Name: How Did Celebrities Fall for the FTX Scam? w/Coffeezilla
Uploaded: 2023-03-07T18:12:12.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Did Celebrities Fall for the FTX Scam? w/Coffeezilla' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-03-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How Did Celebrities Fall for the FTX Scam? w/Coffeezilla' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-03-07. Transcript available.

The Joe Rogan experience.
And in the FTX case, how much of it was getting celebrities to endorse the
platform?
It's huge.
This is what I wanted to say.
Like, the more I study this stuff, and you start to have repeat occurrences,
like I just
cover stuff all the time, and you see echoes of the same thing.
I just had somebody just a couple days ago, I was interviewing for this news
scheme we're
looking at, and he said, you know, I never understood how Bernie Madoff got
people, because
it seemed so preposterous.
And then I fell for something very similar.
And what I noticed with all of these things, the threat is, you know it's kind
of too good
to be true, but the social proof is overwhelming, and it overwhelms your kind
of like alarm bells.
So the social proof is a combination of things.
So first of all, it's like, it's this guy who drives a Toyota.
So you go like, well, why does he need to scam me if he's driving a Toyota,
right?
Then it's like, which Sam Bankman-Fried did.
Then it's like, okay, Tom Brady backs him.
Well, Tom Brady's got to have some guys who are looking into this.
And then it's like, well, BlackRock backed him.
Well, BlackRock definitely has some guys who looked into it.
It's Sequoia Capital.
They said he was, might be one of the first like trillionaires or whatever.
Like, like he's such a great entrepreneur.
They think he's such a genius.
I actually, it might've been one of the A1Z guys, or I'm blanking on the name
right now.
A1Z?
What is that?
No, no, no.
I'm sorry.
I'm blanking on, it's this famous, I've got to remember it right after I get
out of here.
It's one of the famous, like investment funds.
They invested in a bunch of NFT projects.
Mark Andreessen, I think, is the guy who runs it.
Jamie's looking it up.
I thought I knew it off the top of my head, and now I don't want to say the
wrong one.
A16Z.
A16, A1Z, A16Z.
I can't, it was one of those, Sequoia or A16Z.
One of them wrote this glowing review of Sam basically saying he's going to be
one of the first trillionaires.
So all these guys, basically, a lot of these people backed Sam with the highest
endorsements.
And so if you're just an average person, you're thinking, well, how much more
due diligence can I do than all these other guys?
All these other guys buy into him.
And then they themselves are kind of also looking at each other, being like,
well, that guy did it.
It's the hottest deal around, right?
Kevin O'Leary's in.
So you kind of think you're swimming safely with other savvy investors, and
that's what ultimately gets you to buy in.
Bernie Madoff is very similar.
I mean, he was really well-regarded in Wall Street.
So when people invested with him, they knew the returns were insane.
But it wasn't like he was some random fly-by-night guy.
He was well-respected in the Wall Street space.
People thought he might take over the SEC after, like, the current person had
stepped down.
They thought he was going to take it over.
Like, he's one of the leaders at the NASDAQ.
I mean, he was one of the go-to guys.
And so you thought, well, I invest with Bernie.
Like, I can't lose.
It's like almost, you know, betting on the house.
Like, the house always wins, right?
So when FTX was taking off, it just seemed like everyone who was a someone was
backing him.
So then it was okay.
And then I think a lot of these people deferred to their other friends.
They're all saying it's okay.
Let me put money in.
And it's just a huge case study that just because other people fall for
something doesn't mean you're safe.
Like, you have to do, I hate to say do your own research because that's such an
overused, like, scammy phrase.
It's actually such, like, a phrase, like, that, you know, it's almost useless.
Chemtrails.
Let me say this.
If it's too good to be true, if they're offering market returns that you want
to believe in, you go, man, I want to believe this is real.
Don't invest.
Like, that's a bad idea.
People were calling bullshit, though.
Just like they were calling, there was a few people that were wary that were
calling bullshit on Bernie Madoff, and there was a few people that were
standing out and saying, none of this makes sense.
Right.
And who were those people?
So, there were a few people.
There was a Matt Levine interview with Sam Bankman-Free.
He didn't call him a fraud outright, but he's like, hey, it seems like you're
in the Ponzi business, and business is good.
Whoa.
And what did he say to that?
He's like, well, you know, like, think of it like a box.
And, you know, you tell a bunch of investors, you know, hey, if you put money
in this box, we can get some money out.
We can give you this yield.
He starts to explain, like, this thing that sounds exactly like a Ponzi scheme.
And so, ultimately, Matt Levine's like, oh, yeah, this doesn't really make a
lot of sense.
But, again, it stopped short of this is a fraud because, you know, no one knew.
There's a bunch of backing.
So, I made a video at the time being like, this crypto CEO just describes a Ponzi
scheme.
And that video has aged so well because it's like people are like, oh, it was
all true.
But, like, but people were outright calling it a fraud, like Mark Cohodes.
He's a famous short seller.
He was calling that a fraud early.
I have a buddy of mine.
He goes by Dirty Bubble Media on Twitter.
He's like one of the anon at Twitter accounts.
He was calling it a fraud.
He was calling it a fraud.
Thank you.