Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily Bloomberg I heard podcast
Speaker 1: and I'm Stacy Marie Ishmael, Managing editor of Crypto for
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News. It's Monday, January sixty. Hi everyone, Stacy Murrie
Speaker 1: here Today in the U s we're observing Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King Jr. Day, which is a holiday. So we on
Speaker 1: the Crypto team wanted to offer up an episode we
Speaker 1: think feels appropriate to the idea of service. This is
Speaker 1: an episode that focuses on sam Bank un Freeds, so
Speaker 1: called effective altruism. What happens to all of the various organizations,
Speaker 1: nonprofit and otherwise around the world who were expecting to
Speaker 1: receive donations or who received donations from sam Bank, mun
Speaker 1: Freed or f TX or any of its associated entities.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg reporters Sophia Alexander and Laura Davison joined me for
Speaker 1: a look at the full out and we'll be back
Speaker 1: tomorrow with a new episode. Thank you and enjoy. So
Speaker 1: if you want, don't you introduce yourself. Hi. I'm Sophia Alexander.
Speaker 1: I'm a reporter on the Wealth Team. I cover billionaires
Speaker 1: what they're doing with their money, and especially billionaire philanthropy.
Speaker 1: Such a busy time for billionaires and what they're doing
Speaker 1: with their money. Laura, what about you? Hi? I'm Laura
Speaker 1: Davison and I'm based down in Washington, d C. Where
Speaker 1: I'm covering wealth but also um all things Congress and
Speaker 1: tax policy and what politicians are up to. Again, just
Speaker 1: many things happening in your world. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: the place where the intersections of your worlds are happening,
Speaker 1: and that is a gentleman named Sam Bankmun Freed, who
Speaker 1: I'm no longer going to introduce on the show because
Speaker 1: if you're listening to show about crypto and you you've
Speaker 1: at least heard of what som Back Mantrid is, but
Speaker 1: perhaps you have heard either slightly less about or don't
Speaker 1: quite understand what the concept of effective altruism is, which
Speaker 1: is something that he was closely associated with, Sophie. What
Speaker 1: does this crypto billionaire or perhaps former billionaire have to
Speaker 1: do with this particular strand of philanthropy. Effective altruism is
Speaker 1: this brand of philosophy and philanthropy that's picked up steam
Speaker 1: recently because it's caught the attention of billionaires like Sam
Speaker 1: Bankman Freed, but also Elon musk, and what it is
Speaker 1: is essentially the idea that you should make as much
Speaker 1: money as you can to give it away, but in
Speaker 1: a very effective way, hence the first word in the term,
Speaker 1: but that means saving as many lives as possible. And
Speaker 1: there's a whole other strand of it called long termism,
Speaker 1: and the idea behind that is trying to sort of
Speaker 1: preserve humanities long term existence on this planet. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of focus on artificial intelligence research and trying
Speaker 1: to make sure that the robots basically don't kill us
Speaker 1: in the future. They're about a definitely gonna kill us.
Speaker 1: But when you say things like trying to preserve humanity,
Speaker 1: I think of, you know, cryogenics and this idea that
Speaker 1: people have like, well we can what we can all
Speaker 1: freeze ourselves and be and be alive. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if effect of altruism had much to do with cryograonics,
Speaker 1: but what I do know is that part of the
Speaker 1: tension that I've seen in terms of the criticism is
Speaker 1: how do you know if stuff is working? Like, if
Speaker 1: you have such a long term time horizon, how are
Speaker 1: you even measuring the efficacy of your effectiveness? The things
Speaker 1: that they focus on sort of get at that, like,
Speaker 1: but there's no way of knowing whether people are going
Speaker 1: to be around in two hundred a thousand years or whatever,
Speaker 1: but they're trying to focus on issues that will prevent
Speaker 1: the collapse of humanity pandemic prepared. This research on bio
Speaker 1: security is increasingly popular, especially from SPF, and then artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence is a big one as well, especially among not
Speaker 1: just SPF but also Elon Muski does a lot of
Speaker 1: that as well. And to your point, not about being
Speaker 1: like yea robots, but more about neigh robots more so
Speaker 1: like doing the research now to make sure that artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence is developed in a safe way. Got it, Laura,
Speaker 1: You're in d C, which is in a lot of
Speaker 1: wiz the opposite of Silicon Valley, from the fashion to
Speaker 1: the focus to just the way that you know, the
Speaker 1: priorities that people have SPF for lots of reasons associated with,
Speaker 1: you know, lobbying efforts around trying to get certain types
Speaker 1: of regulations in place, spent a lot of time in
Speaker 1: d C. Was he successful in persuading people around him
Speaker 1: to like buy into this effective altruism vision from your perspective,
Speaker 1: he really he talked about pandemic preparedness as being one
Speaker 1: of his key drivers for political giving, which raised a
Speaker 1: lot of eyebrows because there is almost zero talk in
Speaker 1: d C about pandemic preparedness, at least among politicians and
Speaker 1: Congress in the White House, maybe in some corners of
Speaker 1: some agencies. But this has really been sort of an
Speaker 1: interesting way to see how he spent his money to
Speaker 1: really bring to life some of these ideas that he's
Speaker 1: talked about his crypto giving or his political giving. Really
Speaker 1: most people believe that that was more focused towards crypto
Speaker 1: when you look at and crypto regulation or less regulation
Speaker 1: as the case. Maybe he was giving to the key
Speaker 1: figures there. Where you see some of these more altruism
Speaker 1: ideas come to light is in this foundation giving though
Speaker 1: as a reporting to show that the amount of money
Speaker 1: that his foundation said it gave or the FTX Foundations
Speaker 1: said it give didn't actually go out the door. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, they had a bunch of grants that never
Speaker 1: u ultimately got paid and in some cases some of
Speaker 1: that money actually maybe Claude back as part of the
Speaker 1: bankruptcy proceedings. Now, just for context, is this common in
Speaker 1: philanthropic giving, Like is there often this discrepancy between Hey,
Speaker 1: we're planning to give all this money and is it
Speaker 1: just that the timelines along, it's hard to give money,
Speaker 1: like what's going on here? In like the broader like
Speaker 1: world of billionaire philanthropy, there are a lot of promises
Speaker 1: that are made, like the giving pledge. It's a pledge
Speaker 1: to give away the majority of your wealth in your
Speaker 1: lifetime or your will. You know, a lot of people
Speaker 1: have died who signed the giving pledge. We have no
Speaker 1: idea whether they actually gave away the majority of their
Speaker 1: lifetime or wrote it in their will. The majority of
Speaker 1: your wealth is you know, a big question work because
Speaker 1: you know, Jeff bezos Is wealth has varied, you know,
Speaker 1: tens of billions of dollars since this time last year.
Speaker 1: He said recently that he wants to give away most
Speaker 1: of his wealth in his lifetime. But what does that
Speaker 1: actually mean in terms of dollar figures? Now talking about
Speaker 1: SPF and his pledge. You know the grants that they
Speaker 1: said they made on their page, you know a lot
Speaker 1: of those weren't paid yet. A lot of that has
Speaker 1: to do with paperwork. There's a lag I think there
Speaker 1: is a lot of pr to the world of billionaire philanthropy,
Speaker 1: so sort of like slapping all these big numbers up
Speaker 1: makes a person look good, and in SPFS case, that's
Speaker 1: that's also true. Right to your point about billionaires saying
Speaker 1: they're going to give things, it does. I'm reminded of
Speaker 1: when people were super surprised that Mackenzie Scott formally Mackenzie
Speaker 1: Scott Bezos was just like literally giving money to just
Speaker 1: turn up and be like, here's a bunch of money.
Speaker 1: By I am fascinated by what you said. They're about
Speaker 1: this idea of pr because bank mun Freed, who has
Speaker 1: been on a bit of a like texting with reporters tool,
Speaker 1: in a text thread with a report at Vox Media,
Speaker 1: appeared to concede that for him, at least some of
Speaker 1: this effective alcoatraism stuff was just pr How seriously can
Speaker 1: we take this movement in general? Like, is it unfair
Speaker 1: to ascribe, you know, cynicism to the vast majority of
Speaker 1: these folks. It's hard to know what people's real intentions are.
Speaker 1: Philanthropy has in history been a very good PRD tool.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about Rockefeller today, you think
Speaker 1: a lot about his philanthropy. Literally, the Rockefeller censer exactly
Speaker 1: in New York and Carnegie. You know, you think about
Speaker 1: his public works, his libraries and things like that, you
Speaker 1: don't think of the fact that they were robber barons.
Speaker 1: And you know, the same has been true for you know,
Speaker 1: billionaires who are still alive today, like Bill Gates. You know,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, people didn't think of him as this
Speaker 1: fantastic philanthropist. They thought him as this evil monopoly man.
Speaker 1: And that look how much that has changed. Sam For
Speaker 1: the Sacklers, who you know, are implicated in the opioid crisis,
Speaker 1: their names are slapped over museum buildings all across the country,
Speaker 1: and until recently, no one thought anything of it. So
Speaker 1: it is hard at this point to think, Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: we can take this billionaire at his word that you
Speaker 1: know he really does mean well, he's just trying to
Speaker 1: make as much money as possible to give it away.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should start asking the question of how are
Speaker 1: they making their money. The other thing, too specifically about
Speaker 1: SBF is that he clearly was very conscious about who
Speaker 1: he gave money to and the reasons he was giving
Speaker 1: that money. He told Fox recently that he gave as
Speaker 1: much money to Republicans as he gave to Democrats for
Speaker 1: political donations through dark money. Through dark money, which of
Speaker 1: course can't be verified by definition. Those groups don't publish
Speaker 1: their list of donors, so it's very hard to know
Speaker 1: whether that's true. But the reason he said he gave
Speaker 1: through dark money groups versus giving to more public entities
Speaker 1: was because reporters freak out when billionaires give to Republicans.
Speaker 1: So it was clear he was thinking about what is
Speaker 1: the perception of this giving that I'm doing. So this
Speaker 1: is SBF saying the reason he used dark money was
Speaker 1: to avoid you know, quote unquote reports was freaking out. Yes,
Speaker 1: and you look here to the people that were seaving
Speaker 1: money from the ft X Foundation. It's a lot of academics,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of researchers, including you know, undergraduate students
Speaker 1: and PhD students, master students. Some really small dollar donations,
Speaker 1: you know, comparatively speaking, you know, things that are in
Speaker 1: like the tens of thousands of dollars, but people that
Speaker 1: were influential in the field and that were very influential
Speaker 1: online of sort of pumping up f t X as
Speaker 1: well as the effect of altruism movement. Now, I just
Speaker 1: want to kind of segue briefly into Future Fund and
Speaker 1: this idea of influence because it was a part of
Speaker 1: the overall ft X Foundation that was, according to their
Speaker 1: marketing materials on their website, funded by what looked like
Speaker 1: Bankman Fried's Inner Circle. Right, So you had Caroline Allison
Speaker 1: from Alameda, Gary Wang sing what did they do exactly? Like,
Speaker 1: what was the Future Fund? Yeah? Sure? This was actually
Speaker 1: a really kind of novel and also very complicated organizations.
Speaker 1: So they basically had two tiers of grants that they
Speaker 1: gave out. They gave up bigger grants which were more
Speaker 1: like her traditional foundation where you know, applicants could apply
Speaker 1: and get you know, kind of hundreds of thousands or
Speaker 1: millions of dollars. They also had this whole re grant
Speaker 1: our structure where they had more than a hundred people
Speaker 1: that were active in the effect of altruism community who
Speaker 1: would identify different researchers or projects that they thought that
Speaker 1: they were deserving of, you know, sort of smaller dollar
Speaker 1: amounts of money. So these are a lot of students
Speaker 1: who are applying for specific projects that they were working on,
Speaker 1: or kind of ragtag groups of of people who were
Speaker 1: starting different side hustles, and they could apply to get
Speaker 1: this money. So it was really kind of broad. You know,
Speaker 1: you look at people from you know, it was Trump's
Speaker 1: former head of Operation Warp Speed, who's writing a memoir.
Speaker 1: You got some money as well as you know, a
Speaker 1: Harvard undergraduate got thirty thou dollars Up next, more from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg reportos Sophie Alexander and Laura Davison on what's happening
Speaker 1: with effective altruism and crypto. Now we've talked a bit
Speaker 1: about these smaller dollar amounts and the influence, and so
Speaker 1: I feel like we have to so about one of
Speaker 1: the the influencers of this whole movement, which is William
Speaker 1: David McCaskill. And when I googled him as research for this,
Speaker 1: it was like a bunch of photos of him staring
Speaker 1: off into the middle distance, like really intently. And he
Speaker 1: you know, he has been described, as it were, as
Speaker 1: a charismatic leader. Who is this dude and what was
Speaker 1: his relationship to the FTX Foundation and to the e
Speaker 1: A movement. He is one of the originators of the
Speaker 1: effective altruist movement. He's a philosopher and he was actually
Speaker 1: on the team of the f t X Future Fund.
Speaker 1: He was one of the people who signed the letter
Speaker 1: that went up on e a forum, a community online
Speaker 1: from the team behind the Future Fund after the whole
Speaker 1: thing collapsed, saying, hey, we resigned big apologies. If you
Speaker 1: have questions and you're a grantee, please email us here.
Speaker 1: So it's unclear to me, at least in my reporting,
Speaker 1: what the relationship between SPF and mccasko us, but does
Speaker 1: sound like from Ellen Hewett's story recently with Peter Singer,
Speaker 1: she didn't interview with Peter Singer. It sounds like SBF
Speaker 1: was making the rounds with this group. Peter Singer is
Speaker 1: another originator of the movement, alongside McCaskill, another philosopher at Stanford,
Speaker 1: so it sounds like they were swimming in similar circles
Speaker 1: and no shade to philosophers. So philosophers, please don't come
Speaker 1: from me for what I'm about to say. But most
Speaker 1: philosophers aren't like household names. McCaskill was on The Daily
Speaker 1: Show with Trevor Noah only a McCaskill welcomes to the
Speaker 1: Day Show. Thanks so much for having me. I'm a fan.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's interesting speaking to a philosopher because when
Speaker 1: they say, philosopher. I remember thinking, oh, it's probably gonna
Speaker 1: be like a ninety year old man with like a
Speaker 1: stick and what is the meaning of life? But this
Speaker 1: is an extremely savvy group of folks. Is that sort
Speaker 1: of common in these EA circles that they are, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of strategic about getting their message jouts in these
Speaker 1: larger forums, in the larger forms, I'm not sure. I
Speaker 1: mean recently, just within this past year, it's been interesting
Speaker 1: to watch them sort of gain influence in these billionaire circles.
Speaker 1: Like I said earlier, Elon Musk has also espoused the idea.
Speaker 1: I don't know how recently, but at least earlier this year.
Speaker 1: There was a poker player named Igor Kirganov who was
Speaker 1: in charge of his foundation, and he is Elon Musk's
Speaker 1: foundation was run by a poker player. Yes, a poker player,
Speaker 1: and it seems like there are a lot of poker
Speaker 1: players who are involved in the effect of Altoist movement.
Speaker 1: This guy, Ego or Kirganov was big in the EYA space. Now,
Speaker 1: I just said, no shade of philosophers, but some shades billionaires.
Speaker 1: One of the things I've noticed about billionaires is they
Speaker 1: seem to be hypersensitive to associating themselves with people who
Speaker 1: are cool, because a lot of billionaires aren't cool. And
Speaker 1: so tell me a little bit about you know, these
Speaker 1: kind of billionaire circles and who they're being influenced by. Well,
Speaker 1: with Elon Musk, it's a completely different story because it's unclear,
Speaker 1: like how many real close friends he has. You know,
Speaker 1: this year he had this poker player running his foundation
Speaker 1: who he apparently met at Burning Man. You know, he
Speaker 1: dates grimes, he like, you know, he's doing all this stuff.
Speaker 1: Who knows who's actually close with him and who is
Speaker 1: just associating with him for the proximity to his power.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the circle that Ellen Musk runs in
Speaker 1: with SPF. It sounds like it was this tight knit
Speaker 1: circle of FTX folks and also effective altruists. I just
Speaker 1: I feel like I have to close with this anecdote
Speaker 1: because it's too good not to. In the New Yorker
Speaker 1: profile of William McCaskill, they have this sentence, McCaskill like
Speaker 1: to drink too many pipes of bit and frolic about
Speaker 1: in the nude, climbing pitched roofs by night for the
Speaker 1: life affirming flush. He was a saxophonist in a campus
Speaker 1: funk bland that played the Mabels and was known as
Speaker 1: a hopeless romantic incredible. Thank you both, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: That was super fun. I learned at least five wild things.
Speaker 1: You can find more of their reporting on the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: terminal and on Bloomberg dot com, and do check out
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Speaker 1: The supervising producer of Bloomberg Crypto is Vicky very Galina.
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Speaker 1: Original music by Leo Sidran. I'm Stacy Maria Schmall, we'll
Speaker 1: be back tomorrow.