Coffeezilla: SBF, FTX, Fraud, Scams, Fake Gurus, Money, Fame, and Power | Lex Fridman Podcast #345

- Do you think he is incompetent, insane, or evil? The following is a conversation with Coffeezilla, an investigator and journalist. exposing frauds, scams, and fake gurus. He's one of the most important journalistic voices. we have working today, both in terms of his integrity. and fearlessness in the pursuit of truth. Please follow, watch, and support his work. at youtube.com/coffeezilla. This is the Alex Fridman Podcast.

To support it, please check out our sponsors. in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Coffeezilla. How do you like your coffee? Dark and soul crushing? That was the number one question on the internet. Do you like your coffee to reverberate deeply. through the worst of human nature? Is that how you drink your coffee? - I've gone through a lot of phases on coffee. I used to, in college I would go super deep into, you know, grinding fresh beans, all of that kind of stuff,

water temperature exactly right, and then I hit a phase where I was just, it was the maintenance dose. Then I went to like espresso, because I could get a lot more in, and now I go through phases of like, sometimes I like it with a little oat milk, sometimes a little half and half and sugar-. - [Lex] Oh, you've gotten soft in your old age. - I've gone a little, I have. But hey, if I'm doing a SBF interview, it's black that day. Nothing less. There's black, no sugar. - The lights go down. What do you actually do in those situations. like leading up to a show?

Do you get hyped up? Like how do you put yourself in the right mind space. to explore some of these really difficult topics? - I think a lot of it's preparation. and then once it happens, it's mostly fueled by sort of adrenaline I would say. I really deeply care about getting to. the root cause of some of these issues, because I think so often people in positions of power. are let off the hook. So I really care about holding their feet to the fire.

and it translates into like a lot of energy the day of. So I never find myself like, funny enough, I usually drink a lot of caffeine. leading up to the interview. and then I try to drink like minimum the day of, because I have so much adrenaline, I don't wanna be like hyper stimulated. - I have to say, of all the recent guests I've had, the energy you had when you walked into the door. was pretty excited. - I'm excited! Are people not excited to be here? - [Lex] I dunno. - You're a big deal, Lex.

- [Lex] I think they're scared. - I don't know if you know. - I felt like you were gonna knock down. the door or something. You were very excited. Like that just energy. It was terrifying because I'm terrified. of social interaction. Anyway, speaking of terrifying-. - You chose a good living of interviewing people for-. - Face your fears, my friend. - [Stephen] There you go. - So let's talk about SBF and FTX. Who is Sam Bankman-Fried? Can you tell a story from the beginning. as you understand it? - Yeah, so Sam Bankman-Fried is a kid.

who grew up sort of from a position of huge privilege. Both his parents are lawyers, I believe both of them were from Harvard. He went to MIT, went to like, or sorry, backing up a bit more, he went to. like this top prep high school, then to MIT, then he went to Jane Street and after that. he get started a trading firm in I think 2017. called Alameda Research with a few friends. Some of them were from Jane Street, some of them worked at Google, and they were sort of the smartest kids on the block.

or that's what everyone thought. They made a lot of their money on something. called the Kimchi Premium or at least the story goes, which just to explain that, the price of Bitcoin in Korea was substantially higher. than in the rest of the world, and so you could arbitrage that by buying Bitcoin elsewhere. and selling it on a Korean exchange. So they made their money early. doing kind of smart trades like that. They flipped that into market making, which they were pretty early on that, just providing liquidity to an exchange.

And it's a strategy that is considered delta neutral, which means basically if you take. kind of both sides of the trade. and you're making a spread like a fee on that, you make money whether it goes up or down. So in theory there shouldn't be that much risk. associated with it. So Alameda kind of blew up. because they would offer these people, you know, people who are giving out loans, they'd say "hey, we'll give you. this really attractive rate of return. and we're doing strategies that seemingly are low risk. So we're a low risk bet.

We're these smart kids from Jane Street. and you can kind of trust us to be. smarter than everyone else," kind of thing. Around 2019, Sam started FTX, which is an exchange, specifically it specialized in derivatives, so like margins, kind of more sophisticated crypto products. And it got in with Binance early on. So Binance actually has a prior relationship to FTX, which we'll explore in a second, 'cause they're gonna play a role in FTX's collapse actually.

Binance is the number one crypto exchange. and they're led by, he's called CZ on Twitter, I don't wanna butcher his full name, but really smart guy has played his hand really well. and built up a quite large exchange, and Binance was funding a bunch of different like startups. So they funded, they helped invest into FTX. Early on they invested a hundred million. So these guys were kind of like teammates early on, SBF and CZ.

And FTX quickly grew. They got like, especially in 2020, 2021, they got a lot of endorsements, they got a lot of credibility in the space. and eventually FTX actually bought out Binance. They gave them $2 billion. So pretty good investment for CZ in a couple years. And now lead that up to 2022, what happens? Luna collapsed, Three Arrows Capital collapsed, which if you don't know, there's just these kind of cataclysmic events in crypto,

led by some pretty risky behavior. Luna was a token that promised really attractive returns. that were unsustainable ultimately. and it just kind of spiraled. It did what's called a stablecoin death spiral, which we can talk about if we need to. - The stablecoin death spiral, I can't wait till that like actually enters the lexicon, like a Wikipedia page on it. Like economic students are learning it in school. it's like a chapter in a book. Anyway, I mean this is the reality of our world. This is a really big part of the economic system.

is cryptocurrency and stablecoin is part of that. - Yeah, it's weird because on the one hand, cryptocurrency is supposed to somewhat simplify. or add transparency to the financial markets. The idea is for the first time, you don't have to wait for an SEC filing. from some corporate business. You can look at what they're doing on chain, right? So that's good, because a lot of big financial problems. are caused by lack of transparency. and lack of understanding risk. But ironically you get some people. creating these arbitrarily complicated financial products.

like algorithmic stablecoins, which then introduce more risk and blow everything up. So anyways, Three Arrows Capital blew up. and all of a sudden this crypto industry, which everyone thought was going to the moon, Bitcoin to a hundred thousand, is in some trouble. And FTX seems like the only people, besides like Binance who's also really big and stable. and Coinbase, they seemed like they were doing fine. In fact they were bailing out companies in the summer. I don't know if you remember that. SBF was likened to like Jamie Diamond who's the,

you know, CEO of Chase, who like kind of was like. the buck stops here, you know, I'm like the backstop, right? So SBF was supporting the industry. He was like the stable guy. So come to like around October and November, there's all this talk about regulation. Everything's been blowing up. SBF's leading the charge on regulation and CZ, the CEO of Binance, gets word that maybe SBF. is kind of like cutting him out. or making regulation that would maybe impact his business.

and he doesn't like that too much. They start kind of feuding a little bit on Twitter. So when it comes out, a CoinDesk report came out. that FTX's balance sheet wasn't looking that good. Like it looked pretty weak. They had a lot of coins that in theory had value. if you looked at their market price, but for a variety of reasons, if you tried to sell them they'd collapse in value. So it was sort of like this thing, a house built on sand.

And a friend of mine on Twitter, he goes by Dirty Bubble Media, he released a report, and he basically said I think. these these guys are insolvent. Well CZI saw that and he retweeted it. and started adding fuel to the fire. of the speculation, 'cause up till this point everyone thought. FTX is super safe, super secure. There's no reason to not keep your money there, Tom Brady keeps his money there, whatever. And CZ kind of fuel adds fuel to the fire by saying. not only am I retweeting this adding.

kind of like validity to this speculation, but also I'm going to take the FTT that I got, which part of their balance sheet was this FTT token, which is FTX's like proprietary token. and Alameda and FTX controlled a lot of it. They were using this token to basically be. a large amount of collateral. for their whole balance sheet. So it had accounted for this huge amount of their value. and the CEO of Binance had a huge chunk of it as well.

And he said I'm gonna sell all of it. And the fuel that that introduced to the market is, if he sells all this FTT and this FTT is underwriting. a lot of the value of FTX-. - Does FTT almost approximate like similar things. if you were to buy a stock in a public company, is that kind of like a stock in FTX? - It sort of was this proxy, because what FTX was committed to doing. was sort of like buying back FTT tokens.

They would do this thing called the buy and burn. I think there was some amount of sharing. in the revenue fees of FTX. It was kind of this convoluted thing. In my opinion, the exact value of FTT. was speculated from the beginning and it was clear. that it was very tied to the performance of FTX, which is important because we'll get to later, FTX sort of built their whole scaffold on FTT. which meant that this scaffold was very wobbly, because if FTX loses a little bit of confidence,

then your value goes down. When your value goes down, you lose more confidence. and this goes down. So it was kind of like this thing that, this flywheel that when it was going well, you got huge amounts of growth, when it's going bad you get a exchange death spiral. so to speak. - Actually this structure, it's a pretty non-standard structure. Did the architects of its initial design. anticipate the wobbliness of the whole system?

So putting fraud and all those things. that happened later aside, do you think it was difficult to anticipate. this kind of FTT FTX Alameda research weird dynamic? - No. Because I think sophisticated traders. always think in terms of diversification and correlation. So if you're trying to, the way to think about risk. in investing is like if I invest in you, Lex Friedman, and then I also invest in some product you produce,

the performance of those two things. will be pretty correlated. So whether I invest in you or I invest in this product. that you like are completely behind, I'm not de-risking, I'm basically counting all on you doing well, right? And if you do bad, my investments do very bad. So if I'm trying to build a stable thing, I shouldn't put all my eggs in the Lex Friedman basket. unless I'm positive that you're gonna do well, right? And these people-. - As your financial advisor, I would definitely recommend. you do not put all your eggs in this basket. - Right. And so you can think about it like if I know that,

these people were trained to think like this. and so the idea that you could start this exchange, you're worth billions of dollars, and you underwrite your whole system by betting, putting most of it on your own token is insane. And what's crazy is we'll later find out. that they were basically taking customer assets. which were real things like Bitcoin and Ethereum. with risks that were not so correlated to FTX, and they were swapping them out. They were using to go basically gamble those.

and putting FTT in its place as quote value. So they were increasing the risk of the system. in order to bet big with the idea. that if they bet big and won, we'd all be singing their praises. If they bet big and lost, I don't know if they had a plan, but I think they were being extremely risky. and there's no way to avoid their knowledge of that. - So when you say customer assets is, I come to this crypto exchange, I have Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency,

and this is a thing that has pretty stable value over time. I mean as crypto relatively so, and I'm going to store it on this crypto exchange. and that's the whole point. So this thing, to the degree that crypto holds value, is supposed to continue holding value. There's not supposed to be an extra risk. inserted into the thing. - Right. And FTX was pretty clear from the beginning.

that they wouldn't invest your assets and anything else, they wouldn't do anything else with it. They wouldn't trade it. That's what made FTX such like a horror story. for investor confidence is basically they made. every signal that they would not do anything nefarious. with your tokens. They would just put 'em into the side, put 'em in this separate account. that they don't have access to, and they just kind of wait there until the day. that you are ready to withdraw them. That's explicitly what they told their customers.

So going back to the story a little bit, CZ then says, "hey, I'm selling this token. that underwrites the value of FTX.". There's a total panic. SBF during this time says several lies such as, FTX assets are fine, we have enough money. to cover all withdrawals, and a day later, he basically admits that that wasn't the case. They don't have the money, they're shutting down, and then a few days later after that, they declared bankruptcy. There's, I should be clear, there's Alameda Research,

FTX International, and FTX US, which is the US side of things. These are three different entities. All of them are on bankruptcy. and it's not clear to the extent. that they were co-mingling funds, but it's clear that they were co-mingling funds. to some extent. So they kind of were taking from each other, and that is where the fraud happens, right? Because if, going back to our earlier analogy, if you're supposed to set funds aside.

and I find out you were using it. to go make all these arbitrage trades or do market making. or all these activities you were known for. for your like hedge fund trading firm thing, that's a huge problem because he basically lied about this. And especially when he's saying explicitly. that we have these things, we have these funds, and these things turn out to be lies, well again, the question of fraud comes in. and it's just like there's no way he didn't know. So the obvious question might be, well, why isn't he locked up? Why is he running around?

And it's because really his story is. that he didn't know any of it. He found out that they had, the steel man's position. He would say he was totally disconnected. from what Alameda was doing, he had no idea that they had. such a large margin position, that they'd had an accounting quirk, and that accounting quirk hit 8 billion from his view, and so when he was saying that they had money to cover it,

he was saying that truthfully to the best of his ability. and he just was so distracted at the time. that he made a series of increasingly embarrassing mistakes. and now he owes it to the people to write those wrongs. by publicly making this huge apology tour. You might have seen him on, I mean he's been talking to nearly everyone. about basically how he just didn't know what he is doing. He's the stupidest man alive. - So what are some interesting things.

you've learned from those interviews? - I think I've appreciated why you don't talk. in that position. Most people wouldn't talk, most people would listen. to their legal counsel and not talk. I do not think any lawyer worth their salt. would tell him to talk, because right now. I think the danger of what he's doing is. he's locking himself into a story of how things happened, and I don't think that story is gonna hold up. in the coming months. Because I think it's impossible, from the insider conversations I've had.

with Alameda research employees, with FTX employees, it's impossible to square what they are telling me. with no incentive to lie with what SBF. is telling me with every incentive to lie, which is fundamentally that he didn't know. they were co-mingling funds, he didn't know they were gambling with customer money, and it was basically this huge mistake, and it's Alameda's fault, but he wasn't involved in Alameda, a company he owned. - So like compassionate but heart hitting gangster.

that you are, very recently you interacted with SBF, I like how you adjust the suspenders as you're saying this. You interact on Twitter spaces with SBF. and really put his feet to the fire. with some hard hitting questions. What did you ask him? What did you learn from that interaction? - Sure, I should say first, this was not a willing interaction. I mean I thought that was kind of the funny part of it.

'Cause I've been asking him for an interview for a while. He's been giving interviews to nearly everyone. who wants one, big channels, small channels. He didn't give me one, but I managed to get some. by sneaking up on some Twitter spaces. and DMing the people and like being like, "hey, can I come up?". So I didn't get him to ask everything that I wanted, because he like would leave sometimes, you know, after I asked some of the questions. But really what I asked was about this 8 billion. and zooming in on the improbability.

of his lack of knowledge. It's sort of like if you run a company. and you know the insides and outs. and you're the top of your field, top in class, and all of a sudden it all goes bust and you say, "I had no idea how any of this worked. I didn't know.". It's like the guy who runs What-A-Burger saying, "I didn't know where we sourced our beef. I didn't know where we," that's a Texas example actually. - [Lex] Thank you. I appreciate that. - Let's take it like worldwide. Walmart. Like, "I didn't know we used Chinese manufacturers.".

It's like that's impossible. To become Walmart, you have to know. how your supply chain works. You have to know, even if you're at a high level, you know how this stuff works. - Can I do a hard turn on that and go, as one must, to Hitler. Hitler's writing is not on any of the documents around, as far as I know, on the final solution. So in some crazy world you could theoretically say, "I didn't know anything about the death camps.".

So there's this plausible deniability in theory. But that most people would look at that and say, "it's very unlikely you don't know.". - Well, especially if all the insiders are coming out. and saying, "no, no, no, of course he knew. He was directing us from the top.". I mean what was clear, what's interesting. about the structure and like I love the nitty gritty-. - Sorry, we're back to SBF. Went to Hitler, now we're back to SBF. - [Stephen] I wanted to turn us. as fast as possible away from Hitler.

Yeah. - I pause. So the insiders in what? Alameda Research? - Alameda Research. What was interesting is that. there was this sort of one way window going on. between Alameda and FTX, where FTX employees didn't know a lot of what was going on. Alameda insiders, and I would say by design, knew almost everything that was going on at FTX. And so I think that was really interesting. from the perspective of a lot of the so-called.

like what you could, what he's trying to ascribe to. as like failures or mistakes or ignorance and negligence. when looked at closely are much more designed. and they sort of don't arise spontaneously, because like let's say, so there's this thing. in banking and like trading where if I run a bank. and you run like a trading firm, we need to have informational walls between us, 'cause there's huge conflicts of interest. that can arise, right? So the negligent argument might be that like,

"oh, we just didn't know. We're sort of these dumb kids in the Bahamas, so we shared information equally.". But when you see a one-way wall, that starts to look a lot different, right? If I have a backend source of looking at, or sorry you're the trading firm, so you have a backend way to look at all my accounts. and I have no idea that you're doing that, that all of a sudden looks like a much more designed thing. It would be plausible, let's say, going to use another analogy too, if you're saying look I co-mingled funds.

'cause I was so bad at corporate structures. You would expect those companies. to have a very simple corporate structure. 'cause you didn't know what you're doing, right? But what we see with FTX and Alameda. is they had something like 50 companies and subsidiaries. and it's an impossibly complicated web. of corporate activity. You don't get there by accident. You don't wake up and go, "oh, I designed this watch. that ticked a very specific way, but it was all accidental.".

If you really didn't know what you were doing, you'd end up with a simple structure. So even just like from a fundamental perspective, what SBF was doing and like the activities. they were engaging in were so complicated. and purposely designed to obfuscate what they were doing, it's impossible to subscribe to the negligence argument. And I want to quickly say too, like I don't think a lot of people have honed in on this. There was insider trading going on. from Alameda's perspective where they would know.

what coin's FTX was going to list on their exchange, and there's a famous effect where, let's say you're this legitimate exchange, you list a coin, the price spikes. Insiders told me it was a regular practice. for Alameda insiders to know that FTX. was going to list a coin and, as a company, buy up that coin so they could sell it after it listed. And they made millions of dollars. How do you do that accidentally? - [Lex] Yeah, and that's illegal. - Totally illegal, right?

So that's illegal from like an, if an individual does it, it's illegal, it's fraud. What if a company is systematically doing it. and you can't tell me that FTX or someone at FTX. wasn't feeding that information to Alameda. or somehow giving them keys to know that. And that would happen at the highest level. It would happen at SBF's level. And this is why his arguments of, "I was dumb, I was naive, I was sort of ignorant," are so preposterous. because he's dumb and ignorant.

the second it becomes criminal. to be smart and sophisticated, right? - But then also coming out and talking about it, which is-. - [Stephen] It's a bizarre move. - It's a bizarre and almost a dark move. Can you tell the story of the 8 billion? You mentioned 8 billion. What's the 8 billion? What's the missing 8 billion? - Yeah, so it's really interesting, because it's sort of like wire fraud. He's sort of copping to like smaller crimes. to avoid the big crime. The big crime is you knew everything. and you were behind it, right?

The smaller crimes are like, well, little wire fraud here, little wire fraud there. So what the 8 billion is is that FTX. didn't always have banking. It's hard to get banking as a crypto exchange. There's all these questions of like, where's the money coming from? Is it coming from money launderers? So for a variety of reasons, it's always been hard for exchanges to get bank accounts. So before when FTX was just getting started, they didn't have a bank account. So how do you put money on FTX? Well they would have you wire your money. to their trading firm. Their wiring instructions would go to their trading firm.

It's easier to get banking as a trading firm. So you'd put your money with the trading firm. and then they'd credit you the money on FTX. Okay, first of all, this is a whole circumvention. of all these banking guidelines and regulations. That's the first like thing that I think is illegal. But basically what SBF argued. is that there was an accounting glitch error problem. where when you'd send money to Alameda, even though they'd credit you on FTX, they wouldn't safeguard your deposits.

Like your deposits would go into. what he called a stub account, which is just like some account. that's not very well labeled, kind of like a placeholder account. And he didn't realize that those were Alameda's funds. or they were playing with those funds. and that they basically should have safeguarded that. for customers. That's his explanation. It's preposterous 'cause it's $8 billion, but anyways.-. - [Lex] Just poor labeling of accounts. - Of an $8 billion account! I mean it's-.

- [Lex] What's a billion between friends? - A billion. This is like-. - [Lex] I do this is all time in programming. - This is the craziest thing. Like he was talking to me and at one point. in the conversation he's like, "yeah, I didn't have precise knowledge, because he said, "I didn't have knowledge. of Alameda's accounts.". And I said, "well, Forbes a month ago. was getting detailed accounting of Alameda.". And he goes, "oh, that wasn't detailed accounting. I just knew I was right within 10 billion or so.". What is that error margin? $10 billion? Dor a company that is arguably never worth.

more than a hundred million. Probably never even worth more than 50 billion. Your error margin is $10 billion? You have to be, this is a guy. who is sending around statements that like, there was no risk involved, and you're telling me he had a error margin of $10 billion? That is the difference between like a healthy company. and a company so deep underwater you're going to jail. So you have to believe that he is impossibly stupid. and square that with the sophistication.

that he brought to the table. I think it's an impossible argument. I don't even think it's-. - Do you think he is incompetent, insane, or evil? If you were to bet money on each of those? - [Stephen] Incompetent, insane, or evil? - Insane meaning he's lying to everyone but also to himself, which is a little bit different than incompetence. - He's not incompetent.

So I think he's some combination of insane and evil, but it's impossible to know. unless we know deep inside his heart. how self diluted he is versus a calculated strategy. And I think if you look at SBF, he's such a, I think he's a fascinating individual. Just, I mean, you know, he's a horrible human being. Let's start there. But he's also somewhat interesting. from a psychology perspective,

because he's very open about the fact. that he understands image. and he understands how to cultivate image, the importance of image, so well that I think. a lot of people, even though they've talked about it, aren't emphasizing that enough when interacting with him. This is a man whose entire history. is about cultivating the right opinions. at the right time to achieve the right effect. Why do you think he would suddenly change that approach. when he has all the more reason to cultivate an image?

- So he is extremely good naturally, or-. - I don't know if he's good, but he's hyper aware. - [Lex] So he's deliberate in cultivating a public image, in controlling the public image. - You know about the like Democrat donations. Like he knew to donate to the right people, $40 million. He says on a call that we released with Tiffany Fong, he says on a call that he donated. the same amount to Republicans. There's speculation on whether this is true,

'cause he's a liar, whatever. So caveat there, but he said he donated to Republicans. the same amount, but he donated dark, because he knew that most journalists are liberal. and they would kind of hold that against him. So he wanted all the sides to be on in his favor, in his pocket, while simultaneously understanding. the entire media landscape and playing them like a fiddle. by cultivating this image of. I'm this progressive woke billionaire. who wants to give it all away, do everything for charity,

I drive a Corolla, while living in a million dollar penthouse, multimillion, but that was sort of the angle. He understood so well how to play the media. And I think he underestimated when he did this, how much people would put him under a deeper microscope, and I don't think he has achieved. the same level of success in cultivating this new image, 'cause I think people are so skeptical now, no one's buying it, but I think he's trying it,

he's doing it to the best of his ability. - But it has worked leading up. to this particular wobbly situation. So before that, wasn't there a public perception. of him being a force for good, a financial force for good? - A hundred percent! Yeah. Somebody from Sequoia Capital, you know, wrote this glowing review that he's gonna be the. world's first trillionaire. There's so many pieces done on, he's the most generous billionaire in the world. that he was sort of like the steel man of, you know, it's possible to make tons of money.

This is like the effect of altruism movement. Make as much money as you can, as fast as you can, and then give it all away. And he was sort of like the poster child for that. And he did give some of it away. and got a lot of press for it. And I think that was kind of by design. I want to address a real quick point. - [Lex] Yes. - A lot of people have said that like Binance played a role. and while they catalyzed this, insolvency is a problem. that will eventually manifest either way.

So I don't put any blame on CZ. for basically causing this meltdown. The underlying foundation was unstable. and it was gonna fall apart at the next push. I mean, he just happened to be the final kind of like, I don't know the straw that broke the camel's back. - Yeah, the catalyst that revealed the fraud. - But yeah, but I don't think he's culpable. for FTX's like malfeasance in how they handled accounts, if that makes sense. - So what role did they play?

Could they have helped alleviate. some of the pain of investors, of people that held funds there? - Yeah, I mean probably. I don't know. I would see some kind of weird obligation. like with the 2 billion they made on FTX, remember they got 2 billion, some of it in cash, some of it in FTT token. So I don't know how much actual cash. they have from that deal, but they have billions from the success.

of what seems to be a fraud, seems to have been a fraud from early on. They had the backdoor as early as early 2020. from what I can tell. - So the backdoor between FTX and Alameda Research? Do you think CZ saw through who SBF is? What he's doing? - No. I think CZ is like, he's a shark, I think he's good at building a big business-. - [Lex] Like a good shark or a bad shark? I don't know.

- I don't know. I think sharks just eat. I mean, I don't know, I think-. - [Lex] My relationship with sharks, like "Finding Nemo,". there's a shark in that. - Sure. I don't know. So I think like Jeff Bezos is a shark. - [Lex] Okay. - So people have loaded connotations. of like how they feel about Jeff Bezos. I mean I would say like, I think CZ's a ruthless businessman. I think he's cold, he's calculated, he's very deliberate, and I think what he should do in this position. is forfeit the funds that he profited from that investment.

Because largely I think it's owed to the customers. There's so much hurting out there. So I think they could do a lot of good around that. I don't know if they will, because I don't know if he sees it in his best interest. I think that's probably how he's thinking. But yeah, I think they could have helped. or they could still help there. - Who do you think suffered the most from this so far? - The little account holders. This is always true. So one of the big temptations with fraud,

I've covered a lot of scams, frauds, is everyone looks at the big number, everyone that's the headline. Billions of dollars, the top 50 creditors. or what everyone thinks at first. But quickly when you dig down, you realize that most people who lost $10 million, I mean I'm sure that's terrible for them, I wish them to get their money back, but it's usually the people with like 50,000 or less. that are most impacted. Usually they do not have the money to spare. Usually they're not diversified in a sophisticated way. So I think it's those people,

I think it's the small account holders. that I feel the worst for. And unfortunately they often get. the least press time or airtime. - That's the really difficult truth of this. is that especially in the culture of cryptocurrency, there's a lot of young people who are not diversified. They're basically all in on a particular crypto. and just breaks my heart to think. that there's somebody with 50,000 or 30,000 or 20,000. But the point is that money is everything they own. - [Stephen] Right. - And now-.

- Now what? - Their life is basically destroyed. Like, you know, imagine you're 18, 19, 20, 21 years old, you saved up, you've been working, you saved up, and this is it. This is basically destroying a life. - What's so brutal about this. is that this all comes on the back, the entire crypto market comes on the back of, comes from the deep distrust of traditional finance, right? You have 2008, everybody lost trust in the banking systems.

and they lost trust that if those banking systems. acted in a corrupt way, that they would receive the justice. It turned out that the banks received favorable treatment. People didn't. So people lost faith in the structure. of our financial system in a way. that we're still feeling the reverberations of it. And so when crypto came along, it was like kind of this way to reinvent the wheel. Reinvent the world for the sort of lowly. and the less powerful and kind of level the playing field.

So what's so sad about events like this. is you see that fundamentally a lot of. the power structures are the same, where the people at the top face little repercussions. for what they do, the people at the bottom. are still getting screwed, the people at the bottom are still getting lied to, and law enforcement is way behind the ball. - Do you think this really damaged people. trust in cryptocurrency? - For sure. Way bigger than Luna.

Way bigger than Three Arrows Capital. It's because of who SBF was. It's not just the dollar figure behind it. It's because he wooed so many of our media elites. who should have been calling him out. or at least investigating him and not rubber stamping him. It's an indictment of our financial system. Even our most sophisticated people in BlackRock, in Sequoia. who didn't see this coming, who also rubber stamped him.

And you just wonder like if you can't trust. the top people in crypto who are supposedly the good guys, the guys saving crypto, just a month ago or two months ago, he was the guy on Capitol Hill. that was talking to Gary Ginsler, to all the top people in Washington. He was orchestrating the regulation of crypto. If that guy is a complete fraudster, liar, psychopath, and nobody knew it until it was too late, what does that mean about the system itself.

that we're building? - So you are one of not the best. fraudster investigators in the world. Did you sense, was this on your radar at all? SBF over the past couple years? Were any red flags going off for you? - Yes. So funny enough, like one of my videos. from six months ago or so blew up, because I gotta give a lot of credit. to Matt Levine of Bloomberg. Great journalist, great finance journalist, and I wanna say when I like talk about media elite,

there are people doing great work. in these mainstream institutions. It's not a monolith, just like independent media. isn't all doing great work, and all the corporate media is bad or whatever. There's like these overarching narratives. that I don't subscribe to. So Matt Levine's great journalist, he did an interview with SBF where he got Sam. to basically describe a lot of what was going on in Defi, but kind of a larger philosophy around crypto. And he described a Ponzi scheme. where he described this black box, it does nothing,

but if we ascribe it value, then we can create more value and more value and more value. And it kind of was this ridiculous description. of a Ponzi scheme, but there was no moral judgment on it. It was like, "oh yeah, this is great. We can make a lot of money from this.". And Matt is like, "well it sounds like. you're in the Ponzi business and business is good.". And I made a video about that. I said, "this is ridiculous, this is absurd,". whatever, "it's obscene.". But I didn't explicitly call SBF a fraud there. And I think if I'm being, I think I saw some of it,

but like many people, I think a lot of us were kind of like, I think a lot of us missed how wrong. everyone could be at the same time. I did notice leading up to the crash. what was happening and I called it out a day. or a day and a half before it happened, 'cause I saw my friend's post, Dirty Bubble Media,

and this was the first real look. into the heart of their finances. 'cause they're this black box. You just kind of had to evaluate them without knowing much. And once we got a peek under the hood. of what their finances were, I realized, "oh my gosh, these guys might be completely insolvent.". So I made a tweet about it, I hope some people saw it, and got their money out, but pretty quickly after that, I caught the narrative. of what was really going on at Alameda.

That it was basically this Ponzi scheme. that they had built. - Do you ever sit like Batman in the dark. since you fight crime and wonder, like sad, just staring into the darkness and thinking, "I should've caught this earlier.". - [Stephen] Yeah, I think-. - In your 10 billion studio-. - [Stephen] $10 million-. - $10 million-. - [Stephen] We're working our way there. - With a bunch of cocaine on the table. - Sure, it's never enough. It's never enough. Like you always could be catching stuff sooner,

you always could be doing more. - I mean the fascinating thing you said. is that one of the lessons here. is that a large number of people, influential smart people, could all be wrong at the same time. in terms of their evaluation of SBF. - This is one thing that I don't understand too. is like, I think it's one thing to not see something, I think it's another thing. to like rubber stamp or explicitly endorse. I feel like a lot of people didn't look too close at SBF,

because I think a lot of the warning signs were there. But my feeling is if you're a Sequoia, if you're a BlackRock, wouldn't you do that due diligence? I mean like before just endorsing something, especially in the crypto space, this is just why I don't do. any deals in the crypto space ever, 'cause it's impossible to know which ones. are gonna be the like big hits. or the big frauds or you know, whatever. But if you're gonna make that bet, if you're gonna make that play,

you would think that you would do all the research. in the world and you would get sophisticated looks. at their liabilities, at how they were structured, all that stuff. And that is the most shocking part. is not that, you know, people missed it, because you can miss fraud, but that there were so many glowing endorsements. Like this guy is not gonna be that thing. We explicitly endorse him. I saw Fortune magazine, he was called the next Warren Buffet. It's just crazy. - Do you think it's possible to have enough,

like Tom Brady endorsements, that you don't really investigate? - [Stephen] Yes. - There's a kind of momentum, like societal social momentum? - I think that's the problem. I actually think that's hugely a blind spot of our society. is we have all these heuristics. that can be points of failure. where like a rule of thumb is, if you go to an Ivy League, well you must be smart, right? A rule of thumb is if you're both your parents. are Harvard lawyers, you must know the law.

You must like kind of be sophisticated. The rule of thumb is if you're running. a billion dollar exchange, you must be somehow somewhat ethical, right? And all of these heuristics can lead to giant blind spots. where you kind of just go, "oh, we'll check.". Like it's a lot of energy to look into people, and if enough of those rules of thumb are met, we just kind of check them off. and put 'em through the system. So yeah, it's been hugely exposing. for sort of like our blind spots. - And you don't know, maybe how to look in,

for example, there's a few assumptions. Now there's a lot of people who are very skeptical. of institutions, of government, and so on, perhaps too much so. - [Stephen] I agree. - But for some part of history, there was too much faith in government. And so right now I think there's faith. in certain large companies, there's distrust in certain ones and trust in others. Like people seem to distrust Facebook, extremely skeptical of Facebook, but they trust, I think, Google with their data, I think they trust Apple with their data, much more so.

Like search. People don't seem to be, Google search like, "huh, I'm just gonna-". - [Stephen] Throw it in there. - Have you ever looked at your Google search history, your Google search history. has gotta be some of the darkest things. - Oh, I don't think I've ever looked. at my Google search history. - [Lex] You should. - I'm pretty careful with like browser hygiene. and stuff like that, because I think it's-. - [Lex] Well Google search history, unless you explicitly delete, is there. I recommend you look at it. It's a fascinating look,

because it goes back to the first days. of you using Google search history. - Fun fact actually about that. I am aware of that. I just mean for like certain sensitive topics. where like I'm investigating some fraud. and I go sign into their website, right, log in, I won't use like a traditional browser. I'll use a VPN and I'll like put it on. like Brave or something like that. - You log in, create an account as Lex Friedman-. - Yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly. - You mentioned effective altruism. You know, SBF has been associated.

with this effective altruism, which made me look twice at EA. And see like, wait, what's going on here? Was this used by SBF to give himself a good public image, or is there something about effective altruism. that makes it easy to misuse by bad people? What do you think? - Yeah, it's interesting. He could have endorsed a wide range of philosophies.

and I guess you just have to wonder are all those, would those philosophies also be tainted if he had gone bad? I guess effective altruism is sort of unique, because he used it as part of his brand. It wasn't like he was, he described himself. as a consequentialist and like that ended up mattering. It was like he described himself as an effective altruist. and he used that part of the brand to lift himself up. I guess that's why it's getting so much scrutiny. I think the merits of it should speak for themselves.

I mean, I don't personally, I'm not personally an effective altruist. I personally am motivated by giving in part emotionally. and for some reason that I can't exactly describe, I think that's somewhat important. I don't think you should detach. giving from some personal connection. I find trouble with that. And like I said, it's for reasons I can't describe, because effective altruism. is sort of the most logical ivory tower position. you could possibly take.

It's like strip all humanity away from giving, let's treat it like a business, and how many people can we serve. through the McDonald's line of charity. for like the dollar, right? I just personally don't resonate with that. But I don't think the entire movement. is like indicted because of it. Typically most people who care about giving and charity. on the whole are nice people. So, I can't speak for the whole movement. I certainly don't think SBF indicts the whole movement,

even though I personally don't subscribe to it. - Yeah, it made me pause, reflect, and step back. like about the movement and about anything. that has a strong ideology. So if there's anything in your life. that has a strong set of ideas behind it, be careful. - Yeah, I mean, look. I kind of feel like what it teaches me. and what I kind of think about when I think about systems. is that no system saves you from the individual.

No system saves you from the individual, their intentions, their lust for power or greed. I mean, I think one of the great ideas. is the decentralization of power. And like, this is why I think democracies. are so great is 'cause they decentralize power. across a wide range of like interests and groups. And that being an effective way. to kind of try as best as you can.

to spread out the impact of one individual. Because one bad individual can do a lot of harm. as I mean, clearly as seen here, but no, I don't think it has anything to do with ideology. because it's not like being an effective altruist. made Sam Bankman-Fried a fraud. He was a fraud who happened to be an effective altruist, if that makes sense. - So there is something about, yes, no system protects you from an individual, but some system enable or serve as better catalyst.

than others for the worst aspects of human nature. So for example, communist ideology, I don't know if it's the ideology or it's implementation. in the 20th century, it seemed like such a sexy and powerful and viral ideology. that it somehow allows the evil, bad people. to like sneak into the very top. And so like that's what I mean about certain ideas. sounds so nice that allow,

like the lower classes, the workers, the people that do all the work, they should have power. They have been screwed over for far too long. They need to take power back. That sounds like a really powerful idea, and then it just seems like with those powerful ideas, evil people sneak in to the top. and start to abuse that power. - Yeah, I think, I mean I don't have. a lot of probably big brain political takes, but what I can say is that you can never get away. from both the system and the individual mattering.

For sure, some systems incentivize. some behaviors in certain ways, but some people will take that and go, okay, all we need to do is design the perfect system. and then these individuals will act. completely rationally or responsibly. in accordance to what our incentives say. That's not true. You could also say, all we have to do. is focus on the individual and all we have to do. is just create a society which raises. very well-adjusted people. and then we can throw them into any system. with any incentives and they will act. responsibly, ethically, morally. And I also don't think that's true.

So incentives are real, but also the individual. ultimately plays a large role too. So yeah, I don't know. I come down sort of in the middle there. - And some of that is just accidents of history too, which individuals finds which system, you know. - [Stephen] They become the face of that. - Yeah. With FTX versus Coinbase versus Binance, which individual, which kinds of. ideas and life story come to power? That matters.

It's kind of fascinating that history. turns on these small little events. done by small little individuals, that, you know, Hitler's a failed artist. or you have FDR, or you have all these different characters. that do good or do evil to the world. and it's like single individuals. and they have a life story. and it could have turned out completely different. It's, I mean, it's the flap of the butterfly wings. So yeah, you're right. We should be skeptical is attributing too much. to the system or the individual.

It's all like a beautiful mess. - The Lex Friedman podcast. That was like a Lex line. I've heard quite a few episodes. and that's like such a Lex line. It's a beautiful mess. - [Lex] All right. - Beautifully said! - [Lex] All right! Sorry, I'm a fan of the show! - Okay, all right. I love you too. Alright, can you think of possible trajectories. how this FTX SBF saga ends and which one do you hope for?

Do you hope that SBF goes to jail? That's the individual, and in terms of the investors and the customers, what do you hope happens and what do you think. are the possible things that can happen? - So A, yeah, I definitely think SBF should go to jail. for nothing else for a semblance of justice, the facsimile of justice to occur for all the investors. I also think there are people. probably several steps down the chain that probably knew.

At least Caroline Ellison, you can have questions about sort of their, you know, Dan Friedberg who I'd love to talk about as well, there were a lot of people in that room who I think knew. I think we do so much of like the one guy is all to blame, let's throw everything at him. when clearly this was a company-wide issue. So everyone who knew I think should face. the same punishment, which I think should be jail. for all of those people. - [Lex] In part to send a signal to anybody.

that tries this kind of stuff in the future. - Yeah, absolutely. I mean one of the big things that you saw, like okay, take a microcosm of all of this action. and just look at like the influencer space, right? There's a ton of deals that were done. that I've covered ad nauseum about. influencer finds out they can make a lot of money. selling a crypto coin. The first thing they wonder is, am I gonna get caught? If I do this, is there a consequence?

And if the answer is no, then it's a pretty easy decision. as long as you don't like have any moral scrips about it, which apparently none of them did, or a lot of 'em didn't, I should say. So as soon as somebody steps in and regulates, that math changes. And all of a sudden there's a self-interest reason. to not go do the bad thing. And I can give a concrete example of this. There was a NFT, the first ever NFT. sort of like official indictment. or the DOJ released this press release.

that they're charging these guys who ran a NFT project. that they didn't follow through on their promises, they made all these promises, lied, and then ran away with the money. First ever consequence for anyone in the NFT space. That day that that press release came out, I saw several NFT projects come back to life. from the dead. Why? Because all those founders are freaking out. and they realized we scammed people, we have to go at least make it look like. we're doing the right thing, right? So that's on the optic side,

but there's also tons of people who now go, oh, the basically law enforcement is on the scene, we can't do the same thing. So there is a very pragmatic reason for this punishment. It's very much just because people work it into their math. of should I commit fraud? And the last several years have been very, has been like a little bit of a nihilistic landscape. where no one was getting punished. And so there's this question of, you're almost an idiot if you didn't take the deals.

So I think it's really important, extremely important for kind of law enforcement. to play a role, regulation to play a role. to make it harder to commit those crimes, and if you commit those crimes, there's actual real world punishment for it. To your point about like what's gonna happen. to the investors, I think that was kinda your question, it's tough, because if the money's not there, the money's not there. I mean there's gonna be be the guy, they got the best in class guy, it's the guy who ran the dissolving of Enron.

So, I mean, I can't imagine someone better equipped. to run a complicated corporate fraud like dissolution. But yeah, it's tough 'cause everyone's gonna get probably, I don't know, 10 cents on the dollar, maybe less. - I wonder if there's a way. to do a progressive redistribution of funds. So I'm just really worried about the pain. that small investors feel, you know? - Yeah, I think there's a lot of thought around that. I forget if they actually do do this.

I mean I know there's a lot of law about like, you can't treat creditors differently. You have to treat them all the same. So I think it'll be some kind of proportional payback. It's certainly not gonna be that the guys at the top. get, you know, a significant amount of their money back. and the rest get nothing. Unfortunately, I think there's such a small amount of assets. that back this whole thing in the end. and that value is actually declining every day. because it was inextricably tied to SBF.

It was like the FTT tokens, which now what are those worth? The Serum tokens that was his project. or the project they made, what is that worth? Basically nothing. So, you know, it's a very, it's a hard situation. and you know, there's a bigger ethical concern, which is FTX US, it's unclear how backed it was, but it was clearly more backed than FTX International. Do you take all that money. and throw it into a big pot and give people money back? Or do you give the US people back their amount of money,

which is probably gonna be significantly more, and leave everyone internationally out in the cold? And to add to that ethical issue, let's say you're a liquidator and you are US based, there's a tremendous question like legal questions. about, you know, how do you ethically do that? It's not clear. There's a tremendous incentive. to just favor the US people over everyone else. 'cause it's our country, America, whatever. But I don't know if that's necessarily fair.

It's really hard. It's impossible. - And some, I forget where you said this, bu one of the, I mean it probably permeates. a lot of the investigations you do, which is this idea that it's really sad. that the middle class in most situations. like this get fucked over. So the IRS go after the middle class, they don't go after the rich, is basically. everyone who doesn't have a lot of leverage. in terms of lawyers, money, get fucked over.

- Yes. And then they're the ones, like it's always the rich and powerful. who get the favorable treatment. As like a microcosm of this, funny story, so one of the big criticisms of crypto. and I think rightly so, is the irreversibility of the transaction. So if I accidentally send a transaction somewhere, it's gone, right? So crypto.com accidentally sent a lady $10 million. and now they want the money back and they're suing her.

But the funny thing is, is if you are on crypto.com. and you send, let's say I accidentally send you money. and I come knocking on your door. "Lex, I didn't mean to send you, you know, like a thousand dollars. I need my money back.". Or if I go to crypto.com and I said, "hey, I sent that to the wrong person, can you reverse it?". They'll say, "screw off. No way.". If I go to court, they'll kill me in court, 'cause they're gonna go, "look, this is how the blockchain works.". But then they do it, they do the exact same thing, they send this lady $10 million, they're suing her. They're gonna win. Now it's now what's in court is not.

whether they get the money back, it's should she be liable for theft, I believe. And that's in just another case of. the same rules apply differently to different people. whether you have the money to back you or not. It's a very sad thing and that's why I think people, like you need journalists fighting for the little person. We really need it. And it's kind of like this unfortunate thing. where that's the most risky thing to do, like legally you should not be doing that.

But I think it's important to do. - It's the ethical thing. It's the right thing to do. What do you think about influencers and celebrities. that supported FTX and SBF? Should they be punished? - Yeah, I think they should take a huge reputational hit. I mean I think they should be embarrassed. I think they should be ashamed of themselves. - But it was really hard to know, sorry to interrupt, for them to know. Like for example, I think about this a lot. It's like who do I, because I don't investigate,

you know, like sponsored by Athletic Greens. Okay, it's a nutritional drink. Should I investigate them deeply? I don't know. You just kind of use reputational, like it seems to work for me. Should I really. invest in them deeply? - I think it really. depends on, I think your credibility hit. will depend on what domain you're an expert in. If you're sponsored by a robotics company. and you're an expert in robotics, if that company turns out to be a disaster and fraud,

then you should have looked more deeply. We're talking mostly about, like I hold Tom Brady. a lot less accountable. than financial advisors, financial influencers. because that is their world of expertise. and you treat their recommendation differently, proportionally to what you think their expertise is. So in some ways, I don't actually think Tom Brady, I'm sure he reached a lot of people, I personally didn't feel at all moved. by his recommendation 'cause you know it's just money. But when you hear somebody who should be an expert. in that thing endorse a product in that space,

you hold that opinion to a higher standard. And when they're completely cataclysmically wrong, it's gonna be a different level of accountability, and I think rightfully so. When Jim Kramer in was saying Bear Stearns is fine, he made that terrible call with Bear Stearns in 2008. He was rightfully reamed for all of that. Even though it could be considered that like, well, you know, did he have all the information? Maybe not. But he's a financial advisor,

he does this for a living, if you go on and you make a big call, and you turn out to be wrong and people lose tons of money, you are going to take a hit, and I think rightfully so. But no, I don't think these people. should go to jail or anything like that. - No, but it's such a complicated thing. I mean I just feel it personally myself, I get it, but you still feel the burden of the fact. that your opinion has influence. I know it shouldn't, I know Tom Brady's opinion. on financial investment should not have influence, but it does. That's just the reality of it.

That's a real burden. I didn't know anything about SBF or FTX, it wasn't on my radar at all, but I could have seen myself like taking them on. as a sponsor. I've seen a lot of people I respect, Sam Harris and others talk with SBF. like he's doing good for the world. So I could see myself being hoodwinked, having not done research. And the same thing, it makes me wonder. I don't want to become cynical, man, but it makes you wonder, who are the people in your life.

you trust that are like, that could be the next SBF or worse big powerful leaders, Hitler, and all that kind of stuff. To what degree do you want to investigate? Do you want to hold their feet to the fire, see through their bullshit, call them on their bullshit? And also as a friend, if you're happen to be friends. or have a connection, how to help them not. slip into the land of fraud. I don't know, all of it is just overwhelming.

- Yeah, I mean we should be clear, like finance is sort of a special space. where you're talking about people's money. You're not talking about whether someone. takes a bad supplement or like a supplement. that is just, they're $50 out, right? I think the scale of harm, and therefore responsibility. escalates depending on what field you're in. Just like I wouldn't hold Tom Brady, like if he gives a bad football opinion, right, and he should have known better, that is a different scale of harm.

than a doctor giving bad advice, right? Like he tells you a pill works. and the pill kills you or something like that. There's just different levels of accountability. depending on the field you're in, and you have to be aware of it. Finance, you have to be extremely conservative. if you were gonna give financial advice, because you're playing with people's lives. and you cannot play with them haphazardly, you cannot gamble with them, you cannot play with them on a bet. 'cause you're getting paid a lot of money. It's just the nature of the space. And so with the space comes the responsibility.

and the accountability. And I don't think you can get around that. - Who was Dan Friedberg that you mentioned? Some of these figures in the SBF realm. that are interesting to you? - Super interesting kind of subject, because Dan Friedberg is the former general counsel. for Ultimate Bet. Ultimate Bet was a poker site where. famously they got in a scandal. because the owner, Russ Hamilton, was cheating. with a little software piece of code they called God mode.

God mode allowed you to see. the guy across from you, his hand. Obviously you can imagine you can win pretty consistently. if you know exactly what your opponent has. Very unethical. I should be clear that for some inexplicable reason, I don't think they were ever charged. and convicted of a crime. But they were investigated by a gambling commission. that found they made tens of millions of dollars this way. for sure. And Dan Friedberg is the general counsel. He's caught on a call basically conspiring with Russ.

to hide this fraud. He's saying we should blame it on a, you know, a consultant third party. And Russ Hamilton famously says, you know, like it was me, I did it. I don't wanna give the money back. Find basically a way to get rid of this. So that's Dan Friedberg's big achievement. Like that's what he's known for, he's most known for. And this is the guy they pick. as their chief regulatory officer for FTX. Why do you hire somebody who, I get it, not formally charged and convicted, investigated, and there's tape out there, so I wanna be clear.

about what's actually available evidence. But someone who's seemingly only achievement. is hiding fraud, why do you hire that guy. if the intention is not to hide fraud? So this is a question I put to, you know, Sam Bankman-Fried, and his answer was, "well, we have a lot of lawyers.". And I said, "well, it's your chief regulatory officer.". He's like, "well, we did regulate a lot.". And it was just this big dance of, you know,

basically he's done great work, he's a great guy. And I think that tells you everything you need to know. - And there's figures like that probably. even at the lower levels, like just infiltrate the entire organization. - It's just like why, yeah, why wasn't there a CFA, why wasn't there anyone in that space. who could seemingly be the eyes that goes, "holy," whatever, "we need to,". "we're in dangerous territory here," right? So yeah, it seems very deliberate. I mean, I talked to one FTX employee.

that they talked about who's told me they talked about. taking, I think it was taking FTX US public, and Sam was very against the idea. And the employee in retrospect speculated. that it might have been because you'd face so much scrutiny, like regulation-wise. Like you'd have to, you know, go through. a lot like more thorough audits, all that kind of stuff, that basically he knew they would never pass. So yeah, I mean it's red flags. all the way down with that guy. - And you hope all of them get punished.

- Everyone who knew. I mean, I think for sure there are people at FTX. who didn't know. I think there are some people at Alameda who didn't know. - There's degrees, sorry to interrupt, but there's degrees of not knowing. - [Stephen] Yes. - There's looking away. When you kind of know shady stuff. That's still the same as knowing, right? That might be even worse. - Well, yeah, like I was talking to one insider. and we were talking about the insider trading. They were telling me about this insider trading. and I said, "do you think this was criminal?".

And they said, "it was probably criminal in hindsight, yes.". And the question is, someone who answers a question like that, what does that like mean? You know, like it was probably criminal. So you're right. There are different degrees. I mean, I'll say at the most basic, I would be very happy if everyone. who had direct knowledge went to jail, which I don't think will happen, to be clear. I think a lot of people are gonna cut deals, prosecutors are gonna cut deals. so they actually nail Sam Bankman-Fried. I think that's their only focus.

- What about his reputation? What do you think about all these interviews? Do you think they are helping him? Do you think they're good for the world? Do you think they're bad for the world? Like what's your sense? And like say you get a sit down interview with him. for three hours and I'm holding the door closed. Is that a useful conversation or not? Or at this point should be legal and that's it? - I think it's useful. I mean I think with respect, it's all about how you interview him.

You can interview someone responsibly, you can interview him irresponsibly. I think we've seen examples of both. - What's an irresponsible? I keep interrupting you rudely. - [Stephen] That's okay. No, no, no. - It's unacceptable. - No, no, no, I think it's fine. There was like a New York Times interview, which spends any amount of time talking about his sleep. And he's like, "yeah, I'm sleeping great.". I mean, I think that's so deeply disrespectful. to the victims. And especially when you're not even releasing. an interview live, it's like you have time to triage.

what you're gonna talk about. Why would you spend any amount of time. talking about the sleep that a fraudster is getting. It's just so weird. - Well, it's a steel man in that case. I don't think it turned out well. I think, okay, here's the thing. I could see myself talking about somebody's sleep. or getting in somebody's mind if I knew. I have unlimited time with 'em. If I knew I had like a four hours. Because you get into the mind of the person. how they think, how they see the world,

because I think that ultimately reveals, if they're actually really good at lying, it reveals the depths, the complexity of the mind. that through like osmosis, you get to understand like, this person is not as trivial as you realize, also makes you maybe realize that this person. has a lot of hope, has a lot of positive ambition. that has developed over their life, and then certain interesting ways things went wrong.

They become corrupt and all that kind of stuff. - You just, that's all fine, but this conversation was not properly contextualized. in the world of what he did. And, you know, I've asked about this interview. 'cause I was like so curious. It was outta the New York Times. and there was not much mention. of fraud or jail or the big crimes. like misappropriation of even client assets. It was just sort of this, you know, "Sam sat down with me, he's under investigation, but there's not much specifics.".

And then it's like, "yeah, he's playing 'Storybook Brawl,'. he's sleeping," and it's just like, okay, this isn't adding to the conversation. - Especially when the New York Times, it's like you should be grilling him. - Right, right, exactly. So, but as I've said, I mean, it's all arranged the gamut. And some interviews, like some of it's okay. and then some of it's weird. Like the Andrew Sorkin interview, he asked some hard-hitting questions, which I really appreciated, and then at the end he goes, "ladies and gentlemen, Sam Bankman-Fried.". And everyone gives like an ovation for Sam.

I mean the steel man of that of course is like, they're actually applauding Andrew Sorkin, but the way you like lay it up. I wouldn't go like "ladies and gentlemen,". it's like an applause line. It's like "ladies and gentlemen, the Eagles,". "Elton John," "Lex Friedman.". And so to go, so you have this like deal book summit. where you have all these important figures. that are positively important, and at the end you have Sam Bankman-Fried, a fraudster, and you go, "ladies and gentlemen, Sam Bankman-Fried,". everyone's applauding, that I think, that's a negative. I think the way that the optics of that just were all wrong.

And so I think, yeah, you have to be very responsible. I think it's useful, going back to how you can useful do this, even when somebody's determined to lie to you, it's always important to pin them down. to an accounting of events. because that is unimaginably helpful. when it comes to a prosecutor. trying to prove this guy's guilty, is if you say you didn't do a crime, but you don't tell me any details about it,

day of the trial, you can basically make up. any story, right? But if you tell me in detail where you were that day, I can go hunt down, you say you were with Joe, I go hunt down Joe and he says he wasn't with you. Boom, you've lost credibility. and now you're much more likely to be convicted. So it's really important to get SBF's exact accounting. of how things went wrong, because right now. he's positioning himself to throw his Alameda CEO, Caroline Ellison, under the bus.

Like she did everything. She knew everything. I knew nothing. Well, if Caroline Ellison's gonna take the stand and go, "well, I have all these text messages. and this is all a lie.". Then Sam Bankman-Fried is gonna be completely, you know, ruined, like self ruined by his own design. So I think it's-. - So more like a legal type of like get the details. of where he was, what he was thinking, what the-. - I think it's like, yeah, I think the public probably cares. to get to know what happened too. And again, I think if you're careful, you can expose someone for as they lie to you.

without giving into those lies, right? Like without capitulating to, "oh, I'm just gonna assume you're correct.". I think you can point to, "well, Lex, you say it happened happened this way, but you've lied about X, Y and Z. Why should we believe you?". That's a suddenly a totally different conversation. than just being like, "oh, okay, that's how it happened.". - The thing I caught that bothered me, and the thing I hope to do in interviews. if I eventually get good at this thing.

is the human aspect of it, which is like, which I think you have to do in person, is he seems a bit nonchalant. about the pain and the suffering of people. that I have red flags about. And the way he communicates about the loss of money, like the pain that people are feeling about the money. I get red flags, like you're not, forget if you're involved in that pain or not, you're not feeling that pain.

- Well he'll say he is, but he'll be playing a game. of "League of Legends" while doing it. - No, but you see it from his face. - [Stephen] I know, I know. - And that I know he needs to be grilled. Like that little human dance there. that's, I mean, I considered, I talked to him, I considered doing an in-person interview with him. and that's-. - Are you still considering it? - I don't know. Do you think I I should in person?

- I think it depends if you think. you have anything to add to the conversation. A lot of people have-. - Yeah, there's been already... You did an incredible job. - [Stephen] Thanks. - I think I would like to grill the shit out of him. as a fellow human, but not investigative Coffeezilla investigative. - [Stephen] Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Like another human being who I can have compassion for. who has caused a lot of suffering in the world. Like that grilling. Like basically convey the anger that people.

and the pain that people are feeling, right? Like that. - Yeah. I think it'd be really hard. I mean like that guy is sort of a master dancer. and what he would say at the end of it, 'cause I've listened to so many interviews of him, I probably am like a GPT model for Sam. I think he would do some kind of thing about like, "yeah, I really hear you. And you know, it's just terrible. I feel such an obligation to the people.

who've lost money, and you know, it's just, it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money.". You know, he'd do something like that. and it would be very superficially like, "okay,". but when you drill down to the details of what he did, it's just impossible that he didn't know. And one of the things that I wish I had asked, maybe I can talk about like, I wish I had gone on this, it's just so hard when you're doing a live interview. to kind of focus on one thing. Everyone's asked about the terms of service. So in the terms of service there was like, "we can't touch your funds. Your funds are safe. We're never gonna do anything with that.".

Anytime anyone brings that up, he says, "oh, well there's this other terms of service over here. with margin trading accounts.". Remember we talked about it's a derivatives platform. If you're in our derivative side, you're subject to different terms of service, which kind of lets us like move your money around. with everyone else, okay? So we treat it as one big pool of funds.". And that's sort of the explanation. of how this all happened is, "we had this huge leverage position and we lost everything.". But what no one has sort of done a good enough job. getting to the heart of is that this pool of funds.

never was segregated properly. It was all treated under the same umbrella. of we can use your funds. There was no amount of, we have the client deposits. which were just deposited with us. and not like used to margin trade or do anything over here. These funds over here, we have saved. They didn't. Fundamentally, they lied from the get-go. about how they were treating the most precious assets, which is your customer deposits. that you said you didn't invest. Clearly, you put them all over here,

you yolo gambled 'em, and then when everyone starts withdrawing from here, they don't have any money over here. So that is like one of the most fundamental things. that I haven't seen anyone grill him on. And the next time, if I get the chance to ambush him again, that's what I'm gonna drill down on. Because it's impossible for that not to be fraud. There's no world where you had a pool of funds over here. and now you don't have them. without you somehow borrowing over here.

Because if you deposited one Bitcoin. and I never sold that Bitcoin. and it's earmarked Lex Friedman. and you come and it's not there, something had to happen, right? - Well, so this is so interesting. So for me, the approach that, like you said, the most important question of, 'cause for you it's like, were those funds segregated? For me, the question is, as a human being, how would you feel if you are observing that? So like, you know that like marshmallow test.

with the babies? Like it's the human thing. It's the human nature question. Like I can understand there's a pile of money. and the good faith interpretation is like, well I know what to do with that pile of money. to grow that pile of money. Let me just take a little bit of it. Like how willing are you to do that kind of thing? How able are you to do that kind of thing? And when shit goes wrong, what goes through your mind? How does it become corrupted?

How do you begin to lose yourself? How do you delegate responsibility for the failures? Like, as opposed to getting facts, try to sneak into the human mind of a person. when they're thinking to that. Because the facts, they're start gonna start waffling. They're gonna start like trying to make sure. they don't say anything that gets them incriminated. But I just, I want to understand the human being there. because I think that indirectly gives you. a sense of where were you in this big picture.

- I think I've talked to so many people. who have sort of committed some range of like outright fraud. to like misleading marketing. No one thinks they're a bad person. Nobody admits that they did it. and they knew or almost nobody does. There's actually one funny exception. I had a guy who admitted like, "yeah, I did it, it was wrong. and, you know, but I did it and I wanted the money,". which was kind of like almost refreshing in its honesty.

But the reason I focus on like the facts. is because unless you find a bright red line, humans can rationalize anything. I can rationalize any level of like, "well, I did this because I had the best of intentions.". And if you play the intention game, you'll never convict anyone, because everyone has good intentions, everyone's honest, everyone's doing the best they can. and got misleaded and got misguided and da da da da. Ultimately you have to drill down to the concrete and go, "look, I get it. You're just like the last 50 guys that I interviewed.

You had the best of intentions. It all went wrong. I'm very sorry for you. But at the end of the day, there's people hurting. and there's people that have significant damage. to their life because of you. What did you actually do, and what can we prove, taking intention out of it, taking motivation out, what can we prove that you did. that was unethical, illegal, or immoral?". And like that is sort of what usually I try to go to, because I will do those human interviews, but you know, it's just like the same record on repeat.

I mean a lot of people build the same-. - I'm with you, I'm with you on the everything you said, but there is ways to do to avoid the record on repeat. I mean, those are different skillset. You're exceptionally good at the investigative, like investigating. I do believe there's a way to break through the repeat. There's the different techniques to it. One of which is like taking outside. of their particular story. Yes, when everyone looks at their own story, they can see themselves as a good player doing good. But you can do other thought experiments.

I mean there's-. - But they'll follow you. They'll know what the thought experiment is. - No, well it depends. It depends, my friend. I mean, you know, to me, there's a million of them, but just exploring your ethics. Would you kill somebody to protect your family? And you explore that. You start to sneak into like what's your sense. of the in group versus the out group,

how much damage you can do to the outgroup. and who is the outgroup? And you start to build that sense of the person. Are we like the two mobsters that we're dressed as, do we protect the family and fuck everyone else? You're with us and the ones who are against us, fuck them, or do we have a sense that all human beings. all have value, equal value, and we're a joint humanity. There's ways to get to that. And you start to build up this sense of like, some people that make a lot of money are better than others.

They deserve to be at the top. If you have that feeling, you start to get get a sense of like, yeah, the poor people are the dumb asses. They're the idiots. If you believe that, then you start to understand. that this person may have been. at the core of this whole corrupt organization. - Yes. Two things. One, I think you should join me on this side of the table. We'll put SBF over here. We'll good guy, bad guy. Human, facts. - [Lex] You're the bad guy. I'm like, "no, no, no, slow down, Coffee.".

- What is your feeling about humanity? - [Lex] Have you been getting enough sleep? - Yeah, right. So I think there's a lot of truth to what you said. One thing I've noticed that is hard to combat. is sort of like preference falsification. and just the outright lying about those things. is tough to kind of pin down. But yeah, you're absolutely right. There's ways to interview people. There's all sorts of interesting techniques. and yeah, I don't disagree. - Good cop back cop.

We should do this would be like a sitcom. Okay, you did an incredible documentary on Safe Moon. The title is "I Uncovered A Billion Dollar Fraud.". Can you tell me the story of Safe Moon? - Sure. So Safe Moon was a crypto coin. that exploded on the scene in 2021, I think at this point. Sorry, I'm losing track of my years. One year in crypto's like five years in real life. But it kind of gained a huge amount of popularity,

because of this idea that, it's in the name, you go safely to the moon. How they were gonna do this is. with sort of a sophisticated smart contract idea. where there's, I kind of have to explain. the way some contracts get rug pooled for a second. or scams happen. So in the, sometimes it's called like the shit coin space, the alt coin space, anything below Bitcoin, Ethereum, and maybe the top five or 10 is kind of seen. as this wasteland of gambling and like, you know,

you don't know if the developers. are gonna become anything or not. You're kind of like reading the white paper. trying to figure it out. So there's this big question about like, how can you get scammed? How can, back to the interests, you don't want the developer. to have some like parachute cord. where they can pull all the money out. So one way this happens is that. in decentralized finance, there's something called the liquidity pool, okay?

It's basically this big pot of money. that allows people to trade. between two different currencies. So let's say like Safe Moon and Bitcoin, right? Or Ethereum or it's actually on the Binance smart chain. So it'd be BMB. And this pool of money can be controlled by the developers. in such a way they can steal it all right? They can just grab it. I don't wanna go too much into details. 'cause I feel like I'll lose people here. But the point of Safe Moon was the core idea. was we're locking this money up, you can't touch it,

and actually every transaction that you buy Safe Moon with, we'll take a 5% tax of that, we'll do a 10% tax, but 5% of it will go back to. all the holders of Safe Moon, okay? And 5% of it will go back into. this little pool of money, okay? So the idea is as you trade, as this token becomes more viral, two things will happen. One, the people who are holding it long term. will be rewarded for holding it long term. by receiving this 5% tax that's distributed to everyone.

And two, you can kind of trust that. your money's gonna have this stable value, because this pool of money here in the middle. that's kind of guaranteeing you can get your Safe Moon out. into this actually valuable currency, it's not gonna move. So the story of Safe Moon was that fundamentally, this was not the case. They promised that this money was gonna be locked up. It was not actually locked up at all. They said it was automatically locked up, you don't have to worry about it. Well, it was very manually locked up. and they didn't actually lock a lot of it up. They took a lot of it for themselves, for the developers.

So there's a lot of players in this. A lot of them have left by now. There's kind of this main CEO that everyone knows, John Keroni, now. And you know, despite saying. that they were gonna lock up all the funds for four years, somehow he's gone from, as everyone else. in the token has lost 99% of the value of the token. So they've lost 99%, he's gotten like a $6 million crypto portfolio,

multimillion dollar real estate portfolio, invested millions into various companies. So he's accrued this huge wealth. And so I made a video basically exposing that. and showing how this coin, which once had a $4 billion market cap. is just viral everywhere. Everyone was talking about it. because of these viral ideas of like, it is sort of a captivating idea. that by holding it you could get returns, right? Like you just hold onto it, you automatically get money. And it's a viral idea that this money in the middle,

in the pot isn't gonna leave you. When those things turned out to be false, this community has had a slow death. as a lot of people realized it was a scam, and there's been a core part of the community, which gets to an interesting dynamic. we can talk about if you want to, where they have like doubled down on the belief in Keroni. And so part of it was out of a hope. to let those people know. what was really going on in their coin. and like hopefully save some of them, not in like some altruistic sense, but like,

or not in like some like, I'm like a hero sense, but in the sense of like, I think a lot of them didn't know, like literally didn't know. So just sort of like as a public service, letting them know so they could get their money out. and hopefully save themselves a lot of pain and suffering. So yeah. - [Lex] So they really dug in. - Some did. Some did, some left. I mean a lot of people have left, but the people who are left are people. with large amounts of Safe Moon holdings. that are down immensely, and you can imagine.

at a certain point in losses, there's a tremendous psychological pressure to go, look, I'm in it. I gotta go for the long haul. And then you want to believe that this thing is legitimate. and will succeed because A, there's an ego component around, I haven't been scammed, I'm too smart to get scammed. It's tremendously, you know, it hurts psychologically. to acknowledge you've been taken for a ride, and also you just want this thing to succeed. for your financial wellbeing. So you like want to believe it. So there's tremendous psychological pressure.

to build cult-like communities around these tokens. And I've noticed with the incentive. of like community-built, it's sort of new to finance. There's like these meme coins or these cults, I don't wanna, it's not really fair. to call all of them cults. Like some of them are open to criticism. But one of the things that defines cults. is they're not open to sunlight or criticism. There's these financial communities that are opening up. with crypto, with a few stocks, where if you criticize them,

you are attacked and the entire community. has every incentive to kind of like downplay. your legitimate criticisms or kind of go after you. And so it creates this interesting dynamic. that I'm fascinated by. - What do you think about Bitcoin then? Do you think it's one of those communities. that does attack you or criticize? I guess which coins do you think are open to criticism. and which are not? - It's kind of tough.

Like no community is a monolith. So just like, it's just a spectrum of how open they are. There's always this core contingent of extreme believers. who will go after anyone who criticizes them. And it's just about how wide of a band. that makes up of the entire token. - How intensely how active that small community is. So it's in Bitcoin they're called Bitcoin maximalist, but you can also call any any community's subgroup.

like that maximalist, whatever the belief is, I don't know. Dunking Donuts maximalist. That community is probably small. in terms of attacking you online if it could. You know which community has a very intense following? So I got attacked on the internet. when I said Messi's better than Ronaldo. - [Stephen] Oh yeah, that's controversial. - And so that's a very intense maximalist community there. The other one that surprised me. is when I said, now I did it in jest, okay folks?

I said Emacs is a better ID than Vim. - [Stephen] I love Emacs, I agree. - Listen, I have trauma. I wake up sweating sometimes at night thinking-. - [Stephen] Emacs! Emacs maximalists. - The Vim people are after me. They're everywhere. They're in the shadows. No, Vim is an amazing, and it's actually surprised, I've recently learned that it's still, even more so than before, an incredibly active community.

So a lot of people wrote to. - But do you use Space Macs? It's just Emacs and Vim? - [Lex] No, I haven't. I use Raw, I have-. - Old school Emacs? Oh you gotta use- - [Lex] Hold on a second. I actually recently, I have recently said, you know what, let's make love not war. And I went to VS code. I went to a more modern ID, 'cause I did most of my programming in Emacs, I did most of anything as one does in Emacs. just 'cause I also love lisps, so I can customize everything.

Then I realized like, like how long will Vim and Emacs. be around really? Well, I was thinking as a programmer. looking like 10, 20 years out, you know, I should challenge myself to learn new IDs, to learn the new tools that the majority. of the community is using so that I can understand. what are the benefits and the cost. I found myself getting a little too comfortable. with the tools that I've grew up with. And I think one of the fundamental ways. of being as a programmer, as anyone involved with technology. based on how quickly it's evolving,

is to keep learning new tools. Like the way of life should be constantly learning. You're not a mathematician or a physicist. or any of those disciplines that are more stable. This is like everything is changing. Crypto's, like you said, a perfect example of that. You have to constantly update your understanding. of digital finance constantly. in order to be able to function, in order to be able to criticize it, in order to be able to know what to invest in. So yeah, that was why I did, I tried Pi Charm a bunch,

the whole JetBrains infrastructure, and then also VS code cause that's really popular. and you know, Adam and Sublime, all of those. I've been exploring. I've been exploring. But VS code is amazing. - You should check out Space Max. I'm just gonna give one more pitch for it. It's just basically like a customizable configuration. Well, Emacs is already customizable, but it's pretty useful. I'm not even much of a coder, but for like certain journaling applications.

or like time management, like I find it really useful. Anyway, wait, we're so like in, I feel like half this podcast is what it should have been. and then half of it's just us nerding out. about our own engineering idiosyncrasies. Sorry, guys. - All right. So what were we talking about? Safe Moon and Bitcoin. Bitcoin, what do you think? Have you made enemies in certain communities? What do you think about Bitcoin?

- So I've made certain enemies. in the sort of crypto skeptics space, because there's sort of this range of skepticism. you can have about cryptocurrency. I'm obviously a skeptic about a lot of it, but there are certain aspects of crypto. that I think are inevitable. and I'm gonna do my best to kind of describe those here. But I'm not committed to any crypto specifically. But there are some, I've taken a lot of heat ironically. for not being skeptical enough. There's some people who believe that like, like the entire thing is a complete waste of time.

They're r/buttcoin on Reddit. It's a amazing community actually. It's very funny. They have-. - [Lex] What's a buttcoin? Is that-. - It's like a play on Bitcoin. They're just like, "oh, at least we admit it's a scam.". Very funny guys. Very funny people there. So, but they'll be like, you know, Coffeezilla should just admit. that all of it's a giant Ponzi scheme. All of it's a basically like not real. - So everything including Bitcoin. - Yeah, it's all basically all the Ponzinomics, it's Ponzinomics all the way down.

It's like there is no fundamental use case. that is that useful. I don't know if, I guess I don't want a straw man them here. I don't wanna say that. I don't know if they're saying that it's all useless. At minimum they're saying the level of interest. in cryptocurrencies is far, the actual usefulness of it. is far less than the amount of attention and time and money. that's being poured into it. So like the revolutionary of this technology. is not at all revolutionary.

Let me kind of steel man what I think. the pro crypto take is. I think that technologies are sort of this inert thing. and the success of them in my opinion is not based on PR, it's not based on marketing. It's based on cheaper, faster, better fundamentally. The success of any technology relies on those three things. and longevity of it. So I have two employees and both of them. are out of the country.

So I have to frequently make. international wire payments to them. - Is one of them SBF? Just as a reporter, I have to ask. - [Stephen] No. - Okay, all right. He's not on payroll. - [Stephen] Yeah, I think he'd have to pay me. - I'm trying to do my best Coffeezilla words. like in hard-hitting investigative questions. - It's good! It's good! So with these international payments, you face all sorts of slow fees. and you face like kind of like this time thing. And it's this painful process.

So if I use different cryptocurrencies, some of them are like really fast, some of them have really low fees. I just believe in a world where digital currencies. with fast payments, with cheap payments. revolutionize the global exchange of currency. And I don't know if this is going to include the blockchain, it's just that the blockchain is the first thing. that's really embraced truly digital currency,

which doesn't need to go through. this complicated system of wire transfers and just happens. So I can send you, let's say I want to send you. Ethereum or Bitcoin. I can send it to you just as fast. if I send you a dollar or a billion dollars. and I can send it to you just as fast. if you're across from me. or if you are across the world from me. That I think is a step change in easier, faster, better. in terms of like just. this really basic international payments kind of idea.

So I think at like its core, if the the lowest form use case of cryptocurrencies is that, I think it will change the world in some variety. It's just kind of the larger question is, is that technology going to include. the blockchain specifically or not? The other benefit is transparency, which I personally like as an investigator. It's just that previously it's like hard to describe. how opaque our financial system is.

until you've tried to investigate someone or something. Understanding finances, unless you have a subpoena, unless you're like the FBI or like the FCC. and you can get a subpoena for someone's finances. or you're going through discovery, you don't know what someone has. You're basically playing poker with everyone. and the cards are face down. For the first time, the blockchain to some extent, 'cause there are ways to obfuscate it, and in some ways cryptocurrency has enabled more fraud, which is kind of this irony. But in some ways it's enabled people to also audit.

a lot better and in real time. And I think that is a structural change. that is fundamentally for the better. The question of all this is do those betters. outweigh the cons that this introduces. and how much can regulation mitigate those cons? Some of those cons being like fraud, money laundering, all these negative externalities. that are easier with cryptocurrency. - Why do you think cryptocurrency in particular.

seems to attract fraudulent people like scammers. and fraudsters- - Because it's unregulated, it's the wild west and you can transmit. large amounts of money very quickly across the world. with very little oversight. - What about creating. new crypto projects like new coins. - Because you have to show very little actual use case, you can just promise. So it's like true of any emerging technology. So much vaporware happens at the beginning. when it's all promise, because fundamentally, let's say you're legitimate, I'm illegitimate.

We look the same at the start of a technology. because both of us are promising what this can do. And in fact the less scruples and morals I have, in some ways I can outcompete you. 'Cause I can say mine does what Lex's does, but like way better and way faster, and it's gonna happen in a year rather than 10 years. You're being honest, I'm playing a dishonest game. I look better. Once this space matures and you actually have some people. actually doing the things that they say they're going to do, suddenly this equation changes. Now you are Amazon, you're delivering in two days. I can say whatever I want.

You do the thing you do and I have no credibility. So I think part of the fraud is, you know, just the ability to transmit so much money so quickly. with such little oversight. Part of it is like this just happens. with any emergent technology. Vaporware is a real thing. And hopefully as this space matures, as regulation comes in, things will improve. - Well let me ask you your own psychology. - [Lex] Sure. - You're going after some of the richest,

some of the most powerful people in the world. Do you worry about your own financial, legal, and psychological wellbeing? - Yes. Yeah, I do. I mean, I'm not totally oblivious to the precariousness. of like any kind of journalism like this. Obviously there's risks. I've always believed there's a quote. and I'm going to butcher it, but I hope you guys understand the spirit of it. You know, news is when you print something. someone else doesn't want you to print.

Everything else's public relations. I really believe to do meaningful journalism, you have to go after people. Like it's not inherently a safe profession. I mean if you're gonna do important work, you have to have risk tolerances. And I think everyone has a line. of what that risk tolerance is. and it's different for everyone. I don't think I could do what Edward Snowden did. I think that would be my bright red line. is going against my own government. It's such a, in my opinion, I really see him as a hero.

Like it's such a selfless act of self-destruction. You know that the party you're going after. has all the power and will crush you. and you do it anyway out of the like the true, I don't know, platonic ideal of journalism. I think that's beautiful. I don't think I could do that. I think I need some ability to live and subsist. in the society that I am in, and I think my bright red line would be like. if I'm forced to flee the country for my work, I think I'd finally have to say no.

But as journalists go, I take risk pretty well. I especially like think risk is important to take. when you're young and when you can do that. I think when, I mean I'm married so when I have a family, I think I will probably dial this risk thing down, just being honest. I mean I think you kind of have to. But right now I mean I'm kind of running on all cylinders. I'm willing to take on quite a range of people, but yeah,

I think a lot about it. - Well, you're also. a wolf pack of one, or a small wolfpack. as opposed to having like a New York Times behind you. or a huge organizations with lawyers, with a team, with a history with-. - These people are less courageous. This is the dirty truth. The bigger the organization, the more conservative a lot of them are. It's true that sometimes they like, and this is not to bash big organizations, I'm just saying this is an observation. of someone who's talked to a lot of people.

and especially in the world of fraud, a lot of them are scared to engage in fraud. that is obvious but hasn't been litigated yet. This is why you'll never see documentaries. about ongoing fraud on Netflix. It's too much of a liability. They'll sue Netflix to hell. and they know that if they win, Netflix has the money to pay it. So corporations like the New York Times, you know, a lot of these, some of them are very, like they're as courageous as they can be,

but at the bottom line, if someone sues you to hell and back. and you have to pay up, you'll disappear. And you're relying on liability insurance, which you're already paying out the ass for. to try to cover you if you get sued, but if you get sued, even if you win that liability insurance. now goes up in price the next year. And if you're the New York Times, it goes up by a lot. So I mean, I think there's work. that independent journalists can do uniquely. that they can actually take like in some ways more risk.

than a giant institution, which has a lot more, in my sense to lose, even though it would appear. like they have more in terms of defense too. - But you can be bullied legally. - [Stephen] Yeah. - Do you get afraid of that? - Sure, I mean I just, all these things are things you have to be aware of. and then forget to do your job. Like you have to be, you know? It's like being like a snowboarder and it's like, do you realize you could hit your head? And it's like, yeah, of course. But in order to go do the flip or whatever,

you have to just accept the risk, mitigate the risk as much as possible and move on. So we have like insurance, we keep like a pool of funds. for that kind of thing. Like I'm very conservative with how I, I spend my money basically all on production. and like trying to make my life as secure as I can, and then I just do the work that I, you know, I want to do, because-. - So 99% of your fund goes into the studio,

and then into the elaborate space of yours. - [Stephen] Yeah, yeah, of course. - How many kittens had to die to manufacture that studio? But anyway, that's my investigation for later. What keeps you mentally strong through all of this? What's your source of mental strength. or your psychological strength through this? - I think there was a time. when I was getting a lot of cease and desists.

Some people were like actually saying. they're gonna show up to my house, all that kind of stuff. I don't think I was that, I think I was pretty worried. about that for a while. My wife was huge short source of strength here. where she was like, "hey, if you're not comfortable with it, you need to get out of the game. or you need to basically like suck it up. and this is what it is. If you're gonna go after these people, you have to basically be mentally strong around this.". And seeing her have that realization.

helped me have the same realization. and I really deeply admire and respect that about her, and it solved a lot of my concerns around that. It just made me realize every profession has risks. It is what it is, you mitigate and then you move on. - Why do you think there's so few journalists like you? You're basically the embodiment, at least in the space you operate, of what great journalism should be. Why do you think there's very few like you?

- That's such an enormous compliment. and probably overstatement, but I first want to pay respect. There are a lot of great journalists. and a lot of them are, I don't want to just kind of take it. and go yeah, you know, it's just me. There's so many great journalists. Matt Levine, Kelsey Piper, you know, you've got anonymous journalists like Dirty Bubble,

you've got citizen journalists like Tiffany Fong, but-. - [Lex] Who- - But. - [Lex] Mm hmm. - But I think if you are gonna be in the space. in the long term, you do need to accept certain risks, and I think in the long term it's like, I don't know how easy it is to play that game. for a long period of time, because to do great journalism, you don't get paid a lot compared. to what you could get paid if you did press pieces. or anything like that.

You take a lot of risks legally, you take physical risks, you take, it's just like if you care about money, it's not the profession. And I feel like a lot of people when they get notoriety, they move to like, well I can just maximize. the money security side of things. And I think it takes out a lot of. would be great journalists. - And also, so first of all, comfort of physical and mental wellbeing. And also being invited to parties with powerful people.

- [Stephen] Access. - You make enemies, rich and powerful enemies doing this. - [Stephen] Yes. - But that's why it's admirable. I mean, you know, it's an interesting case study. that you've been doing it as long as you have. and I hope you keep doing it, but it's just interesting that it's rare. - I'll say, I wanna make a call.

Like I think societies can create better journalists. and worse journalists insofar as they support. the journalists who are doing great work. And I want to call out Edward Snowden specifically. because what we have done to him is such a travesty, and the only lesson you can learn. if you're a logical human being. is that you should never whistle blow. on the United States government. after looking at what they did to Snowden. So as a society we can put pressure on lawmakers.

to make it easier for people. to do the great work by not punishing the people. who do great work, if that makes sense. and de-risking it for them, because we shouldn't expect journalists to be martyrs. to do great work, right? To do important work. And part of that comes from protecting whistleblowers. There's like very common sense things. I love, like it's great to heroisize, you know, people like Edward Snowden and stuff like that. But we shouldn't expect them to be heroes to do that work.

- Do you ever think about going, you've been focused on financial fraud, do you ever think about going after. other centers of power? Like- - [Stephen} Government, politics? - Government, Politics? - Politics, it seems to me you can't do good work. Like everybody doing good work in politics. is to some extent, from my limited perspective. as I said, I'm not that into it, it seems like everyone has to take a side, because even if you do great work,

whoever you're exposing, half the other people, no matter how good your work is, are going to claim it's just for partisan hackery. and they're going to malign you. So it seems like a lot of journalists have to take a slant, even if it's not explicit bias, they have to take a slant on who they expose. I hate that. I would really like a world where you could freely expose. both sides without having a constant malignment of like,

you know, who are you working for? Or you did this for X, Y, Z or whatever. Like I really find that deeply problematic. about our current journalism in the political sphere. As far as government stuff, I think it's easy to do, not easy, but like it's much more enticing to do foreign journalism. than to do local journalism on positions of power. 'cause if you question, it's so easy to just get, the bigger cases you expose locally, you get in danger.

Like it's just like very, very clear cut. The bigger the case, the more your financial wellbeing, your access, your entire life is sort of in jeopardy. Whereas if you do foreign journalism, you can do great work. and largely you're protected by your own government. So it's kind of this weird thing. where if you want great journalism on America, sometimes going abroad might be the way. - But the politician thing, that's interesting that you mentioned that and going abroad.

I think the way you think about your current work, I think applies in great journalism in politics as well. So what happens in, I have that sense. 'cause I aspire to be like you. in the sort of in the conversation space with politicians. I try to talk to people on the left and the right. and do so in a nonpartisan way and criticize, but also steel man their cases. What happens, I've learned, is when you talk to somebody. on the right, the right kind of brings you in.

It's like, "yes, we'll keep you comfortable, come with us.". And then the left attacks you. And the same happens on the left. You talk on the left, the right attacks you, and the left is like, "come with us.". So like there's a temptation, a momentum. to staying to that one side, whatever that side is. The same with foreign journalism. You can cover Putin critically, there's a strong pull to being pro-Ukraine, pro-Zelensky, basically really covering.

in a favorable way to the point of propaganda, to the point of PR the Zelensky regime. If you criticize the Zelensky regime, there's a strong pull towards then being supportive. of not necessarily the Putin regime, but a very different perspective on it, which is like NATO is the one that created that war. There's narratives that pull you. and what I think a great journalist does. is make enemies on both sides and walk through that fire.

and not get pulled in to the protection of anyone's side. because it gets so harshly attacked. anytime they deviate from the center. - Well, and I think also there's a criticism. of all centrists, which I think in some way is fair. And I say that as someone largely who's a centrist. which is that this, what about this, or like like what about the left or what about the right. can skew when it's not a both sides issue. So in the case of like Russia, Ukraine,

I think like I'm strongly in favor of Ukraine. even though I tend to go like on both sides. And that might be partly because. one of my employees is Ukrainian. And I think what a great journalist does, especially like in politics. is I think they criticize the regime that's most in power, most controls the keys, and is the most corrupt at that time. And they might appear to be like, let's say during the realm of Trump, a great journalist would criticize Trump,

but that same journalist who held Trump's feet to the fire. should be capable of holding Biden's feet to the fire. four years later if that kind of makes sense. - That's exactly right. Yeah. So any revealing, so attacking any power center. for the corruption, for the flaws they have-. - Irrespective of like your political agenda. or your political ideas. - And that's what I mean about sort of the war in Ukraine. There's several key players. NATO, Russia, Ukraine, China, India,

I mean there's several less important players, maybe some like Iran and like Israel and maybe Africa. And what great journalism requires. is basically revealing the flaws. of each one of those players. irrespective of the attacks you get. And you're right that throughout any particular situation. there is some parties that are worse than others,

and you have to weigh your perspective accordingly. But also it requires you to be fearless in certain things. Like for example, I don't even know. what it's like to be a journalist covering China now. - Oh that's an exact case of like, China has made it so difficult to be a good journalist. that they've effectively squashed criticism, because to be a journalist in China. means constantly risking your life every single day.

to criticize that government. And so the best journalists are a lot of times. outside the country or they have sources. inside the country who are like, there's like this, you know, different, there's layers to the journalism. where there's insiders who are leaking information, but they themselves cannot publish because it's, you know, it's extremely risky. So yeah, as a society, one measure of how healthy the political structure is. is how well you can criticize it.

without fearing for your safety. - In that sense, the chaos and the bickering going on. in the United States politics is a good thing. that people can criticize very harshly-. - [Stephen] Very harshly. - And be in terms of safety are pretty safe. - Yes, absolutely. I think our only challenge is like, where it gets dangerous. is around like top secret information. The government comes down so hard. that the danger in covering politics here.

is you can expose something that's top secret. that should be exposed and they'll ruin you. - So that's where you again, give props to Snowden for stepping up. - [Stephen] A hundred percent. A hundred percent. - What's the origin of the suspender-wearing Batman? How did you come to do what you do? Like what we talked about where you are. and how your mind works, but how did it start? - I've kind of always been interested in fraud. or at least I saw fraud early on.

and I was just like curious about what is this? I didn't know what I was really looking at. So basically my mom got cancer when I was in high school. and it was pretty traumatic. I mean she's fine, she had thyroid cancer, which is, we didn't know it at the time. It's like cancer's cancer, but it's fairly easily treatable with surgery. It's one of the better, you know, survivable ones. And I just watched her get like bombarded. with all these like phony health scams of, you know, just like colloidal silver, you know, all these different like remedies. And she was very into, you know, all the different ways.

that she might treat her cancer. And obviously surgery's very daunting and, you know, I was just confused. I was like, why are we doing so many different remedies. that all seem of very dubious health value? Later I'd find out that these are like all grifters, I mean they take advantage of free speech in America. to like advertise their products as, you know, life-saving miracles, whatever, when they're, of course, not. Eventually she got the surgery, thank God. But I know people in my life who their parents passed away.

because they didn't have the surgery, they instead took the alternative option. I know like, I don't wanna go into specifics. 'cause I don't want to mention their specific case, but their family member went to Mexico. for some alternate treatment, health treatment instead of getting an easy surgery. and they died. And so it's like I realized, you know, where is the outrage about this? Who covers this stuff? And I realized, well not many people do.

Then I went to college, I was getting a chemical engineering degree, and all my friends were like telling me, you know, hey you should come to this meeting, you know, we don't need this. Like you're doing this engineering stuff, that's great. You're gonna make like 70K a year, but don't you wanna get like rich now? Like why wait till you're 60 years old to retire? Like you can be rich now, Lex. So I'd go show up to a hotel and there'd be an MLM, like multi-level marketing, you know, pitch for Amway. or whatever it was that day, and I was once again fascinated.

I didn't know what I was looking at, but I was like, what is this weird game we're all playing. where we sit in this room, we're looking at this speaker. who says he's so successful, right? But why is he taking a Friday or a Saturday. to do this, you know, pitch at night. and they're gonna telling me I'm gonna be financially free, but they're working on their Saturday and Sunday. And so it's like how financially free are they? So I was just like confused. I was like, you know, none of my friends were rich. They all said they were gonna be rich. No one ever seemed to get rich. And so I was sort of baffled by what I was looking at. Later, I graduate, I had no interest in doing engineering,

which we can kind of get into, but I wanna do something in media. and I started covering a variety of topics, but eventually I sort of revisited this interest in fraud. And I started talking about. these kind of get rich quick grifters that were online, sort of the Thai Lopez variety, you know, 67 steps or you know, whatever, like five steps to get rich, five coins to 5 million. You know, these get rich quick schemes. that a lot of people were interested in. No one seemed to get rich once again. except for the people at the tippity tippity top.

selling the get rich quick thing. And I was like fascinated by the structure of it. and I was like, "does nobody see what this is? Like, does nobody get it?". So I started making a series of videos on that. and the response was like palpable. I mean it was like, I've made a lot of stuff before that. I had made stuff that got a million views. I'd had like some marginal success, but the response of like the emails that came in, I could tell this work, even though it had far less views at the time, was having a different level of impact.

And that's what I was really interested in. One of my problems with engineering was from my standpoint, I did chemical engineering at Texas A&M, and I was like, "is my future just gonna be. in a chemical plant improving some process by 2%, and that's like my gift to the world?". Like I didn't see the hard impact. and that maybe that's a lack of imagination. 'cause chemicals matter, but I needed, I wanted to see an impact in the world. And so when like I started doing this fraud stuff, exposing fraud, it like clicked in my brain.

I was like, "whoa, this is kind of doing what I want to do.". And so I started posting videos. At first it really focused on like get rich quick scheme, grifty advertising, which I think is super predatory, and we can go into why, but it eventually graduated to crypto. and it snowballed, I guess, 'cause now we're talking to Sam Bankman-Fried. - Okay, grifty advertising. So actually this is a step back. What is a multi-level marketing scheme?

Like what, because I've experienced a similar thing. It's like I sold women's shoes at Sears and at a bank. and I just remember like some kind of, I forgot the name of the company, but you like, you can sell like knives or whatever. Like that's a common-. - [Stephen] Oh, I know what you're talking about. - I'm sure there's a lot of things like this, right? And I remember feeling a similar thing, like why, to me what was fascinating about it is like. wow, like human civilization is interesting.

like a pyramid scheme. Like I didn't maybe didn't know the words for that, but it's like, it's cool. Like you can like get in a room. where you convince each other of ideas. and you have these ambition. There's a general desire, especially when you're young to like, life sucks right now. Nobody respects you. You have no money and you wanna do good. and you wanna be sold this dream of like, "if I work hard enough at this weird thing, I can shortcut and get to the very top.".

I don't know what that is. And I also in me felt that like, life really sucks and I could do good and I'm lucky, I found a way to do good. And I don't know, you connect with that somehow. I think there's like this weird fire inside people. to make better of themselves, right? I don't know if it's just an American thing. or if it, but anyway, that was fascinating to me. from a human nature perspective. - Well, grifters play on this though, right? - So the best salesman play on true narratives.

that you already believe. So the true narrative is, you know, life is unfair. It is tough. The American dream as described by go to a job, work at the same company for 40 years, and then retire to a safety net. that your positive is gonna be there, that is largely dead. And so they like play on those fears. and those problems to then sell you a pill, a solution, a thing. And the the problem is that the solution. is usually worse than even the problem they sketched out.

Like you will do better most of the time. by going with the regular company. than you will by going with. these goofy multi-level marketing. But let me answer your question. What is a multi-level marketing? So there's a criticism first of all that, well let me get to what it is in theory. Like edits most ideal, multi-level marketing. is where you have a product that you're selling. and one of the ways you help sell it is. by rather than going through traditional marketing, like where you go and you put out print advertising, it's like sort of a social network of marketing.

I sell to you, and then actually, Lex, not only can I sell to you, you can then go sell this product, and you'll make money selling it. And you know what to incentivize me to get other salesmen, 'cause when I get another salesman, I'm actually giving myself competition so that's bad. So to incentivize me to do that, they'll pay me part of what you make, right? And then you go out and you go, "okay, well I can sell this product, I also can get new salesmen to like sell for me". and I'm gonna make money from you, whatever. So it goes down the line of you create multiple levels. where you can profit from their marketing, right?

The problem with this system. is that however well-intentioned it is, is that usually the emphasis of that selling. and making money ends up not being about the product at all. and ends up entirely being about recruiting new people. to recruit new people to recruit new people. That's the real way to make money in multi-level marketing. This is where the very true criticism. of most multi-level marketing, if not all, are pyramid schemes in structure. Because what a pyramid scheme is, is it's all about I put in $500.

and I recruit two people to put in $500. and that comes up to me and they get two people. to put in $500 and it goes to them. And the reason it's a flawed business model. is in order for it to work and everyone to make money, you'd have to assume an infinite human race. And so that's not the case. Most people end up getting screwed in multi-level marketing. and in pyramid schemes. That's what that is. That's that thing. - And the quality of the product, it doesn't necessarily matter where you're selling. - [Stephen] To people who are financially incentivized. to like buy this thing.

- Yeah, and so you're selling the dream. of becoming rich to the people down in the pyramid. - That's the real product. of multi-level marketing unfortunately. And so you look at the statistics of these companies. and although they'll make it seem like it's so easy. to be the top, you know, 0.1% who's making all this money, the statistics are that 97%. make less than a minimum wage doing this. They spend an enormous amount of time. and just what's so cruel about it is.

that's not advertised up front. I mean it's like if I go at work at McDonald's, I know what I'm getting. If I go work at Amway, I have visions of, they've sold me visions of beaches and whatever. and more than likely I'm losing money, so better than 50% of people lose money. But 97% of people make less than minimum wage. So it's like, it's such a bad business. for the vast majority of people who join it. and the people at the very top. who are lying to the people at the bottom. saying they all can do it when they can't. are making all the money. So it's, yeah, it's really messed up.

- And the interesting thing I've noticed, maybe myself too, cause I've participated. in the knife selling for like a short amount of time. and that's probably the experience that most people have-. - [Stephen] It's not Cutco, is it? - I don't know. I don't think it was Cutco. - I know what you're talking about. It's killing me. I think there's several variations of it. I think I was part of a less popular one. It doesn't, I keep wanting to say it was called Vector. - [Stephen] Yes. Something with a V was what I was gonna say. It might be Vector.

I get what you're saying though. It's a multi-level marketing knife selling. - But the thing is, I just remember. my own small experience with it is. I was embarrassed at myself for having participated. I think there's an embarrassment. That's why people down in the pyramid. don't like speak about it, right? I'm trying to understand the aspects of human nature. that facilitate this. - Well this is one of the problems with fraud. is there's a tremendous embarrassment to being had.

- [Lex] Yeah. - Also, if you buy, so slightly different human nature. is that if you buy into a get rich quick scheme. and then it doesn't deliver, you are more likely to blame yourself. than blame the product for not actually working. You go, "well there must be something flawed with me.". And constantly reinforce this. They go, "well. it's all about your hard work. The system works. Look at me, I did it. So if you're failing, it must be some indictment. of your character" and you have to always double down. The system can't be flawed. You must be flawed. And so yeah, it's a really messed up system.

It really preys on people's psychology. to keep them in this loop. And that's why in some ways these things are so viral, even though they don't actually get most people. a significant amount of wealth. and they cost most people money. So it's very unfortunate. - Most people do have the dream of becoming rich, most young people. - Right. And the thing is is that everyone knows in business. what do you sell? You sell solutions to problems. So if so many young people wanna get rich, the product is that pitch.

You sell them the dream. Why this gets so grifty and so cruel and predatory. is because there is no easy solution to this. There is no solution that people are gonna buy. because the real solution people want is. no work, no education, no skills required, no money upfront. And people will pay any price for that magic pill, and people are happy to sell that magic pill. And I think those people are very cruel. and I think deserve to get exposed for it.

- So somebody that's been criticized. for MLM-type schemes is Andrew Tate, somebody that I'm very likely to talk with. So for people who have been telling me. that I'm too afraid to talk to Andrew Tate, first of all, let me just say I'm not afraid. to talk to anyone. It's just that certain people require preparation. and you have to like allocate your life in such a way.

that you wanna prepare properly for them. And so you have to kind of think. who you want to prepare for. 'Cause I have other folks that have more power. than this particular figure that I'm preparing for, so you have to make sure you allocate your time wisely. But I do think he's a very influential person. that raises questions of what it means. to be a man in the 21st century. And that's a very important and interesting question, because young people look up to philosophers,

to influencers about what it means to be a man. They look up to Jordan Peterson, they look up to Andrew Tate, they looked up to others, to other figures. I think it's important to talk about that, to think what does it mean to be a good man in the society? Of course in the other gender, there's the same question. What does it mean to be a good woman? I think obviously the bigger question. is what does it mean to be a good person? - Lex Fridman Podcast. - I swear to God.

Did not mean to interrupt. Okay. So that said, one aspect of the criticism. that Andrew's received is not just on the misogyny, is on the MLM aspect of the multi-level marketing scheme. So is there some truth to that? Is there some fraudulent aspect to that? - So yeah, I definitely think so. I mean that's the main reason I criticized him.

So let's back up. There's a few clarifications I need to make. What Tate is selling is not multi-level marketing, although he is selling the dream. He's selling an affiliate marketing thing, which is slightly different. So in multi-level marketing, if I sell to you. and then you go sell to two other people, I make money from those two other people down the chain. Multi-level. Affiliate marketing is sort of like one level. I only make money, so Andrew Tate had this affiliate program. where if you sold Hustler's University to somebody else, which sounds like something people would,

boomers would put on Facebook in like 2010. Like I went to Hustler's University. School of Hardness! - By the way you were a member of Hustler's University. - Yeah, I joined. I joined, I became a hustler. That's in large part due to why I'm so successful. is because of my Hustler University membership. I'm just kidding. So it's an affiliate program. So you'd sell, like I sell to you this $50 course. and I make like $5 and Andrew Tate in perpetuity. makes $50 a month off of you. Okay. What does this course actually sell, right?

Because ultimately he's selling the dream. He's selling, hey, the matrix has enslaved you. He's really gone down this like neo-rabbit hole. So the matrix has enslaved you, your life is controlled by these people. who want to keep you like kind of weak, you know, lazy, whatever. You need to break out and you need to achieve the new dream, which is sort of like hustling your way to the top. You don't need the antiquated systems of school. You can just pay me $50 a month. and I will teach you everything.

Okay. So what do you actually get? And why is it a scam? So I think it's just a scam in terms of like value. in like you're selling. based on these completely unrealistic things. He's like, let's get rich. Okay. You get a series of Discord rooms. Do you know what Discord, most people know what Discord is. It's like a bunch of, you know, chat rooms basically, right? - So it's like AOL or is it like? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right. Well I'm talking to the guy who who quit Emacs. So I don't know. There's Discord servers and in these, there's like seven different rooms you can go in.

or there's several rooms. and each one is like a different field of making money. E-commerce, trading, cryptocurrency, I think fulfillment by Amazon, like copywriting. Okay, so I went to all of these, I checked them out, I checked all their money making tools. The first funny thing is that Andrew Tate. is nowhere to be found. The supposed successful guy. that you like bought into is nowhere to be found. It's these professors that you have now,

he has hired and said these guys are super qualified. So I looked up some of these guys have done. and some of them have launched like scammy crypto coins, the cryptocurrency professor was like shilling. a bunch of coins that did bad. and then like deleted the tweets. I mean just completely exactly what you'd expect. Behind the paywall, it's nothing of substance. You're not gonna learn to get rich by escaping the matrix. and going to work for Jeff Bezos. Fulfillment by Amazon is not escaping the matrix, right?

Like that's not the way to hustle to the top. It's literally a field of making money. that everyone in the world has access to. If you wanna differentiate yourself and make money, the first thing you realize is. going into skillsets that literally anyone. with an internet account can do is a bad way to do that, because you have to have. some differentiating factor to add value. So it's just such a obvious and complete scam, because there is no value to this like so-called education.

The professors are crap, the advice, they're like hiding some of the bad things they've done, and Andrew Tate's nowhere to be found. Ultimately, that's why everyone joins. What he's done is very interesting because, and I'll give him credit in his marketing. He's been very savvy to like make the reasons. you admire him, not the thing he's sort of selling, which is weird. Like he's selling get rich quick, which seems like it relates to his persona. but is actually very orthogonal to it. His persona is like the tell it how it is,

like tall, buff, rich guy. It's like actually his persona that you're buying into. and then he's selling you this thing to the side, which when people get in there. and they're not delivered on the product, he still is those things that you first thought he was. So it's like, I think it's to some extent. he's made a lot of money by making the thing. that he makes money on not the thing. he gets so much pushback online for. and what he's also loved for. So people will push back for his misogyny,

but the real way he's making money. is just like basic get rich quick schemes. that are super obvious to spot, but everyone's distracted by like, oh, he said some crazy stuff about women, or you know, all these various other scandals. he's gotten himself in. - To get more and more and more attention. With the persona. Is the Hustler University still operating? - I think they've rebranded it. I'm part of their pitch now. I'm like, they put me on as like, I mean as like, "the matrix is trying to take us out, Lex.". And then it's me saying like, you know, they put me in saying I'm part of the Matrix.

They put me in saying, "oh, this guy sucks. You know, I joined, it sucks.". And so they'll play that and they do like a bass drop. and it's like, you know, "don't listen to people like this," da da da da. I mean it's, I'm basically like-. - Oh, so you've been co-oped by the matrix to attack? - [Stephen] Yes. - You're an insider threat that infiltrated. and now is being used by the matrix to attack him. - Everyone who criticizes him as part of the matrix. He won't say who the matrix is, it's just the shadowy cabal of rich, powerful people.

It's just like the easy narrative for people. who are disaffected and who feel cheated by the system. You just collectivize that system. and you make it the bad guy and you go, "look, those guys who have been cheating you, they're the bad guys. They want me to shut up.". And now the people who harmed you, they want this guy to shut up, you're gonna listen to him.". So it's like the most basic psychological manipulation. that everyone seems to constantly fall for. It's really trivial and stupid, but-.

- Can you steel man the case for Hustlers University. where it's actually giving young people confidence, teaching valuable lessons about actually incentivizing them. to do something like fulfillment by Amazon? The basic thing to try it, to learn about it, to fail or maybe see, to try to give a catalyst and incentive to try these things. - As much as it pains me, I will try to give.

a succinct maybe steel man of it. as best as I can thinking that it's such a grift. But I think what you would say is that some people. in order to make a change in their life. need a someone who they can look up to. and men don't have a lot of like strong role models. like big male presences in their life. who can serve as a proper example.

So the most charitable interpretation. would be Andrew Tate would encourage you. to go reach for the stars, I guess. My problem is I have a deep issue. with the lust and greed that centers all these things. It's like this glorification of wealth equals status, wealth equals good person, wealth and Bugatti equals you are meaningful, you matter.

And like the dark underlying thing is that. none of that matters. It matters that you make a decent living, but past that, I think the like lust for more stuff. and the idolization of these people. that is just like opulence is a net bad. So my steel man has to stop there because. I really disagree with like the values. that are pushed by people like that.

- Yeah, no, I agree that that's the thing. that should be criticized. I shouldn't say it doesn't matter. I think it's just like an amazing meal. at a great restaurant that matters. It's money and Bugattis for many people make life beautiful. Like those are all components, but I think money isn't, you can also enjoy a beautiful life in a hike in nature. There's a lot of ways to enjoy life. and one of the deepest that's been tested through time. is the intimacy, close connection,

friendship with other people or with a loved one. Like they don't talk about like love. Like what it means to be deeply connected. with another person. It's just like get women, get money, all those kinds of things. But that I think, I don't wanna dismiss that, 'cause there's like value in that, there's fun in that. I think the positive, I haven't investigated Hustler's University, but the positive I see in general is young people. don't get much respect from society.

It's easy to call it the matrix and so on. But there's a kind of dismissal of them as human beings, as capable of contributing, of doing anything special. And then you have young people. who are sitting there broke with big dreams. They need the mentors, they need somebody to inspire them. And so like I would criticize. the flawed nature of the message, but also you have to realize there needs to be institutions.

or people or influencers that help like inspire, right? - The the problem is though is the people who are pitching. unrealistic versions of that are getting a lot of attention, whereas like there's so many great free courses. where you can learn everything and more. about fulfillment by Amazon or about copywriting. or all these different things. that I think like so often the air is just, the oxygen is sucked up by all the grifters.

who promise everything. It's back to what we said about vaporware. This is one of the reasons that educational products. can so often be co-opted by grifters. is vaporware is very hard to distinguish, because the feedback loop on education is not clear. It's not obvious immediately. So I can sell you a book and I can say. this is gonna change your life if you apply it. If your life doesn't change. I just say,

"well you didn't apply it," right? Like there's this weird relationship. It's not clear the value, it's not so easy to like quantify education. So that gets co-opted by people who make all the promises, they get a ton of attention, a ton of money, and then those people are often left confused. and like kind of disillusioned maybe thinking, "well, this didn't work in one year. so it's not gonna work at all.". And so I think yeah, there are problems there, there's certainly a need for like male role models.

There's certainly a need for somebody. to speak to a younger generation. I just think that person shouldn't be. maybe Andrew Tate, like personally. - Yeah, so you have to criticize. those particular individuals. - Yeah, I think the Bugatti aspiration is so stupid. Like it's so-. - Well, let me steel man. So I'm a person who doesn't care about money, don't like money. The women maybe appreciate the sort the beauty.

of the other sex, but like cars in particular, is like, really? Is this really the manifestation. of all the highest accomplishments. a human being can have in life? Yes, I can criticize all that. But to steel man that case is a young person, a dreamer has ambition. And I often find that education throughout my whole life. there's been people who love me, teachers who saw ambition in me,

and tried to reason with me. that my ambition is not justified. Looking at the data, look kid, you're not that special. Look at the data. You're not. And they want you to like not dream essentially. And then again I look at the data, which is all the people, I just talked to Hadrew Gracie. Hadrew Gracie is just a person, widely acknowledged as probably the greatest of all time,

dominated everybody. But for the longest time he sucked. and he was surrounded by people that kind of, you know, don't necessarily believe in him, so he had to believe in himself. You have to, it's nice to have somebody, I just as older I get and I've seen it, it's so powerful to have somebody who comes to you, an older person, whether it's real or not, that says you got this, kid. - [Stephen] Who believes in you, sure. - I believe in you, you know. - Yeah, it does. I mean I think so I think dreaming.

is actually really important. I'm more protective over people. co-op those dreams for money. And I do think it matters so much. that we encourage people to take risks. It's one of the great things about America. is it lionizes sort of people who have taken risks and won. But I think it's just a weird vapid thing.

when like the reason you do all of it. is for this thing you can get out at the end of the day. when we all know, and you've just heard a million interviews. like nobody ever gets the Bugatti and goes, "this now completely fulfills me.". Everyone knows the beauty and the fulfillment. actually comes from becoming obsessed. about what you're doing for its own sake, Sort of the journey, the beauty of that thing, And I think money's just this thing we have to deal with. to be able to do cool stuff.

Like I acknowledge that, you know, you need money to build the 10 million studio. to like, you gotta get the cameras, you gotta get the lights, And I'm very blessed to be able to have gotten that. but past a certain point, I think that is really. the function of money is to just do cool stuff, But ultimately if you can't fall in love. with the process and the craft itself, you will be left very unhappy at the end of it. And so to start people off on that journey. by pointing to the shiny object. and going like, "that's what you should care about".

seems to me so backwards. we should learn from the actual people who have done it. and said that shiny thing did nothing for me. Learn to love the journey, And like that's the thing we pitch people, As unsexy as that might be. - Yeah, absolutely. That's well said. And the same applies to like the red pill community. that talks about dating and so on. That it's not just about the number of hot women. you go to bed with, it's also about intimacy and love. and all those kinds of things.

And so there's components to a fulfilling life. that is important to sort of educate young people about. - [Stephen] Totally. - But at the same time, feeding the dream is saYING take big risks. And you, the little you that has no evidence. of ever being great, can be great. because there's evidence time and time again. of people that come from very humble beginnings. and doing incredible things that change the world. - Yeah, And there's just a tremendous funny thing.

where you can't become great. without having a willful denial of the statistics. Like in some ways you have to take the chance, even if that chance is so improbable. and it's always those people who did take that chance. who end up winning, so I agree. - Probably SBF and FTX is the biggest thing. you've ever covered, but previously you've called. the Save the Kids scam the biggest in the world. influencer scam you've ever seen. Can you describe it?

- Sure. So Save the Kids was a charity coin that was launched. by a number of extremely popular influencers. I think they had over 50 million followers together. Huge names. And they basically said, "hey guys, invest in this coin. We're gonna save the kids. A portion of the proceeds go to charity.". And this coin, it's unruggable. So rugging is the term for, remember earlier we talked about Safe Moon, you just grab the pool of funds in the middle. and you take 'em out?

Okay, it's unruggable because we have this smart code. that is gonna prevent people who are quote whales, which is a crypto term for saying. you have a large portion of the tokens, it'll prevent those people from selling. a large amount of that at one time, right? And so basically you don't have to worry about trusting us, it just is what it is. Join and we will, you know, change the world, save the kids, whatever. It was really skeezy from the beginning and sketchy.

because their logo matched the Save the Children logo, which is like an actual charity that you know. So they basically copied it and said we're saving the kids, like a knockoff brand. And almost immediately the project rugged. They stole the money and tracing back through, the code was changed the last second before launch. Like if you looked at their code. that they launched as a test versus the code. they launched in actuality they changed only two lines. and it was the whale code.

to basically make the whale code nonexistent. Like you can sell as much as you want as fast as you want. And it turned out that some of the influencers. had not only sold that and made money, but also had a pattern of pump and dumping tokens. So we can talk about what that is like. - [Lex] Yeah, what's pump and dump? - A pump and dump is just where, you know, you have a huge following, you promote your little Lexcoin to everybody. while holding a big portion of it, and as everyone rushes in to buy it, the price is gonna pump and you dump at the same time.

So that's where the name comes from. Pump and dump. You pump the price, sell all your tokens, make a lot of money. So I traced basically their wallets on the blockchain. and found that two of the actors specifically. had had a long history of doing this, which really proved malicious intent. And why I called it the worst is not, it certainly wasn't the worst in terms of. like the amount of people affected. It relatively was like a small pump and dump. 'cause it rugged almost immediately.

But in terms of the amount of people. that were involved in it, in terms of the amount of malicious behavior before it, that like sort of proved that this wasn't an accident, the fact that there was like this whale code, it was one of the most cynical attempts. to just take the money of the followers you had. And just like, that's mine now. So that's why I caught it that. That's Save the Kids. - [Lex] So that was-. - That was a lot of the Phase members. and it was I think Addison Ray. There were a lot of people who seemed like.

they were kind of taking shrapnel on it. There was like this guy Teko, who he didn't even sell the tokens, he just like held onto it the entire time. and lost like a few thousand dollars or maybe even, I forget the exact amount. He lost a lot of money. A decent amount. And so like he took a lot of shrapnel with that, but there were also people who were maliciously doing this. So in that investigation, like several of the members of Phase got kicked out, one of them got like permanently banned, and then this other guy that I talked about.

fled the country. Like he sold all his belongings and like fled the country. and you know, hid out in London or wherever he is now. I don't really know where he is. Somewhere in the UK area. - So the basic idea there is to try to convert. your influence into money. - [Stephen] Correct. - Okay. - [Stephen] That's the basic idea behind. a lot of influencer crypto promotions. - Well but right, but that little word, influencer, means something, 'cause aren't most crypto scams influencer scams?

They're not, right? - The most high profile ones, like just by nature, they tend to be made high profile by the influencer. So sometimes they are, but you're right, a lot of money has been lost. and like nobody finds out, because there's no one big sort of attached to it. They just steal a lot of money. But influencers are great salespeople, because like in order to overcome the resistance. of getting you to buy some random coin, there has to be a reason. And so much of the 21st century content creator generation.

is defined by these strange parasocial relationships. where people feel like they know you, not the character you play, but you, and you have some friendship with them. when in actuality you don't know the viewers. You know, you have a sense, but you don't actually know all of these people. And so that relationship is extremely powerful. in terms of persuasion. So you can say, I believe in this. and I've watched you for years.

and all of a sudden I say if Lex believes it, I believe in it. I trust him as a human. And so that differentiates these coins. and all of a sudden the coin blows up, gets really popular, you made this side deal and you make a ton of money. - I have to say podcasting in particular is an intimacy. Like I'm a huge fan of podcasts and I feel like I'm friends. with the people I listen to. - [Stephen] Right. - And boy, is that are responsibility. And that's why it really hurts me to announce.

that I am launching Lexcoin. No. - [Stephen] No! - No man, I hate money, I hate this kind of the scheme-yness of all of this. The use of any kind of degree of fame that you have. for that kind of stuff. There's something- - What makes it. so frustrating is these people, I have a general sense. of what they were like sort of what, I'm in the, even though I wouldn't describe myself.

as an influencer, I make content on YouTube. I know that especially since they were taking. these huge corporate sponsorships, they were making tons of money. They didn't have need for these scams. I mean I think it's one thing to scam. if you're like broke on the street, you know, and you're playing three card monte to like live. And I think it's a whole other ethically cruel thing to do. if you are basically trying to upgrade your penthouse. to the building next door. and like you're already well off. and you just kind of want to get even further ahead.

I think that's worse. - Well, this is the fascinating thing. So I've been very fortunate recently. to sort of get, you know, whatever, a larger platform, and what you find out is like, life is amazing. Well I always thought life is amazing but yeah, it becomes more amazing. Like you meet so many cool people and so on, but what you start getting is you have more opportunities. to, like scammers will come to you. and then try to use you, right. And I could see for somebody could be tempting.

to be like, "ooh, it'd be nice to make some money.". - I wanted to say on this, we're on this topic of opportunities you get. kind of when you get a platform. So one of the reasons kind of I railed a little bit earlier. against materialism or whatever, I think to the extent. to which you can moderate your own greed, you can play longer term games. and I think so many people end up cutting. an otherwise promising career short. by just wanting it too fast.

So I think it's like a huge edge, just like discipline, is in terms of like achieving what you want. I think like a very moderate, like being comfortable with a moderate existence. and finding happiness in that is a huge edge. because really your overhead is so much cheaper. than the people who need a Ferrari. or a super nice house to feel fulfilled. And when your overhead is less, you have the luxury. to say no to like sketchy offers. You have freedom that other people don't have, 'cause a lot of times people don't pitch it this way.

They pitch a Ferrari as freedom or like a big house. as like you've made it. In a lot of ways, those shackle you back. to like, you gotta find the cash flow for those things. It's never a free ride. - Yeah, that's really beautifully put. I I've always said that I had fuck you money. at the very beginning. I was broke for most of my life. The way you have fuck you money. is by not needing much to say fuck you. - [Stephen] That's right. - I mean that's the overhead that you're talking about. If you can live simply and be truly happy and be truly free, I think that means you could be free.

in any kind of situation. You could make the wise kind of decisions. and in that case, money enables you in certain ways. to do more cool stuff, but it doesn't shackle you, like you said. Too many people in this society it would shackle, 'cause material possessions kind of like draw you. into this race of more and more and more and more. And then you feel the burden of that, bigger houses and all that kind of stuff. And now you have to keep working,

now you have to keep doing this thing, now you have to make more money. And if it's a YouTube channel and so on, you have to get more. And it's not even just about money. That's why I deliberately don't check views and likes. and all that kind of stuff. is you don't want that dopamine of pulling you in. I have to do the thing that gets more and more attention. or more and more like money. and it's- - [Stephen] That's so wise. Yeah, agreed. - It's a huge negative hit.

on your ability to do creative work. - Can I ask you about that? 'Cause I'm always interested in this. I completely agree. I think it's funny because when you abstract yourself. out to the people you admire and respect. who inspired you to do the creative work you do, you never think about like the views they were getting. or the money they were making or the influence they had. All you ever think about is the work itself. And it's funny when a lot of people get in this position,

your temptation is to focus on that which you can measure, which is like all the stuff you said, the likes, the view. That's not actually the target or what you got into it for. If you get into it 'cause you're inspired or whatever, your goal is, inspiration, it's impact, and like that can't be quantified that same way. So it's interesting you have to find a way. as a creator of any of this stuff. to like deliberately detach yourself.

from the measurable and focus on this thing. which is kind of abstract. And I was wondering if you have any like ideas for that. - So yeah, there's a bunch of ideas. So one is figure out ways. where you don't see the number of views on things. - [Stephen] How do you do that? - So I wrote a Chrome extension for myself. that hides a number of views. - [Stephen] That's really funny. What's funny is I have- - For me. 'Cause it's useful for other people's content.

- Right! Oh my gosh! I'm gonna need to borrow this. That was my problem. I actually have some Chrome extensions for like, I don't like going down like recommendation rabbit holes. when I'm at work. I just wanna like search for a video, find it. I don't wanna see like all the up next. 'cause I'll the waste time. So I use chrome extensions for that. But the views is a problem, because it's relevant to me as a creator. Like is this a big video? Is it a- - Yeah. Which is why I really hurt when they removed. likes and dislikes, because I wanna know. for tutorials and so on what's, I mean that's probably really useful for you,

the dislikes. - [Stephen] Yeah. - Do you have that? Do you ever considered making that Chrome extension public? - Sure. Actually, yeah, and there would be a good philosophy behind it, right? If you're a creator- - [Stephen] I really like it. I love the idea. I've wanted this thing before. I don't know if it necessarily exists. - Thank you. Because I don't think I've made a Chrome extension public. That'd be cool. I would love to see, yeah, I would go to that process. of adding it to the, 'cause I love open sourcing stuff. So yeah, I'll go add it to the Chrome extension, like the store.

- [Stephen] Yeah. 'Cause I totally have- - That's awesome. - I've hated this for like a long time. YouTube made a change and they just continue. to make the analytics front and center, which makes sense from their perspective. They're trying to give people better data. on what is successful and what makes something successful, they're trying to train their creators, but in the process it can lead. to some unhealthy habits of thinking views define a video. And so I've long thought, "okay, I've learned analytics, I understand retention, now I sort of want to do. the zen, like forget it all now.".

And you can only do that if it's out of your sight. - Depends on how many friends you have who are creatives. The other really important thing, and I found this has nothing to do with creatives, but people I respect very much in my life, some of them people would know that they could be famous, they will come to me and say, they will comment on how popular a video was on YouTube. They will sort of compliment. the success defined by the popularity. Even for a podcast where most of the listenership.

is not on YouTube, Spotify now is getting crazy, they will still compliment the YouTube number. So one of the deliberate things I do is I either, depending if it's a close friend, I'll get offended and made fun of them for that. and sort of signal to them, this is not the right thing. - [Stephen] I don't want, yeah. - I don't want that, and for people more like strangers. that compliment that kind of stuff, I show zero interest. I don't receive the compliment well.

and I focus on the aspects of the compliment. that have to do with like what do they find interesting? Like, you know, I kind of make them, reveal to them that you shouldn't care. about the number of views. - It is strange. There's like this weird hypnotism that happens. once you get past a certain number. and that number is some approximation. It's always like hard numbers. It's like a hundred thousand, a million, 10 million. People just see a number and they just go like, "wow, that is," and they assign a quality to it. that usually means nothing at all.

So I agree, I've never been good at like handling. that 'cause you're like, "thank you?". It's like, "okay?". - That said, I do admire very different from me, but I admire Mr. Beast who unapologetically. says like the number's all that matters. Like basically the number shows, like the number of views you get shows like how much, I don't know, joy you brought to people's lives. Because if they watched the thing, they kept watching the thing,

they didn't tune out. That means they loved it. You brought value to their life, you brought enjoyment, and I'm going to bring the maximum amount of enjoyment. to the maximum number of people. and I'm gonna do the most epic videos. and all that kind of stuff. So I admire that, when you're so unapologetically into the numbers. - Yeah, he's sort of, it's interesting. He's like, gosh, we're getting way too in the weeds. Is this bad? I don't know. I'm like constantly self-monitoring. about like what talks we've done, but if we can, Mr. Beast is so interesting.

'cause he's almost done what, have you ever seen "Moneyball?". - [Lex] Yes. - It's the story of how someone. brought statistics to baseball. - [Lex] To baseball, yeah. - And it revolutionized everything. He's money balled YouTube. He took statistics to YouTube and it changed everything. And everybody now, so many people are playing catch up. I think it would be interesting in a few years. to see how he develops. and now that he's like kind of revolutionized. the data side of things, how he then approaches.

future videos because there's a point at which. you've optimized, you've optimized, you've optimized, but optimizing for short-term video performance. is not the same as optimizing. for long-term viewer happiness. And how do you do that? Assuming the YouTube algorithm. does not perfectly already do it for you, which it doesn't, but they're trying to obviously do that, optimize for long-term happiness. - And also growing, optimizing for long-term creative growth. - [Stephen] Sure. - I think the thing that people don't,

I mean maybe I don't know, I don't actually don't know enough about Jimmy, but like to me, the thing that seems to be special about him. isn't the "Moneyball" aspect. That's really important. It's like taking the data seriously, but to me. it's the part of the idea generation. The constant brainstorming and coming up with videos. So it's nice to connect the idea generation with the data, but like how many people when they create. on YouTube and other platforms.

really generate a huge amount of ideas, like constantly brainstorm, constantly, constantly brainstorm? I, at least for me, I don't think I go. so many steps ahead in my thinking. I don't like try to come up with all possible conversations. I don't come up with all possible videos I can make. - But you can't. So the one mistake to make is to map. Jimmy's philosophy onto every genre, 'cause not every genre fits that model.

Your model is not an idea centric model. It's a people centric model. And so if you were in the business of creating. just mass entertainment for the sake of mass entertainment, you might focus on, okay, the reason going idea focused. instead of person focused is such a revolutionary idea. in some senses is because ideas can be broader, more broadly appealing than any single human can be. But you are not going for that.

You are going for a podcast interview. And I think for you, the goal should always be. how deep can you get with interesting guests. and like finding the most interesting guest, which is a different probably set of skills than-. - Really well put. But I think the right mapping there. is finding the most interesting guest. - [Stephen] Yeah. Right. - And I think I don't do enough work on that. So for example, I try to be, something I do prioritize. is talking to people that nobody's talked to before,

'cause I kind of see myself as not a good, like I know a lot of people that are much better than me. I really admire, I think Joe Rogan is still the goat, he's just an incredible conversationalist, so it's like, all right, who is somebody. Joe's not gonna talk to? Either he's not interested or it's not gonna happen. Like I want to talk to that person. I wanna reveal the interesting aspect of that person. and I think I should do a Mr. Beast-style rigor.

in searching for interesting people. - [Stephen] And you should probably find people. to help you search. - Sure, so he does that. But if you are being honest, he does that, of course, with other folks, but he's the main engine. - Yeah. You need like, sort of like a pre-filter, you are the final filter. 'Cause your problem is you are only able. to think of humans that you've thought of before.

or been exposed to and most of the world. you've never been exposed to. So you need people to like pre-filter and go, okay, these guys are just interesting humans, Lex has never heard of them. And then you sort of take a batch. of like a hundred people and you go, who seems the most interesting for me? - But by the way, on that topic, we're really in the weeds, I've almost done, I'm building up, I programmed this guest recommendation thing. where I want to get suggestions from other people,

'cause I really want to find people that nobody knows. This is the tricky thing. Like you're not famous, but the idea is. there's probably fascinating humans out there. that nobody knows. I wanna find those. And I believe in the crowdsourcing aspect will raise them. And now of course the top hundred will be crypto scams, no, but yes. So like I have to make sure. that these kinds of swarms of humans that recommend. I can filter through and there's. this whole kinds of systems for that.

But I wanna find the fascinating people out there. that nobody's ever heard from. and from a programmer perspective, I thought surely I could do that. by just building the system. - [Stephen] Yeah, that's how programmers always think. They'll just automate a system to do it. - Well that's the Jimmy Money Ball, right? Like looking at the data. - [Stephen] Weeds on weeds! - How did we get to Mr. Beast exactly. - [Stephen] I'm not sure. - Okay. Save the Kids influencer. - That's probably-. - Yeah. Let me ask you more on the guru front.

Okay, let's start with somebody that you've covered. that I think you've covered a lot. and I'm really embarrassed to not know much about him. I think this is like old school Coffeezilla. You've been through stages, okay? - [Stephen] I've been through stages and phases. IT's true. - So a character named Dan Locke. Who is he? You've exposed him for a cult-like human. and his cult-like practices. Who is he? What has he done? - So Dan Locke is sort of, he's gone through a number of iterations,

but he was kind of this like sales trainer guy. who really made a hard push. into what he called high ticket sales, and he was telling people that they could kind of escape. the nine to five rat race. if they just learned high ticket sales. and they can have the life of their dreams. Basically, it's like I'll teach you to sell, but I'll teach you to ask, like not only will I teach you. to sell you that pen, but I'll teach you to sell it. for $50,000 instead of a dollar, right?

So I talked to a lot of the people who had taken this course. 'cause it was pretty expensive. I think it was like $2,500 or a thousand dollars. And mind you, the people who who are taking it. are like teachers and people who don't have a lot of money. And then you take the course and immediately you find out, okay, well there's an upsell. At the end of the course, you're not ready. You need to go from like high ticket closer, which is one of the products, to inner circle, or like the level up, right? And all of these courses are structured like this.

So they spend a tremendous amount on Google ads. to get people in the door promising the dream, and then once you're in, you're actually not done being like the product. You are actually in this system that tries to upsell you. again and again and again and again. and eventually you're paying monthly. and you're getting more and more. You're constantly paying for access. to Dan Locke's wisdom and like ideas. And fundamentally, this sales system. wasn't working for people. I mean I talked to like for example a teacher.

who put in like $25,000, was in debt at one point, and has nothing to show for it. And it was sort of these tactics. of pressuring, pressuring, pressuring, and then anytime anyone would complain, he would try to silence them. So I heard from like, funny enough, this lady was a teacher as well, she put together a Facebook group basically saying, I think this guy's a scam. His course didn't work. It's not working for a lot of people, because fundamentally the promise of turning someone.

from a non-salesman into a person who's making six figures. selling is not an easy thing to do. It's not just a matter of just like take my course. But anyways, it wasn't working. She created a Facebook group about it. and he liked sues her and was like legally pressuring her. to stop doing that. And I realized like somebody has to speak out about this. and everyone who is is getting silenced. So I was like, I'm gonna use my platform. to raise awareness to this. And people came outta the woodwork, I mean, saying that this guy defrauded me or he scammed me.

And I wanna just really quickly take a second, take a beat to explain why get rich quick schemes. are different than let's say selling a water bottle. and saying it's the greatest water bottle ever, right? Because sometimes people wonder. They go like, "well, doesn't like Nissan say their car. is gonna make you happy and then it doesn't make you happy? Like why is that different. from the kind of advertising of a get rich quick course?". I mean both of them are sort of promising things. that aren't true.

But you get something, you take some kind of a training, you know, isn't it the same thing? No. Here's why. There's this concept in economics. called elastic demand and inelastic demand. What it essentially means is that. if I raise the value of this water bottle, there's a point at which you're just gonna be like, "no, it doesn't make any sense," right? But there are areas in our lives. where we have desperation around them. that can get deeply predatory very quickly.

because there's no elasticity around their demand. For example, your health. If you get cancer and I have the pill that will solve it, or at least let's say I don't, I have a sugar pill here, but if I can convince you that this pill. will solve your cancer or treat your cancer, you will pay any amount of money you have on this earth. to get this pill. But obviously that gets really predatory really quick, because selling something that isn't real.

is almost as compelling as selling something. that is real, right? So this happens in the get rich quick space too. There's any amount of money you would pay. to make a lot more money, right? So these products have inelastic demand. That's why you see what is essentially a few webinars. getting sold for $2,500. Courses that literally have identical videos on YouTube, like very similar course curriculums. that are selling for such extravagant amounts of money. And I think there can be comparisons made to college.

'cause obviously there's similar questions about benefits, but in this case there's not even statistics available. that even shows the average person gets something out of it. That's true of like if you go to college, your average income will improve, right? That's the justification there. There's none of that. There's no case studies, there's nothing backing. their extravagant claims of. you're gonna make all this money, you're gonna make all this wealth. Instead they're just, as we said before, they're selling you a dream. So that's why I find all those types. of get rich quick schemes so problematic.

and it's why I've railed against them. for a significant amount of time. - What have you learned from attacking, exposing some of the things that Dan Locke is doing? What have you learned about human nature. and fraudsters and gurus and so on? - That's a great question. So I think one of them is that. there's this systemic problem that the phrase, there's a sucker born every minute, is very true. There is no end to the people. who will fall for something like this.

And the problem is because there's just no end. to need and want and just lack. I mean it's easy to, on the one hand, to criticize people's greed, but a lot of times. you have to put yourself in their shoes. If you're at a dead end job, you have nothing going for you, you don't have the money to go to college, you don't want to get in debt, fair play, where do you go, right? As you said, there's somebody who's there. saying they believe in you, they believe you can make six figures, you know, you're gonna believe in that.

And so I really felt like it made a lot more sense. to tackle it from the other side, from the side of people that can stop, that can basically be exposed. and basically have sort of a negative put on their work. I mean they're largely going under the radar. So I kind of felt like, you know, do you want to educate the, do you wanna blame it on the victims. and say you should have known better, you should have done this, you should stop,

but there there's no end to that, or do you go after the grifters themselves? And so that's what I realized. I realized like that's the tactic that I went with. and it's tough 'cause it's a little legally risky. to do that, but yeah, you just kind of gotta. be smart about it, I guess. - So your platform has gotten really big. so there's some responsibility to that. - [Stephen] Weirdly big. Yeah. - Yeah. Let's say-. - [Stephen] Because like only a year ago. it was a lot smaller and then it's hard.

to make that adjustment, you know, because like to me it's the same show I've been doing. - So how do you avoid becoming a guru yourself. or your ego growing? There's different trajectories it could take. One of one of which is you can start seeing. everybody as a scammer and only you can reveal it. and like you have a audience of people. who love seeing the epic Coffeezilla grilling.

And you can destroy everyone. And that power now is getting to your head. How do you avoid that? - Well, I mean this is like less optically obvious. I think the main way is like my circle of friends. doesn't care about any of that and my wife doesn't care. The people whose opinion I value. has no relation to like a subscriber metric. or anything like that. I think that's like tangibly. the most important thing to just staying grounded. As far as like becoming a guru,

I just don't have anything to like sell. I mean I'm not interested in teaching people finance, I'm not interested in teaching people, I'm not interested in selling a course. and I've kind of given myself a hard line on that, which I think has helped me a bit. is there's a temptation to go, "well, I can tell what's a scam, so let me tell you what's not a scam.". And a lot of people have offered a lot of money to do that. and basically be like, "hey, I have such and such legitimate product. Come be like an endorser.". And I just don't do that because I think it undermines.

a lot of what I do is if you get, like, if you're taking money in on the side. to say this is legit and you're saying this isn't legit, that's a huge conflict of interest. So I think it's about managing conflicts of interest. and keeping people around me that are grounded. And also I think, yeah, my only interest. really is just like make cool stuff. and I guess I'll do that until people stop watching, so. - A question from on that topic.

from the Coffeezilla subreddit. Shout out. - [Stephen] Shout out. - How does Coffee find the strength. to maintain his integrity and resist temptation. of being paid a great amount of money. to advertise or promote a potential scam? - I think that's like goes back. to what we've been talking about a lot, which is just on what you prioritize, what you value. I've just never, I guess I grew up. kind of lower middle class and I had a great time. Like I had a great childhood, I had very loving parents, and because of that,

I guess intuited at an early age. that money doesn't do a whole lot. And I knew a lot of people who were way better off. who had miserable childhoods. because whether their dad was always gone at work. or like they just had other family issues. that just money can't buy. And I realized, I guess, quickly that money's. a very, it's a glittery object. that isn't what it appears to be.

And so to me I'm like, I'm having the time of my life. making my show. I'm not gonna have the time, like you could ruin all that. just trying to go for this quick check. when it's like, no, I'm having a great time. - Yeah, it's actually, maybe you're probably the same way, but for me there's a lot of happiness. in having integrity, in looking in the mirror. and knowing that you're the kind of person that has that. In fact, walking away from money is also fun. 'cause it's like promising your, like it's showing,

it's easy to like just say you have integrity, it's nice to like, huh, I actually, I've discovered several times in my life. that I have integrity. - When you get put, yeah, when you get put. basically to the test. - Yeah, I've said like I don't know if I publicly said, but to myself, I say like you can't buy, there's a lot of things you can't buy with me. like $4 billion, like a trillion dollars. But it'd be nice to get tested that way. It'd be cool to see, 'cause you never know until you're in that room.

- [Stephen] It's true. - Same with power. Given power. I'd like to believe I'm the kind of person. that wouldn't abuse power, but you don't know until you're tested. So anyway, you're in a really tricky position. because you're doing incredible, I mean you are a world class journalist, straight up. And so there is pressure on that. of like not having, erring on the side of caution. with like having conflicts of interest and stuff like that. It's tough. It's a really tough seat to sit in.

It's really tough. It's really tough, but it's unfairly tough I feel like. But it's good that you're sort of weighing all of those. But that said, go donate to Coffeezilla. Donate everything. Support him. He's a really, really important human being. The other guy I did I think is the first person. I discovered that you investigated. is Brian Rose of London Reel. Can you talk about his story?

- Brian Rose, he was sort of this interesting figure. 'cause he was like trying to be, to one level or another, the Joe Rogan of London, which I don't think he did a terribly bad job of, especially initially he had some really interesting podcasts. with some really interesting people. And it's funny enough I started out like I would watch him. I mean I don't know if I was like a huge fan, but I was like, I like some of his interviews. He had some really good like big gets. in terms of you know, great guests.

However, when kind of COVID started, he went down this really weird grifting rabbit hole. where he did like this interview with David Ike. who's as you know, like a pretty big COVID conspiracy theorist. And I mean like actual. Like he believes some of the royals are literally lizards. So he got shut down for that. and he kind of made a big stink, which I think it's fine.

Nobody likes to be censored, and I'm not even saying that he should have been censored, but his reaction to that was to like raise a ton of money. from his audience promising this digital freedom platform. And at first it was like, "oh, we wanna raise. a hundred thousand dollars". and then they raised it like within a day. So he is like, "well, we gotta raise a lot more money!". And so eventually they raised a million dollars. and he's trying to raise $250,000 a month. to kind of keep putting his viewers' money into this stuff.

So I started digging into the platform they were building. and there was nothing free about it. They had censorship guidelines. and there was nothing about a platform at all. There was no underlying infrastructure. He just got some white label live streaming thing. So I criticized him for that. It was just this ridiculous thing. All the donators expected one thing, they thought Brian Rose was gonna take on. Google and Facebook. and like bring free speech back for everybody, and of course he didn't. And then it kind of got worse, because he started taking a lot of heat for that.

and he really pivoted hard into like the defi grift. So he started selling this course about defi mastery. and this is a guy who knows nothing about crypto. or very little at the least. So it just got really kind of, he just kind of doubled down on this course model. of you're gonna be rich if you just follow me. And it was ultimately you just type in Brian Rose. on YouTube, you can see what his audience thought of that, 'cause almost all of them have left him at this point.

He's getting like a thousand views a video. And it wasn't because of me. I mean it was like people lost taste. in just the constant ask. for more money, more money, more money. At some point people get sick of it. and it's like everyone has an understanding. that no one works for free, but when it starts to be ego driven and driven around money, everything's about money, it drives people away. - [Lex] Well, you are a part of that sort of helping,

it's nice to have a voice. - Yeah, I certainly spoke out. I mean it wasn't like I was quiet. I was very loud about it at the time. But I mean in the sense that if you look at someone. like Andrew Tate, I made a video about him. even though he's been banned off all the platforms, he gets more views than Brian Rose. And I think it was a testament to how much Brian Rose. was like doing like the grift that people could, even people who were fans and didn't care about what I said,

like couldn't look past, you know, just the constant ask for more and more money. People just get burnt out. - Is there some aspect that you worry about. where with a large audience, there seems to be a certain aspect of human nature. where people like to see others destroyed. - [Stephen] Sure. - Do you worry about hurting people that don't deserve it? Or rather sort of attacking people that are grifter light,

but they get like a giant storm of negativity towards them. and therefore sort of overpoweringly cancel them. or hurt them disproportionately. - Sure. I mean I try to be sensitive to my platform. and as I've grown, I've tried to make sure my video topics. have grown with me and it does reach this tricky point.

where if you're exposing a grifter. with like 50,000 subs who's doing some harm, are you punching down? - [Lex] Right. - And so far there's been enough high profile things. that I can distract myself with. to where this has never been a problem. You don't ever want to be. sort of like Sir Lancelot in retirement where, have you heard this analogy? - [Lex] No, no. - Okay. So there's this great analogy where it's like.

Sir Lancelot's the guy who slays the dragon, right? He gets a lot of fame and he gets a lot of fortune. for saving the dragon. Or at least a lot of, you know, people love him. But what happens after he slays the first dragon? He's gotta go find a bigger dragon. So he goes, finds a bigger dragon, and eventually, depending on how many dragons you think are there. in the world, maybe he kills all the dragons. And one day people go see Sir Lancelot. and he's in a field with cows and he's chopping their heads. And he's sort of put himself in retirement,

but he can't even enjoy the fruits. because his whole thing is like, I am killing the dragon. So I try to be cognizant and I try to always make myself. willing to hang up my suspenders, I guess. Hang up my hat. I try to be aware like if I significantly improve. the problem I put myself out of business, I want to be okay with that basically. And just be fine with it. The funny thing is I was more worried about this.

as like an issue earlier, because I thought there was a finite, like I was like I'm gonna solve this faster, especially as it started gaining traction, like I'm gonna solve this fast. I got this, you know? Classic naive, you know, we all think we're so influential. - [Lex] FTX comes along. - Well yeah, you just get like with time. you get humbled 'cause you talk to people. I've talked to like versions of Coffeezilla. that are older and it's like,

oh yeah, they didn't solve it. And they probably were better. at doing it that I was - I just imagine. a smoke filled room of just like retired Batman. and you're this young bright-eyed-. - [Stephen] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Fiery spirited investigator. - [Stephen] Yeah, exactly. - What's the process of investigation. that you can speak to? What are some interesting things you've learned. about what it takes to do great investigations?

- Sure. Great investigations reveal something new. or bring something to light, so I think what everyone thinks in terms of investigations. is like a lot of like, you know, Googling or like searching through articles. I think that's the first thing you wanna get away from. and you wanna try to talk to people. doing the non-obvious things. and just trying to get perspectives. that are beyond just what is available. So a lot of it's just having conversations.

is so enlightening. Both to victims and also obviously trying. to talk to the people themselves. Secondly, there's sometimes some analysis. you can generate that's meaningful like blockchain evidence. So in the case of Safe Moon for example, going back to that, I found someone's secret account. where they were pump and dumping coins. They were saying things like, "who sold? I'm so mad at the guy who sold. F the guy who sold.". And you look at his account and he was the guy selling. And it's like that is just, that's great stuff.

So digging through the blockchain kind of, I've gained some skills there and that's kind of this fun, I guess I would say. it's this weird edge I have for right now, because a lot of people don't know too much about that. And so I have this weird expertise that works now. I don't think that'll work forever. 'cause I think people will kind of figure out. how to do very similar analyses. But so it's kind of an interesting edge. right now that I have. - So that's like a data driven investigation, but you also do interviews, right? - Yeah, definitely. And then also recently I've tried to get more,

speaking to your point about, as your platform gets bigger you need more responsibility, I've tried to get much more responsible. about like reaching out or somehow giving the subject. some way to talk, because I think in early on. I was such a small channel that. A, if I asked them, they wouldn't answer, but B, I kind of felt like I was launching these videos. into the abyss and when some of my videos had real traction, I was like, okay, hang on a second, let's double check this.

Let's triple check it. Let's try to make sure all this stuff is correct. and there's no other side of the story. I'll say this has interesting implications, because for example, I investigated this thing called Genesis. They're a billion dollar crypto lender. and my conclusion was that they were insolvent. That's a huge accusation. So what do you do? Well, I emailed their press team, everybody. I said, Hey, I think you're insolvent, I think you're this, I laid out all my accusations and I said, you have till I think 2:00 PM the next day to respond.

At 8:00 AM before I made my video, they announced to all their investors. that they're freezing withdrawals. They don't have the money. So they front, I don't know if they saw, like I don't know if they actually saw that email. I don't want to take credit for collapsing them or whatever. But my point is, had I not taken that level of kind of care. and just said, "hey, you're a scammer, you're frauds.". Ironically could I have done more good. by allowing people to withdraw their money early? I made some tweets that people did see.

that like some people got their money out, but my YouTube audience is much larger. and could I have helped more people. had I not given them basically the ability. to know what I was gonna produce when I produced it? - Boy, your life is difficult, 'cause you can potentially hurt the company. that doesn't deserve it if you're wrong. or if you're right and you warn the company, you might hurt the, hoo! Well I'm glad your wife is a supporter and keeps you strong.

That's a tough, tough decision. Ultimately, I guess you want to err on the side. of the individual people, of the investors and so on. But it's tough. It's always a really, really tricky decision to make. - [Stephen] Very tricky. - Oh boy. That's so interesting. And then the thing I've seen in your interviews. that I don't remember, 'cause I think I watched you earlier.

in your career, you were a little bit harsher. You were having, you were like trollier. You're having a little more fun. - [Stephen] Sure. - And when I've seen you recently, you do have the fun, but whenever you interview you seem respectful. Like you you attack in good faith. - Yeah. - Which is really important for an interviewer, so then people can go on. and actually try to defend themselves. That's really important signal to send to people, 'cause then you're not just about tearing down.

You're after like the, you know, it's cliche to say, but the truth, like you're really trying. to actually investigate in good faith, which is great. So that signal is out there so like people like SBF could, like he should go on your platform, I think. I mean now it's like in full, not just like a half-assed conversation on Twitter space, but in full. So that's great that that signal is out there. But of course the downside of sort of, as you become more famous, people might be scared.

to sort of go on, but you do put that signal. of being respectful out there, which is really, really important. - You know what's interesting? It's surprises me. I know it surprises other people. 'cause other people have commented, but it consistently surprises me. how many people still talk to me. And maybe it's because they, and I really do give a good attempt. to try to argue in good faith. I try not to just like load up ad hominems. or anything like that. I just try to present the evidence. and let the audience make up their mind, but it surprises me sometimes that people will just be like,

yeah, they wanna talk, they wanna talk, they wanna talk. I think it's very human in a way. And I think it's like almost good. Like one of the things that is always told to everyone. who's gonna talk to the cops is like, you should never talk to the cops, whatever. Which is true, you shouldn't talk to the cops. Because even if you're innocent, they can use your words, they can twist your words, da da da. But there's something that gets lost. in that robotic like, you know, self-interest.

that I think having open conversations, even if you've done something wrong, I think there's something really compelling about that. that continues to make people talk in interrogation rooms, in Twitter spaces, wherever you are, regardless of whether you totally shouldn't be talking. And I don't want to downplay that. That's actually really important. I mean it's like a lot of cases get solved, a lot of investigations go farther.

because people sort of make the miscalculation to talk. But I think it's like almost important in a way. that we have that human bias. to connect in spite of self-interest. - Yeah. But also they're judging the integrity. and the good faith of the other person. So I think when people consume your content, especially your latest content, they know that you're a good person. I found myself, like there's a lot of journalists. that reached out to me and I find myself.

like not wanting to talk to them. because I don't know if the other person on the side. is coming in good faith, even on silly stuff. I'm not a- - [Stephen] I'm the same way. - Like I don't have anything to hide, like you don't really have anything to hide, but you don't know what their like spin is. - Can I tell you an example? 'Cause I believe so strongly. that journalists have done themselves such a disservice. Okay, one of the truest things is that. everyone loves journalism in theory.

and almost everyone dislikes journalists as a whole. Like there's a deep distrust of journalists. and there's a deep love for journalism. It's this weird disconnect. I think a lot of it can be summarized in, there's this book called the, god, what is it called? I think it's called "The Journalist in the Murderer.". It's written by Janet Malcolm. The first line of this book is that every journalist. who knows what they're doing, who isn't too, is smart enough to know what they're doing,

knows what they're doing is deeply unethical. or something like that. And what they're talking about. is that there's a tradition in journalism. to betray the subject, to lie to them. in the hopes of getting a story and play to their ego. and to their sense of self to make it seem like. you're gonna write one article. and you stab 'em in the back at the end. when you press publish and you write. a totally different article. This is what actually everyone hates about journalists. and it's happened to me before. So I did a story like way back in the day,

I got interviewed about something. that was like data with YouTube. I made a few comments about data in YouTube. and somehow by the time the article got published, it's about me endorsing their opinion. that PewDiePie is an anti-Semite. And I'm like, I reach out to this person. I said, "I never said that. Like what are you talking, how did you even twist my words to say that?". And I felt so disgusted and betrayed to have, I'm like this mouthpiece for an ideology. or like a thought that I do not actually agree with. And when journalists do this they think,

well, I'm never gonna interview this person again, so it's okay. So it's almost like the ends justify the means. I get the story. But the ends don't justify the means, because you've now undermined the entire field's credibility. with that person. And when that happens enough times, you end up sitting across from Lex Friedman and it's like, well I don't know if they're gonna represent me fairly. Because the base assumption. is that regardless of what the journalist says, they could betray you and they might betray you.

at the end of the day and be saying you're great. while they're secretly writing like a hit piece. about like, you know, how much, you know, you're a bad force for the world. whereas there's an alternate universe. where if the journalist was somewhat upfront. about their approach, or at least didn't mislead. and didn't say like, I love you, I think you're great, you would end up with less access, but you would end up with more trusted journalism.

which I think in the long run would be better. - [Lex] I think you get more access. - I think in the long term, yeah. But all of these, like everything we're talking about. is long-term games versus short-term games. In the short term you get more access. if you suck up to the person, if you say this, say this, say this, and you stab 'em in the back later. Long-term, you build a long-term reputation, people trust you, it actually matters more. - And it's nice when that reputation is your own individual. So like you have a YouTube channel, you're one individual. So people trust that because you have a huge disincentive.

to screw people over. - [Stephen] True. - I feel like if you're in New York Times, if you screw somebody over the New York Times gets the hit, not you individually. So you're safer. But like the reason I don't screw people over is I know. that, I mean, well, there's my own ethics and integrity, but also there's a strong disincentive, because you're now, that person's gonna go public. with me screwing them over,

completely lying about everything, how I presented the person, for example. And that's just gonna, you know, that's gonna percolate throughout the populace. and they're gonna be like, "Lex is the person that is the lying sack of shit.". And so there's a huge disincentive to do that. Yeah. Journalists don't have that. - That is what's interesting about, yeah, the move towards independent journalism. I think we'll probably end up at a space where, it's so interesting, mainstream journalism.

has so much work to do to repair the trust. with the average individual. and it's going to take a lot of like self-reflection. I've talked to a few mainstream journalists about this. and a lot of them will admit it behind closed doors, but like there's this general sense that, "oh, the public's not being fair to us.". Like they're very self, they're defensive I guess in a way. And I understand why, because sometimes it's just a few bad apples. that ruin it for everybody.

But without the acknowledgement of the deep distrust. that they have with a good portion of our society, there's no way to rebuild that. Just like when there's no acknowledgement. of the corruption of the 2008 financial crash, there's no way to rebuild that. Even if most bankers, most traders. are not unethical or duplicitous, they're totally normal people. who maybe aren't deserving of the bad reputation, but you have to acknowledge the damage that's been done.

by bad actors before you can like heal that system. - Well, what do you think about Elon. just opening the door to a journalist. to see all the emails that were sent, the quote unquote Twitter files? - Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean I saw a lot of, I'm like in this weird thing. where I follow a lot of independent people. and I follow a lot of mainstream journalists. and they are very polar opposite takes on that. - People are really quickly politicize it.

But to me this thing that was fascinating. is just the transparency. that I've never seen from, one of the really frustrating things to me, 'cause a lot of this podcast. has been about interviewing tech people, CEOs and so on, and they're just so guarded with everything. It's hard to get to, and so it's nice to get, hopefully this is a signal look, you can be transparent. Like this is a signal to increase transparency. - Hopefully so. Yeah, it's been tribalized so quickly. It's like I've lost a lot of faith in that.

And unfortunately it's been this like bludgeon match. of like, you know, if you're on the right, you think it's uncovering the greatest story ever. about Hunter Biden. If you're on the left, you think they were just silencing. revenge porn picks of Hunter Biden, so therefore it was justified. And by the way, Trump also sent messages to Twitter, so doesn't that mean that like we should be criticizing, this goes back to why I don't touch politics. is 'cause I think as many problems as I have, I think when you become like a journalist that,

not even a political journalist, when you become a journalist in politics, you have like twice the problem. So I'm like, I'm happy to be. well outside of that kind of sphere. - But it's an interesting. - [Stephen] It is interesting. - Twitter, you know, forget Twitter files, but Twitter itself is really, really interesting. from the virality of information transfer. And from a journalistic perspective, it's like how information travels, how it becomes distributed is interesting.

- [Stephen] What do you think about Twitter? I'm always conflicted on Twitter. 'cause I almost hate how much I enjoy using it. 'Cause I'm like, this is like this mindless bird app. is consuming my time. It's this incredible networking tool. But what's weird is when I think about. my own presence on Twitter, they've almost made it too easy. to like say something that you've half thought, like the friction to send a tweet is so much less.

than like, if I'm gonna make a YouTube video, there's several points at which I'm like, well, what's the other side? What's this? What's that? There's no friction there. And so one thing I've noticed. is everyone I follow on Twitter, a lot of them after reading all their tweets, I think nothing more of them, nothing less of them. But there's a lot of them that I think less of. And I don't think I've ever had an experience. where I've read someone's tweets. and I think more of them in a way. And I'm like, "what does that say that-". - Yeah, what is that? There's so many people I admire.

that the worst of them is represented on Twitter. Like there's a lot of people. - [Stephen] There's a million examples. - They become like snarky and sometimes mocking. and derisive and negative and like emotional messes. I don't know. Yeah, what is that? Maybe we shouldn't criticize it and accept that. as like a beautiful raw aspect of that human being.

but not encompassing, not representing. the full entire idea. of that human being. - But it does reflect. like it's impossible to not reflect it to some extent. Or you'd have to counter that bias. really carefully 'cause that is them, it is a thought they had, it's just probably something. that should have been an unexpressed thought perhaps. So I kind of wonder like my, I'm like, should I be on Twitter? But the problem is is it's such a great place. where like so much of the news happens on Twitter, so much of the journalism breaks on Twitter.

Even people in the New York Times, they'll tweet their scoop. And they'll put that out on Twitter first. So it's this really weird thing where I'd love to be off it. and it's like too useful for my job, but I kind of hate it. - No, no. You need to, well it depends, but from my perspective, you should be on it. - [Stephen] Oh, I definitely am. - Like Coffeezilla should definitely be on Twitter, but have developed the callouses and the strength.

to not give into the sort of the lesser aspects. 'Cause you're silly, you're funny, you could be cutting with your humor. I wouldn't give into the like the darker aspects of that, like low effort negativity. The way you are in your videos, I would say if you're ever negative or making fun of stuff, I think that's high effort. So I would still put a lot of effort into it, like calmly thinking through,

and also not giving into the dopamine desire. to say something that's gonna get a lot of likes. You know, I have that all the time. You you use Twitter enough, you realize certain messages. that are going to get more likes than others. - And are usually the ones that are more extreme. And like emotional, like, "Lex is an idiot". or like, "Lex is the greatest human being ever.". It's much better than, "oh wow, what a polite, nuanced conversation.". I can tell you right now which of those three tweets.

isn't gonna perform well. - Yeah, yeah. So I think the extremes are okay if you believe it. Like I will sometimes say positive things. I said that the Twitter files release was historic. Of course this was before I realized, I mean the reason I said it is because the transparency, it's so refreshing to see any level of transparency.

And then of course those kinds of comments, The way Twitter does, is every side will interpret it. in the worst possible way for them. and they will run with it. Or some side when it's political. Yeah, one side will interpret. Yes, I agree with Lex. - [Stephen] You're right, it's historic. They might not have even read the article. or the tweet thread and they're just like, "it is historic.". - It's historic because Hunter Biden was finally, the collusion or whatever it is.

And then the other side is like, no, it's a nothing burger. Yeah, that aspect of nuance and it's frozen in time. Even with editing, it's tricky. But if you maintain a cool head through all of that. and hold to your ethics and your ideas and use it. to spread the ideas, which you do extremely well on YouTube, I think, I think it could be a really powerful platform. There's no other platform. that allows for the viral spread of ideas,

good ideas, than this. And this is where like, especially with Twitter spaces, I mean, where else would I see, I think twice, impromptu conversations with Coffeezilla and SBF. - [Stephen] Never. Yeah, nowhere else. Because he wasn't gonna come on my show. He wasn't gonna come on some big prepared thing. It's like, "hey, yolo, let's go into Twitter space.". And then I like pop up.

And you know, what's funny. And I hope this release is late enough, or well, SPF probably won't see this. Although I'm sure he's a fan. - Unfortunately, he will. - [Stephen] Oh, okay. - Yes. - Hopefully, I'll have time to enact my little plan. But I'm hoping if he goes on any future spaces, I can like haunt him from interview to interview, which is like, I keep showing up and he's like, "ah, I hate this guy.". But I think he's already kind of probably. has like PTSD of like in the shadows lurks a Coffezilla.

- That just would, that really amuses me. - I mean I think he honestly would enjoy talking to you. There's a aspect of Twitter spaces. that's a little uncertain of like, what are we doing here? 'Cause there's an urgency because other voices. might wanna butt in. If it's an intimate one-on-one. where you can like breathe like hold on a second. I think it's much easier. So in that sense, the Twitter space is a little bit negative. that there's too many voices,

especially if it's a very controversial kind of thing. So yeah, it's tricky. But at the same time, the friction, it's so easy to just jump in. So I could just, I mean I could, I mean just imagine like a Twitter space. with like Zelensky and Putin. Like how else are these two going to talk, right? Like, can't you imagine? - [Stephen] If you try to set it up on Zoom, like it's never happening. - It's never happening. - [Stephen] Too many delegates. Like just the only way it happens.

- Putin like sitting there like-. - [Stephen] Zelensky is live! - Is live, right. Just jumping in. - [Stephen] It's hilarious. (Lex speaking Russian). - Okay. Actually just on a small tangent, so how do you have a productive day? Do you have any insights. on how to manage your time optimally? - Yeah, I mean I've gone the gamut. of from obsessive time tracking in 15 minute buckets. to kind of like the other extreme. where it's more kind of large scale,

some deep work here, two hour bucket, you know, account for an hour of lunch, and some other thing. But now I just roughly, because I manage a team. and there's some things that kind of come up, it's only a team of two, it's not like big, but I just have things. that are not necessarily controllable by me. I like have to take some meetings or whatever. It's not as easy to plan out my day ahead of time. So I do a lot of retrospective time management. where I look at my day, and that's what I mostly do now, and I account, did I spend this day productively?

What could I do better? And then try to implement it in the future. So a lot of this I've realized is very personal for me. I do very well in long streaks of working. and I can't do a lot of work in 15 minutes. I can't do a lot of work in even an hour. But if you give me like three hours or five hours. or six hours of uninterrupted work, that's where I get most of my stuff done. - So from the, it'd be fun to explore this. When you did 15 minute buckets,

so you have a day in front of you, and you have like a Google Sheet. or a spreadsheet or something. - [Stephen] Yeah, yeah, I did in Excel. - Excel. - And you're, do you have a plan for the day. or do you go, like when you did it, or you just literally sort of focus on a particular task. and then you're tracking. as you're doing that task of every 15 minutes? - Yeah, I would kind of do it live. I'm not, so one of the reasons I'm so obsessive. about it is 'cause I'm not organized by nature.

and I lost, like in college I learned. how much lack of organization can just hurt you. in terms of output, and so I realized. like I just had to build systems. that would enable me to become more organized. So really I think that doing that. really taught me a lot about time. in the same way that tracking calories. can teach you about food. Like just learning accounting for these things. will give you skills that eventually you might not need.

to track on such a granular level. because you've kind of like figured out. So that's kind of how I feel about it. I think everyone should, if you care about productivity and stuff, should do a little bit of it. I don't think it's sustainable in the long term. It just takes so much effort and time to like, and I think the marginal effect of it in the long term. is kind of minimal once you learn these basic skills. But yeah, I was basically tracking like live what I did. and what I saw is that a lot of my real work.

would be done in small sections of the day. and then it'd be like a lot of just nothing. Like a lot of small things where I'm busy, but little is being achieved, and so I think that's a really interesting insight. I've never figured out how to unbusy myself. and focus on the like core essentials. I'm still getting to that, but it is interesting. realizing most of your day is like a lot of nothing. And then like some real deep work. where most of your value comes from is like 20% of your day. - Yeah, I try to start every day with that.

So the hardest task of the day. and you focus for long periods of time. And I also have the segment of two hours. where it's a set of tasks that I do every single day. with the idea is you do that for like your whole life. It's like long-term investment of Anki. and it's just like learning and reminding yourself of facts. you know that they're useful in your everyday life, and then for me also music, I'll play a little bit of music. - [Stephen] I play piano. - Piano. And so like keeping that regular thing.

is part of your life. - And one thing that I've really taken from this. is 'cause I've read all the, I had a self-improvement phase in my early twenties. and one thing you learn is. that everyone wants to give you a broad general solution, but really the real trick of figuring out optimizing. is figuring out the things that work for you specifically. So like, yeah, one interesting thing you said is like, "oh, I like to do my hard work at the beginning of the day.". I know a lot of people recommend this.

I've tried so many times. and I just do better work late at night. And so usually my streak of work. is like from like after dinner, 7:30 to like 2:00 AM. That's my prime time. And so like a lot of my videos, which you'll see, which is like lit from this studio, which appears to be daytime, it's like shot at 3:00 AM, you know, just like in a caffeine-fueled rush. But that's kind of how it works for me. And then also like with the social outlets.

and stuff like that, which it's easy, and I feel like we think similarly on this, so it's easy to discount these things. as less relevant 'cause they don't have. quantitative metrics associated with them, but in terms of longevity and like, I think to be able to do creative work, there's an amount of recharge and like reinputting stuff. that is frequently discounted by people like us. who are like obsessed with, you know, quantitative metrics.

And so I really found that some of my best work. gets done after I take like a break. or I'll go play like live sets of music, and I mean like that's like for me really recharging. But nowhere on a spreadsheet is that gonna show up. as productive or like meaningful. But for me, for whatever reason, it recharges me in a way. that like I need to pay attention to. - Yeah, for sure. I usually have a spreadsheet of 15 minute increments. when I'm socially interacting with people. and I evaluate how are-. - [Stephen] I'm getting roasted right now. - No, I'm not.

It's actually I'm probably roasting myself. But I do find that when I do have social interactions, I like to deal with people that are in outside of that. exceptionally busy themselves. 'Cause then you understand the value of time. and when you understand the value of time, your interaction becomes more intimate and intense. Like the cliche of work hard, party hard. or whatever the cliche is-. - [Stephen] Play hard. - Play hard, damn it. Whatever the-.

- [Stephen] Need more social interaction! No, I'm just kidding. - I mean that cliche, there's a truth to that, but the intensity of the social interaction. even like, you know, it's not even the intensity. Like it's not even the party hard. It's like even if you're going hiking and relaxing. and taking in nature, so it's very relaxed, but you understand the value of that. There's, when you put a huge amount of value. on those moments spent in nature, that recharges me much more.

So you have to surround yourself with people. that think of life that way, that think about the value of every single moment. That's one of the things you do. when you break it up in 15 minute increments. is you realize how much time there is in the day. How much awesomeness there's in the day to experience, to get done and so on. And then so you can feel that when you're with somebody. And then for me personally, like when I interact with people, I really like to be fully present for the interaction. - I can tell. This is for anyone, I've been the audience forever,

so I haven't been on this side of the table before. You're very intense. You look right in the eye-. - [Lex] Well, I don't know about right in the eye, eye contact is an issue. But yes, I'm there. - Lex has a soulful gaze, guys. Just in case you're wondering. It's very soulful. - [Lex] All right. - It's very comforting. - [Lex] All right. - It's like a warm hug. - Back to serious talk. Okay. You've studied a lot of people who lie, who defraud, cheat, and scam on a basic human level.

How do you have trouble trusting human beings. in your own life? What's your relationship with trust of other humans? - That's a great question. So, funny enough, before I did this, I was like an incorrigible optimist. Everything, the sun shined every which place. I always saw, like everybody is fundamentally good. Nobody was bad. It just was like sort of wrong place, wrong time,

bad incentives. That view has darkened significantly, but I just try to remember my sample set. and just like, I'm just sampling sort of the worst, and I try not to let it bleed into my day-to-day life. And I think it's probably because. I was such an optimist early on. that I've been able to kind of retain some of it. I call it enlightened optimism. Like choosing to be optimistic. in the face of a realistic sense.

of the problems in the world. and with a realistic sense. of like the scale and the challenge ahead. I actually think it's much braver to be an optimist. when you're aware of what's going on in the world. than to be a cynic. I think being a complete cynic is, maybe, I'm not saying it's wrong, but I'm saying it's maybe the easier way, just mentally, to cope with so much negativity. It's like just saying, "well, it's all bad,

it's all doomed to fail. It's all gonna go bust" is easier. - Yeah. That leap into a believing that it's a good world. it's a little baby act of courage or at least I think so. I don't think it's naive. - No, it can be. Some people are naive that are optimistic, but oftentimes just because someone's optimistic. does not mean they're naive.

They could be ha be full well aware. of how troubling the world is. - And I also believe some of the people you study, you know, I'm a big believer that all of us. are capable of good and evil. So in some sense the people you study. are just the successful ones. The ones who chose sort of the dark path. and were successful at it, and I think all of us can choose the dark path in life.

That's the responsibility we all carry. is we get to choose that at every moment. And it's like a big responsibility. and it's a chance to really have integrity. It's a chance to stand for something good in this world. And all of us have that, because I think all of us are capable of evil. All of us could be good germs. All of us could in atrocities be part of the atrocities. - Yeah, I think it's, I really have, especially in recent years,

tried to somewhat depersonalize my work. and see it almost like as like a, I don't know, like a force of nature that I'm fighting. more than like individuals, because of this exact thing. I think like sort of "therefore but the grace of God, their go I" is kind of a really profound way. to understand yourself rather than. as just fundamentally good and full of integrity.

Acknowledging that so much of that is a product. of your environment and your family and your upbringing. and so much of the people who don't have that. is a product of their environment. It doesn't absolve them, but it gives you more perspective. to sort of deal fairly, if that makes sense. And not approach it from a place of anger. or a place of outrage. There is a sense of like sadness for the victims, there's a sense of outrage for the victims, but approach the individual who's done the thing.

from that place of understanding. of this isn't just this person. There's like a whole broader thing going on here. - Do you have advice for young people. of how to live this life? How to have a career they can be proud of? So high school students, college students. what can be a life they can be proud of? - Hmm. That's a great, well let me think about this for a second.

I think don't be afraid to go against the grain. and sort of challenge the expectations on you. Like you sort of have to do this weird thing. where you acknowledge how difficult it will be. to achieve something great. while also having the courage to go for it anyways. And understanding that other people. don't have it figured out I think is a big theme of my work, which is that everyone wants the guru.

to show them the way, to show them the secrets. So much of life and achieving anything. is learning to figure it out yourself. And like the meta skill of being an auto didactic. where you can, I don't know if I said that word right. You basically use self-teach. You learn the meta skill of like learning to learn. I think that's such an underrated aspect of education. People leave education, they go, "when am I gonna use two plus two? When am I gonna learn, you know, use calculus?". But so much of it is learning. this higher level abstract thinking.

that can apply to anything and getting that early on. is incredibly powerful. So yeah, I would say like a lot of it is, I guess to some extent, you kind of have to do that Steve Jobs thing. where you realize that nobody else in the world. is smarter than you, and that both means. that like they can't show you the perfect way, but it also means you could do great things. and kind of chart your own path. I don't know.

That's so cheesy. This is why I hate giving advice. I feel like it's cheesy. And I don't think it is. I think my journey is so full of luck. and specific experience, I wonder how generalizable it is. But if I've learned anything. and if I could talk specifically to myself, I guess that's what I would say. - I mean, you've taken a very difficult path. and I think part of taking that path, like of a great journalist frankly, is like, I can be that person. Like just believing in yourself.

that you can take that. 'Cause like if you see a problem in the world, you could be the solution to that problem. Like you can solve that problem. - [Stephen] Yeah. - I think it's really important to believe that. It depends. Maybe you're lucky to have the belief inside yourself. Maybe the thing that you're saying is like, don't look to others for that strength. - And also like be really comfortable failing. I think one of the best things.

that like you would never know about me, just looking at my background. that helped me was playing music live. I had incredible amounts of stage fright growing up, mostly because I was terrible at piano. I like sucked. And I specifically, I taught myself how to play. and I joined jazz band in like high school, did it through college. I remember all my recitals, I messed up every single solo I ever did.

I never like actually nailed it. And every time I'd go up there, I'd like have so much dread around this. and it was easier to get up there. 'cause there were sort of some people up there, but eventually I started like playing live too. and I sucked at that. And I've just gone through the trenches of like, just like being publicly sort of, in my mind humiliated, like that prepared me so much for what I do now. of trying to basically being fearless.

of failure in the face of like a wide audience. I don't have that anymore 'cause kind of, I've experienced so many iterations of it. at a smaller scale of just like abject public humiliation. to where it's like not something that bothers me, I have no stage fright, that doesn't bother me anymore. But you'd think like, "oh, maybe he just was always good at this.". I was terrible at it. I had a complete phobia about public anything. So it was that rapid iteration of just failure.

And eventually I just like came to the conclusion of like, I wanna love it. I wanna like love like getting up on a stage and bombing. If you can learn to like love that and be fearless there, there's almost nothing you can't do. - Yeah, that's brilliant advice. I'm with you. Still terrifying to me, like live performance, but yeah, that's exactly the feeling. is loving the fact that you tried. and somehow failure is like a deeper celebration. of the fact that you tried, 'cause success is easy,

but like failure is like, bombing, I mean music, yeah. On the smallest and the largest of stages, I'm not gonna say who, but there's a huge band, huge band that wanted me to gig on stage. and it probably will happen, but I turned it down because I was like, "no.". - [Stephen] Terrified. - Because I'm gonna suck for sure. So the question is- - [Stephen] Do you do it?

- Do I wanna suck in front of a very large live audience? And I turned it down. I was like, "no, no, no, no, no, no.". But now I realize, "yes.". - [Stephen] Embrace it. - It's gonna be good. It's gonna be good for you. It's gonna crush your ego to the degrees remaining. And it's just good for you. It's good not to take yourself seriously. and do those kinds of things. But honestly I feel that way in an audience, like in an open mic. It hurts.

That's why I really admire comedians. I go to open mics all the time with comedians and musicians. and I just see them bomb or play in front of. just a few folks and they're putting their heart out. and especially the ones that kind of suck, but are going all out anyway. - I think open mics are the best place to learn though, because it's the lowest stakes you can get. while still being public. If you're gonna face like fears around this, 'cause we're talking very specifically.

public speaking or any kind of, you know, being in front of a camera, if you're gonna face your fear, you have to do it, and the easiest way to do it is to lower the stakes. You're not gonna start being Lex Friedman. on stage with a huge band. You don't wanna be. Like in that way it is so impossible. But the more you lower the stakes. and just like open it up to like two strangers, five strangers, like the most dive bar open mic. you can go to and like start performing, that's really what I did is, like I love open mics now.

'cause it's like low stakes on the one hand, but you really get the feeling of like going for it. - And get better and better and better at that. Yeah, for sure. And then you'll get the strength. to take a bigger and bigger and bigger risks. Listen, Coffee, I'm a huge fan of yours. Not just for who you are, but for what you stand for. People like you are rare and they're a huge inspiration. I'm inspired by your fearlessness that you're taking on.

some of the most powerful and richest people in this world. and doing so with respect, I think, with good faith, but also with the boldness and fearlessness. Listen man, I'm a huge fan. Keep doing what you're doing as long. as you got the strength for it, 'cause I think you inspire all of us. You're doing important work, brother. - Thanks for having me. - Thanks for listening. to this conversation with Coffeezilla. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you some words from Walter Lipman. "There can be no higher law in journalism.

than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.". Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.