FTX, every mention
102 scenes, the whole family · ← back to FTX
tap a year for its mentions
every year anyone Ben Gilbert 53David Rosenthal 32Sam Bankman-Fried 9Mario Gabriele 5Packy McCormick 2Anthony Gonzalez 1
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where FTX comes up
10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis) · Acquired
- ▶ 36:27 David Rosenthal So, uh, end of 22, uh, FTX happens, uh, interest rates go up, you know, all the, uh, podcast advertising market, you know, falls off a cliff.
Holiday Special 2022 · Acquired
- ▶ 17:45 Ben Gilbert We actually felt the same way about FTX, which
- ▶ 17:48 Ben Gilbert I mean, you could argue that we did have a part to play in FTX because Sam was on the show last year, but like, there was so much good coverage and good reporting going on, and we're not reporters, and we don't do stuff in real time, blah,…
- ▶ 18:15 Ben Gilbert Like, we don't want to hit people over the head with like, this is just like an FTX where they had this.
- ▶ 18:34 David Rosenthal
- ▶ 20:30 Ben Gilbert Last point on this FTX saga, which again, we're watching it play out in real time.
- ▶ 20:50 Ben Gilbert We wanted to tell the extraordinary story of FTX, which was extraordinary.
- ▶ 21:01 Ben Gilbert I do want to say I'm sorry if the exposure that FTX got from Acquired, and every other publication in the world, but from Acquired caused you to, yeah.
- ▶ 21:09 David Rosenthal We lent our platform to Sam and to FTX, and um, yeah, I do feel bad about that.
- ▶ 21:34 Ben Gilbert So sorry if you were like on the fence on FTX and you were like, I don't know if this thing's legit or not, and then acquired, legitimized that for you.
- ▶ 1:47:29 David Rosenthal I mean, of course, we're thinking back now on the FTX interview when we, when we had Sam on.
Enron · Acquired
- ▶ 0:00 David Rosenthal Obviously the context is we're doing this episode because of FTX.
- ▶ 2:05 Ben Gilbert This story is every bit as crazy as the FTX story that we are all watching play out in real time.
- ▶ 2:45 David Rosenthal I was in New York on the way back from Lisbon, and I had breakfast with Andrew, and we were talking about FTX, of course, and everything going on.
- ▶ 2:52 David Rosenthal And I was like, how can Acquired add to the conversation right now about FTX?
- ▶ 3:07 Ben Gilbert Well, on the FTX note, suffice to say, we will definitely be appending a new intro to that episode.
- ▶ 6:57 David Rosenthal Kurt Eichenwald writes this, and I just thought it was so perfect to frame the Enron story and the FTX story today.
- ▶ 1:26:57 Ben Gilbert Do you know, speaking of FTX, who the other big investor was along with CalPERS?
- ▶ 1:27:11 David Rosenthal Who are also, of course, big investors in FTX, right?
- ▶ 1:45:23 Ben Gilbert So they stand up and exchange, like an exchange you can access through a web browser, much like FTX, but Enron itself is the counterparty to every trade.
- ▶ 1:45:39 David Rosenthal I didn't make the FTX Alameda connection in this.
- ▶ 1:47:41 David Rosenthal I've actually been thinking about this recently, both in the context of FTX and just generally also being a new parent makes you think about some of this stuff.
- ▶ 1:48:08 David Rosenthal And I think it's cases like this, like Enron, like FTX.
- ▶ 1:48:11 David Rosenthal Like, there's no question that SBF, you know, and a lot of the people involved in FTX in Alameda were brilliant.
- ▶ 1:59:48 Ben Gilbert And just to make an FTX comparison here, I mean, lots of the time you get away with poor accounting and, you know, lots of leeway from
- ▶ 2:31:16 Ben Gilbert So what happens is John Ray gets brought in as the chief administrative officer who is currently serving the same role over at FTX.
- ▶ 2:39:48 Ben Gilbert The result of Sarbanes-Oxley being stay private longer, that it's much more likely that fraud now happens in the private market than the public market, and that is basically what we saw with Theranos, with FTX.
- ▶ 2:51:12 David Rosenthal I think we should find a way to buy some FTX equity right now.
- ▶ 3:00:20 David Rosenthal Yeah, Citadel's, or FTX in Alameda, right, before it all went wrong, right, like, uh, but Citadel is a good example.
- ▶ 3:05:11 Ben Gilbert And it's funny, because this was before FTX happened, and we were sort of talking about the fact that a lot of the times, people assume when they have, like, three or four layers of coverage, they're like, well, I'm covered.
- ▶ 3:05:40 Ben Gilbert And so, when you tie everything to this share price, and you tie everything to collateralizing it with your own stock, or in the FTX case, if you collateralize against the FTT token, which is very, very correlated to your company's…
- ▶ 3:06:35 David Rosenthal I've kind of always had this as like a part of my financial philosophy, but then like the whole FTX thing and everything is made me think about it even more.
- ▶ 3:15:58 Ben Gilbert And we're trying to contextualize everything that's going on, specifically with FTX, but in what feels like a lot of increase in fraudulent activity recently.
- ▶ 3:16:08 Ben Gilbert Actually, speaking of FTX, did you know FTX's 50 largest creditors sum to 3.1 billion?
- ▶ 3:16:46 Ben Gilbert FTX is really bad.
- ▶ 3:17:13 David Rosenthal So that's a good reminder for now and for FTX.
- ▶ 3:19:44 David Rosenthal FTX being prime example there.
Amazon.com · Acquired
- ▶ 4:09:21 David Rosenthal God, it just makes me think so much about, like, right now, makes me think about FTX, right?
From NFL to Startup COO to Congressman Regulating Crypto (with Rep. Anthony Gonzalez) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:07:22 David Rosenthal I mean, like FTX being like the obvious one.
- ▶ 1:07:25 Anthony Gonzalez FTX is the best example.
- ▶ 1:07:54 David Rosenthal Like we want that company here.
- ▶ 1:40:55 David Rosenthal Like FTX being based in the Bahamas, like, is not good.
Arena Show Part I: Idea Dinner + YC Continuity · Acquired
- ▶ 25:42 David Rosenthal Not only that, but Coinbase and FTX, they make money whether crypto goes up or down.
- ▶ 26:18 Packy McCormick I think FTX is, I mean, like, there's a lot of comparing FTX and Coinbase because they're right around the same market cap right now.
- ▶ 26:25 Packy McCormick FTX has like, 200 people or something
- ▶ 26:41 Ben Gilbert This is Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of FTX, who Mario wrote a three-part unbelievable series on.
- ▶ 27:01 Ben Gilbert I mean, um, the FTX bear case on Coinbase would be that derivatives are actually a much bigger market than trading direct equities or direct crypto.
- ▶ 27:19 Ben Gilbert And FTX is better poised for the derivatives market than Coinbase is.
- ▶ 27:29 Mario Gabriele I think like FTX is, you know, scary, uh, in, in lots of ways and are so, so efficient as a business, but especially factoring in the NFT play, I think there's like a really nice upside here.
Nvidia: The GPU Company (1993-2006) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:42:06 David Rosenthal If there's a team coming out of like Solana and FTX, or like, let's make up an imaginary example, making some new vision for a class of applications in web three, like they're going to get term sheets from everybody.
SONY (75 years of electronics history in 3 hours) · Acquired
- ▶ 0:07 David Rosenthal We need another FTX soon.
The Browser (with Brendan Eich, Chief Architect of Netscape + Mozilla and CEO of Brave) · Acquired
- ▶ 4:55 Ben Gilbert Uh, we talked with some of Solana and FTX's earlier investors from Race Capital.
Taylor Swift (Acquired’s Version) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:29:30 David Rosenthal We had Sam SPF from FTX on,
FTX with Sam Bankman-Fried & Mario Gabriele (Extended Cut) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:01 Ben Gilbert Today we are telling the story of the crypto trading exchange, FTX, started just two and a half years ago and today worth over twenty five billion dollars.
- ▶ 1:12 Ben Gilbert They're by far the fastest growing crypto exchange.
- ▶ 1:15 Ben Gilbert In the research, I found that they grew an astonishing 10 X by volume in the year 2020.
- ▶ 1:21 Ben Gilbert I went to look if they repeated that unbelievable feat in 2021,
- ▶ 1:25 Ben Gilbert And found out that they actually 10 X just in the first half of 2021.
- ▶ 1:30 David Rosenthal The answer is no, they didn't.
- ▶ 1:31 David Rosenthal They doubled it.
- ▶ 1:34 Ben Gilbert So the pace is accelerating for FTX.
- ▶ 1:36 Ben Gilbert We're still waiting on end of year numbers, but this company is, is just astonishing.
- ▶ 1:41 Ben Gilbert So FTX is now the sponsor of the Miami heat's basketball arena, FTX arena, and you can see their logo on every major league baseball umpires uniform.
- ▶ 1:51 Ben Gilbert You can see Tom Brady and Giselle and FTX commercials.
- ▶ 1:55 Ben Gilbert So what is going on here, and how did they get so big so fast?
- ▶ 2:35 Ben Gilbert Listeners, if you haven't read it yet, Mario did a three-part epic series on FTX over at The Generalist, and I, I think it's safe to say, Mario, you are truly a world expert on this company after writing, I think, 36,000 words.
- ▶ 3:15 Ben Gilbert So before we get in, is it right to say, Mario, do you know, this, is this company only 200 employees, and I think maybe started the year at like a, a few dozen employees?
- ▶ 3:37 Mario Gabriele Um, so they're growing extremely fast, but
- ▶ 6:31 Ben Gilbert Well, it is, uh, it is our pleasure and our privilege to really, uh, get to have you tell the story of FTX today, of Alameda Research, how this whole crazy thing came to be, and, and really help us analyze the, um, the crypto assets…
- ▶ 18:20 Sam Bankman-Fried And one thing which we really try to maintain as a company is that people understand both of those sides.
- ▶ 23:19 Ben Gilbert This all predates FTX.
- ▶ 29:35 Ben Gilbert Okay, so why start FTX?
- ▶ 38:13 Mario Gabriele Like I remember talking to Chris McCann at raise capital and talking through how they thought about investing in FTX seed round as like,
- ▶ 39:52 Mario Gabriele And it's essentially, uh, still sort of the fundamental power behind FTX's engine.
- ▶ 45:43 Ben Gilbert I was reading through, uh, FTX's PitchBook page to look at really, like, these astonishing rounds that have come together, not just because of how fast it's grown in, in valuation and investment raise, but the unbelievable sea of…
- ▶ 46:45 Ben Gilbert Going back to the story here a little bit, so I've got a list in front of me of, that I, I pulled up from PitchBook of the original investors in FTX, and this is a nutso list.
- ▶ 47:14 Ben Gilbert So your fundraise, once you decide, oh, we're starting a company called FTX, and it's an exchange for crypto derivative products.
- ▶ 47:32 Sam Bankman-Fried I think eventually the story that convinced us that FTX would be exciting convinced a lot of people.
- ▶ 52:06 Ben Gilbert And Sam, what were the things you were really intentional about as you realized, okay, we're going to build a company, an enduring institution here, an operating company with FTX?
- ▶ 55:41 Ben Gilbert It is worth noting because you just brought up this in the United States and outside the United States for our half of listeners that are in the US, you'll note that the thing you can use and I can use FTX US is not a derivatives platform.
- ▶ 55:55 Ben Gilbert and it's a very, very simplified version of the complex platform that, um, that y'all have built Sam at FTX.
- ▶ 1:04:05 Ben Gilbert We will come back to some of this in our analysis section, but just to kind of finish out the growth of the company and bring us to today.
- ▶ 1:10:09 Ben Gilbert Well, rather than going through blow by blow over the, the last couple of years from your launch, can you just fast forward us to today and what are some of the, the high level public stats that you can share on FTX as a business right now?
- ▶ 1:11:05 Sam Bankman-Fried We, we have FTX US as well.
- ▶ 1:15:24 Sam Bankman-Fried Like, the biggest things we're thinking about are how do we communicate to people who FTX is in a way which is kind of meaningful and, you know, which will hopefully leave a little bit of a mark, I guess.
- ▶ 1:16:18 Sam Bankman-Fried And when I say people here, I don't just mean, like, you know, potential, like, direct users of FTX the platform.
- ▶ 1:19:28 Ben Gilbert I think a lot of FTX's success to date is because
- ▶ 1:19:59 Ben Gilbert FTX that will enable it to be durably profitable as, as competition pours in.
- ▶ 1:24:19 David Rosenthal It wasn't like there was a, um, you weren't coming from behind against FTX today.
- ▶ 1:25:02 David Rosenthal Is it fair to characterize FTX as a whole as like, you know, you have, you have the exchange business, both spot and, and derivatives as, as the bigger part of it.
- ▶ 1:25:29 David Rosenthal In the long term, there's a lot more that we can, there's a lot more opportunity for FTX to serve, build products and serve here than just beyond that, right?
- ▶ 1:27:40 Mario Gabriele and, you know, find new places for FTX to imbricate itself in users' lives?
- ▶ 1:28:28 Ben Gilbert Well, thinking about sort of the playbook, like, that you've, you've implemented to run FTX.
- ▶ 1:32:04 David Rosenthal That is what FTX and SPF are doing.
- ▶ 1:37:53 Ben Gilbert Okay, well, FTX has a set of resources right now.
- ▶ 1:37:56 Ben Gilbert It has human capital, it has, uh, financial capital, lots of it, and it's got time.
- ▶ 1:40:33 Sam Bankman-Fried I think the plausible C is we just kind of don't really grow, you know, like you kind of look back at us like, you know, in a year and you're like, where is F, or in five years, you know, where is FTX now?
- ▶ 1:40:43 Sam Bankman-Fried And the answer is like, you know, they're like, you know, one of the bigger, but not like the biggest crypto exchange.
- ▶ 1:48:55 Ben Gilbert Is there anywhere, you know, we've got a bunch of smart people out there listening who might want to work at FTX.
- ▶ 1:49:11 Sam Bankman-Fried You can go to ftx.com or ftx.us if you're in the US, um, and I can file a support ticket there.
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