Speaker 1: Push Kim.
Speaker 2: Hello listeners. If you've been enjoying our coverage of the
Speaker 2: trial of Sam Bankman Freed so far and are looking
Speaker 2: to dive even deeper into Sam's past, you should take
Speaker 2: a listen to Wondery in Bloomberg's podcast Spellcaster, the Fall
Speaker 2: of Sam Bankman Freed. His fall from grace represents one
Speaker 2: of the most spectacular failures of corporate controls in American history.
Speaker 2: Here interviews with Sam Bankman Freed himself and his former
Speaker 2: girlfriend and business partner, Caroline Ellison, who later admitted something
Speaker 2: had gone very wrong inside their operation. From Bloomberg and
Speaker 2: Wondery comes Spelcaster, hosted by Bloomberg reporter Hannah Miller, now
Speaker 2: with an all new bonus episode that takes you inside
Speaker 2: the courtroom at Sam Bankman Fried's trial, including expert analysis,
Speaker 2: what to watch for, and more behind the scenes reporting.
Speaker 2: Here's a clip from Spelcaster. Follow Spellcaster on the Wondery
Speaker 2: app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3: The Baja Maar Resort is a gargantuan hotel on a
Speaker 3: gorgeous stretch of Bahama's beach front. You enter by crossing
Speaker 3: a Roman style bridge over a landscaped lake where every
Speaker 3: night there's a glitzy fountain show with pulsing lights and
Speaker 3: extremely loud music. It's like the Bellagio on the Caribbean.
Speaker 3: Take In Climb checked into the Baha mar one afternoon
Speaker 3: in April of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: So you arrive and there's a fish tank behind the
Speaker 1: check and dusk.
Speaker 3: A big vertical tank filled with lionfish.
Speaker 1: To be more specific, there were signs for Cryptobahamas everywhere.
Speaker 1: It really felt like the whole island was kind of
Speaker 1: buzzing about this event.
Speaker 3: Tagan was a twenty nine year old crypto entrepreneur and influencer.
Speaker 3: She'd done a lot of these crypto conferences before, but
Speaker 3: she didn't know much about this one called Crypto Bahamas,
Speaker 3: other than that it was invite only and she'd agreed
Speaker 3: to speak the event.
Speaker 1: It almost had this dark fantasy Disneyland Vegas vibe to it,
Speaker 1: and it really felt surreal from the moment that I landed.
Speaker 3: She got her badge and was directed toward the VIP reception.
Speaker 3: She walked out on the hotel lawn to find a
Speaker 3: small gathering of people surrounded by cabanas and giant video screens.
Speaker 3: A local marching band played in the background.
Speaker 1: There was one big table. It was a long, rectangular
Speaker 1: table set for about sixty people, So we kind of
Speaker 1: cull us in the middle of that table and we
Speaker 1: all talked together. It was a three course meal, no
Speaker 1: caviat but definitely nice food.
Speaker 3: The guests took turns introducing themselves. There were a lot
Speaker 3: of the usual suspects hedge, fun guy, venture capital dude,
Speaker 3: crypto bro. Then a woman sat down at the table.
Speaker 1: She came with two guys and they were very nice.
Speaker 1: They apologized for being late to the dinner.
Speaker 3: Can recognize the woman right away. It was Katy Perry
Speaker 3: has an international pop superstar, Katy Perry. Then the guy
Speaker 3: next to her spoke of.
Speaker 1: He said, I got famous from my role playing legalist
Speaker 1: and Lord of the Rings, and it was actually Orlando Bloom.
Speaker 3: But for this crowd, Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom weren't
Speaker 3: the biggest celebrities there. The next morning, Michael Lewis, the
Speaker 3: world renowned business journalist, sat on stage with an awkward
Speaker 3: looking thirty year old guy with a mop of curly hair,
Speaker 3: wearing shorts and a baggy T shirt.
Speaker 4: Three years ago, nobody knew who you were, and now
Speaker 4: you're sitting on the cover of magazines and you're a
Speaker 4: gazillionaire and you're.
Speaker 3: This was who people were here to see, the co
Speaker 3: founder and CEO of FTX, one of the world's largest
Speaker 3: crypto exchanges. He was a billionaire many times over, a
Speaker 3: prolific political donor, a boundary breaking philanthropist, and he does
Speaker 3: it all in just a few years.
Speaker 4: These are world This is your breaking land speed records,
Speaker 4: and I don't think people are really noticing what's happened,
Speaker 4: just how dramatic the revolution has become. There's a status
Speaker 4: of people that's going on in the financial world, and
Speaker 4: you're sitting right in the.
Speaker 3: Middle of it. Sam Bankman Freed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean basically, And I think the way that
Speaker 5: sort of I approached it was like, what should the
Speaker 5: product be like?
Speaker 3: You know, Lewis has written some of the definitive business
Speaker 3: books of the past forty years, Moneyball, Liar's Poker, and
Speaker 3: The Big Short. He has spent a lifetime sorting businesses,
Speaker 3: good guys from the Charlatans, and on stage at least
Speaker 3: he sounded impressed by what Sam Bankman Freed had accomplished.
Speaker 3: And Sam didn't just sit with Michael Lewis. He was everywhere.
Speaker 3: He shared the stage with former President Bill Clinton and
Speaker 3: former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He had an intimate
Speaker 3: heart to heart with Tom Brady, and then another with
Speaker 3: the quarterback's then wife, Giselle Bunschin, the Brazilian supermodel.
Speaker 5: Oh that's just done, you know, I mean, ultimately, the
Speaker 5: scale of impact you can have on the world is
Speaker 5: just really, really large.
Speaker 3: Sam was beyond awkward. His leg bounced wildly as he spoke,
Speaker 3: his eyes darted around the room, and.
Speaker 5: You know, that's I think what really sets it apart.
Speaker 3: His audience didn't seem to care. His awkwardness came off
Speaker 3: as a kind of charm like he was totally indifferent
Speaker 3: to what people thought about it, and they lapped it up,
Speaker 3: especially when he talked about his driving motivation doing good.
Speaker 3: Sam had promised to give all of his wealth away,
Speaker 3: all twenty six billion dollars of it.
Speaker 6: The Ftech Foundation's recent announcement to give up to one
Speaker 6: billion dollars this year alone to high impact chair parties
Speaker 6: show how Sam is transforming corporate governance and becoming the
Speaker 6: modern day CEO that the world needs today.
Speaker 3: We'll discuss on stage with Giselle. Salmon bailed a new
Speaker 3: ad showing him standing with his arms crossed with a
Speaker 3: calmly confident, even virtuous expression on his face. He wore
Speaker 3: a hoodie and shorts. The quote on his ad said,
Speaker 3: I'm in on crypto because I want to make the
Speaker 3: biggest global impact for good. Taigan Klein had never seen
Speaker 3: anything like it.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people were kind of in awe.
Speaker 3: The crowd was captivated by Sam's good intentions, by the
Speaker 3: celebrities and world leaders he kept company with, and the
Speaker 3: sheer scale of his promises.
Speaker 1: And this is where I realized that it was kind
Speaker 1: of the Sam Show.
Speaker 3: The Sam Show. The spring of twenty twenty two, Crypto
Speaker 3: was booming and Sam Bankman Freed was the star. At
Speaker 3: one point, FTX said it was processing on average, twelve
Speaker 3: and a half billion dollars worth of transactions each day,
Speaker 3: and it was all Sam claimed in the name of
Speaker 3: one day giving his fortune away to save the world. Then,
Speaker 3: not long after his star turn in the Bahamas, The
Speaker 3: Sam Show began a very different season. Competitors and regulators
Speaker 3: began to circle Crypto prices were falling. Behind the scenes,
Speaker 3: Sam's closest advisors were abandoning him. At the same time,
Speaker 3: my colleagues at Bloomberg started poking at the myth of
Speaker 3: Sam Bankman freed, and we published stories about it. We
Speaker 3: weren't the only ones, but even we couldn't imagine the
Speaker 3: full scale of what was wrong inside Sam's empire. By
Speaker 3: year's end, FTX was bankrupt, eight billion dollars were missing,
Speaker 3: and Sam was in handcuffs. Investors, prosecutors, lawyers, and crypto
Speaker 3: fans were all left to figure out what was real
Speaker 3: and what wasn't.
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