FTX's Collapse; Taibi's Downfall | Jacob Silverman | TMR

Emma’s joined by writer Jacob Silverman! Jacob Silverman walks through the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, and what it tells us about the worlds of crypto and Big Tech writ large. Later, they dive into Matt Taibbi’s recent evisceration at the hands of Mehdi Hasan, and the absurdity of being a journalist that gets countless facts wrong and refuses to be critical with their sources.

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We are back and we are joined by Jacob Silverman, a freelance journalist who just came out with this excellent four-part limited series podcast, The Naked Emperor, about FTX Sam Bankman-Fried or SBF. I mean everybody's a three-letter acronym these days and crypto generally. Jacob, what's your middle name? I mean you gotta come up with your own. I will reveal that my government middle name is Isaac. Okay. JIS is here with us. Yeah. Tell us a bit about the naked emperor. Sure it's a four-part podcast for CBC each episode's about 30 minutes. It's really kind of beginning to end or at least beginning to now of the FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried Saga and designed for you know no crypto knowledge required. No interest is required. Really more about the kind of Timeless themes of Fraud and deceit and greed and hype and celebrity and the ways that manifested within crypto. But it's more sort of a corporate crime story than is necessary hey this is a crypto or Tech story. Yeah I mean so like where does the Sam Bankman-Fried prosecution stand right now? Like I mean I think a lot of people have fears that he's going to be singled out as the singular grifter who totally warped what crypto really should have been intended to provide and so all we need is some substantial or substantive regulation and then the cryptocurrency can through survive and thrive. That's my fear. I mean what's your take on how he kind of stands in the cryptocurrency zeitgeist. Sure yeah, it's interesting. Because it's certainly a big deal. He was probably the most visible face of crypto I'd say. Ran FTX was by some measures the second-largest exchange. Finance is the largest in the world and its CEO CZ is being investigated all over. So you know crypto and then all these other companies have either recently failed. There are plenty before FTX that are in trouble and can't seem to follow the law. Yeah. So you know the industry has widespread problems that kind of precede FTX. FTX really epitomizes some of them and it was a dramatic highlight. Certainly, the fact that SBF could go from kind of industry Golden Boy the guy who was going to bring us safe regulations supposedly. And to villain and any kind of arch grifter in the space of a week. That was really shocking to people. So I think is also in the average consumer's mind what they probably think now when they hear crypto. I mean I talk to people in the industry and I also talk to regular folks. You know normies. Or people who use so-called retail investors people who used to own crypto or do. And a lot of people are either disillusioned. Or they hear crypto and they think scam. Or they think oh that guy who was in the commercials was now wearing an ankle monitor and living in his parent's house in Palo Alto. Like the image problems are very real. But I also think they are translating into people not wanting to come back to the casino table so to speak. And that had been going on even before FTX you had these other failures of major companies. You had even one like this guy Doe Quan who was arrested in Montenegro last week I believe his company was a major failure and kind of kicked off this whole crypto winter. That happened actually about a year ago and that was pre-FTX. And he's only now been arrested in Europe. He was on the run in South Korea and the U.S. both want to extradite him for various Financial crimes. So you know this is all very much still ongoing and Sam Bankman-Fried is kind of Public Enemy Number One for people in crypto, especially because he's kind of ruined the party.