticipate that your off . Icism might not pay yeah. So when i pitched it november 20, 2021 and in the page i was like more or less like its a house of cards, its all going to collapse, which wasnt like that controversial view at the time. Might come more or less the did happen but it definitely didnt feel that way. Like youre saying, like immediately im very nervous. Im seeing like the price is not collapsing. Im like what a going to write about in this book . Whats going to happen . And by the time, no commas only five months later but by the time i got to april 2022 20, 22. I was at Sam Bankmanfrieds they conference in the bahamas and im feeling kind of depressed but i wish is that i dont know. I guess like this is all the world is going to be. Like you got some dumb Crypto Company and youre going you can ande a billion dollars like, maybe they will just raise the money and figure it out later. Yeah. I mean, theres like the title number go up could be like red like literally or ironically to video where we were in the market cycle. I think its coming out like a very good time but i was somewhat surprised like particularly reading the blurbs on the backve of the book. Theyre very much like yeah, its over. And i wasab like, theres probay going to be likeok a sequel to this book. Like, what is happened since then, like i know that like the trial Sam Bankmanfrieds trial starts i think a few blocks away from here, and i think three weeks, like, how are you feelg about the like aftermath of what you wrote about . Thats how i i definitely , like i think i saw it amazon filed it in history. And im like, i think thats appropriate. I just, i can imagine we will ever see like another bubble like this one. And i dont think the outcome of sams trial is in like too much suspense. Maybe some crypto thing will happen in the future but i think it will beom different from the one that if it does it wont be the same stuff that i wrote about. Thats something want to ask about as well. Like, in the book there are, theres the idf crypto and then associate ideas like smart contracts, you know, everything the cancer goes around it. And then theeo other people that it is attracted, all the rides, ponzi schemers and scammers that you describe. Is it possible to separate the idea in your mind from the people or was it inevitable that this idea would attract these people . So for me its very, at this point is very hard to separate and i can only really judge crypto by what i saw, which was bad. It also know that i can see the ideas have a lot of appeal unlike a lot of smart people have worked on them. But the question i would just come back to when i was talking to these guys, and do something that like as a writer like you want to see stuff thats happening so you can write about it. So i would be like hey, youve got this company, you say that you raise 200 million but selling spaceship nfts. E maybe we can play the game together and will be a like a la better seen. And the guys like all, no, no, no. Like, the nfts existed with the 200 million like the game is five years away. Like we cannot play the game. I just like i was always pulling back the curtain and was like very disappointed by what i saw. So yeah, so at this point its hard for me to like really get excited about the ideas. So i should disclose that i also, i made a podcast check, check. About [inaudible] check and is this cutting out . Now it sounds okay. Okay. And one of the biggest was one of the Biggest Challenges for me was like what level of depth describe the technical stuff. It could be like zero. It could be like 10,000 pages of footnotes depending on how you handled it. What was your thinking about like how much explanation needed to bemo in this book versus like the more fun friday parts . So definitely my thinking was like as little as you can get away with. Like, do not explain anything if you dont need to and definitely not right for the beginning because thats going to turn people off. Was a something you had to like calibrates are people reading it and being like this part is extremely boring . I mean, to be fair like im very easily bored, too. I did need anyone to tell me like which, start writing about blockchain would be boring. Also, i have a colleague at Bloomberg Matt levine writes about these concepts like way better than i ever would. So i was like im not trying to imatch that. Im going to w write about like these characters and this what happened in this boom. And dash on the wake of succinct to the wii watchable podcast about the movie black cat, and of a of thinking about how this whole area of like could Computer Bank robberies is extremely cinematic very difficult to like about her make exciting. I feel your book is exciting, like where did you find the part of the story that were exciting or were captivating . What are the scenes in a mostly Computer Store . Yet. I mean, that was certainly like when i pitched the book that was certainly my goal come what you need to find some interesting stuff going on that you can write about. At this point so much that can be about like different crypto coverages that you attended. Those actuallywe the right one so you were not going to top that when. So one thing i write about in the book is i heard about, you about crypto beingse used for le illicit purposes, and thats also kind of hard to dramatize because, like its unlikely that some money launder is going to invite you over while he does this thing. I heard about these romance scams called pig butchering, where like if you come with all get these like random spam Text Messages, and it turns out, like this people are trying to entice you with a crypto skin and then very dark twist, it turns out that the people sending those messages are often themselves victims of Human Trafficking your life in cambodia being tortured while they send spam Text Messages. So when they heard about this it was not, like i was in the first one who about it but understandably of the people who covered this were more interested in like the human rights issues. And i was like wait, did iqs that you use crypto for all these scams . And then ii i got one of thesem Text Messages and playeds, along with this scammer who said the name was vicki ho. Finally she was like iraq, you want to learn to trade like me . Send me some tether. And i was like, great, yes. I will send you some tether. A guy can track your wallet and then i end up going, i was not able to find vickie but ended up going to cambodia just because i wanted to see these damn compounds for myself. And there i actually did visit like money exchangere store whee i sawaw a dude just like walk ot with a brick of 50 grand and i was able to send 100 tethers to the clerk and walk out with like a 100 bill, no questions asked her and thats what i i thougt all, now i finally see this. This is pretty useful. Maybe crypto is good for something. Was that really the only skin you were engage with . I was one of you keeping like 20 of them running at once to see if one of them would try to find a mention no. That was the only one. I honestly that always use tether. Thats not the particularly good reason why they all use tether. I think its mostly because for, as evicted if youre asked to buy like bitcoin for something you might be worried that the price will go up or down. Where as with tether the scammer can say its always worth a dollar and you send to me and we will collect 30 interest something. So i dont think its necessarily anything more than that whether the use tether. You kind of get into, to me as a person, admittedly has the crypto, distinction which are other less sketchy stablecoins. Theres one thats issued by a wellknown American Company thats regulated by the government called circle, and yet this like extremely sketchy not backed one succeeds but you can kind of see why that might be true if you are doing something which you didnt want to have your funds frozen by some sort of Law Enforcement action of some kind. Definitely. And i did, from a victim of one of these pig butchering the scams, they sent, the shelby some of their communications with tethers Customer Service and they wereli like yeah, i set in like 20 grand and it turns out it was to like some chinese gangster, and liking you freeze their account . Because tether does have that power. Theyve been in the past. And then tether was, itof was funny to see their series of excuses i would just be arbitrary, clearly just made up by some Customer Service worker and their like him we only freeze accounts if you proof of violence. And i sigh, in the banking system, like you know banks follow all sorts of rules, unlike tether and other Crypto Companies purport to follow the rules but didnt seem to just like make them up which of the once they want to follow. Theres also some distinction there are about, like the rule of law across countries, where yes, you can like freeze an American Bank account, but like much of the stuff is happening across international borders. I dont know if they are legitimate but theres a powerful truly unfeasible money, even if its not backed by anything. Yeah. Like maybe im kind of like a boring guy, but im like, you know, theres a reason why the banks have tot like noblesse which account and i think theres a reason for all the. Financial regulations. And i feel like the crypto world is kind of like learning it all over again. Yeah. I mean, someone has described to me like crypto is like a speed money, 100 years of like bad Financial Decisions in like two years, probably something to that. Definitely. I mean, to begin just seems like so much of it boils down to like some guy has some idea. He get you to send in your real money and then he gives you some like random token and then now he has the money and goes and like blows it on something else. What is it about the writing i found the writing of the book so fun and so kind of refreshing in i guess bluntness is made with what i would describe it. You call a scam a scam. You call a con man a con man and thats always true in the sort of journalistic outlets are things and maybe a little heavily lawyered. People try to be careful, and you say things like its not just that the idea was stupid, but, and go on. Im wondering if that was like, was that like first draft energy was at like real energy . Well, this was really big for me. It was like one of the appeals of writing a book is that im usually held to this, like i have to write under this constraint. I work for bloomberg and even though business week can be a little bit edgier, where theres just like a house style, and i feel like crypto is not made for that. Like, theres not time to investigate all of these scams. Sometimes you just have to see something. Maybe its not a scam. Maybe its just like some hype, some worthless hype you can use it in like, say what you think about it. I also like a lot of crypto is built around being cool, like people have made so much money off just like convincing other people that they are cool. Sometimes like the expose is just like they are not cool. [laughing] yeah, theres an underlying question in the book. Theres like, the sort of like big, big fraud in the, like Sam Bankmanfried gambled with other peoples money sense. And then theres this kind of larger question about whether we should stop people from gambling overall, like whether we should move towards a society where theres more gambling on everything. You can see this like we have cited crypto, too. Like i dont know if you watch any sport youre pretty much supporting like a sports gambling industrial industry know. Ut im interested how you thought about sort of the second question which is like the creation of a larger and larger like gambling infrastructure in the world. You know, as someone who covers markets as a whole how you would connect that to like your previous life in wall street and traditional finance can just kind of a different Gambling Market place. I mean, i can the appeal of gambling. Like when i was younger i kind of like gambling, but if you like when im writing finance, i want to tell people the truth about whats likely to go on. And like, i dont think, it is, sort of gets to the argument thickets of the book, an argument with my friend about george cohen calling and t like by this doggie clickers going to go higher. Doggie coin is pumping. And unlike its called dogecoin. The joke is played out. Its not funny. And if you go up and he did make money but i think i was going to be theic one whose like the stik and a that is like a, like daytrading, its a proven loser. And like him as a way to lose money. If you buy board eight for 500 that will not sacral for the long andth soon it will be worth like zero. Did you ever have like, like the operative one and it is interesting to me is like the likely sort of turned you into a predictor of the future, and the book is in some ways about how the future is really hard to predict. Like at one point you select i couldve thrown t a dart at a dartboard and hit a company that is going to be, go belly up and get tether some apostolic chasing at the end. How did you think about like the oracle elements of the book, particularly not knowing what the world wouldoo look like when it came out . I mean, as a like long form reported you do sort of have to like make bets about which characters are going to be important, like he was were spending all this time with, who is worth like cultivating and try to get access to. So somebody like Sam Bankmanfried, like i could tell that he was an important character in that, regardless of what happened he would be a good one to hang out with and that he probably knew something about tether the sabbath he did not tell me. So even when i learned that the first time i flew down to the bahamas to hang out with him, he was very, like im sitting with him. I could see on hiske computer. Hes emailing with ceos. Hes got a counter and i could see that he just been with michael lewis. I was like,h, lets hope that gy is a writing a book crypto, too. [laughing] but i was like, you know what . Like whatever. My book is different and i can even as discussed been a lot of time with michael lewis, i think is an important character and that hes going to play a role in like whatever happens in crypto and and i should be g time with him, too. So i tried to make my plans to be flexible so i could still have the book no matter what happened. Can you describe it the emotions that you went through when, and what you did when ftx, the Company Started to collapse . So when ftx, like certainly cannot plan that i predicted that Sam Bankmanfried was running like like a big fre discovery would collapse. And when it did i was like a little unsure of like whether ii should be writing about this or i mean it seems an obvious now but i really like him to an auto lock,of talked with my colleagus and then i get a text message from somebody that was like are you in the bahamas right now . I was like saying to us of, no. I guess i should be. Then i flew f down there and arranged to go to sams apartment, he is holed up in his 30 million penthouse and like to me he hadnt been arrested yet. There was some question about like what it happened. To me it seemed really clear there was a big fraud and that was a matter of time before, before he would not be available for more interviews can which proved wrong. [laughing] another bad prediction. He did, apparently 1000 interviews from house arrest. [laughing] but that was in court papers. Yeah, once i decided to go visit with him and see if he had some side of the story to tell and if theres Something Different from like a narrative that was out there, to turn to be a alike really interesting to spend time with him when things were at the end after having seen him when he seemed like the next Mark Zuckerberg or something. What did you make of the fact that he was, i mean, before, the fact that he was willing to talk to, like what was your interpretation of what he was thinking . So, my take is that i dont think like we didnt have some like special relationship, but i felt like he was so successful with immediate on the way up, but he was able to get himself on magazine covers and make them into crypto does hold of what i really by being really lyaccessible and yet a story to tell people really like. When the company collapsed i dont think he was crazy for him tokn think like i dont know, maybe i can talk my way out of this one, too. Like lets talk to reporters and he ended up going on the big apology tour, going on in morning america and zooming in to the deal book conference and think a lot of the same stuff that he had said to me. I think you may have like an over for practice, like honestly. This is about some of the nuts and bolts of doing this kind of work and sort of asking for maybe future stories that people end up with like this where you have a ton of people obviously pushing the story, and it appears that Sam Bankmanfried was talking to all of them at once, like how do you try to expand out in a situation like that ande had as a change f the cactus whatn youre doing knowing there was like seven other writers trying to exactly the same story on bearing publishing deadlines . So with that particular story, i decided that, first of all i was, my book leave had started but i was like i knew businessweek would like the story. I have got to bring this back to business week and weve got to publish it. We got to publish it quick. And that was one where like what evan was saying, i thought i could distinguish i myself becae im like, just been a long time thinking about crypto, you know what youne think about this, you know what you think happened, and you can say it and i was able to press sam and also zabel,id i just wrote in the sty things like he said this, but it didnt seem very believable for this reason. And i felt like that was not unfair because sitting with sam i would also tell them that i was like well, you just said, that doesnt mak sense to me. Or like i dont think its true for this reason. So i think that, yeah, i knew that my story would be different because a lot of the of the people who jumped in to the story were not like that wellequipped to interrogate his responses. And also because i was on book leave, i was able to just go and talk my way into his house and it didnt have too to like a proposals for anything. This this is a weird quest like whats it like reported in some was like in such a deep crisis that you like, almost having like some form of like a public break out in front of you . So i really, we didnt communicate that much leading up to the interview. So when like i walkedly in i had no idea what to expect. I wasnt sure if you would be all alone, like a wasnt sure if he would be like utterly despondent. When i met him he was really, i mean im sure he was keeping up a a brave face but he seemed like exactly the same guy that i had met six months earlier when he was like the riches, one of the richest guys in the world and the hero of crypto. Thats what surprised me. He seemed alike, he seemed really unfazed. I dont know if het was maybe a little delusional at that point that he is going to raise 10 billion in bail himself out there but i will say i felt like it was a really sad situation. Unlike regard is about what i thought of what sam did, i was just like, i mean, the interview went on forever. I called that, im really tired. [laughing] and then he come because hes gote all the good study drugs. [laughing] can i get one of those patches . Know, when i got out of there i was just like,. [laughing] , i am really looking forward to going back to brooklyn and being with like my normal, my wife and like my awesome kids and like my normal life. Im glad this isnt my life. Speaking of getting back to your wife and kids, you did a lot of traveling for this book. You were all over the world for this, and you also describe in a way that a really appreciate as a reporter flying somewhere and then just getting the door closed on your face. And im wondering how you went about deciding where to go after the door hadce been closed on yr face many times. Iim mean, some people were really generous hosts, like i was surprised often by the people that he met that would just like let me in and talk to me. I felt like id ever been said like i a went anywhere. Maybe the pressure to get something to do really like help you come up with something. And i also worked with, and most of the countries that it went, i worked with like really amazing reporters who had either covered the topic before or had been like working, researching it for me and for like pretty prepared. So that enabled me to do it a lot, lot faster than otherwise. Like, i dont even have time to quite often but when he went to the philippines i was working with guilt rambles was like a veteran fixer. And she was just like opera, welcome to the philippines. There have been this big crypto bubble there and the sort of pokemon game, she was just like lets go to the city and were going to track down the first guy who played this game. And likability. Like i dont speak the language so that was all her. And yeah, we were able to come to some of these places i didnt, i was able to do it like quicker than i might have imagined. How did you think about like weaving all the different threads together to make a coherent book . Becausehe theres like theres a major tether arc. Theres the ftx sbf arc and then theres all these ways that their actions sort of influence normal peoples lives all over the world. Its a pretty sprawling story, like i dont know, like it was a movie to be like one of those stereophonic kind of movies were using it from all the different angles. How did you turn that into a single narrative . That was like possibly theha biggest challenge, and like the thing that it worked the hardest at in the writing process. And my editor, paul at crowd, like that was motive is main, 2020 turned interests was like we need to weed, why is a narrator going from this place to the place . Like what is this chapter have to do with that chapter . Im pretty proud of like how it turned out. I think it like reads like a real story. But that was like, i was likeng worst case we have like a collection of entertaining essays. This case, this is like a really good story, and that wasnt the goal that i was working on like throughout all the writing and revising. I feel like we get a lot of galleys. A lot of times im like is this a thinly veiled collection or is this a single book . To me this really did feel like a single book where you kind of didnt under, you wouldnt understand like where these ideas came from that like lead to the philippines or in cambodia without grounding yourself and like an italian surgeon has an idea one day, not plastic surgeon, i shouldnt give them the full surgeon titl title. And the overarching mystery that started it all, did you feel like, where you still cane you still going to solve the mystery . Do you feel like theyre still a mystery there . Honestly, yes. And i felt like my on this trip to cambodia when i saw heather being used, like, i really saw crypto use in the real world and id ever seen tether for sure. Never seen it used anywhere. Even at these bitcoin covers of entente if he, tried to pay with bitcoin for like your baby would be down. So i get to, im on a bus from ho chi minh city. Acrosstheboard into cambodia. I meant made this town where notorious for forced labor and like scam compounds. In the parking lot of one of these scam casinos were suppose alike lots of workers are being held against their will, theres like a little booth thats like trade your tether for dollars. Just like, this is the nice part about being a book and not like a New York Times article. Like to meth thats a very, to e that doesnt prove anything. But to me like ive been looking at this for two years and this is why find the first am i see the tether logo in the real world . Like i felt likeke i had got to some sort of answer, but definitely, yeah, like spoiler alert, like tether hasnt crashed. Its bigger than ever. The company come if you believe the numbers they are making tons of money. Plastic surgeon and author of the top people are billionaires and they now, its because Interest Rates have gone up and they can invest in safe use treasuries and earn safe returns. Like i still have my doubts about the whole company, but like i dont know, ive looked into it for a long time. I didnt find like evidence that they were lying about the assets now. And like i dont know, we will see what happens. Like, im not convinced the story is over but i cant, yeah cant control what happens and it had to call it part of my book. Yeah, i was just sort of curious, like i mean come you start short of what the smoke around tether and as you said it hasnt collapsed, its bigger than ever. Jenna, basically howal much like the individual personal personality is that these people of these people behind these comp is matter. Like the fact that these guys all have these colorful slightly scam he pass. Like, how much of what youre doing is reading into the people versus sort of like finding out things about the business . And what dot you think looking back sorted from what you yw about these people at the beginning up until now . Yeah. I mean, i have sort of like a rule of thumb which is about if somebody did like one scan, they probably did another scam. And like, if they did one skin in theds past and now they havea new thing, like the other good its also a scam. Like its not always true, and so like that was, that was definitely like born out sometimes in crypto world, like with celsius and alex who had like this really insane aspens and all sorts of crazy things. But then, yeah, i dont know. It wasnt always. And partly its because of the crypto traders react to this differently, and they are not like, if they hear like oh, such and such protocol, like the founder was associated with the exchange which failed, like thee wont necessarily just dump all the tokens and go put the money in jpmorgan. They might even be like its kind of cool, like you know, hes ambitious. The normal rules didnt quite apply for a while there. All do wonder ife then we cn do some audience questions if there are some. So get thoset ready. But have you heard, i mean there are people you describe in very colorful ways in the book thinking about brock pierce forr example, is addressing . Have you heard from any of these people about the way that theyre described in the book . I dont, some of the people have read it and have it, but definitely theres a lot of people i havent heard from where i am, im certainly like kerry just what they think. And like i, im not like a heartless person. Like i really care what, i feel like when i go write the book, my duties to the reader guide to write what i think. I have to tell them whats really going on. And i cant worry too much about what the people involved will think about it. But then when the writing is over im back to being like im that person and it do care what they think. Brock is someone, like he is one of the most colorful characters in this whole world and is the key like enjoys being a colorful character and getting attention. Im not sure he will like it but hes someone who i think will sometimes, some of these guys like to be in the mix and to be thought of as like an important player, even if im saying that they dressed in johnny depp cosplay. [laughing] you should describe chisel bit because it gives a good flavor of the kind of character you find in the book. So im in the bahamas and my friend is like i was at this party lasted. It was on this yacht. It was crazy, like everybody was drunk andth people doing billion dollar deal of, the people doing shots over there. She pulls herer phone check out these videos. She shall be one, its this guy with long hair and a scorpion tattoo on his shoulder, and use, i know him from pictures. Its brock pierce was like one of the founders of tether who ive been wanting tome spend tie with. And so i had his contact information. Unlike hey, rock, can it come your yacht, whichch was like my lecturer, like really become an, 300foot yacht or some degrees like okay. A sense a speedboat to pick up. It was really dramatic. He used to be one of the hes in the mightyil ducks. He was a successful child actors who he knows from drama. Im on the yacht and i see him, hes addressing this, like small crowd of people who seem kind of confused. Hes like, hes about 55. Hes wearing a long mother pesco no shirt. Hes got diamond shaped pink sunglasses. He always wears like a fedora with like playing cards and it or feathers. His gallic all sorts of flyer and he talks and like he talks in total riddles. Like when i asked him, you know, why did you create tether . He was like, im a dual for creation. I only take on missions impossible. The funnyin thing is, like, he,e like this. He likes talking to reporters in sync stuff like this. He was one of the characters in my, about a businessweek story about tether before the book, and afterwards i had a meeting with like a documentary producer. They were like, oh, were kind ofcr interested and like makinga documentary about crypto. Nothing came of it but they are like willie our favorite part is this guy who said dula for creation. Do you think h would talk to us . Unlike, theres no way he will talk of death and not. Unless you hire me. [laughing] theres only one way to get to brock pierce and that is through zeke faux. [laughing] meanwhile, hes just like he travels with of the darker just because like theres not enough cameras around. [laughing] all right. Do have any audience questions . I think im going to have you look at this. I got a question on the d. C. Side of things. Your friends like ac investing in axion infinity or simple x, et cetera, multibilliondollar valuations and in some cases like [inaudible] g of any sort insider knowledge on the terms dictating e tokens on it was a not theyre still turning a profit even after it completely imploded . Thats a really good question, and if my book deadline had been like another year, i definitely wanted that to be a chapter because your description of this is accurate. Yeah, so many of these crazy ideas come back with like tons of money from venture capitalists, especially and reason horwitz. One clue is that like these tokens that regular people by as you said have gone down a lot but based on report in the publication the information, the returns of the crypto fund are quite good. So like like this seems lid clue that the smart money is not just mine like the same thing that crypto people are buying. They must be getting an earlier getting some sort of like good terms. Anyone else . Or we will keep going. If you questions just raise your hand. So that issue of the sort of ongoing nature, like if i had another, if i hadnt of the month come if i had another chapter, are you sick of reporting on you talk about crypto lot but at what level are you ready to continue reporting on this, or you are like ive seen enough . I mean, im definitely ready to move on now but i feel sad about the things come like a so, so much but the thing ever great as like the things i didnt see. You know, like always liked was a some better crypto party that a did not go to that maybe erin went to . Yes. [laughing] and like i wasnt there on the day that el salvador announced, adopted it. As official currency went brac2 of big party and jake paul was there but there were like protest industry for protesters alike earning bitcoin agm. Unlike it had occurred to me that like maybe i should go that day, like i have like a job come like a kids. Im not able to just drop think at a moments notice because there might bee something going on. But it didot feel like when i gt this to my first book when i got this book to i was like i really want to go all out and so like you arere there can to make the book a great book and find out as much as i can. Im proud of how much i did do but i kicked myself i didnt do more of the bubble was still going. Now i feel like yeah, i do feel like the story is over and dont feel like theres not waiting like the next crypto cycle to get going. What was the most like surprising thing . Going in sort of with attitude that you started with, what like surprised you . Was not what you expected . So, i mean, i write in the book, like this if im not what youre looking for but i went in thinking this iss pretty dumb, alike i never could have guessed, the depth of its stupidity. And like like a do kindfe o feel that way. But yeah, i think i was surprised that, you know, like some of this stuff does seem, like infinity this was a pokemon game that became come like a crypto bubble, and was especially popular in the philippines. Crypto people had like really just talked about how great this is going to be. This is like a shining example of web3. Web3. Like it with her and unlike, my cab driver had like borrowed lots of money and lost it on buying these crypto pokemon. I like this is really bad for like his life. Yeah, i did, would expect that. Like it wasnt thinking, i dont know, i mean was expecting more of like when i met people its like lost their savings and crypto that wasnt the surprising but to see that affect effect on people around the world surprisedal me. And i was also surprised by the ability of crypto people to just like memory hole anything bad that happened just like you would hear about stuffff and you hear about enfin it would fail and wishes like as if it never happened or like we all knew that one was bad, you know . Are you going to attend the sbf . I definitely want to see. I havent quite figured out how im going to write about it, but im certainly curious. What makes a the most interesg for me is that there is a a guidebook who i really liked who i metf him he was one of sbf lieutenants, and he just seemed like the sweetest guy. And like he almost seemed to be like he did know very much about crypto, like he was so caught up in like his workaholism and like becoming a billionaire that he hadnt even stop to think much about what was going on. He has since like pleaded guilty to serious crimes and is going to testify. He supposed to testify against sam, and theyd known each other since they were kids. So to me, like, i dont know, im most interested in seeing like this group of friends who now are like going to be on the stand talking aboutch each othe. Theres a degree to which, like, a lot of these crimes are like very, very modern and also like timeless, you know, like starting a shadow bank and then the shadow bank doesnt actually have all the money. That was like a popular thing to do in the wild west also. You how. Like how much of this debate is truly unique and technological, versus like universal humanpl like fraud themes that played out through time and often like touch on sort of novel Technological Development . No, i think that a lot of these scams are not that new. I spent a lot of time writing about penny stocks, which are similar to me to a lot of like cryptocurrencies, where some guy says like a, i just got this great goldmine, like its time to invest. He doesnt have the goldmine. People in this. He served as a manipulation to get the stock going up at and what the stock is like he dumps he shares and runs away. And like it think that explains like, i dont know, do you think spirit i think its very accurate. I be like organized crime country involved and a penny stock market as it got larger. When people see it is like easy money to mandate, it sort of attracts other human archetypes that exist throughout time. Thats like one of my favorite periods in wallep stret history. I was not there to report on it but its depicted in like one episode of the sopranos. They call the company. Com copy like thats real. Like ive met come on sort of like a fan, like a scam aficionado. So i will look up the guy who ran but the real, you want to get a beer . These days . To and ill say that like these guys like to talk about their jobs, like same as me. Like its fun for me. Document work. Ou most of my friends are sick of hearing about it. And then, y you know, this guy, like his wife is boarded of hearing about itt so much. Hes ready to tell me how like he came up with his this gry and is going to make five bucks a sheriff on the suckers, or whatever. Or better if you already did it. But yeah. Last one. Last one. I mean, you described this as like okay, im paraphrasing here, like one of the sort of greatestdi mediacom Financial Media Human History basically. Now that youve written about it, do you feel like you will continue to have that love of scan, that interest inn scams, r what everything seem small in comparison to the vast targetrich environment that you just encountered . No, ive been thinking about that a lot. I can actually been considering stories that are totally different and dont have to do with scams. But im sure you feel that way, like you, after writing like the mastermind, like youre never going to get like how to talk the character like paula . Like, because we want to go into a story think its going to be my best story ever. Yet. I mean, i feel like saving grace is theres always a new stranger character to say the word. So the question is are you still willingga to live in the world again . Oh, yeah, they just needer to come up with like cooler scams. All right. Thank you all for coming. Thanks for listening, and buy the book. [applause] if you are enjoying booktv then sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive the schedule of upcoming programs, author discussions, book festivals and more. Booktv every sunday on cspan2 or anytime online at booktv. Org. Television for serious readers. Weekends on cspan2 are an intellectual feast. Every saturday American History tv documents a ghost stories, and on sunda booktv bring to the latest in nonfiction books and authors. Funding for cspan2 comes in these Television Companies and more including buckeye broadband. 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