S1: We don't know exactly how many people were impacted by
S1: the crypto scandals of the past year, but retail investors
S1: lost billions of dollars tied up in Ftxs Celsius, Luna,
S1: Three Arrows and others. Today we're joined by Mark saidI,
S1: CEO of X, claim to discuss how they are helping
S1: people recover a portion of the money that they might
S1: not otherwise see. Again, if you're one of these investors,
S1: we hope you'll find hope in recovering your crypto from
S1: bankruptcy on episode number 671. Of the Bad Crypto podcast. Five.
UU: Four, three, one, zero. Ignition. Who's bad?
S1: And welcome to the MAD Crypto podcast, the show for
S1: the crypto curious and the crypto serious, the best blockchain
S1: and crypto show in the world. According to our moms.
S1: I'm Sir Joel and that is Sir Lord Travis, right? Hello, sir.
S2: It's not the best, but it's the best one that
S2: you're listening to right now.
S1: It's the best, according to our moms. That's true. Or
S1: I don't.
S2: Know my mom. I don't even know if my mom
S2: thinks that's true.
S1: They're like, you know, we like you guys. We love
S1: you guys even. But it's you're not the butt.
S2: Don't know what the hell you're talking about over there
S2: with that.
S1: Don't understand anything about this. And why do you guys
S1: why do you guys have to call yourselves crypto clowns
S1: and defi defi and and algorithmic asshats? That's not nice.
S2: Why are you bad? Why don't you get good?
S1: Let's get good. Well, think we still own good crypto
S1: podcast which was registered years ago in response to. Yeah.
S2: Just in case there was a troll out there going
S2: well we're the good crypto. Like no you're not Dick
S2: because we got it already.
S1: So travel a lot of people lost a lot of
S1: money in Celsius as we've talked about previously on the show.
S1: Brad Mills was a hero because he called Luna before
S1: it happened and then came on this show and called
S1: Celsius before it happened. And I got my money out.
S1: A lot of people didn't. But today's interview is super interesting.
S1: If you've got any money that was tied up in
S1: any of these services because there might be hope for you.
S2: There might be hope. Yeah. Yeah. This is this is
S2: really interesting how they're able to kind of go in
S2: and leverage the future potential returns of this money that
S2: may be lost, that may not get back for 4
S2: or 5 years down the road. Some people are still
S2: waiting for Mt. Gox. So. Right. You know, this right
S2: here is something that is a service that is needed
S2: and hopefully it's working out pretty good for the people
S2: that's using it. We'll find out why I so right here.
S1: Here we go. There's been a lot of sadness in
S1: the crypto world, especially for those who have had their
S1: crypto locked up in services like Voyager and Celsius. I
S1: am fortunate enough to have escaped Celsius two weeks before
S1: the thing got shut down because we had Brad Mills
S1: on this show. Remember that, Trav? Brad?
S2: Brad was like, Yeah, get your shits out of that
S2: because it's going to happen next. And we're like, What?
S2: And and then Joel was like, okay. But then one
S2: of our friends actually didn't had left a lot of
S2: his money in Celsius and in Voyager to the tune
S2: of a couple two, $300,000 sitting in there. So, yeah,
S2: that's no bueno.
S1: Painful. And a lot of these companies are now in
S1: bankruptcy proceedings. There's talks about other, you know, like Binance acquiring.
S1: And we'll dig more into this. We've got a specialist
S1: today who's been a chief restructuring officer helping companies in
S1: various industries and now is the CEO of a company
S1: called Exclaim X Dash claim. They say if your crypto
S1: is now in bankruptcy proceedings, that you can trade your
S1: claim for cash. His name is Matt Sardi. Did I
S1: pronounce that right? Siddig Siddiq All right, nailed it. Matt,
S1: welcome to the Bad Crypto podcast. Thank you for having me.
S3: Excited to have the conversation.
S1: Yeah. So there's been a whole string of crypto exchanges
S1: or custodial services that have failed. I've named two of
S1: them Voyager and Celsius. We also know that, of course
S1: FTX screwed over a good many people and Three Arrows
S1: has got problems because of their exposure to some of these.
S1: What are some of the other ones that might be
S1: lesser known where people could have gotten hurt?
S3: Yeah, you named four of the big ones. But in December,
S3: Blockfi also filed for bankruptcy and and Genesis in January,
S3: if we go further back, there were actually some other
S3: bankruptcies like nearly two years ago, but in the last
S3: 6 or 7 months is really when it exploded. And unfortunately,
S3: a lot of people got hurt by that.
S4: Luna.
S2: That was crazy. I mean, there was like a there
S2: was like a couple of months there that was like, boom, boom, boom, boom.
S2: And it was like, uh oh, is this is this
S2: the end of crypto? Is crypto going to crash here?
S2: What's going on here? This It was insane. As you saw,
S2: Bitcoin just sort of go down with the ship a
S2: little bit. Now it looks like it's rising up again,
S2: but man, what a ride that was, huh?
S3: You can actually plot on a timeline these bankruptcy cases
S3: and the value of Bitcoin and watch the watch them
S3: fall off a cliff within 24 hours of a bankruptcy filing.
S3: Because each time a bankruptcy occurs, people are losing, are
S3: having less confidence and there's less faith in the system
S3: to protect their money and get them paid out.
S1: Well, the markets are emotional, right? People buy and sell
S1: on emotions. Most people don't have the the patience and
S1: the strength to not FOMO in or not sell out
S1: of fear. And so is there an have you actually
S1: plotted that out with the points of each of the,
S1: you know, the announcements of these failings?
S3: We haven't plotted it out. But you're exactly right about
S3: the emotion of driving these things, driving these trading decisions.
S3: But it's not so dissimilar from the bank runs that
S3: we've all heard of, of. Throughout history, when when people
S3: feel like their money is locked up or is going
S3: to be locked up, they'll try and pull it out.
S3: And unfortunately, that just spirals the whole situation further down.
S3: It's how FTX lost several billion dollars in a matter
S3: of 72 hours.
S1: How much do you think, you know, put put aside
S1: the the institutional money for a moment. Let's talk about
S1: the retail investor with all of these companies that have
S1: are going belly up or in bankruptcy or may not
S1: be coming back. How much retail money has been lost?
S3: Um. Well, lost, I don't know. But trapped in bankruptcy
S3: is about $10 billion.
S1: Wow. That's a lot of money.
S3: It's a lot of money. And and it's pretty tragic.
S3: We hear stories all the time of people that had
S3: their life savings in these accounts who can't make payments
S3: on medical bills right now and have. Really, really sad
S3: stories being mailed to the judge asking for for leniency
S3: and mercy to get their cash out. And unfortunately, that's
S3: just not the way it works. And people have been.
S3: A lot of harm has been done, but. For that reason, several,
S3: many people have decided that they're not willing to be
S3: harmed anymore and they're willing to take the money that
S3: they can get and decide and control it so they
S3: can decide what to do with it going forward.
S2: We're not going to take it anymore, Joel. We're not
S2: going to take it. You're just being.
S1: Twisted, sister.
S2: Man. So that's just bizarre. So it's like when this
S2: stuff is stuck, like, for example, some people still haven't
S2: gotten their money back from Mt. Gox. Like, that was
S2: years ago. And think about that. When they were they
S2: were buying Bitcoin. Then a couple hundred bucks a Bitcoin,
S2: it goes down, Bitcoin makes it up to almost $70,000.
S2: They can't get their money out even though their money
S2: has gone up so much. Man, it's insane. How about 300%
S2: 300 x sometimes from what? They bought it, they couldn't
S2: get it. But then like, oh, you had $200 in
S2: there at the time. Here's your $200. Like, no, no, no,
S2: where's my big money? And it's like sometimes seems like
S2: people get screwed in that whole scenario.
S3: That's that's exactly right. Mt. Gox is a great example
S3: of where nine years ago people had their funds locked
S3: up in that bankruptcy and they still haven't been paid.
S3: But talking about trading mentality that we spoke of a
S3: moment ago, um, imagine. Be selling at the bottom and
S3: not getting paid.
S1: I can imagine this.
S3: Selling at the bottom and not getting paid and then
S3: watching the whole thing go up and not benefiting from it.
S3: That's what's happening right now to anybody that anybody who's
S3: trapped in these bankruptcies. They got crushed when the when
S3: bitcoin was at. What did it drop to? 13 at 1.14. 15?
S1: Yeah, we were we're definitely in the 13 range, maybe
S1: even 12. Right.
S3: So when it drops that low and that's when you
S3: get frozen and now it's up to 22 and you
S3: don't get the benefit of any of that. That's why
S3: people are becoming more urgently saying, I want to participate
S3: in the recovery of Bitcoin rather than or crypto generally,
S3: rather than just sit on the sidelines for up to
S3: nine years like Mt. Gox.
S1: So let's talk about what you're doing here. The website
S1: claim is the site and you guys are buying claims.
S1: I'm going to click on the how it works here
S1: and maybe you can kind of explain this to us.
S3: Sure. So to be first off, claim is not a
S3: buyer of claims. We're a marketplace. So we allow account
S3: holders from all of these different crypto bankruptcies that we
S3: mentioned to list their claim on X claim and expose
S3: it in a marketplace to buyers. There are hundreds of
S3: investors around the world distressed debt, institutional or even retail
S3: investors that are interested in buying these claims and waiting
S3: it out. It's really interesting actually, the difference between a
S3: buyer and a seller. A seller in these cases is
S3: effectively selling a loss. They're cashing out their loss and
S3: they're taking that those dollars to reinvest and use it
S3: for a better purpose. Buyers, on the other hand, are
S3: making a speculative investment that the future payoff is worth
S3: the investment today. So even if even if it pays
S3: off at $0.50 five years from now, a seller can
S3: cash out for half of what they are owed. But
S3: a buyer can make a decent return if they're paying
S3: $0.25 for it today.
S1: All right. So I'm on this claim calculator here looking
S1: at this and it's kind of gives me an idea
S1: of of what I can make on this. Do you
S1: have a calculator? Doesn't require me to put in my information.
S3: No, we don't.
S1: All right. So can I put a fake one in?
S5: Sure.
S3: The idea of the calculator is, first off, everybody, of course,
S3: wants to receive full recovery. 100 cents on the dollar
S3: payment immediately. But that's not the reality. And people don't
S3: typically give enough credit or weight to the the duration
S3: of how long it takes to recover these funds. And
S3: if you're waiting five years, you know, simple math, the
S3: $1 today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. So.
S3: What we're trying to do is give people the opportunity
S3: to put in their own expectations of what they believe
S3: claims are worth and how long until they're going to
S3: see a recovery and then determine whether selling today is
S3: in their best interest or not.
S1: Okay. So in this case, it fills in the default.
S1: I'm expected let's say I've got $1,000 in Celsius. I
S1: expect that I'm going to get 600 of that. It's
S1: going to take 2.8 years to get it. Is this
S1: inflation rate accurate Right about now? That's 8.5%. And the
S1: email give me my money at aol.com from I lost
S1: bigly and calculated is today I could get $477.47 instead
S1: of waiting.
S3: So if a buyer pays for 77, which is what
S3: it's worth today and recovers 600 in 2 point eight years,
S3: that's their return. But if you're a seller and you
S3: sell for 47 today, you're getting the same discounted value
S3: of what you would be getting if you waited 2.8 years.
S3: And that that trade is happening all day, every day
S3: in a very hot market right now because buyers and
S3: sellers are increasingly finding exclaim and buyers directly of how
S3: to how to transact. We're aware of about $1 billion
S3: of claims that have traded hands over the last six months.
S2: Wow. So which are the the properties that that people
S2: got maybe hosed on that you guys are able to
S2: help them with claim is that with Ftxs Luna Celsius
S2: what are all of the properties that you guys have
S2: identified that you're able to work through now.
S3: We've traded claims in all of the above. Celsius and
S3: FTX have been the most active and the most popular. Um,
S3: but each of these cases has unique characteristics, even if
S3: even in a case where the claims are almost worthless,
S3: there's no expectation of recovery. There is still usually a
S3: buyer that will buy it for. Nearly nothing because they
S3: believe that five years from now they can make $0.05
S3: a dollar. Okay. From again, from a buyer, it's all
S3: about the gain. And from a seller, it's about the recovery.
S3: And we try to make it as easy as possible
S3: for sellers to come on the site, get as many
S3: offers as possible from as many buyers as possible, and
S3: make a decision of what's in the best interest of
S3: of of their lives to whether it's worth waiting or
S3: whether they can do better things with that money today.
S1: Yeah, it's an interesting service for people because a lot
S1: of people don't know they have options or like, All right,
S1: my money's tied up here and now I just got
S1: to wait and see what happens. So you're giving people
S1: an option and you're providing a service that, of course,
S1: this is a for profit service. So how does X
S1: claim make a profit on this?
S3: Yeah, So. I come from the restructuring bankruptcy industry. And
S3: the reason I started the business because I saw kind
S3: of the unfairness of the market and I always felt
S3: that account holders or sellers of claims had already suffered.
S3: They've they've already been receiving less than what they did.
S3: They put in a hard day's work and they're getting
S3: less for it. So we don't charge anything to sellers.
S3: If you want to come to us and list your
S3: claim and explore what selling could mean, even if it
S3: includes getting offers from 50 buyers and you choose not
S3: to sell, there's no cost. If you choose to sell
S3: and a buyer buys it. Buyers do pay us a
S3: commission for helping them find their investment. That's how we
S3: make money. We charge commissions to the buyer.
S1: Makes a lot of sense. Well, you guys can go
S1: check this out. X dash claim to learn more about it.
S1: You could speak with a claim holder advocate. And how
S1: much recovery have you guys done to date and quantify
S1: it in a dollar amount.
S3: We've traded about $200 million worth of claims. Each of
S3: these cases are different. We've been actually very active in
S3: the Genesis case and the FTC's case, and currently we
S3: have almost $400 million of claims listed on our platform.
S6: Excellent stuff going on, so.
S2: Well, I think that this could be something very valuable
S2: for some of the people who are maybe pissed off
S2: about crypto because, you know, FTX went down, Voyager went
S2: down Celsius, went down, some of these all went down.
S2: And so they need to find a way to to
S2: to remedy that in some way to to capture some
S2: sort of value from that because something is better than nothing.
S2: And if you can even take 50% of what you
S2: thought you were, you had lost forever. Right. That's a
S2: win for a lot of people. Then they can take
S2: that and invest in other things. It's not so much
S2: what you had, it's what you have access to now
S2: that then you can then leverage into more. So, you know,
S2: think this could be a viable option for a lot
S2: of people, not not financial advice by any means, but
S2: something is better than nothing, right?
S5: I think so.
S3: I agree, certainly. And I think that's exactly the right
S3: mentality because we hear it all day. There are people
S3: that are ready to sell their claim so that they
S3: can get the cash and reinvest it. As we all know,
S3: the crypto community really believes, and they've been proven right
S3: many times, that you can tend your investment quickly if
S3: you've got the cash in the right place at the
S3: right time.
S1: So which, which coin, Matt.
S3: But letting it sit in a bankruptcy court for a
S3: decade and personally I will I will bet that Ftxs
S3: creditors account holders will be waiting 5 to 10 years
S3: before they see anything. Really, it's going to take bankruptcy
S3: is not a fast process. Just an example. Bernie Madoff,
S3: many of many of you and your listeners may remember
S3: that name. That was 15 years ago. Wow. And the
S3: the people that are owed money in that bankruptcy are
S3: still getting paid little pennies here at a time. So
S3: Ftx's is just as big, just more complex. It's going
S3: to take a long time.
S1: Why is it the names of these people, you know,
S1: Bernie Madoff, he made off with people's money. Sam Bankman-fried.
S1: It sounds like fraud. It's like was it baked in?
S1: Do we need to be careful?
S6: Man was.
S2: Freed. That's what happened was the bank man got arrested
S2: in Bahamas and then he was freed immediately on coming
S2: to America. So weird.
S1: And all the investors got fried.
S5: They did.
S3: They did. There should be some diligence on last names.
S3: When people invest with with a with a newfound.
S1: Well, I just want to say Travis is right. There
S1: you go. And I'm and I'm what is calm? I mean,
S1: I just you're very peaceful. I'm just communicating and I'm
S1: mostly peaceful, so. I had a brilliant question for you.
S1: And and it went with the bad joke.
S2: With the Madoff joke, because I was thinking the same thing,
S2: which knows we're on the same line because he made
S2: off with a whole lot of money. And then Joe
S2: just got it and I was like and.
S1: It made off with my question is, is exactly what
S1: it did there. So you guys go check it out.
S1: Zcash claim do your own due diligence. Make sure you
S1: check it all out for yourself before you do anything.
S1: And Matt, thanks for coming on today and sharing with us.
S1: I'm having a breath mint.
S7: Of course.
S3: Thanks for having me. We're across the the cameras. I
S3: can't actually smell your breath, but I'm sure it's delightful.
S1: It's minty fresh, I guarantee you.
S2: There we go. So if you're interested in that, make
S2: sure you go check that out. This is not, again,
S2: not financial advice. This is not a sponsored thing, just
S2: a potential good service to maybe help you out in
S2: this scenario that you're in. So there you go.
S1: Get your money back. I got my money back.
S5: Oh, my gosh. Oh, that's not.
S2: Oh, my God. How did we just have the same
S2: dad joke.
S5: Simultaneously.
S1: Was just that's like combustion. Like that type of thing
S1: is people's people's MP3 players might be.
S5: On fire.
S2: Right? Oh, my God. It's a gusher.
S5: That's what you.
S2: Know what a gusher is? No. So you ever seen
S2: that movie Stand By Me? Yeah. Like River Phoenix and
S2: Wil Wheaton. Wil Wheaton, those guys. Yeah. Yeah. So that's
S2: what happens whenever you say the same thing at the
S2: same time. Back in the day. Now you say jinx,
S2: but back in the day it was a gusher.
S5: And for a.
S1: While it was pinch, poke, Buy me a Coke, Was it? Yeah.
S1: Never heard. Pinch poke. Buy me a Coke.
S2: Buy me a Coke. Now, I've heard of the pinch,
S2: the Penske pinch. Like if you see a Penske vehicle
S2: drive by, you got to pinch somebody or the slug bug,
S2: but not the poke. Buy me a coke.
S1: So if you guys are not yet members of that
S1: crypto nifty club, you will want to be because we
S1: are dropping nfts. All you need to do is go
S1: to bad crypto dot uncut dot FM and pick up
S1: this cool ultra spinny bad crypto nifty club membership. NFT.
S1: It's rare because Uncut says it's rare and it is
S1: 0.002 eath, which equates to $3.13. You will be in
S1: good company to have this. Airdrops will be coming your
S1: way and if you're.
S2: Already coming to people who've got them right, there's some
S2: really cool ones that's in there. And guess what cost
S2: you three bucks? And you get all kinds of cool
S2: drops and you get it doesn't make us any money
S2: at all. It actually takes us time, but it's fun
S2: to do and you guys get cool excitement out of it.
S2: Some of the people who've received some of these are
S2: literally really excited about some of the cool things.
S5: We've dropped them.
S1: But and I hope that you bag crypto nifty club
S1: members that are currently holding or paying attention to what
S1: we said about our new sister show, The Bad I Show.
S1: And currently as of now you can get a free
S1: founder's NFT, but that is not an automatic drop. You
S1: need to go to bed. I show forward slash NFT.
S1: These founder's passes are so badass looking and they're going
S1: to entitle you to things and stuff and you'll be
S1: an OG.
S2: Yeah. So check this out. So you see this one
S2: right here where we're just all static inside there. The
S2: new one, it's not static like it's moving around. It's
S2: really cool. We're learning some really awesome tricks when it
S2: comes to this, you know, using AI and some of
S2: these different tools. And then also our buddy Alex, who's
S2: helping put the finalized touches on some of this stuff. Dude,
S2: it's just really cool. This stuff is going on. I
S2: don't know how many hours. Last night I was watching
S2: different AI tool videos on on YouTube last night. Joe
S2: Just checking. I'm gonna go on. Oh, my God, I've
S2: never even heard of that. And I go, Oh, and
S2: I finally got access to runway ML. That one. I've
S2: been waiting for that one for a while. It's got
S2: like 30 different creators tools inside this thing. And I said, Yeah,
S2: I'm going to go ahead and pay for the membership
S2: because I know I'm going to use this like crazy.
S2: That's the one where you can import a video and
S2: then tell that video what you want it to do,
S2: and it'll make it in the form of like, Oh,
S2: here's a picture of Joel and Travis walking down the street,
S2: turn these guys into claymation.
S5: And then their header gummy.
S1: Their header on the page. Their tagline is Everything you
S1: need to make anything you want. And so we're going
S1: to be covering that on the Bad AI show. You're
S1: going to want to go subscribe and make sure you
S1: get this free founder's pass NFT while you can, but
S1: you have to claim it at Bad II dot show
S1: forward Slash NFT. Thanks for listening to the Bad Crypto podcast.
S1: We appreciate you guys. We love crypto, we love blockchain,
S1: we love Web3, we love Nfts and Metaverse and gaming.
S2: The future of technology. Joel We love technology and as
S2: technology advances, we like to learn about it and then
S2: teach you about it. So that's really what it is.
S2: We probably when we named our show Bad Crypto, it
S2: probably just the bad technology show because we're talking about
S2: all kinds of badass technologies. Really? Yeah.
S1: But they did that in another timeline and it didn't work. Yeah. Yeah.
S1: Those guys failed. Nobody knows who they are. Yeah.
S5: Yeah.
S2: I guess that was. I guess we're on the proper timeline.
S1: We're in the right timeline, which is here and now.
S1: And as much as we love talking about technology, we
S1: also love telling you guys that one thing you should
S1: do is.
S8: To stay back.
S9: Who's bad?
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S1: The content of the show, the videos and the website
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