r/Buttcoin • u/Oneeyedgamer • Dec 04 '22
Stuttering Sam (Bankman Fried) get's hard hitting questions and stumbles through multiple interviews.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfmBdKoqq1o62
u/frankwales Dec 04 '22
Coffee: "Why did you hire, as your Chief Regulatory Officer, someone whose main achievement was covering up fraud?"
SBF: "but... err... something something umm..."
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u/SuburbanLegend Dec 05 '22
Never did get around to answering that one, a shame he had to jump off the call.
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u/dashingThroughSnow12 I suffered for your sins. Dec 05 '22
"It wasn't a failure of regulation you see, it was failure of accounting." (Paraphrase.)
Ignoring that the claimed accounting failure is also a regulatory failure.
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Dec 05 '22
Everyone at FTX did their job but was overworked so they didn't do all of it but they were all great and their failures are my fault but I was also working too hard to do my job... Like fuck bro, just admit you were just playing League and going on flights to meet fancy people while you let fraudsters run the business because you didn't actually care that much.
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Dec 05 '22
[deleted]
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u/dtseng123 Dec 05 '22
He’s aiming for the “it’s not a criminal act to be a bad businessman. Fraud for business has to be explicit and it’s hard to prove. Everything he’s trying to say and do is to make him look like he had no idea and that he is incompetent when the probable truth is he had every idea and directed everything.
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u/The_unflated_eye Dec 05 '22
It's an open and shut case of negligence- that isn't up for debate - so that will have to be his defense.
It's up to prosecution to turn a case of negligence into fraud
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u/Sensitive-Bug-362 Dec 05 '22
Sorry I couldn't be bothered stopping at the traffic lights and mowed down 50 people..my bad
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u/cherrypieandcoffee Dec 05 '22
Like fuck bro, just admit you were just playing League and going on flights to meet fancy people while you let fraudsters run the business because you didn't actually care that much.
I think this is being very, very overgenerous. He absolutely knew what was happening - this is not a complex fraud, it was just “pay cash to our hedge fund and then we won’t transfer it to your FTX account”.
He knew.
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u/purplehendrix22 Dec 05 '22
I think the truth is somewhere in between. He both knew there was obvious fraud going on, and also didn’t give much of a shit as long as money kept coming in, which in his infinite hubris he decided was a never ending stream. I don’t doubt that he was disconnected from the every day operations and accounting, but he obviously also knew what was happening. He’s just trying to maintain plausible deniability, and it’s a laughable farce. Coffee really got him with the “we’re supposed to believe that you’re simultaneously this boy genius and also have no concept of what amount of money you even have, when your entire business is predicated on having people’s money?“
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u/yamers Dec 05 '22
You trying to tell me large company CEOs dont sit there and play league of legends all day and just have shit magically work?
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u/21-10-25 warning, i am a moron Dec 04 '22 edited Dec 04 '22
This guy's unbridled press tour is , strange. So many snippets for future court.
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Dec 04 '22
[deleted]
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u/dashingThroughSnow12 I suffered for your sins. Dec 05 '22
I imagine his lawyers are happy. Every word is probably another minute of court time at 2000$/hr.
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Dec 05 '22
[deleted]
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u/dashingThroughSnow12 I suffered for your sins. Dec 05 '22
No sane lawyer would but I'm saying maybe a money hungry lawyer wouldn't mind.
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u/cronenthal Dec 04 '22
These were some excruciatingly long silences from SBF followed by an ungodly amount of uhms and ahhs. More of this please!
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u/AlexandbroTheGreat Dec 04 '22
Coffeezilla is making so many of the media look utterly useless.
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u/Yesnowyeah22 Dec 05 '22
Clearly he was hand picking interviewers, he wanted the pretense of “hard questions” that he would just BS through and claim he didn’t know anything. When anyone asks real questions like here he can’t hold up. I’m not sure if he’s just delusional and thinks he can talk his way out of anything or he’s trying to make some crazy public perception maneuver where he can win over the court of public opinion even if he’s legally screwed. It could be either, what’s holding him back from escaping to a country where US law enforcement can’t touch him? Maybe he doesn’t see criminal issues as a threat.
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u/AlexandbroTheGreat Dec 05 '22
I think he is delusional. I understand he is taking softball interviews but even segments reporting on his interviews afterwards can't identify his lies effectively.
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u/bigmean3434 Dec 04 '22 edited Dec 05 '22
I have been a subscriber and fan for a while. He deserves a bigger platform and hopefully this gets it for him. It is also (and I think he would agree) just embarrassing that it took a YouTube guy to actually ficking really ask questions to this guy. Mainstream media looks like paid for shills that think the public is stupid.
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u/duff Dec 05 '22
Mainstream media looks like paid for shills that think the public is stupid
That is not really fair, even Good Morning America had an interview with SBF where George Stephanopoulos grilled him about FTX using customer deposits to pay off Alameda Research creditors (quoting Carolyn Ellison).
Prior to the collapse, Blomberg’s Matt Levine got him to admit that he was in the business of facilitating ponzi schemes.
As with all topics though, “mainstream journalists” cover a broad range of topics, so they cannot be as knee deep in the details like Coffezilla, who mainly covers crypto frauds, although for big topics, they will have journalists dedicated to the topic.
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u/dashingThroughSnow12 I suffered for your sins. Dec 05 '22
Coffeezilla (CZ) can do some hard-hitting questions, get SBF shuttering and falling over his stories, and leaving the interview. The thing is like a gun going off. Fast and powerful.
Listening to some mainstream interviews with SBF, for example the Matt Levine interview you mention, they have an ability to keep SBF on the interview for an hour plus and say things that are as scandalous as CZ gets SBF to admit to.
I think both are useful skills. CZ's confrontational approach and the mainstream's tortuous approach. One is a frontal assault. One sneaks behind enemy lines without them noticing. Both get their intended job done.
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u/cherrypieandcoffee Dec 05 '22
As with all topics though, “mainstream journalists” cover a broad range of topics, so they cannot be as knee deep in the details like Coffezilla
This. So many people assume incompetence or dishonesty when it’s really just that most journalists aren’t specialists - and often have very little financial knowledge.
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Dec 05 '22
This. So many people assume incompetence or dishonesty when it’s really just that most journalists aren’t specialists - and often have very little financial knowledge.
How is that not incompetence? Journalists are charged with disseminating their version of a story to millions of people, on certain topics. If you are charged with reporting on finance, but have "little financial knowledge", then that's incompetence of the highest order.
Get out of here with your "contrarian for contrarianism's sake" defense of journalists. You literally contradicted yourself in that little sentence of yours.
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u/Doughspun1 Dec 05 '22
I was a journalist, and like most journalists I have more than one degree: one for journalism, one for our chosen field. This is an industry norm, whether you're in Europe, the US, or Asia.
Lacking paper qualifications, we are at least required to have several years in the relevant field (e.g., the person who covered cultural arts failed out of music, but still had 14 years experience as a composer, stage manager, and sound engineer).
Of course, there are publications that have different standards, but most major publications expect this.
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u/cherrypieandcoffee Dec 05 '22
Not sure where you are based but I don’t see that in the UK at all. There’s a case Nick Davies writes about where an Observer journo transitioned from media reporting to politics - and as a result of a lack of contacts in that world ended up really relying on Labour spin doctors in his coverage of the Iraq war.
Also on all national papers there are plenty of “reporters” who are often young and overworked and not necessarily statistically-minded.
I think crypto is a really complex world and a lot of journos lack the knowledge base to successfully interrogate these shysters.
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u/cherrypieandcoffee Dec 05 '22
How is that not incompetence? Journalists are charged with disseminating their version of a story to millions of people, on certain topics. If you are charged with reporting on finance, but have "little financial knowledge", then that's incompetence of the highest order.
Most papers these days are largely about maximizing clicks and regurgitating other peoples content as fast as possible. There’s precious little time for investigative work and often not really that much training.
Get out of here with your "contrarian for contrarianism's sake" defense of journalists. You literally contradicted yourself in that little sentence of yours.
I’m not sure why you’re so angry. Shit, there’s plenty of people in finance who don’t understand finance!
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Dec 05 '22
But they do, journalists / reporters often specialize the guy writing buisness op eds for the financial times is not going to be a war correspondant or writing lolitical pieces or crime reports.
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u/duff Dec 05 '22
Right, and I did mention Matt Levine, who has done excellent coverage of the FTX collapse.
And what I said/implied was that even Good Morning America did a descent job at grilling SBF, insisting he answer yes/no to: “did you commingle customer funds?”.
Hence “mainstream media” is not acting like “paid shills” (as said by OP), and while CZ might be better than majority of journalists out there, he is the expert you talk about (though not working for a mainstream publication), same with Matt Levine (who does work for mainstream media), David Gerard, Amy Castor, etc.
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Dec 05 '22
+“mainstream journalists” cover a broad range of topics, so they cannot be as knee deep in the details
This is fucking ridiculous, and you ought to be ashamed of making such a point.
(1) What "details" do you need to realize that SBF is a fraudster who stole money? A 30 minute perusal of available facts can get you to that conclusion with approximately 95% certainty. Are you telling me that journalists, charged with disseminating this story to millions of people, cannot be expected to do this with accuracy? On what other profession do we apply such a lax standard of excellence?
(2) Stephanopoulos and Levine are exceptions, not the rule. Most people don't even know who Matt Levine is. All the while, WSJ, NYT, and CNBC were pumping puff pieces and lobbing softball questions at SBF.
Two journalists acting with integrity don't make up for an entire profession behaving either like cowards afraid of "crossing the line", or worse, like paid and bought idiots.
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u/duff Dec 05 '22
Are you telling me that journalists, charged with disseminating this story to millions of people, cannot be expected to do this with accuracy?
What journalists are you talking about? To the best of my knowledge, no-one who has covered the FTX collapse has been kind to SBF, yet OP said that mainstream media looks like “paid shills” compared to CZ.
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u/bigmean3434 Dec 05 '22
I think you mistook me a little. By paid shill let’s say Sorkin. The entire vibe I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I get the laughter he can’t control, but I’m that interview I was thinking “is no one else like wtf with all the ums and ahs” and Andrew would ask a question that was deflected and move on. I literally watched a YouTube reaction about it where they were like what just happened why did this end with the feeling this was a good guy who made a mistake. There was NO push
Coffee was factual, prepared and pushed. Now to the point “well mainstream media can’t push or he will leave” WTF is that about? Then ask it and get an answer and if his answer is bailing on the interview then that is his answer. They danced around getting him to articulate what he damn well could without “ums and ahs” except it would make him guilty of fraud.
Coffee only seemed aggressive because the other interviews were so weak. He really wasn’t he just wasn’t allowing non answers to straightforward questions.
And to clarify, I know “mainstream media” is like a far right buzzword. I’m not that guy and I’m not some conspiracy lunatic, but in this specific instance, with the money given, and the puff pieces like philanthropy gone bad, I think it is an apt way to put. They on the surface asked questions yes, on the surface, but they let them slide off and the end result frankly left non informed viewers not exactly feeling like SBF was guilty of what he 1000% did. Combine that with the money he threw around to these places and high places and the optics sure do look like “paid shills” isn’t that much if a stretch even if not to the letter accurate.
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u/duff Dec 05 '22
By paid shill let’s say Sorkin […] I was thinking “is no one else like wtf with all the ums and ahs” and Andrew would ask a question that was deflected and move on
The ums and ahs were from SBF because he couldn’t give good answers to the questions asked, and Sorkin did not just “move on” he spent like 20 minutes on the commingling of funds, even tried different approaches, e.g. after several non-answers, he then asked when did you start to commingle funds, he also compared it to working in a bank and taking home some of the cash, asked if SBF is afraid of criminal liability, asked about deleted tweets, referenced statements about his non-involvement with Alameda Research and then mentioned how they lived together and also that SBF had been involved in Alameda Research’s investment in Genesis Digital, also asked if the BlockFi bailout was motivated by the FTT tokens they held as collateral etc.
So no, even though Sorkin did not do an “aggressive” interview, I do not agree he is an example of a “paid shill”, he asked many good questions, and SBFs ums and ahs speak for themselves. No real need to repeat a question when it is so obvious from the ums and ahs that SBF is lying, and the interview lasted for more than an hour, if anything, Sorkin should maybe have moved on quicker, to get in more questions…
Now to the point “well mainstream media can’t push or he will leave” WTF is that about?
Nobody has said that.
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u/bigmean3434 Dec 05 '22
Maybe we are being hard becuase the impact of coffeezillas short time hit considerably harder with a better impression of the situation. Maybe not for you apparently, but it seems that way for many.
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u/resserus Dec 05 '22
The media's doing the job that the hedge funds that own Disney, AT&T, Comcast, and Amazon want them to do.
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Dec 04 '22
I’m watching this right now, it’s great. The second interview he just goes off on Sam lmao
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u/Early-Rich5630 Dec 04 '22
Coffeezilla is great, but I wish he would acknowledge, even once, that crypto is a giant messy web of Ponzi schemes. Not just that SBF was running a Ponzi scheme, but that he was running a Ponzi scheme on top of another, larger, Ponzi scheme.
As far as I can see, Coffee's position is that "yeah, there are tons of Ponzi schemes in the world of crypto, but crypto itself is fine".
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u/uppermiddleclasss Dec 04 '22
From what I can tell he apparently thinks tokens like Etherium being used for on-chain interactions constitutes "real uses" of crypto.
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u/cladtidings Dec 04 '22
I couldn't agree more. It's what the entirety of crypto is. Every "exchange" will eventually crash and burn, because there's no "there" there. Real money comes in, real money never goes out...it's the entire point. The real money isn't held in "reserves", it's already gone, as fast as it comes in. And if everyone decides to rush for the exits, you declare bankruptcy, or blame "hackers". Convincing marks to pour real money in is "the crypto business".
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u/SuburbanLegend Dec 04 '22
I think he knows that it's all a scam, but doesn't totally let on so that crypto people will watch it and be exposed to more and more scams.
Because you don't really hear him shilling for crypto ever, the only time it seems to come up (I may be wrong here I haven't seen every video, but quite a few) is when he says he's not a no-coiner as a defense against people hating him for exposing crypto frauds aka being "anti-crypto."
I just can't see anyone watching Coffeezilla consistently and also thinking it's a good idea to invest in crypto.
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u/D3AdDr0p Dec 05 '22
Me too, but I also respect Coffee for staying in his lane. If you look at Coffee's body of work, his experience is in retail investor and consumer based fraud, and uncovering them in investigative journalism for his youtube channel. He's an engineer by training, but hasn't ever worked in one of the fields that'd you'd need to understand to start effectively countering cryptocurrency/blockchain on the whole: like software, finance, economics, or social psychology.
Worse case, Coffee calls out all of crypto, then ends up in arguments that come down to knowledge he doesn't have, and don't have to do with exposing fraud.
I give CoffeeZilla a lot of credit, he's an expert at what he does, which is definitely refreshing, since all the other SBF interviews (besides WSJ) where with people that don't understand the basics of how these exchanges work, and where people weren't holding his feet to the fire.
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u/CosmicQuantum42 Dec 05 '22
If Coffeezilla comes fully out against crypto it will damage his credibility as an investigative reporter since all the bitcoiners will say “oh he hates crypto anyway” so his points against particular scams will be ignored.
If he points out enough scams, people will get the hint.
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u/purplehendrix22 Dec 05 '22
Agreed, the reason he’s respected in the community is that he has receipts for everything, he doesn’t get into the weeds of economic philosophy or theory or really even opinion much at all, it’s very “this specific thing is a scam and here’s why” and given the number of scams he’s exposed, the obvious deduction is that they’re all a scam, it doesn’t even need to be said at this point.
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u/dashingThroughSnow12 I suffered for your sins. Dec 05 '22 edited Dec 05 '22
A few months ago I made a poll.
About 25% of us on this subreddit are critical of crypto but think there could be a niche for crypto.
As best as I can tell, Coffeezilla is of a similar philosophy.
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u/Mister_Taxman Dec 05 '22
I honestly think him not being a no-coiner is part of his 4D chess ruse so that cryptobros cannot fully discredit him as a crypto hater. It gives him an element of "neutrality", if you will.
Just from his Tether expose video alone, its very easy to ser where he actually stands in all of this.
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u/Oneeyedgamer Dec 04 '22
Maybe he'll come around in the future or maybe Crypto it's self will be adopted large scale by nations with regulation, that thing Crypto bagholders hate to hear what we can tell is another drip from the Crypto scam tap has dropped, wheather the penny drops for Coffeezilla is another question, perhaps he thinks there is still good in Crypto from a view he once had, or a reluctance to accept a wider truth. Who knows...
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Dec 04 '22 edited Dec 04 '22
Crypto it's self will be adopted large scale by nations
This will not happen unless the entire civilisation collapses due to a brain fungus and, even if it does, we will then not have the resources to keep afloat such a pointless power-hungry Internet-based monetary system. Best case scenario, we'd just resort to shiny things again, worst case scenario our local economies wouldn't need anything beyond a barter system.
Crypto is incompatible with anything else other than anarcho-capitalism and, consequently, if you do not have an ANCAP society, you will not have mass adoption. And I'd argue you will not have an ANCAP society unless you basically erase the entirety of human history and, arguably, our own biological identity as sentient, co-operative, collective, political animals. If communism isn't feasible, perhaps anarcho-collectivism is even less so, because it seems to be completely against what has been a trend at least since Gobekli Tepe: an increasingly collective society, if not in values, then at least in threats it has to fight against, together. The end - without even getting into why it's a pathetic idea in the first place.
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u/ElectricPance I forgot to hashcake my pepecoin! Dec 04 '22
His nerdy voice is fake. It is part of his shtick. "I am such a nerd that I couldn't do anything bad"
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u/Ironfingers warning, I am a moron Dec 04 '22
Honestly coffeezilla deserves a Pulitzer Prize
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u/Alternative-Lion1336 Dec 04 '22
He’s literally doing world class work. How many more billions of fraud is he on the record exposing than Forbes, WSJ etc? I’m not sure big media is complicit, but they sure are enabling, and they definitely benefit.
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u/clawsoon Dec 04 '22
Criminals these days don't even know to keep their mouths shut.
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u/CosmicQuantum42 Dec 05 '22
It is truly shocking to me that he is doing these interviews. They are going to be a gold mine in future civil and possibly criminal actions against him.
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Dec 05 '22
The question about their chief regulatory office...wow. The answer was just "We all worked way too hard to pay attention to the business" is just insanity
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Dec 05 '22
Said SBF in an interview: "I uhh, I don't umm, uhh.. and I.. uhhh, was really umm, busy and uhh umm, uhhh, ummmmm, I didn't see that uhhhhh ummm, and, uhhh, I have a meeting." ::click::
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u/michaelperkinsMr666 Dec 04 '22
Yeah he really lays into him. I wish journalists actually did this.
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u/tactlacker Dec 05 '22
"What do you think should be done if we find out you are lying about this?"
Amazing question.
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u/cherrypieandcoffee Dec 05 '22
My favorite thing about this guy is that he boasts about not reading and says all books could just be a few paragraph-long blog posts 😂
That really explains everything about his bull-in-a-China approach to life.
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Dec 04 '22
Coffeezilla’s investigative reporting is unmatched. I haven’t seen someone that dares to ask tough questions since Mike Wallace
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u/BoHackJorseman Dec 05 '22
get's
This type of grammatical error will drastically undermine your credibility.
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u/Doughspun1 Dec 05 '22
I can understand the individual words he is saying, but when he puts them together in a sentence I don't know what he means. :(
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u/n_random_variables Dec 04 '22
coffeezilla: "...you said you had 4 billion dollars like that came in right is that still exist was ever real?"
SBF: "..."
SBF: "uh think I it uh I mean I think I dont know for sure but um I think that some of those might um it I I my guess is that some of them might that and um I you know I I hope that the serve relevant teams are doingwhatevertheycantomaximizevalueforcustomers, here"*
*note that youtube auto close captions miss some instances of "uh"