Speaker 1: Let's talk about f t X, which has brought the
Speaker 1: specter of fraud into this business cycle, and the question
Speaker 1: now whether f t x it's downfall was due to incompetence,
Speaker 1: too much risk, well flat out fraud. To talk about
Speaker 1: this some more, we've got Edward Harrison, he's at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: senior markets editor who's been writing a column about this topic.
Speaker 1: And and I know you make an observation that stuff
Speaker 1: like this typically happens towards the end of cycles. Can
Speaker 1: you tell us more, Yes, Paul, thanks for having me. Uh.
Speaker 1: It is interesting that when you look back at most
Speaker 1: of the major business cycles, including the Great Depression, that
Speaker 1: the large frauds happened very near the end. That is,
Speaker 1: that the large institutions that had the veneer of respectability,
Speaker 1: but underneath uh, fraudulent activity was occurring. They didn't go bust.
Speaker 1: The fraud wasn't uncovered until all of the red hikes
Speaker 1: had been through. Uh, the economy potentially had gone through
Speaker 1: the ringer. It was right at the end that the
Speaker 1: fraud was uncovered. I'm wondering if there is an analog
Speaker 1: here that would help us understand the magnitude of this.
Speaker 1: I mean, is the Birdie made Off scandal in any
Speaker 1: way um analogous to what we're seeing play out in
Speaker 1: the ft X story. Yeah, I mean it's it's it's
Speaker 1: to be determined whether it was in competence, fraud or
Speaker 1: or or what have you. People talking about Lehman Brothers
Speaker 1: uh and made Off as the two parallels that they're
Speaker 1: most likely thinking about. I actually looked back at Ivra
Speaker 1: Krueger from nine to thirty two. He was I thought,
Speaker 1: I think of him as more of an analog in
Speaker 1: terms of here was a business that was a very
Speaker 1: real business. It was doing well, but when the whole
Speaker 1: economy hit the skids, Uh, the the manager Ivra Kruger,
Speaker 1: the owner of the company, turned to fraud, and eventually
Speaker 1: it was uncovered and he took his own life in two.
Speaker 1: So the parallel here is is that f t X
Speaker 1: was a real company. It was If they had stuck
Speaker 1: to their knitting and engaged in exchange activity rather than
Speaker 1: loaning money or acting in a u a untoward way
Speaker 1: with an affiliated company, they would still be around. Is
Speaker 1: this perhaps a different case though, because the crypto world
Speaker 1: is somewhat opaque, there's very little regulation, and there's another
Speaker 1: old saying there's never just one cockroache, right. I would
Speaker 1: agree with that. Another place where um, the Swedish match
Speaker 1: king was very similar to what's going on today, is
Speaker 1: the lack of regulation. Price Waterhouse back in the day
Speaker 1: looked at the books when they had a chance to
Speaker 1: do so, and they said, anyone with any sort of
Speaker 1: rudimentary accounting no, that these books are completely fabricated, fraudulent.
Speaker 1: The poor record keeping, the lack of of a regulatory
Speaker 1: structure to make sure that this company had good accounts
Speaker 1: is very much something that would not have happened in
Speaker 1: it more highly regulated banking industry, or even within the
Speaker 1: United States outside of the banking industry. I remember in
Speaker 1: the kind of the late nineties when the guys and
Speaker 1: traders over at Enron were held in such high regard,
Speaker 1: nobody could figure out what was going on at Enron
Speaker 1: to the degree that the company was able to um
Speaker 1: create those enormous returns, and then the bloom came off
Speaker 1: the rows, so to speak. It was a spectacular unwind there.
Speaker 1: I mean, do we think that it's going to arc
Speaker 1: in the same way in terms of prosecution? Is there
Speaker 1: going to be I know you're talking about the lack
Speaker 1: of regulation, but there has there been the kind of
Speaker 1: violation of law where we would see kind of aggressive
Speaker 1: prosecution of this case. Yeah, I think that we're at
Speaker 1: the point, the discovery point. Uh. The new CEO of
Speaker 1: f t X has said that the accounts are very terrible.
Speaker 1: He was also the man who was responsible for cleaning
Speaker 1: up in Ron. Uh. What we know now is is
Speaker 1: that there was sixty billion dollars of collateral according to
Speaker 1: Sam Bankman Freed that went down to nine billions. We
Speaker 1: know that they engaged in a non armed length relationship
Speaker 1: with the affiliated Alameter Research, which Sam Bankman Freed also started.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of things that have happened
Speaker 1: that would suggest that, at a minimum, we're going to
Speaker 1: see some prosecution. If you think back to the two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight scenario, we had Lehman Brothers with Countrywide Financial,
Speaker 1: with Angelo, Mozilla, both of those companies, there was an
Speaker 1: attempt to find out whether there was malfeasans but ultimately, uh,
Speaker 1: no one went to prison in those cases. So we
Speaker 1: can't really say at this point other than it's very
Speaker 1: likely that we're going to see prosecutions. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: according to the US bankruptcy called fifty unsecure creditors owed
Speaker 1: more than three billion and SOGG there's an awful lot
Speaker 1: more unsecured creditors out there. How long is it going
Speaker 1: to untangle this mess? And how bad does it does
Speaker 1: it look? It is a good question because today in
Speaker 1: the bankruptcy proceedings, the creditors were not named. They did
Speaker 1: not want to be named. I would imagine part of
Speaker 1: that is because they're involved in the same business. And
Speaker 1: once it's learned who they are, and there were the
Speaker 1: top ten creditors had nine figure credits with with f
Speaker 1: t X, people will then start to wonder whether these individuals,
Speaker 1: these UH organizations have problems themselves. And what do you
Speaker 1: think the reputational damage HIG is to the entire crypto
Speaker 1: space as a result of this. I think that the
Speaker 1: reputational damage is tremendous. It means that it can no
Speaker 1: longer be seen as an adjunct to the regulated banking system,
Speaker 1: that it's not something to get involved in unless you're
Speaker 1: a true believer. No one who is mainstream and certainly
Speaker 1: not institutions will want to touch this with a ten
Speaker 1: foot barge pole. Yeah. Crypto, once known as Digital Golden
Speaker 1: New payment system, a replacement for cash having underlying blockchain technology?
Speaker 1: Is this technology and an answer in steach of a question,
Speaker 1: just quickly, I think it is. It is. Uh. We
Speaker 1: have yet to see the killer app, so to speak.
Speaker 1: There's no applicable usage of blockchain technology thus far that
Speaker 1: would bring it into the mainstream. And that's the biggest
Speaker 1: problem alright. Edward Harrison, Bloomberg Senior my gets editor, writing
Speaker 1: a very fascinating column about the downfall of f t X.
Speaker 1: Recommend you read that on the Bloomberg terminal