Welcome back everyone. I am Caspian Sea and I'm joined
as usual by my partner in crime mr.
Bennett Tomlin Howard you. Today I'm doing well.
How are you kiss? I'm doing pretty good today.
We're here to discuss. Lawsuit against Celsius by a
former Trader who is employed by them.
So this is Chief. I Incorporated versus Celsius
Network. The plaintiff is chi Phi and the
defendant is Celsius Network. First of all, I want to start
this out by saying, even from someone who is not a lawyer, the
the lawsuit is so silly that it's both egregious and crazy
and believable, but also insane. So I want to start this out.
Letting everybody know that this this lawsuit itself starts out
as a handshake deal between two parties.
Look, I don't know anything about business.
I don't know anything about lawsuits.
We aren't lawyers. But as much as I don't know
about law or business. Here's what I'll say you're
doing a billion-dollar deal with a company, don't you a handshake
deal? It's pretty much that simple.
Get it into a contract, a contract for a 10,000 dollar
deal. Why wouldn't you contractual
eyes? A billion-dollar deal?
I don't know, and I'm sure that I couldn't tell you the answer
to that. That in regards to this but this
lawsuit is far outside the scope of that so Bennett tillison,
talk to us about like all the Ridiculousness of what this
lawsuit fully presents. Well I'm not going to get into
all of it just in this initial intro but you're right.
This whole thing is just layers of absurdity piled on top of
each other. Like you mentioned, it was a
handshake deal with they were managing hundreds of millions of
dollars of funds which is unfortunately not unheard of in
crypto as we discussed in episode.
Ed's one, two, and three with bitfenix and tether giving about
a little over a billion dollars actually to crypto Capital core
without ever signing a contract of any sort.
So it's certainly not unheard of but it's also definitely not a
best practice and so Jason Stone at zero X underscore be one on
Twitter started. A cryptocurrency company called
Chi Phi, which was handling, is taking a little bit of some
other stuff like that until machine ski somehow became aware
of them and decided to bring them into the fold to help
manage cells. Is defy activities for them.
There's a lot of different details and allegations in the
suit and we'll get into more of them throughout this episode.
But this Arrangement was weird from the start Celsius set up
this at 0, XB 1 address and started transferring hundreds of
millions of dollars of customer funds in.
Then they would have Jason. Basically, use a VPN to remotely
access the computer that the keys were stored on from which
he would then make the transactions, he was supposed to
be paid. Paid a portion of the profits,
he learned in doing these activities.
And was also apparently, told by Celsius that he didn't need to
worry about hedging because they were taking care of all of the
hedging on their side. Listen, I'm not a traitor.
There's a lot of things we aren't.
We're just going to list all the things we aren't on this episode
and Traders among them. I'm not an expert on hedging
strategies but like, he complains at one point in this
lawsuit that they had not sufficiently hedged for the
potential impermanent loss. He withdrew all of his funds
from the illiquid shit coins that he had been healed farming.
There's a lot of this that is really, really weird like the
fact that he could only use these wallets remotely had to go
into Celsius to do it that he believed they had some team
hedging at all. Now I specifically asked you a
question. This is point number if I'm
correct number 39 on this lawsuit, this is the first time
I found myself a little bit confused.
It says at all times. This maintain complete control
over the oxb. One account.
Indeed. For most of the time that stone
worked with Celsius, he could only access the oxb.
One account by using a VPN to log into a computer controlled
by Celsius that was already logged into the oxb.
One account. Now, I understand what that
means in terms of remote access that part, I totally understand
why is he having to use a VPN to login under remote access just
to make It safe and secure, so that his computer wherever he's
at, which is not close to where this physical computer is at has
a safe Network tunnel to transmit packets from his
location. To Celsius is Network where
they've got more control over the security implementation and
stuff. So as far as we know, he's
accessing this, these hundreds of millions of dollars that have
been granted to him by Celsius via a laptop in a coffee shop.
For all we know is that right? Oh yeah, he could theoretically
be using a laptop but I I think that this computer and Celsius
is and is probably as part of their corporate Network who
cares. Yeah.
And that's it feels weird. It's a very strange way to be
handling, hundreds of millions of dollars of customer funds and
like this is the other weird part is like in the lawsuit he
complains that Celsius told him they were using these hedging
strategies and stuff but like if Celsius had a team of like
quants and Traders who are capable of hedging against all
of the impermanent loss in the other things, well he's healed
farming, these shit coin firms, they wouldn't need him.
Like if they had the people who are capable of doing this kind
of advanced hedging strategies, they never would have had to
brought him in. And like even the part like
we're talking about this weird private access to the computer
that was true up until Celsius got hacked via DNS attack and
then at that point they just gave him the private keys, they
just shared the keys with Jason. So like that's honestly even
worse to me than like Celsius, making him login and being able
to have some control over the computer.
It's happening again, is they just gave this guy before?
Or there was a signed agreement. As far as I can tell the private
keys to a wallet there, depositing hundreds of millions
of dollars of customer funds into.
That's insane. Okay, so hold on, hold on.
Wow Bennett. I'm suddenly realizing how far
outside the scope of not just normal Finance, but just just
reality we are right now. And I want to, I want to slow us
down here for a second and point our listeners to a couple
things, one in episode 26, we talked about defy and lending
platforms that Utilizing defy like Celsius.
We also mentioned next own block by block by has been in trouble.
Nexo says, they're not in trouble, but at least two out of
three of the companies that we mentioned in that episode have
talked about how they are now in trouble in episode, I believe
79. We talked to Mike, Burgers Berg,
who was one of the people who was talking about how systemic,
and scary Celsius is risks were as a lending platform.
So for anyone that needs Catch up on the deeper tidbits of this
doesn't understand what even Celsius.
Network is urge you to listen to those episodes, they're worth
listening to. Obviously I have a bias there,
but I think we need to quickly just go over.
What Celsius network was promising to customers.
And what this gentleman, Jason Stone and Chi Phi or whatever
was doing what even was this that was happening and why is it
Into all the yields that were being promised during defy
summer. So Celsius promised to pay their
customers a yield if they deposited their cryptocurrencies
in there, right? Nominally as a cryptocurrency
lending platform, this yield was supposed to be generated by
servicing. Other people who wanted to
borrow cryptocurrencies. Right borrowing and lending,
they make two sides of the thing.
Everyone's happy, but that wasn't enough interest in
borrowing, cryptocurrencies, in order to pay the rates that
Celsius wanted to pay to attract more customers and So just I'm
going to read directly from the lawsuit here because it's
stunning in 2020 Stone. Spoke with machine ski and other
managers of Celsius. Numerous times to discuss the
possibility of Celsius. Using Keefe has expertise to
deploy Advanced strategies to make money on its customer
deposits that summer plaintiff and Celsius cut a handshake
deal. Where plaintiff would manage
billions of dollars in customer crypto deposits in return for a
share of the profits generated from those crypto deposits.
It continues on point 38 honor around, August 1920, 20 without
a formal agreement. In place Celsius began
transferring hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto
assets to Stone and his team Celsius, created a new etherium
wallet address referred to as the 0xb one account and
transferred. Nearly all the assets Stone was
to deploy into that address Celsius wanted to pay higher
yields than their lending and borrowing business could
maintain. So they brought on this.
Random guy who had done a little bit in cryptocurrency before to
effectively, take their customer deposits and deposit them into
these yield firms. As you mentioned, summer of
defy, that world doing these wild dilutive token, economics,
where they would print a whole bunch of new tokens.
Give them out the beginning, and if you got in early and sold
quick enough, there was a period where people were making a lot
of money but like fundamentally yield farming, strategies are
not a value creation or value accrual mechanism, right?
It's dilution of the Can supply. It's it's it's Ponzi nameks.
There we go. There we fucking go to Ponzi
scheme. Let's not call it ponds and
Amex, please. It's not Panza, not mix.
It's a fucking Ponzi scheme. I'm so tired of this bullshit
dude. And at 0x At 0xb went Jason
Stone. The Twitter account was a
massive promoter of what I have publicly called a Ponzi scheme
before. Olympus Dow.
And so yeah, it's hilarious to read this lawsuit, where he
repeatedly, accuses Celsius network of being a Ponzi.
Well, he was actively using customer deposits from Celsius
to invest in ponzi's. It's it's absurd.
It's bad satire it's I made a handshake deal to do.
What sounds Illegal for this? What looks like a criminal
Enterprise and now, they're not paying me.
So I'm going to sue them in New York state.
It's I don't know what it is. Yeah.
And to explain why Bennett feel so frustrated here.
Because I think I want to lay this down in the most laymen
above layman terms, is if your party to the idea of a Ponzi
scheme or obvious, fraud scam, something like that and you're
like, man, I made this Deal. And we were making money off
this Broad in this scam and I made this deal with this other
party about the money we were making on this fraud in this
scam and then that other party didn't pay me.
I it's kind of like calling the cops to be like hey my drug
dealer. Didn't give me good drugs and
it's like oh do you think this is going to end well for you
like do you think the cops are going to come and be like oh we
totally understand. You got ripped off for those
drugs, you were attempting to illegally by like, no.
Like nobody's gonna have any He or sorrow for you and your
circumstance. Now again, I don't know the
rules and regulations of this civil lawsuit and what's going
to be presented by the end of all this, who knows?
But what I do see is basically a guy who's working in and
supporting a bunch of Ponzi schemes.
I mean, let's call it what it is and then getting mad.
When the company that's providing him, the funds to
support those Ponzi schemes. Doesn't necessarily pay out the
promise Yield that they suggested.
So, like, scammers getting scammed.
I don't know boo-fucking-hoo, as far as I'm concerned.
But you've done a deeper dive into some of the other
interesting aspects of this. So, so let's talk about some of
these like nft. Let's talk about the nf tease.
This isn't one of the most important details in the lawsuit
but it is one of the most intriguing to me.
So right before he told Celsius that he was resigning, there's a
couple of really weird thing. Is that happen first?
He says, in this is like Point ninety in the lawsuit, I think.
Sorry, 89 he says that he had gotten pre-approval to buy a
bunch of n FTS as part of his profit-sharing agreement.
And like, if you look on the blockchain on March 6th, which
is three days before he gave notice on March 9th, you see a
ton of NF T's go out of the 0xb one wallet and go go to the 0 x
50 DD wallet and will link a link this on the website and
stuff for people who want to actually see these.
And a lot of benefit he's suddenly go out from this
account. He was controlling to Celsius to
this other one. He controls supposedly as part
of his profit-sharing agreement, which he claims Celsius isn't
honoring. So I guess those n FTS were
insufficient for his share of the profits.
But right, after this and point ninety one, he makes a really
interesting point which is after Stone left Celsius.
Fi Celsius maintain access and control of the 0xb one wallet
Celsius, CEO, Alex Mission, ski use that control for his own
personal benefit and one example Celsius is CEO transferred
valuable and FTS from the 0xb one account to his wife's
wallet. I was a cryptically tweeting
about this yesterday before we recorded this because I think I
figured out if this allegation is true, which while it it might
be, you can easily find transactions that go to Known
one of Chrissy's wallets, but none of these NF teas are
particularly valuable. There's one from Badger Dow
where which Celsius lost a bunch of money and there's another
Badger and then there's some like, weird crown with a unicorn
on it. None of those are particularly
valuable all of them are flagged as spam on ether, scan and so I
am incredibly dubious that that would be the valuable NF teas
that are being discussed in this, but a few days after Jason
gave his notice the zero. B1 wallet starts acquiring a
bunch of NF teas, and then transferring them to a wallet
that has since never been used and this is the 0 x 3 72, 84 and
it received five people and FTS many of them, much more valuable
three that they paid about 200,000 for another one.
They paid like 120,000 for sorry.
For they paid like 200,000 a piece for and when they paid
like 100,000 for to copy. He's of Into The Ether, one of a
bowl with shit all around it. Another one of like an infected
thing and so get you Pikachu, infected Pikachu.
Yes, in fact it Pikachu I want to make sure transcon lovers
hate this shit because yeah, fuck these fuck these people.
This section of the podcast is probably better on our YouTube
channel dinner then on our podcast feeds.
But yeah, so these five people in ft's were transferred from 0
XB 1 to this other wallet that is scents.
Never been used. And so, my guess is, if that
allegation is true, those five people and FTS are the ones that
are being discussed there. Yeah.
And I want to just I, I know this is not necessarily like
Finance related or or defy related or or anything in terms
of, to the point of them getting in trouble.
But what I do want to say is that Alex machine ski and his
wife Chrissy Mission ski. I have been very, very, very,
very active on social media in general and And about a month
ago, Alex disappeared. When Celsius finally collapsed
Alex machine ski vanished from twitter.com and now Chris
emissions. She is kind of holding the torch
and saying it's all Fudd, you know, just build, who knows what
she does. But cool.
Meanwhile Newt Goldstein the real name of the the chief chief
technology officer or Chief Financial Officer.
I think it's Chief Financial Officer of See it.
He is also stop tweeting completely and entirely.
So these people who were very, very active on social media,
completely disappeared. And now I understand if you're
in media, I understand if you, for instance, run a podcast or
have a YouTube channel, why you need to maintain a very active
presence on social media? I understand why someone like
rowing, like Brian Cohen. The CEO of chewy and GameStop
and a host of other companies why he's acting.
Active to a degree on Twitter and stuff like that.
He also is vague, right? He's also not implicating
himself in like fraud. He's just saying stupid stupid,
funny things, or whatever. Like, I think these people have
become targets. Not just of regulators and law
enforcement and now everyone who they owe money to, but they've
become targets of ridicule on social media because people like
Alex and schinsky and Do Kwan And suzu.
And Kyle Davies are all gone. Now, right?
These are bankrupt, entities, and people.
And these were the same people who were telling everyone have
fun staying poor. These are the same people
saying, unbanked yourself. These are the same people
telling you that this 17 percent yield on us DT or sell token was
absolutely for real. And now they're gone and I think
it just you know what it says To me.
They spoke to a fucking lawyer is what it says to me.
Not much else. Probably lots of them.
Yeah, well and it's funny that you mention the cell token
because that was another fun allegation in this lawsuit that
named names. And I want to point out before
you get started. Here about sell token, we you
and I have repeatedly on Twitter, discussed how cell
token like reflects Celsius Network and people involved with
Celsius or gain getting yield from Celsius or whatever would
To us and say, Celsius token is in no way related to her Celsius
Network, really? Like it's it doesn't even if it
goes to zero wouldn't matter for Celsius Network.
This lawsuit says otherwise so go ahead and now please go into
that. Yeah and so it specifically
alleges and name names. It says that Connor, Nolan head
of coin deployment at Celsius. Told stone that Celsius had used
4,500 Bitcoin with a value of about 90 million dollars to
purchase. Purchase the Celsius token on
the open market between February of 2020 and November of twenty
20 in order to inflate the price.
Yeah, so let's just look at what the price did during that
period. It went from 17 cents all the
way up to, like two dollars. So that's, that's a nice, little
10 bagger. The purpose of this was
supposedly twofold one. Since you got a higher interest
rate, if you took your payment in Celsius token by increasing
the value of the cell, Is token. They limited how much they had
to give out to customers. The other part is Chrissy, Alex,
and the rest of the Celsius team, have a lot of Celsius
token and Dirty Bubble. Media, who you mentioned we've
had on before has done some work in trying to document alleged
sales of Celsius, token by Alex and Chrissy and so, by
increasing the value of Celsius token, they were personally
enriching themselves and making it easier for them to exit their
position and profit from this. And like, again, this is a
lawsuit, these are allegations. But that one, if it's true is
just using customer deposits to pump your own token so that you
can exit is bad. It's it's fraud, it's morally
abhorrent. It's proof that our Regulators
have been overly inactive. It's a negative mark on anyone
who's been defending Celsius over the last couple of years,
Adam back regardless. They also want to state that I
mentioned to you. That as I was looking through
this lawsuit, it truly sounds to me like there's a lot of
commingling going on between this Chi, Phi, entity and
Celsius Network, and like there's it's all the same money
guys. It's all the same money, who
cares? I need people to understand that
isn't how business works. That isn't how business works.
You don't just co-mingle funds, I wouldn't just go.
Hey, so about cast coin and crypto critics cornered out.
Ow. I know all the funds are over
there. I just spun up a new entity
called cast, coined a bow. So it's a combination of kind of
both. Maybe we can just combine all
the funds and I can kind of control them.
That isn't how business works. It's not how business Works to
any sister likes it though. Oh, Danny says to loves
everything that's a scam. So to see food they all these,
these guys all love everything that's a scam.
If they long it you should watch the fuck out.
These people are scammers. I like I think What's becoming a
parent with all of this is our previous episode, right?
The our contagion episode where it's all of these Bad actors are
trying to scam these other Bad actors and there's a movie
called Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. It's from 1988, it's pretty
silly, pretty stupid and it stars, Steve Martin and Michael
Caine and their to scammers who are trying to out scam.
One another and in the end the one Woman.
They're trying to scam ends up scamming both of them and I
can't help. But think of that movie, I can't
help but think of that in this sting and be like, oh, so
scammer, one thinks they can scam scammer to scammer.
Two things they can scam scammer 1, 2, & 3 & 1 2, & 3.
Like everyone is scamming everybody.
And at the end, someone is getting a big Big W.
Like I don't know who yet, I suspect s BF + CZ.
Aren't doing too shabby right now, but all of this makes me
think that none of these people have the customers intention.
All of web three is spun. Is this Big W for for the people
for retail for all of us? Like it's a retail win?
I was, you know what I was doing?
As I was going through FTX officials YouTube the other day
and I was watching their podcast that they do with their head of
trading and she's saying like yeah I think a lot of the
trading that we Do is against retail and you're just like, I
hope that's not true. I hope that retail is not
heavily invested in this FTX. Is you to Burrell amida's fft
xft ex-official. I mean, this was the Alameda, it
was behind research had. Right.
Right.
No, it was Caroline. Carol, wait, because Ryan's
Caroline Ellison. It was Caroline Ellison.
Head of trading it at Alameda research on the FTX official
website, actually, ex-official pod.
Gasps talking about defy summer talking about how like yeah I
think a lot of these trades were against it was so like she
starts it off saying like, huh? Like I went into it, thinking
like this is all so stupid, such a dumb scam, like first were
farming comp, then we're farming, whatever, like it all
seemed, so Dominus game and you're like yeah, it is a
fucking scam. Like, I don't know man, the
whole thing has been very off-putting, but I think that
what this lawsuit gives to me and hopefully, I think you're in
the same campus me. Is that we're seeing the full?
This is the full collapse. Like, I don't know how far it
goes. I don't suspect.
I'm not saying Bitcoin 20. I'm not saying etherium 20,
we're not being insane. I'm saying, we're seeing the
scammers. The yield Farmers.
The lenders, the exchanges, everyone's turning against each
other because there is no yield. There's no fucking yield guys,
it's clear to me. This is this is the end game
right here, go to your local government, seek out a core.
Order against somebody in defy. I'm so happy.
This is where it ends is in a government structured court of
law because of course, it does well and he separated from
Celsius in April of 2021 and has been trying to get paid since
and launch this lawsuit after they shut down withdrawals and
stuff. Because he's like oh they're
really not going to be able to pay.
Now better make sure I make my claim public since the
documentation for it is going to be lacking.
When the bankruptcy lawyers get in there.
There's not gonna be a lot of paperwork that proves I was
doing what I say I was doing and so I better get this on a record
somewhere is really what it kind of feels like to me.
And you're right that like cryptocurrency industry is
deeply and she was--. And all of these entities are
tied together in these absurd ways and Via these lending
agreements. Actually, speaking about lending
agreements is another part of this lawsuit, which I think is
going to end up overlooked by a lot of people that I thought was
quite important. So Celsius ended up with a
pretty Massive hole in their books because they were doing
very shoddy accounting. They logged the liabilities that
they were going to 0 customers who wanted to get paid interest
in dollars and then crypto prices went up and they forgot
to mark to Market and they had been giving out a bunch of those
crypto assets to this one guy to send into random yield farms.
And so, then when people tried to withdraw Celsius, had to go
back and buy more aetherium and stuff on the Open Market at a
higher price than their customers deposited.
That in order to function during this period to make this work
Celsius started taking loans while they were taking loans
before this to several of these appear to be based on point
eighty in the lawsuit sell token.
Collateralized loans where lenders agreed to give out loans
against Celsius token to Celsius.
So that Celsius could cover a hole in their books caused by
their own flawed accounting. Now, this wasn't the only lonely
ended up taking because the lawsuit So claims that the loan
that Celsius ended up getting from tether was negotiated
effectively as like a bailout as together, trying to find a way
to keep Celsius solvent. You may remember tether being
the lead investor in Celsius is series a equity round, which is
very similar to allegations that came out around December 2020.
About Babel Finance in China is that they had started to
leverage, their customer deposits in order to make more
money that They ended up in a position where they were over
committed and didn't have the liquidity to handle more
withdrawals and so they were able to negotiate a bailout from
tether under special loan terms that gave them enough time to be
able to get through that. Since then, now, more recent
times Babble has also had to shut off withdrawals.
As has Celsius this other one that got this loan from tether.
And so the behaviors of Babel, allegedly and Celsius allegedly
and the involvement of tether in both.
In allegedly, very similar manners is just endlessly.
Fascinating to me, and really points to kind of the same kind
of thing. You're talking about.
This was deeply interested Celsius is a lending platform
and like lenders were taking their native token to land them
more think. So they could keep functioning
and it's just a lot of critics talk about how market cap and
stuff and a lot of the money values in crypto aren't actually
what they seem The liquidity isn't really there.
In the numbers are artificially inflated and this is an example
of how dangerous artificially inflated numbers become when
people don't pause and wonder what if this is artificially
inflated. What if the liquidity leaves?
What if the confidence is shaken?
And so then lenders extend loans against cell token and sell
token starts to collapse. In Celsius starts to collapse
and three arrows, Capital runs out a liquidity because they
decided to make a levered play into a staked ether.
Derivative It's absurd, and it's stupid.
And when it starts to go, you're right.
It can kind of just unwind all at once and start to collapse,
hopefully. Hopefully clearing out a lot of
the assholes, huh. There's always more though.
It's just such a magnificently stupid point and beautiful
point. I want to say but such a stupid
point in that I want people to fully comprehend.
What Bennett is expressing here and we have gone over this
before. For the leverage isn't even
fully expressed when you say like Leverage.
When people talk about leverage, they talk about being able to
get to to 100x leverage on a purchase of a dumb token or
whatever at bit Max right like this.
This is what people talk about when they talk about leverage.
When we talk about leverage, we're not just talking about
leverage, we're talking about the idea that you're both
investing in a company and then like lending them money at the
same time and then getting interest payments back.
But you have equity in the company that you're getting
interest payments back from like, it's all a Confluence of
bullshit, and in, and it's gross, it's gross in, this is
always gross. It's very gross and finance.
Because what we have here is a bunch of companies that are
propping each other up repeatedly.
And like you said, the unwind isn't just like a gentle unwind
of like a bunch of gross assets and and that has its own issues
and murkiness and problems. But this is a quick slick fast,
ridiculous unwind where everything depends on everything
else. So as soon as three AC3 sorry
three arrows Capital goes under Celsius is fucked and then
Voyager is fucked and then after he acts is lending billions of
dollars out to everybody. And so CZ is saying all we can
lend out money and and Justin son is now saying he can lend
out billions of dollars to everyone.
Okay. I guess I don't know.
I guess we'll find out I guess. Find out if these people can
actually do it because they're saying it because they probably
are going to need to at least take on hundreds of millions of
dollars to sustain the collapsing system, much like the
US government. Did in 08, they're going to try
to do it privately and without taxpayer support and I wish them
luck. Good luck, guys.
JPMorgan in the 1920s. Right, sure.
Well, it's exactly what you're saying.
And then like, even the stable Queens themselves often act as
kind of a tie Type of Leverage, right?
Like to Heather is partially backed by secured loans which
are collateralized by Bitcoin. They extend to other denominated
loans so that entities like Celsius and EXO can lend tethers
out so they can be used to purchase more cryptocurrencies.
Tether itself is backed by Bitcoin and then other stable
coins like die are entirely or credit based model where they're
almost entirely used for that kind of Levering up, right?
You deposit your ether so you can get dice, you can buy more
ether so you can deposit it and get more died in lever up that
way. And so there's many Places where
that Leverage is embedded and you think with something like
diets public, you've got time to get your collateral in but then
sometimes you don't like we saw with Celsius and we talked about
this a little bit. When Dirty Bubble media was on
like their died position ended up in danger because they're
other loans were being actively liquidated.
And they were having trouble. Getting enough liquidity to buy
enough died to pay down the loan and avoid that position from
getting liquidated. And so even loans that scene
secure seem adequately, collateralized can very quickly
become Inadequately collateralized and unsafe.
Especially if there's other people in the space who were
extending loans against similar assets that have liquidation
points at a similar level one, liquidates and pushes below the
liquidation point of another and you start to see the cascading
liquidations and so fundamentally.
But I hope this massive leverage washout in crypto does is it
eliminates a lot of the actors who have been using that really
irresponsibly and hopefully starts to shift Culture away
from one. That is so predisposed towards
focusing just on trying to eke out every bit of manufactured
money from the retail investors who you're trying to attract on
your podcast right? Like Like, it's a bad world
where FTX brings on the head Trader of FTX CEOs, trading firm
and they go, yeah, we go against retail.
We want to take money from retail and like, every clear, I
don't think she even fully comprehended what she was saying
when she said that. Like the guy was just saying
like who's doing this with you guys and she's like I'm not sure
but I think it's like retail and you're just like so you're just
scalping retail you're just fucking scalping retail.
It's what SPF said on odd. Lots right?
We put the money. The Backs everyone else follows
in, in puts their money in the box and then we take out our
money and most of their money too, right.
They tell you what they're doing, they're telling you
exactly what they want to do to exploit you.
And you can see that these are not honest, actors, these are
not good actor. So that's what the overwhelming
amount of evidence about cryptocurrency actors as shown.
That's not to say there aren't good actors.
That's not to say that aren't good people in cryptocurrency
just that there's so many of these entities that are so
absolutely mercenary and so absolutely focus on eking out
every Possible. That is outside.
The scope of cryptocurrency. I want to be clear, this is a
finance issue. This is a finance issue.
I repeated over and over again.
So people understand we aren't just strictly focused on this.
We are focused on finance. This is not like this is a
Traders, get blown up to, but this is, this is a greed, this
is a greed issue. This is a Never Enough issue.
This is this is outside. The scope far outside the scope
of cryptocurrency and we understand that.
And we're not going to deny that but arm In point that we've been
focused on for all of this time has been cryptocurrency.
So I think it's like we know that this this exists outside of
cryptocurrency, we know that Banks aren't the best entities
in the world. You know, we know, we know,
Social Security is weird and like, we understand all of that.
We're not denying that. It's about where you can make
dramatic change right now. So I appreciate everybody saying
that there are problems outside the scope of cryptocurrency and
and Contagion in regard to Celsius and these lending
platforms and tether. You're right, we're not denying
that, but yeah, I am so happy to see the FDIC moving against
Voyager or at least investigating them.
I don't want to say moving against but investigating
Voyager. We have these bankruptcies,
which is going to entail government looking into these
companies and deciding what the hell is going on.
And whether it's okay, I'm actually more optimistic now
than I was two or three. Years ago with the state of
cryptocurrency. I'm not, I don't know how I
honestly don't know how you couldn't be like seeing these
Bad actors. Not just blow themselves up, but
get blown up by Regulators. Get taken down by Regulators,
get called out, get investigated.
I am far more optimistic now than I have been pretty much
ever covering the space and we've been here for almost five
years now. Right?
There's four or five years. I mean, sure, we've talked a
little It recently about how we've seen a little bit more law
enforcement regulator action which is a promising development
and like I said earlier in this I hope this kind of wash out
removes some of the Bad actors in some of the worst actors.
And I think this has drawn a spotlight that it'll make it
harder for crypto to get away with some of the things it's
done in the past. But I think also in the broader
context, the US regulatory state is actively being gutted by the
Supreme Court was a good chance that Congress will end up
either. So split that nothing will ever
pass or Republican. Old with an anti regulatory Bent
by the beginning of 2023 and there is still a non zero
percent chance. We end up with someone like
Trump back in the Oval Office in 2025 with an active goal of
dismantling. The regulatory state in putting
in people who won't regulate that is, not to mention that
crypto has done a much better job now than it has at any point
in the past of buying influence and getting into positions where
there are powerful people advocating for cryptocurrency
and effectively owned by the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
And so, yes, right now in the past few months, we've had
several positive developments has started to give me hope
Regulators seeming to become more active, the Department of
Justice bringing down indictments, but the larger Meta
Picture still seems to me to suggest that things are about to
become worse. Not better.
When it comes to us covering cryptocurrency in the scams.
Yeah, I tried to end it on a good note and Bennett just
fucking destroyed that. So there you go everybody.
Now you understand, then it hates anything.
That is good and optimistic that is the It is, it's not just me.
It is largely been as fault on that note.
I think we're going to call that in episode.
And guys, I am deeply down, I fully invested in Celsius and
that was, that was all of crypto critics Corners, reserves, that
was how I was going to pay our producer and deal with
everything. So if y'all can support us by
donating, all of your cell token to the burn address.
Please don't listen to me, hit the like And subscribe button.
It's far easier than anything else.
I'm saying or suggesting. Thanks for listening everyone
and we'll we'll talk to you. I guess soon.