The Naked Emperor Episode 4: It Takes a Village
Description
Sam Bankman-Fried couldn’t have marketed FTX to the masses on his own. He had help – from the institutional investors who brought in the big bucks, to the celebrity endorsers who told the public that FTX was “a safe and easy way to get into crypto.” One FTX brand ambassador was Kevin O’Leary, from the reality show Shark Tank. Host Jacob Silverman questions O’Leary about his due diligence before accepting the multimillion dollar endorsement deal. We also hear from everyday investors and hopeful beneficiaries of SBF’s charitable largesse and learn how their hopes were dashed on the rocks of alleged fraud. Zooming out, we learn that a lot of people may be responsible for what happened to FTX and that the losses, especially in a big alleged financial fraud scheme, can reverberate widely. Fourteen years into the crypto experiment, we survey the damage and the successes, and ask what we can learn from the disaster that Sam Bankman-Fried left in his wake. For transcripts of this series, please visit here.
Excellent so far, hope there's more episodes.
I really liked the podcast. being a 40-something, I remember the 2008 crisis cited in episode 4... Well, the author is true: the names have changed, but the whole pictures is the same. I know the why ( the infamous FOMO effect), but I do not really understand the HOW. how is it possible for professional investors, institutions, public figures to be repeatedly cought in such delusions, leading normal people to ruin because they followed those unaware windbags? 😐 Good job to Silverman and its crew🙂
My god, O'Leary is just a shameless liar whose wealth is built on bullshit and opportunistic depravity. He tries to cover it up with technical-sounding gibberish and malapropisms--e.g., "invest" when he means "gamble" and "asset class" when he means "casino". However, the real blame rests with a society that not only fails to hold such charlatans to account, but also actually WORSHIPS them while systematically producing more idiots for them to exploit.
@10:52: There's the sleight of hand. Crypto is marketed as a currency, but when things go awry, its defenders talk about it as a speculative asset. The follow-up questions to that duplicity should be: (1) If it's just a speculative asset, why did you endorse it as a currency, which indicates it's a HEDGE against volatility in equity markets? (2) If it's a speculative equity asset, equity in what? Cryptocurrency is distinct from holding equity either in the mint or the market for that crypto. So equity in what? If it's just a product, then there should be a value in use, but there isn't. So it's clearly just an arbitrary, useless, imaginary collectible! How could he POSSIBLY claim there's such a thing as due diligence on what are essentially commoditized NFTs?!?! This guy is a charlatan who preys on imbeciles, and there are LOADS of those. The guest who lost money claimed that he trusted "all the experts" and that "all the experts" praised FTX. Bullshit. He listened to cele