Not Just FTX: One Skeptic’s Take on Why Crypto Is a Scam - Ep. 446
James Block, crypto skeptic and author of the Dirty Bubble Media newsletter, rose to prominence with a timely post predicting FTX’s insolvency. The blogger, a doctor by day, explains why he sees crypto as an unregulated morass of would-be securities and outright “Ponzi schemes.” From an early interest in Tether to connecting the dots on Celsius, Block explains why he does what he does and why almost all of crypto is just “regulatory arbitrage.”
Show highlights:
how James got into crypto and why he started writing about the space
why James chose "Dirty Bubble Media" for the name of his publication
the problems with the legitimacy of crypto projects
the reasons to be bearish on Coinbase
why the question of whether Bitcoin has intrinsic value is highly subjective
whether every token in crypto is a scam and whether regulations will hit stablecoin issuers hard
how FTX used tokens to create fictitious value worth billions of dollars
why Celsius and FTX were closely linked, and the difference between both cases
ties James found between FTX's European subsidiary and a company doing binary options, an industry characterized by fraud
how he believes financial fraud is similar throughout history — it doesn't repeat, but it rhymes
James’s concerns around Signature Bank and its "questionable tactics"
why Genesis and DCG got into trouble and how James thinks the situation will likely play out
whether exchange tokens are securities and why he believes they have very little value
why he says BNB resembles OneCoin's pyramid scheme
James's contrarian take on the Avi Eisenberg case
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Links
Guests:
James Block:
Twitter
Substack
FTX:
Dirty Bubble Media:
Is Alameda Research Insolvent?
FTX'ed: The Tangled Ties Of Celsius Network and Sam Bankman-Fried
FTX's European subsidiary was built on top of a binary options scam
A forgotten banking scandal suggests FTX is the tip of the crypto iceberg
DCG
Dirty Bubble Media: Digital Currency Grift
Unchained: SEC Charges Gemini and Genesis With Sale of Unregistered Securities
Binance
Dirty Bubble Media: The Binance Scam Chain
Signature
Bloomberg: Binance Says Signature Sets Transaction Minimum Amid Pullback
Mango Markets
The Ballad of Risk-Free Avi - Dirty Bubble Media
Unchained:
Mango Markets Exploiter Arrested on Market Manipulation Charges
Solana’s Mango Markets Sees $100M Drained in DeFi Exploit
Celsius
Dirty Bubble Media: Anatomy of a (fake) Market
Unchained: NYAG Sues Celsius’s Alex Mashinsky for Defrauding Investors
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Understanding the Collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's Crypto Empire
The collapse of the Sam Bankman-Fried empire is gigantic, sprawling and fast moving. While details are still coming out, it already ranks among the most prominent corporate disasters of all time and has left the entire crypto community reeling. To better understand the role that FTX played in the industry and how the exchange started to unravel, we speak with two guests on this episode. First, we have Evgeny Gaevoy, the founder and CEO of the crypto market-making firm Wintermute, to explain how he used the FTX platform and how he understood its relationship with SBF's trading firm, Alameda Research. Then we speak with independent researcher James Block, author of the Dirty Bubble Media newsletter, and one of the first observers to blow the whistle on the FTX disaster.
Stay tuned. On Friday, we'll have a special follow-up interview with Bloomberg Opinion's Matt Levine, who also appeared with Sam Bankman-Fried on the now-infamous “yield farming” episode of Odd Lots in April 2022.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
EP 41 - Bonus Episode: Mike Burgersburg, Twitter Poster Who Helped Discover FTX’s Issues, Breaks Down How It All Happened
In a special bonus episode crypto writer and analyst, Mike Burgersburg joins to help explain what Binance buying FTX would mean, explains the Celsius scam, and other shady FTX deals, plus how this differs from other crypto. He also gets into his own writing on it, how such a big con was missed by so many, and what happens when you try to talk about it on social media.
Show Notes:
https://dirtybubblemedia.substack.com/
https://dirtybubblemedia.substack.com/p/is-alameda-research-insolvent
https://dirtybubblemedia.substack.com/p/ftxed-the-tangled-ties-of-celsius
Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky
Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir
Executive Producer: Josh Machiz
Music: Griff Lawson
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About the Show
A Saturday morning podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett (Partner and Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures) covering the tech news with his friends and other people with industry expertise.
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member.
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