What’s up guys today we have a very exciting podcast with Alex, James and myself. We talk about the FTX scandal, some conspiracies around that. And as well, we talk about our overall trading and the overall market. So stay tuned. And this is super, super good one. And enjoy. Cheers guys.
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James 0:19
What’s up guys, we’re back with another episode of the after hours Podcast. Today we have a huge topic to talk about everyone in like the trading world, crypto world, this has kind of been like the main thing going on. And it’s this whole FTX scandal. So Alex wanted to come on and kind of talk about it a little bit. So yeah,
A Letter of Intent to Buy the Company
Alex 0:36
so I mean, this is some crazy stuff, man. So I know, there’s a lot of videos out there. I know, there’s a lot of people talking about it. But I kind of want to give you guys what happened from a traders perspective and what kind of the reality of the situation is so the way you have to think about as FTX if you want to kind of compare to the real world is like a bank. So it’s like a Bank of America. So you store your money in bank of America, and they give you a certain interest rate. And then what the bank does is they take that money, they lend it out in like a mortgage. And that’s how they make they’re not right. But what FTX was doing is they were taking your money. They were lending it out to a hedge fund, run by FTX CEO calm SBF for short run by SBFs girlfriend. Okay. And that and what they ended up doing is they ended up leveraging that money so they borrowed against, so let’s say they had $10 billion, that they let the hedge fund, the hedge fund borrowed against it 40 billion or whatever they held the numbers we don’t know yet. And then started gambling on random things and pretty much lost all the money. As it’s like they lost all the money. There’s articles coming out every single day that they use customer funds to buy penthouses, in the Bahamas, they use customer funds to, you know, get the naming rights of the FTX Stadium in Miami. And it was basically a big scheme because sure banks do the same thing. They take your money, they lend it out, but they don’t lend it out and you know, try to invest in bankrupt companies. They don’t do it do all this crazy stuff. So the backstory is there was an article that came out I think it was on coin desk. And the article said that FTX and this hedge fund Almeda, Alameda, Alameda whatever, are more related than people think, then what people have to keep in mind is FTX is the number two exchange the number one exchange binance, then came out and said, you know, we have a stake in FTX, we’re just going to sell our stake. We don’t want any part of this. The rumour is that FTX was going behind the scenes to the US government and lobbying them which is basically legally bribing them to create laws and rules that would favour FTX. And not favoured by Nance, right? So they found out that this was also happening and they say, you know, we don’t want any part of some guy that’s trying to cheat us or trying to scam us. So whatever steak we have an FTX because by Nance is an early investor, we’re going to sell it on the open market. Now, if you bring in so much supply into the market, basic economics says if there’s elevated supply and no demand, price goes down. So Alameda the hedge fund that knew this, you know, no, no, no, don’t sell it on the open market will privately buy from you at $22 a coin. And buyers like nah, I’m gonna sell it on the open market, right? I’m gonna sell on the open market guys smart. He knows if he’s tell us on the open market. They’re screwed. Yeah, so that day that that happened FTX had $6 billion in withdrawals, right? Because people are like, Wait, what the hell if the number one cryptocurrency by Nance is selling? Why the hell am I going to keep my money in there. So what ended up happening is the next day by Nance comes out and says FTX reached out to us because they have severe liquidity issues, which means that they cannot fund the deposits.
Alex 3:57
So we’ve decided to send them a non binding Letter of Intent to purchase the company. So all of a sudden, in 24 hours, the number one crypto company was going to buy the number two crypto company for pennies on the dollar. I think the day after that, they came out and said, we looked at the numbers, and there’s no hope for this company. We’re not going to buy it anymore. And then all of a sudden, that’s when hell broke loose. That’s when they halted withdrawals. That’s when they had bank run. And then you find out that this guy SBF that was worth $16 billion yesterday is now worth zero. His $30 billion company FTX is now worth fucking zero. And all these big investors all these big hedge funds lost all their money, and anyone that had money in FTX whether they thought it was safe or not, is all gone. Now. The craziest part about this is now it’s cascading to other companies and other exchanges. Other banks that have had a lot of they’ve had a lot of exposure to FTX. And now because of that they’re also going bankrupt. So as we’re recording this now block five just went fucking bankrupt. I think I saw something else another content resource. Yeah, Genesis going bankrupt. So you we don’t know how crazy the scheme is, and what’s been going on. But the truth of matter is there’s so many conspiracies behind this. I mean, you know, because Cryptos, unregulated, they’re able to leverage the money like crazy in 2008, when, you know, that whole thing happened. That was because the bank’s leveraged so much money that you didn’t know how much risk was in the system. So then they then go regulate. So instead of leveraging $1 to $1,000, they’re only allowed to leverage $1. to like $10, which is so crazy, but whatever, whatever it is. So that’s number one, right? Number one is, all of a sudden, this very ethical, this guy was on Forbes as the next Warren Buffett. He was at all the JP Morgan conferences. He was a major political donor to the Democrats in the midterms that he donated her to. Yeah, yeah. And they said that he was he promised to donate about a billion dollars for the next presidential election. So this guy was clean cuts from what it seemed. And the reality was, they had no money. They were taking customer funds and spending it. And now the question is, what other exchanges next? Because I mean, look, a lot of these crypto exchanges, they make money from fees, okay, let’s say you make a billion dollars from fees, pretty good money. But what ends up happening is a billion is not enough. You take that money, you give it to your sister hedge fund, they store fucking gambling, and Day trading, whatever coins are trading, and then all of a sudden you find out that they lost it all. They lost it all. It’s all gone. So now this opens up the big conspiracy theories, which is where was the SEC, apparently, SBFs girlfriend’s father, was the ex boss of the chairman of the SEC, why isn’t this guy arrested in jail yet? Is it because he donated so much money to the Democrats? You know, who’s next? What’s going on? So I mean, in a perspective of reality, in terms of what’s going on, I mean, I think that’s exactly what the Federal Reserve wants to do. They didn’t want to crash FTX. But they want to slowly get people to realise that all these because what they would do in the past, if interest rates were zero, and customers want to withdraw funds, they didn’t borrow the fucking money, borrow it. Now, when interest rates are fucking 5 6 7 8%, when you borrow the money, you’re fucking you’re on the line for, you know, 10s of millions of dollars a month that they don’t have, you know, so the whole situation is screwed up. I mean, what I was mentioning to James and Harry, what I did is I have coins in the exchange, I just bought this. It’s a ledger, it’s basically a cold storage device. So it takes your money out of these exchanges. So instead of keeping your money in a bank, which is an exchange and earning interest on it, if you keep it on this, you know, little USB stick, keeps in cold storage. And that basically means that you’re stuffing your money under the mattress, you’re burying it in the backyard, so that in case, another bank goes under, and they were using your money to fund their orgies. She’s probably protected, you’ll be protected. So what do you guys think about this whole situation? Like from your perspective, I mean, I’ve tried to give a very brief overview so that people don’t know more, but what do you guys think
People’s Confidence in the Crypto Market
James 8:26
And I think, I just think it’s absolutely crazy. And the problem is now, like, from people I’ve talked to, is people haven’t even less of a confidence in crypto now. I think that people are scared because, you know, I mean, FTX was huge, and I think a lot of people don’t know too huge. And to see someone like that just crater and like the people who have money in there, they’re stuck. I mean, I’ve met a lot of people already, who just, they can’t get their funds, they got nothing. So, you know, I think it just scares the shit out of people. And I think it makes people wonder, like, does crypto need regulation? And the problem is like, that was kind of like the opposite intent of crypto and you know, it’s just sketchy right? Because you see all these celebrities endorsing FTX you got Tom Brady. You got Larry David, you got all these guys endorsing it? And now it just seems like a big scam. So I don’t know man. It’s like it’s it’s just wild. I don’t even honestly I feel like we’re just kind of starting to like you said the cascading effect and we’ll see what kind of happens
Conspiracies About Trading and Trading
Harry 9:23
yeah, to me and like as far as like trading the last time I heard like, a crazy story about like, like brokerage or exchange was like that whole sur trader thing with like, guy gentile so that was the last time I heard something like crazy as far as like conspiracy theory goes. And yeah, I just think that it’s absolutely wild. Like number two exchange, all of a sudden, everything’s gone. And as far as like the house 10 people living together all involved romantically. He’s going on I kept saying, oh, tradings easy. I’m not going to talk about losses. I don’t use stop losses, like right there is like a complete red flag. And she’s like, I’m not gonna go over any trades where I lost a tonne of money. So it’s like all the shit
Alex 10:14
how is this guy not arrested, bro, I felt if I go to the Rolex store and I steal a Rolex, they’re putting me in jail that’s got them Rolex is 10 $20 billion. And the guy is just chillin. I mean, look, I mean, I, there’s definitely a lot of corruption going on in the world. But this is just it’s so mainstream. It’s so in everyone’s face. And the reality is, nothing has been done about it, bro. What the hell?
Harry 10:37
Yeah, well, it’s the same thing. Like, you know, like Epstein. They didn’t have the cameras on or whatever. Now this dude’s just running around in plain sight. And also, like, I also read that, like, Ukraine, like had money in FTX, as well. So like, was the United States Government sending money to Ukraine, Ukraine was putting it in FTX
Alex 10:59
ads, laundering conspiracy theories that Joe Biden is sending billions of dollars a week to Ukraine. Ukraine has a little bit of a stake in FTX. So are they clipping off? 10% Sending off the FTX is sending it back to the Democrats?
Harry 11:14
Exactly.
Alex 11:15
I mean, it’s crazy, bro.
James 11:17
Probably. It probably goes so deep. It probably goes like, I I’m still waiting.
What Happens if a Major Company Gets Scammed Out of Money?
James 11:22
Like, obviously, everybody uses like, major exchanges, like Coinbase and stuff. And like, so far, they’ve done a good job of like, staying out of any issues. But like, imagine if we see like some major company like, because that’s like, the average person’s like exchange that people use is Coinbase. Right? And like, I don’t know, I mean, bitcoins already taken a huge beating every all the all these old coins and stuff, dude, like these things could tank these things could all just crater, and we have no idea. You know, is it’s gonna be weird to see. But I think it’s funny that a lot of these guys now are like begging for regulation in the government after they’ve taken like a massive haircut. But you know, before they were like, all these celebrities, everybody was super happy about crypto and everything. Because just making a ton of money.
Alex 12:05
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, bro, if someone comes to you and says, Hey, we have this company called FTX. I’m going to pay you $10 million a year just to say that we’re the best. I mean, I don’t know about you, robot. But your due diligence at that point, you know, and that’s what happened.
Harry 12:17
Yeah, that’s what happened. Yeah, exactly. And as well,
Alex 12:21
all them , bro. All them everyone. This
Alex 12:24
was Kevin came out though and said he’s like, oh, yeah, it’s still endorsed this guy. You know, if he started another company, and it’s like,
Alex 12:29
you know why bro he has money stuck in there. And he doesn’t he wants to try to save it in whatever way. Yeah,
Harry 12:34
you know? Yeah, that’s cool. He was saying that that was like, he’s like, the number one place I’m not gonna get in trouble is FTX. He was a big believer. And now he’s like, before, he was like, oh, like, we don’t need regulation. We don’t need any regulation. Now. He’s like, Oh, we need regulation. We need regulation. And he was also talking about before the, I don’t know, like he was on CNBC. And he’s like, you know, in order to get out of this recession, one company has to go to zero. And ironically, it ended up being the company that he was marketing the hardest. So it’s kind of funny that you’re not ready to.
James 13:15
Yeah, the reality is this guy like bamboozled like the world, like Alex said he was on Forbes. They’re calling him Warren Buffett. I mean, bro, the
Alex 13:24
one the only fucking thing that compares is Bernie made off the US, the chairman of the NASDAQ, the most recognisable, famous guy that made so much returns NASDAQ, and you think to yourself, I was actually watching a documentary on it the other day. And apparently, they were saying Oh, like, oh, Bernie wasn’t the best, you know, he would make 16% a year and minimum, you know, the returns were crazy. And he had one rule. If you ever would like pull your money out of the fund, you would never be able to get back into the foot. You know what I’m saying? So it scam was really deep. And the the reality is that like, made off was very famous. He was very prestigious. He was the chairman of the nets as the chairman of the NASDAQ is a scammer. So, I mean, you got to it’s really crazy. So I think another example is like Enron, right? Enron was a big accounting fraud. I think Enron scam was I think like, the scan like $70 billion, and FCX is anywhere between 10 to 50. So this might be the second biggest scam in history.
James 14:30
Did you guys see that? They hired the it was like the new CEO was someone who like did the liquidator of Enron. Yeah. And he said he looked at these books of FTX and was like Holy fuck, like he said, he’s never seen anything like this, and that’s Enron. And that’s like, one of the biggest scandals of all time. He said,
Alex 14:49
Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information
James 14:59
that has occurred are here in Sam Bankman Fried. He got to the top of the top like, again he was political, political influence. He was then his name was on the fucking stadium for who is the Warriors?
What happened to the crypto market?
James 15:12
Miami, Miami, like insane shit. And like, I mean, that’s like I don’t know if you guys saw that Netflix show like inventing Anna. It’s like the same idea man like this guy just somehow scammed enough people and to give him enough money and promising returns and promising X, Y and Z and like look at him
Alex 15:27
the reality is bro, if the Fed didn’t raise the interest rates, if the entire crypto market didn’t crash, they were just kept scamming a scam because that’s what happened. The data what happened to made off is I think it was 2000 2000 2007 2008 when shit starts to hit the fan. And clients started to withdraw. That’s when they start to say, Oh, wait, there’s actually no money in here. And I don’t know if this is true. Because like some assumption is real assumptions fake apparently, apparently, what made off would do like he was saying, Oh, you make 16% returns, you make 20% returns what he was doing. But I don’t know if it was true or not. But the rumour is that he took all the money that people were giving him. He put it into a JP Morgan account, earning 4% of your interest. And that was it. That’s all he did is whatever was to withdraw their money. And they were promised 20% returns every year, a $5 million account is now 8 million. Well, in reality, it’s only fucking five and a half million and he can’t get the entire redemption.
James 16:26
I wonder though, like, you know, like you said with the Federal Reserve, and this is like kind of what they wanted. But, you know, it’s almost like they’re sucking like fake money out because a lot of money’s gone. A lot of crypto is gone now that people lost money, period. Yeah, money. And I wonder if that was like, I mean, it’s the goal. But think about like the top of the crypto craze, right? Like people were buying board apes for like $10 million. Or like crazy shit. So like that was this is almost like a reset. I think. I think it’s almost like a slap in the face. Everyone who just made a shit ton of money and now it’s a lot of it’s just fucking It’s
Alex 17:00
the great reset is what’s happening. And what I think is gonna happen, bro is it may sound conspiracy theory, but like, I think the Fed is trying to crash the market and crash everything so hard that like, let’s say an example, like a company like Rand was Uber goes bankrupt, you find out that Uber has too much that they can’t make money, they go bankrupt. All of a sudden the Federal Reserve’s gonna say Oh, shit, like, we’ll fix it. We’ll give you guys money, and we’ll fix a wall break. We’ll lower the interest rates. We’ll do another stimulus. And we’ll keep it going. Because we’ll save you this time. And we tried to fix the market we did as best as we could. We’re gonna save you this time. Don’t worry. We got you. We have the tools to do it. We did it during COVID will save you think they’re just gonna keep fucking going until something breaks. I think FTX did break Harry but I think that they don’t give a shit about FTX I think so. Let’s say company to break and when the USA company breaks are gonna say we’ll save you
Harry 17:56
think so do that. I was just gonna say that. I agree with you. 100% Because it’s not really close enough to home if that makes any sense. Like it is but it’s not really because like, everyone just looks at crypto like oh, it’s gambling odds this odds that if something like fucking I don’t know, Walmart went bankrupt, that would be a real fucking problem.
Alex 18:18
They want something bro, they want something to go bust and then when something goes bust, then they have the reason to reverse their course. Yeah, exactly. It’s sure if inflation goes down the way it’s gonna go down and what people think and you know, the next inflation if the next employment inflation report is low, Market is going to fucking go apeshit if it’s high, I will go right back down. So the next one, this one was important. The next one I think is going to be even more important. So that’s going to be key but it’s crazy.
James 18:44
Do we rip on 7.7 It’s like yeah, that’s good news and all but like still fucking seven points.
Alex 18:51
Normally, normally supposed to be three to 4% Like that’s like normal you know, like inflation is not something that’s ever going to be zero is impossible. So three to four three or 4% is average. So yeah, we’re double the average which is horrible but like as long as it starts to trend lower that it’s going to bring confidence back and aay man This is It’s definitely some crazy times out there
What’s Going On With the Market?
James 19:12
Yeah, I still think we need like some major news headline to like actually change the course of everything like like you said either something’s got a break or you know like the wars got to end or something but like we’re just bouncing around and like Dude if you listen to like all these major guys talking like all the old hedge fund guys and who are now like retired or whatever, but they’re all saying like, we could be in for like five years and just like nothing of just like slow no return kind of marketing. Also
Alex 19:39
a problem is everyone is saying that the market is going to keep crashing and we’ve crashed a lot, you know, certain stocks are down 50 to 70% You got Tesla down 50% You got Apple down 30% You got melted down 70% You got like shit like Nvidia down 70% So we’re down a lot of oil, we’re gonna keep going lower could go lower could go lower than that. Think usually what happens in the market is everyone says the same thing, the opposite is gonna fucking happen, the opposite is going to happen. So if everyone is saying that, you know, the market is going to keep crashing, crashing, crashing, then the opposite is going to happen. And, you know, we’re gonna reverse so I mean, I don’t know what the reality is, I know that there’s gonna be certain companies that make a lot of money during this. I mean, if you look at, like certain charts of oil, energy, solar has all been going crazy, because there’s an energy crisis in Europe, but aside from that, I mean, this is going to really weed out the companies that don’t really make money.
James 20:33
Do you guys imagine if like META went bankrupt? Like if that was like the company that just fucking broke like you? I just looked at the daily chart like, just fucking insane to see like, what some of these major companies have become? And like, obviously, like if you guys look at like even Netflix, right, like, How much money are people down on some of these stocks? It’s insane. Think about zoom.
Alex 20:57
Fucking all this shit for all this shit. Roku. There’s a lot of dead money out there, bro. And these stocks are never coming back. Like if Roku ever has $400 again. I’ll fucking marry you James, but it’s never gonna happen.
Harry 21:13
To remember peloton when everyone was up that peloton thing
Alex 21:18
everyone that want a peloton bought it during the fucking pandemic? There’s no one that wants it anymore? No.
James 21:25
I feel like this is one of those like needed things that sounds so fucked. But like, as bad as things are due like I was just having this conversation at dinner the other night like the world got so ahead of itself. Like like Alex, you went down to Miami a lot during like the like COVID times and like, you saw the crazy money people were spending this crazy shit people were buying like, dude, you’d go to like the Louis Vuitton store and people are fucking just buying everything. And it’s like,
Alex 21:49
lining up out the door to spend money.
James 21:53
Yeah, I mean, again, I always go back to the crypto shit like people were buying NF T’s with zero value for millions of dollars, if not 1000s. And look at them now. They’re down. 90% Yeah, you know, and it’s just like, That’s how far we got. I mean, people were doing the damage. I saw some dude iced out a bored ape necklace, like this. And it’s like you paid like $11 million, some stupid like that. And it’s just again, I think we just everything got too far. The reality
Alex 22:18
is brothers should need to happen. If we want another 10 year bull cycle, we’re gonna have to have two years of hell cycle, you know?
James 22:24
Yeah, yeah. But you know, it’s funny though. Like, even through all of this stuff, though. We’re all still able to, like make money in the market, which is nice. I mean, that’s like, we’re very lucky. And we’re gonna like knock on wood here. But like, that’s basically it. Like that’s what’s crazy. It’s like, as bad as things are. We’re also doing pretty all right.
Alex 22:43
Yeah, well, that pandemic taught me bro is that when the entire world is shut down when there’s no way to make money when everyone is out of business, the one business that remained constant is the stock market.
James 22:53
Yeah, exactly. percent 100% And I feel like we’re starting to finally get some like momentum back into like small and mid cap stocks and stuff like that. I don’t know what’s changed. I honestly, I couldn’t tell you just the end of the year or whatever. But I don’t know like how are things going for you guys you can kind of release transition a little quick to that if you want how things been for you the last couple weeks Harry?
The Current State of Trading in Crypto
Harry 23:15
To me, it’s still pretty slow to be honest. I mean, I know it’s picked up for a lot of you guys, but for me, it’s like when you look like at like the stocks that went up like as far as like quality. I mean, for me, it’s been like, you know, still pretty slow. Like I’ve had a couple of like nice trades, like I got DWAC that other one. But like I’m also very picky as well. Like, I think Alex nailed the only fucking good long trades this week, which was the fucking nail
Alex 23:47
and then that’s I think that same day Austin nailed the DWAC.
Harry 23:51
Yeah, I know. And I woke up and I was like, What the fuck is this dude? Long position. I was like there’s no way I’m fucking locking this stock thing fucking goes to the moon. I was like, Are you fucking kidding me.
Alex 24:05
But aside from that, if you realise the way the market turned is when CPI went down and the market ripped off so a lot of our routers are based on the overall market doing well because if the overall market does well people are willing to speculate on these junk stocks.
James 24:21
And it’s true Alex you did really well like he’s like
Alex 24:27
yeah, I could be doing better bro with a couple of first read days in there but just tries to take a Slowbro What can I do? I mean, you know last year we’re all making 10 20 $30,000 a day now we’re making fucking $10 a day so what can we do
James 24:38
you know just stay the course and that’s it right? It’s just
Harry 24:43
I find they’re like as well like really choppy all the way down like do you act like that was pretty choppy on the way down that day that are like really tanked? Like that was pretty choppy.
Alex 24:54
Yeah, it’s not an easy problem. It was not easy. No, like,
Harry 24:57
I remember like, like Some other first red days where I was like, Holy shit, like that’s insane. And then DWAC was just like, Oh, I’m gonna go like red to green. I’m going to like every single trick in the book. I was like, holy shit like, difficult difficult one to trade for sure. And they’re choppy on the way up to like, I find a lot of people are really short bias. So like, every stock now that’s at least going up. Unless it has like a tonne of volume like epi x did, but like if it doesn’t, it feels like the stock is on SSR where we just get this like burst up and then like right back down and then that burst up and like right back down. I feel to me it feels like there’s just like it’s overcrowded with shorts, but shorts are so confident that we’re not getting these insane, squeezes higher it’s just like Chop Chop, chop chop now whereas
James 25:51
that’s hoping to the end of the year things kind of smooth out and level out and you know, give us some decent range because man I miss it. I miss it terribly
Alex 25:58
I miss making money too
James 26:02
but no that’s it I mean, you know, I think as hopefully the market kind of just like I think like the panic and all that stuff is like slowly kind of like coming out of the large caps like people are obviously it we’ve had so much worry this whole time so like it’s nice to at least see some people coming back for like small caps and stuff like that. And I’m starting to get people asking about trading again, which is kind of a signal to me that like people might be kind of slowly coming back into like this this world that we do.
Harry 26:25
Yeah, and I think I think crypto has done for a little bit now like people have really like lost confidence and Bitcoin maybe it’s a good time to buy now that
Alex 26:35
everyone hates it bras are supposed to buy it
Harry 26:37
Yeah, yeah maybe it’s a good time to buy now but
Alex 26:40
put in the fucking cold storage bro. Put it in the cold store. Fucking block their name they’re not paying us fuck them have it in cold storage guys. That’s the only way that’s all the way to store it. Yeah, cool.
James 26:52
Well, I mean yeah, I mean Well, I guess obviously like next week we’ll see I’m sure but by the next time we do the next episode, there’ll be some crazy news hopefully some crazy fucking company goes on there some crazy shit so
Alex 27:04
yeah, well see, bro in the meantime. Thanks, guys. It was awesome. Yeah, all right. Perfect. .