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 Wednesday, December seven. Sound bankman Freed used
Speaker 1: to say that he was on a mission. That mission
Speaker 1: giving away more than a billion dollars in the service
Speaker 1: of a movement known as effective altruism. My goal is
Speaker 1: to do as much great as I can for the world.
Speaker 1: I I'm perfect Effective altruism comedy. Basically, it's a group
Speaker 1: of people looking to try and figure out if you
Speaker 1: want a maximized the amount of good you do, maximized
Speaker 1: sup positive impact that you can have on the world
Speaker 1: through personal giving and through a philanthropic unit called the
Speaker 1: ft X Foundation, bank when free to pay it to
Speaker 1: support causes ranging from pandemic prevention to research into climate change.
Speaker 1: Fast forward a bits on on bankruptcy later. That message
Speaker 1: of using wealth to empower people and projects that are
Speaker 1: doing the most to make positive, long lasting change. A
Speaker 1: marketing line from the ft X Foundation's website now rings
Speaker 1: a little hollow blue move reports to Sophie Alexander, A
Speaker 1: lot of people have died who signed the giving pledge.
Speaker 1: We have no idea whether they actually gave away the
Speaker 1: majority of their lifetime or wrote it in their will.
Speaker 1: And Laura Davidson, the amount of money that his foundation
Speaker 1: said it gave or the ft X Foundations that it
Speaker 1: give didn't actually go out the door. Join me now
Speaker 1: with the backstory. So if you want, don't you introduce yourself. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Sophia Alexander. I'm a reporter on the Wealth Team.
Speaker 1: I cover billionaires, what they're doing with their money, and
Speaker 1: especially billionaire philanthropy. Such a busy time for billionaires and
Speaker 1: what they're doing with their money. Laura, what about you?
Speaker 1: I'm Laura Davison and I'm based down in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Where I'm covering wealth, but also um all things Congress
Speaker 1: and tax policy and what politicians are up to. Again,
Speaker 1: just many things happening in your world. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about the place where the intersections of your world are happening,
Speaker 1: and that is a gentleman named Sam Bankman Freed, who
Speaker 1: I'm no longer going to introduce on the show, because
Speaker 1: if you're listening to a show about crypto and you
Speaker 1: you've at least heard of what Sam Bankman tried is.
Speaker 1: But perhaps you have heard either slightly less about or
Speaker 1: don't quite understand what the concept of effective altruism is,
Speaker 1: which is something that he was closely associated with, Sophie.
Speaker 1: What does this crypto billionaire or perhaps former billionaire have
Speaker 1: to do with this particular strand of philanthropy. Effective altruism
Speaker 1: is this brand of philosophy and philanthropy that picked up
Speaker 1: steam recently because it's caught the attention of billionaires like
Speaker 1: Sam Bankman Free, but also Elon Musk. And what it
Speaker 1: is is essentially the idea that you should make as
Speaker 1: much money as you can to give it away, but
Speaker 1: in a very effective way, hence the first word in
Speaker 1: the term, but that means saving as many lives as possible.
Speaker 1: And 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 are definitely gonna kill us. But
Speaker 1: when you say things like trying to preserve humanity, I
Speaker 1: think of, you know, cryogenics and this idea that people
Speaker 1: have like, well we can what we can all freeze
Speaker 1: ourselves and be and be alive. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: effect of altruism had much to do with cryodraonics, but
Speaker 1: what I do know is that part of the tension
Speaker 1: that I've seen in terms of the criticism is how
Speaker 1: do you know if stuff is working? Like, if you
Speaker 1: have such a long term time horizon, how are you
Speaker 1: even measuring the efficacy of your effectiveness? The things that
Speaker 1: they focus on sort of get at that, like, but
Speaker 1: there's no way of knowing whether people are going to
Speaker 1: 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 preparedness. Research on bio security
Speaker 1: is increasingly popular, especially from SPF, and then artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: is a big one as well, especially among not just SPF,
Speaker 1: but also Elon Muski does a lot of that as well.
Speaker 1: And to your point, not about being like yea robots,
Speaker 1: but more about neigh robots more so, like doing the
Speaker 1: research now to make sure that artificial intelligence is developed
Speaker 1: in a safe way. Got it, Laura, You're in d C,
Speaker 1: which is in a lot of whiz the opposite of
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley, from the fashion to the focus to just
Speaker 1: the way that you know, the priorities that people have
Speaker 1: spf for lots of reasons associated with you know, lobbying
Speaker 1: efforts around trying to get certain types of regulations in place.
Speaker 1: Spent a lot of time in d C. Was he
Speaker 1: successful in persuading people around him to like buy into
Speaker 1: this effective altruism vision from your perspective, he really talked
Speaker 1: about pandemic preparedness as being one of his key drivers
Speaker 1: for political giving, which raised a lot of eyebrows because
Speaker 1: there is almost zero talk in DC about pandemic preparedness,
Speaker 1: at least among politicians and Congress, in the White House,
Speaker 1: maybe in some corners of some agencies. But this has
Speaker 1: really been sort of an interesting way to see how
Speaker 1: he spent his money to really bring to life some
Speaker 1: of these ideas that he's talked about. His crypto giving
Speaker 1: or his political giving. Really most people believe that was
Speaker 1: more focused towards crypto when you look at and crypto
Speaker 1: regulation or less regulation as the case. Maybe he was
Speaker 1: giving to the key figures there where you see some
Speaker 1: of these more altruism ideas come to light. Is in
Speaker 1: this foundation giving though as a reporting to show that
Speaker 1: the amount of money that his foundation said it gave
Speaker 1: or the FTX Foundation said it give didn't actually go
Speaker 1: out the door. Um, you know, they had a bunch
Speaker 1: of grants that never ultimately got paid and in some
Speaker 1: cases some of that money actually maybe clawed back as
Speaker 1: part of the bankruptcy proceedings. Now, just for context, is
Speaker 1: this common in philanthropic giving? Like, is there often this
Speaker 1: discrepancy between Hey, we're planning to give all this money
Speaker 1: and is it just that the timelines along it's like
Speaker 1: hard to give money? Like what's going on here? In
Speaker 1: like the broader like world of billionaire philanthropy, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of promises that are made, like the giving pledge.
Speaker 1: It's a pledge to give away the majority of your
Speaker 1: wealth in your lifetime or your will. You know a
Speaker 1: lot of people have died who signed the giving pledge.
Speaker 1: We have no idea whether they actually gave away the
Speaker 1: majority of their lifetime or wrote it in their will.
Speaker 1: The majority of your wealth is you know a big
Speaker 1: question work because you know, Jeff bezos Is wealth has varied.
Speaker 1: You know, tens of billions of dollars since this time
Speaker 1: last year. He said recently that he wants to give
Speaker 1: away most of his wealth in his lifetime, But what
Speaker 1: does that actually mean in terms of dollar figures? Now?
Speaker 1: Talking about SPF and his pledge. You know the grants
Speaker 1: that they said they made on their page, you know
Speaker 1: a lot of those weren't paid yet. A lot of
Speaker 1: that has to do with paperwork. There's a lag. I
Speaker 1: think there is a lot of PR to the world
Speaker 1: of billionaire philanthropy. So sort of like slapping all these
Speaker 1: big numbers up makes a person look good, and in
Speaker 1: SPFS case, that's that's also true. Right to your point
Speaker 1: about billionaires saying they're going to give things, it does.
Speaker 1: I'm reminded of when people were super surprised that Mackenzie
Speaker 1: Scott formally Mackenzie Scott Bezos was just like literally giving
Speaker 1: money to just turn up and be like, here's a
Speaker 1: bunch of money. Buy I am fascinated by what you said.
Speaker 1: They're about this idea of PR because bank mun Freed,
Speaker 1: who has been on a bit of a like texting
Speaker 1: with reporters tool in a text thread with a report
Speaker 1: at Vox Media, appeared to concede that for him, at
Speaker 1: least some of this effective alcatraism stuff was just pr
Speaker 1: How seriously can we take this movement in general, like,
Speaker 1: is it unfair to ascribe, you know, cynicism to the
Speaker 1: vast majority of these folks. It's hard to know what
Speaker 1: people's real intentions are. Philanthropy has in history been a
Speaker 1: very good pr tool. I mean, if you think about
Speaker 1: Rockefeller today, you think a lot about his philanthropy, literally
Speaker 1: the Rockefeller Center exactly in New York and Carnegie. You know,
Speaker 1: you think about his public works, his libraries and things
Speaker 1: like that. You don't think of the fact that they
Speaker 1: were robber barons. And you know, the same has been
Speaker 1: true for you know, billionaires who are still alive today,
Speaker 1: like Bill Gates. You know, twenty years ago, people didn't
Speaker 1: think of him as a fantastic philanthropist. They thought him
Speaker 1: as this evil monopoly man. And that Look how much
Speaker 1: that has changed. Sam. For the Sacklers, who you know,
Speaker 1: are implicated in the opioid crisis, their names are slapped
Speaker 1: over museum buildings all across the country, and until recently,
Speaker 1: no one thought anything of it. So it is hard
Speaker 1: at this point to think, okay, yes, we can take
Speaker 1: this billionaire at his word that you know he really
Speaker 1: does mean well, he's just trying to make as much
Speaker 1: money as possible to give it away. Maybe we should
Speaker 1: start asking the question of how are they making their money.
Speaker 1: The other thing, too specifically about SBF is that he
Speaker 1: clearly was very conscious about who he gave money to
Speaker 1: and the reasons he was giving that money. He told
Speaker 1: Fox recently that he gave as much money to Republicans
Speaker 1: as he gave to Democrats for political donations through dark money.
Speaker 1: He sent through dark money, which of course can't be
Speaker 1: verified by definition. Those groups don't publish their list of donors,
Speaker 1: so it's very hard to know whether that's true. But
Speaker 1: the reason he said he gave through dark money groups
Speaker 1: versus giving to more public entities was because reporters freak
Speaker 1: out when billionaires give to Republicans. So it was clear
Speaker 1: he was thinking about what is the perception of this
Speaker 1: giving that I'm doing. So this is SBF saying the
Speaker 1: reason he used dark money was to avoid you know,
Speaker 1: quote unquote reports was freaking out. Yes, and you look
Speaker 1: here to the people that were receiving money from the
Speaker 1: ft X Foundation. It's a lot of academics. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of researchers including you know, undergraduate students and PhD students,
Speaker 1: master students, some really small dollar donations, you know, comparatively speaking,
Speaker 1: you know, things that are in like the tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars, but people that were influential in the
Speaker 1: field and that we're very influential online of sort of
Speaker 1: pumping up f t X as well as the effect
Speaker 1: of altruism movement. Now, I just want to kind of
Speaker 1: segue briefly into Future Fund and this idea of influence
Speaker 1: because it was a part of the overall ft X
Speaker 1: foundation that was, according to their marketing materials on their website,
Speaker 1: funded by what looked like Bankman Freed's inner circle. Right,
Speaker 1: So you had Caroline Allison from Alameda, Gary Wang sing
Speaker 1: what did they do exactly? Like what was the Future Fund? Yeah? Sure,
Speaker 1: this was actually a really kind of novel and also
Speaker 1: very complicated organizations. So they basically had two tiers of
Speaker 1: grants that they gave out. They gave up bigger grants
Speaker 1: which were more like a traditional foundation where you know,
Speaker 1: applicants could apply and get you know, kind of hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands or millions of dollars. They also had this
Speaker 1: whole re grant or structure where they had more than
Speaker 1: a hundred people that were active in the effect of
Speaker 1: altruism community who would identify different researchers or projects that
Speaker 1: they thought that they were deserving of, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of smaller dollar amounts of money. So these are a
Speaker 1: lot of students who are applying for specific projects that
Speaker 1: they were working on, or kind of ragtag groups of
Speaker 1: of people who were starting different side hustles and they
Speaker 1: could apply to get this money. So it was really
Speaker 1: kind of broad. You know, you look at people from
Speaker 1: you know, it was Trump's former head of Operation Warp Speed,
Speaker 1: who's writing a memoir. You got some money, as well
Speaker 1: as you know, a Harvard undergraduate it got thirty dollars.
Speaker 1: Up next, more from Bloomberg reportos Sophie Alexander and Laura
Speaker 1: Davison on what's happening with effective altruism and crypto. Now,
Speaker 1: we've talked a bit about these smaller dollar amounts and
Speaker 1: the influence, and so I feel like we have to
Speaker 1: talk about one of the influencers of this whole movement,
Speaker 1: which is William David McCaskill. And when I googled him
Speaker 1: as research for this. It was like a bunch of
Speaker 1: photos of him staring off into the middle distance, like
Speaker 1: really intently, and he you know, he has been described,
Speaker 1: as it were, as a charismatic leader. Who is this
Speaker 1: dude and what was his relationship to the ft X
Speaker 1: Foundation and to the e A movement. He is one
Speaker 1: of the originators of the effective Altruist movement. He's a
Speaker 1: philosopher and he was actually on the team of the
Speaker 1: ft X Future Fund. He was one of the people
Speaker 1: who signed the letter that went up on e A Forum,
Speaker 1: a community online from the team behind the Future Fund
Speaker 1: after the whole thing collapsed, saying hey, we resigned, big apologies.
Speaker 1: If you have questions and you're a grantee, please email
Speaker 1: us here. So it's unclear to me, at least in
Speaker 1: my reporting, what the relationship between SPF and McCaskill was,
Speaker 1: but it does sound like from Ellen Hewett's story recently
Speaker 1: with Peter Singer, she did an interview with Peter Singer,
Speaker 1: it sounds like SBF was making the rounds with this group.
Speaker 1: Peter Singer is another originator of the movement, alongside McCaskill,
Speaker 1: another philosopher at Stanford, So it sounds like they were
Speaker 1: swimming in similar circles and no shade to philosophers. So philosophers,
Speaker 1: please don't come from me for what I'm about to say.
Speaker 1: But most philosophers aren't like household names. McCaskill was on
Speaker 1: The Daily Show with Trevor Noah McCaskill welcomes to the
Speaker 1: Danny Show. Thanks so much for having me. M it's
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting speaking to a philosoph because when they
Speaker 1: say philosopher, I remember thinking, oh, it's probably gonna be
Speaker 1: like a ninety year old man with like a stick
Speaker 1: and what is the meaning of life? But this is
Speaker 1: an extremely savvy group of folks. Is that sort of
Speaker 1: common in these EA circles that they are, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of strategic about getting their message out 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 where Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's foundation was run by a poker player. Yes, cool,
Speaker 1: a poker player, And it seems like there are a
Speaker 1: lot of poker players who are involved in the effective
Speaker 1: altuist movement. This guy, yougo or Kirkanov was big in
Speaker 1: the e A space. Now, I just said, no shade philosophers,
Speaker 1: but some shades billionaires. One of the things I've noticed
Speaker 1: about billionaires is they seem to be hypersensitive to associating
Speaker 1: themselves with people who are cool, because a lot of
Speaker 1: billionaires aren't cool. And so tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: about you know, these kind of billionaire circles and who
Speaker 1: they're being influenced by. Well, with Elon Musk, it's a
Speaker 1: completely different story because it's unclear like how many real
Speaker 1: close friends he has. You know, this year he had
Speaker 1: this poker player running his foundation who he apparently met
Speaker 1: at Burning Man. You know, he dates grimes, he like,
Speaker 1: you know, he's doing all this stuff. Who knows who's
Speaker 1: actually close with him and who is just associating with
Speaker 1: him for the proximity to his power. So that's that's
Speaker 1: the circle that Ellen Musk runs in with SPF. It
Speaker 1: sounds like it was this tight knit circle of FTX
Speaker 1: folks and also effective altruists. I just I feel like
Speaker 1: I have to close with this anecdote because it's too
Speaker 1: good not to. In the New Yorker profile of William McCaskill,
Speaker 1: they have this sentence, McCaskill like to drink too many
Speaker 1: pipes of beer and frolic about in the nude, climbing
Speaker 1: pitched roofs by night for the life affirming flush. He
Speaker 1: was a saxophonist in a campus funk bland that played
Speaker 1: the Mabels and was known as a hopeless romantic incredible
Speaker 1: thank you both, thank you, thank you. That was super fun.
Speaker 1: I learned at least five wild things. You can find
Speaker 1: more of their reporting on the Bloomberg terminal and on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com, and do check out our newsletter, which
Speaker 1: is also called Bloomberg Crypto. You can get that in
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Speaker 1: is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily podcast from Bloomberg and I
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Speaker 1: for the show to Crypto at bloomberg dot net. The
Speaker 1: supervising producer of Bloomberg Crypto is Vicky Verglina. Our senior
Speaker 1: producer is Janet Babin. Our producers are Mohammed Farouk and
Speaker 1: Sharon Barriro. Our associate producers are Ty Butler and Moses
Speaker 1: on Them. Desta wonder At is our engineer. Original music
Speaker 1: by Leo Sidron. I'm Stacy Marie schmil We'll be back tomorrow.