Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, Jamie here with two notes at the top
Speaker 2: of this week's episode. First, I am going on my
Speaker 2: book tour across the US to celebrate the paperback release
Speaker 2: of my book Raw Dog, The Naked Truth about Hot
Speaker 2: Dogs next week, and I'm really excited to see everybody. Uh,
Speaker 2: please come out if you live in these areas. All
Speaker 2: readings are going to be free and hosted by good
Speaker 2: friends of mine, and so I will be in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: I'll be in Louisville, Kentucky. I'll be in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Portland, Maine, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Richmond, Virginia,
Speaker 2: and Pedaluma, California, starting a week from today. Full dates
Speaker 2: and details are at the link in the description, and
Speaker 2: I would love to see you there. Also, we released
Speaker 2: this in a minisode last week, but this is your
Speaker 2: last week to send me your stories of times that
Speaker 2: you have been the main character or just memories that
Speaker 2: you have with the changing Internet. So please send your
Speaker 2: stories in voice memo form to me by Friday, May ninth,
Speaker 2: that's this Friday, to the following email address small Ice
Speaker 2: Resurfacer at gmail dot com, and you just might be
Speaker 2: featured on the show. In a couple of weeks. That's all.
Speaker 2: And now the grand, grand grand finale of Haley Hawk
Speaker 2: to a Welch.
Speaker 3: The sixteen.
Speaker 4: Sixty Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we
Speaker 4: talk to the main characters of the Internet to see
Speaker 4: how they're a moment in the spotlight affected them and
Speaker 4: what that says about us and the Internet.
Speaker 2: And this week we finish our look at Hailey Welch
Speaker 2: aka Hawk to a Girl, the main character of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. After a shockingly fast run in the public eye.
Speaker 2: Between the summer and winter of twenty twenty four, Hailey
Speaker 2: went from an unknown who was confronted in the street
Speaker 2: by wanna be Girls go on Wild style influencers to
Speaker 2: the face of a cryptoscam run by Howie Mandel's scumbag
Speaker 2: son in law. And whether you like her or not,
Speaker 2: that sounds very overwhelming. And if you want to catch
Speaker 2: up on what happened with Hailey after this halt to
Speaker 2: her career, which was marked by an SEC investigation, a
Speaker 2: disastrous digital press conference and.
Speaker 5: Who I'm going to go to bed and I'll see
Speaker 5: you guys tomorrow.
Speaker 2: And a long subsequent digital silence, please check out our
Speaker 2: previous episode where you'll learn what was happening behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: In these months of alleged silence, speculation ran wild that
Speaker 2: Haley would go to jail as a result of the investigation.
Speaker 2: A few places speculated that she was pregnant or dead,
Speaker 2: and many thought she would either voluntarily or just end
Speaker 2: up having to return to her normal life in rural Tennessee,
Speaker 2: where this time last year, at the time of this recording,
Speaker 2: she was working in a local spring factory. And while
Speaker 2: it appeared that not just Hailey Welch but her entire
Speaker 2: team were careful not to say anything publicly when the
Speaker 2: investigation concluded, this didn't stop them from banking phase banking.
Speaker 2: One could even say a future episode of Talk toua
Speaker 2: while still on Jake Paul's Better Podcast network at this time,
Speaker 2: that seemed to want to serve as a what went
Speaker 2: wrong kind of thing. I would say calling it an
Speaker 2: apology would be a huge stretch, as we unpacked in
Speaker 2: our last episode, but more of an attempt to express
Speaker 2: some light remorse and get the public back on her side.
Speaker 2: Although this episode, as we discussed, still included ads for
Speaker 2: cryptosports betting apps and seemed to reach the conclusion that
Speaker 2: Haley should be open to trying crypto again, but this
Speaker 2: time she should do it smarter. But this episode leaked
Speaker 2: in early February by Haley's team nearly two months before
Speaker 2: that SEC investigation closed, and it completely blew up in
Speaker 2: their faces. Not only is Fayze Banks, a fellow government
Speaker 2: investigated cryptogrifter, furious that this episode of Talk to A
Speaker 2: came out beforehand. The public was not buying the attempted
Speaker 2: mia culpa in the slightest, so Haley and team went
Speaker 2: dark online again until late March, the week that TMZ
Speaker 2: published the following headline.
Speaker 6: Hawk to A Girl off the hook for hawking mean coin.
Speaker 2: Incredible journalism and that is where you join us today.
Speaker 2: So let's hawk back to A. In late March twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five, when the second act of Haley Welch's career
Speaker 2: was hard launched in the hopes of gaining not just
Speaker 2: the forgiveness of the public that her team had defrauded
Speaker 2: a few months earlier in an egregious crypto scam, but
Speaker 2: also recapture the same excitement that existed around her in
Speaker 2: the early days of the Hawk to A meme. She
Speaker 2: first teases this in a poorly rendered comedy sketch that
Speaker 2: she posts to her Instagram in which she re enacts
Speaker 2: all the false rumors that existed around her during the
Speaker 2: four months of sec induced.
Speaker 3: Silence breaking news.
Speaker 6: Hailey clearly well to Gosh the hawk To a girl
Speaker 6: had died.
Speaker 2: But what is suspiciously missing from this sketch is any
Speaker 2: direct mention of said crypto fraud investigation. The only reference
Speaker 2: to crypto or a scandal of any sort is a
Speaker 2: short monologue joke clip pulled from Stephen Colbert. The results
Speaker 2: of the investigation, which were no surprise during a Trump
Speaker 2: administration that had literally started selling their own meme coins
Speaker 2: pre inauguration, were announced two days later, and the stage
Speaker 2: was set for an attempted hawk to a comeback, and
Speaker 2: boy were their attempts Hailey and company, which at this
Speaker 2: point appears to be somewhat reduced. It is unclear the
Speaker 2: size of the team, but definitely consists of her, of
Speaker 2: her best friend Chelsea, who was also her co host
Speaker 2: on the Talk to A podcast, of a lawyer, and
Speaker 2: possibly some managers and publicists. But during this period of
Speaker 2: time when they have not been cleared to speak publicly,
Speaker 2: they are waiting in the wings to parlay this into
Speaker 2: whatever the next chapter is going to consist of. And
Speaker 2: what I mean by this is that it was revealed
Speaker 2: in late March that they were filming a documentary the
Speaker 2: whole time from an Emmy winning streamer documentary factory called Bungalow,
Speaker 2: who have released this documentaries about a lot of stuff,
Speaker 2: but including some pretty serious topics, Thirteen Days in Ferguson
Speaker 2: and Little Richard, I Am Everything being their two most
Speaker 2: successful projects. So it's clear that Haley's team cannot wait
Speaker 2: to push Hailey, Welch and Hawk to A back into
Speaker 2: the public eye after the SEC investigation closes, and so
Speaker 2: in the days to come, there are a bunch of
Speaker 2: very random feeling announcements made. There's the formal announcement of
Speaker 2: the documentary.
Speaker 1: I hope you all been enjoying the crazy stories about
Speaker 1: my life unfold on social media. First I was dead,
Speaker 1: then pregnant, Now I'm wanted by Interpol and in jail.
Speaker 1: Luckily we've been working with Bungalow. Start spilling the tea
Speaker 1: and the truth is actually even more bizarre than you think.
Speaker 2: There's also the announcement that the Talk to A podcast
Speaker 2: will return with the confirmation of what I had suspected
Speaker 2: because of not receiving my talk to A Change My
Speaker 2: Life shirt, they had in fact severed ties with Jake
Speaker 2: Paul and the Better Network.
Speaker 6: Hailey Welch and Better Holdings Incorporated have mutually agreed to
Speaker 6: end their partnership regarding the Talk to A podcast and
Speaker 6: wish each other well in their future endeavors. Better and
Speaker 6: Welch said in a shared statement the podcast will instead
Speaker 6: be produced by Welch's own company sixteen Minutes.
Speaker 2: And as you'll hear, the word produced is quite generous,
Speaker 2: but weirdest of all, Team Welch announces that she is
Speaker 2: going to have a cameo in an upcoming Glenn Powell project.
Speaker 2: I truly do not know any other details about this
Speaker 2: and find it very bizarre, but here is a bad
Speaker 2: AI generated YouTube celebrity news channel insisting upon it.
Speaker 7: Hallie Welch is reportedly back on the scene and doing
Speaker 7: her thing in La La Land. The twenty two year
Speaker 7: old meme queen who shot to fame as the Hawk
Speaker 7: Tua Girl following a viral TikTok video, filmed a cameo
Speaker 7: for Glenn Powell's upcoming show in Hollywood this past weekend
Speaker 7: according to TMZ.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Haley's team is really throwing stuff at the
Speaker 2: wall here, which, to be fair, isn't incredibly different from
Speaker 2: how her career was being run at the peak of
Speaker 2: her relevance. But a flash in the pan star making
Speaker 2: a cameo in a B movie that's kind of a classic,
Speaker 2: that's the tale as old as time. But of these announcements,
Speaker 2: the only thing given a date and a guaranteed release
Speaker 2: was talk to A And I couldn't help But wonder
Speaker 2: I couldn't help it. Wonder what was the new approach
Speaker 2: to the podcast going to be and would anyone still
Speaker 2: want to listen to it? Because the more time that passes,
Speaker 2: And unfortunately this is very common in these stories that
Speaker 2: we cover on this show. People were moving on at
Speaker 2: the time I'm writing and recording this. Coffee Zilla isn't
Speaker 2: making videos about Haley Welch anymore. And while I'm sure
Speaker 2: those videos would get decent engagement, my guess is that
Speaker 2: he hasn't bothered because algorithmically, when it comes to crypto malfeasance,
Speaker 2: he's got bigger fish to fry right now. Here are
Speaker 2: just some random clips from the last three months of
Speaker 2: his content pumping.
Speaker 3: Dumps, why are they legal?
Speaker 2: Today?
Speaker 8: Elon Musk and Joe Rogan are gonna tell us the answer.
Speaker 3: The whole meme coin thing is, and we're gonna.
Speaker 8: Just jump into it now. I want to say it's
Speaker 8: an auspicious day. Not only are the Epstein files about
Speaker 8: to be released, we also released Andrew and Tristan Taate.
Speaker 8: They're free to leave Romania all because, according to the
Speaker 8: Financial Times, the White House and government officials have been
Speaker 8: pressuring Romania to let these.
Speaker 3: Poor persecuted influencers go.
Speaker 8: Today I discovered there are AI ads running on YouTube
Speaker 8: of me scamming people with AI and crypto. Truly my
Speaker 8: worst nightmare reimagined. I thought it couldn't get worse.
Speaker 2: And again, I would genuinely recommend his channel if you're
Speaker 2: interested in better understanding how these scams are being pulled off,
Speaker 2: and I would also recommend my fellow cool Zone Media
Speaker 2: friend ed Zitron on Better Offline. But the point is,
Speaker 2: while a really good reporter, coffee Zilla is as beholden
Speaker 2: to the algorithm as anybody, and it's possible that with
Speaker 2: so much else going on in the world that Hailey
Speaker 2: Welch isn't the algorithmic bait that she was six months
Speaker 2: ago at the time of this writing. And it feels
Speaker 2: horrible to have written that down and to say that
Speaker 2: it feels so reductive, and it bums me out. And
Speaker 2: I started this show because I think that that is
Speaker 2: a very sad tendency. But if you were a person
Speaker 2: whose numbers are beholden too relevant current events, pok Tua
Speaker 2: didn't carry the same cultural relevance it did by the
Speaker 2: time that the SEC and haw Coin settled in March
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, as they had just a couple months earlier.
Speaker 2: And that's for a number of reasons. Haley's career burned
Speaker 2: bright and fast, and she didn't have a history as
Speaker 2: a public figure prior to hawk Tua and didn't have
Speaker 2: anything else for people to glom onto. And even less likely,
Speaker 2: she went viral, and some might argue went more viral
Speaker 2: than usual because it was an election year. And if
Speaker 2: the result of that election year is enthusiastically pulling a
Speaker 2: scam that someone in the White House would do just
Speaker 2: a few weeks later, that's a lot of noise to
Speaker 2: yell over. And it's only if you want to. When
Speaker 2: I was finishing our first series on Haley and the
Speaker 2: Hawk to a saga, she was still, for lack of
Speaker 2: a better phrase, taking a nap, and it was intentionally
Speaker 2: unclear whether she wanted to forge ahead with a career
Speaker 2: in social media or if she was going to take
Speaker 2: stock say hey, this year was fucked up, and then
Speaker 2: buy a house and pack it in. As soon as
Speaker 2: the SEC declared her innocent. A part of me kind
Speaker 2: of hoped that she would a lot of people, myself included,
Speaker 2: thought it seemed pretty clear that Haley was being used
Speaker 2: by some pretty lazy, half assed schemers, whether that be
Speaker 2: Howie Mandel's failed musician son in law turned crypto moron,
Speaker 2: or Jake Paul, a man who bravely kicked an old
Speaker 2: rapist ass on live TV and wasn't even proud of
Speaker 2: it for the right reason. The speculation around Haley Welch
Speaker 2: was complicated, but by the time Talk to A relaunched
Speaker 2: on April eighth, twenty twenty five, people had moved on.
Speaker 2: Hailey hadn't gotten any better at interviewing. The set independent
Speaker 2: of Jake Paul's Better Network was completely unedited and lo fi,
Speaker 2: and while I'd say the only improvement on the show
Speaker 2: is fully putting Chelsea in the second chair. Good call.
Speaker 2: It is still a really boring show.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, okay, well, welcome back to another episode of
Speaker 5: Talk to Him. It's been a hot minute since we've
Speaker 5: been back here. But now where the official owners have
Speaker 5: talk to Him and we may or may not have
Speaker 5: flowd to London to get a very special guest for you.
Speaker 2: We got Ksi Yo yeall, and as before, the more
Speaker 2: experienced in media guests kind of starts to interview Hailey
Speaker 2: when she fails to interview them, and unfortunately the guest
Speaker 2: whose name you just heard, like Phase Banks, does warrant
Speaker 2: some introduction. Ksi or jj Olatunji is one of these
Speaker 2: fucking guys too. He started online as a popular gaming
Speaker 2: streamer as a history of sexist and racist comments, and
Speaker 2: of course eventually parlays the millions of mostly children consuming
Speaker 2: his slop into a string of influencer staples. This means
Speaker 2: professional boxing, alternative rivalries, and business partnerships with various Paul Brothers.
Speaker 2: This means insidiously marketed products to children, and of course
Speaker 2: this means promoting a pump and dump crypto scheme. In
Speaker 2: early twenty twenty four.
Speaker 9: KSI is one of the world's most popular YouTubers, but
Speaker 9: yesterday he accidentally exposed the pump and dump crypto scams
Speaker 9: that he promoted. They've been hidden from two years, but
Speaker 9: only came out when KSI logged back into his old
Speaker 9: Twitter account, saying does this still work?
Speaker 2: And if you're wondering, was that coffee Zilla busting KSI? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I don't know how he does it. He's busted everybody,
Speaker 2: but crypto scams of any kind don't really come up
Speaker 2: in the return of Talk to which, as Haley is
Speaker 2: quick to mention, is now owned by her company, not
Speaker 2: Jake Paul's.
Speaker 10: This I know is gonna annoy j Poole definitely, but
Speaker 10: I'm glad you're free from his grasp. I'm not able
Speaker 10: to flourish and be WHOA one of the best podcasts.
Speaker 5: And Butterfly, Yeah, beautiful Butterfly.
Speaker 2: What's the beef with Jake Paul?
Speaker 11: I mean it's been going on for years. Man.
Speaker 2: With all due respect to KSI, and my understanding is
Speaker 2: there is very little do The commenters on the new
Speaker 2: Talk to A episode on YouTube appear to be in
Speaker 2: agreement that his appearing on her show is a sign
Speaker 2: that Haley's career may be on its last legs. The
Speaker 2: podcast was filmed in London, and the winking in reason
Speaker 2: that Ksi as the guest appears to be because he
Speaker 2: has a fairly long standing feud with Jake Paul in
Speaker 2: spite of the fact that he is in business with
Speaker 2: Logan Paul on two of the most disgusting products on
Speaker 2: shelves today, those being Prime Energy. Up this morning, there's
Speaker 2: a new warning for parents and kids about energy drinks.
Speaker 12: Maybe you've seen Prime Energy on social media.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Brandy Smith explains why the drink is getting so much
Speaker 4: negative attention.
Speaker 2: Schools are actually banning it and Lunchly the Lunchibles with
Speaker 2: mold but.
Speaker 12: Closely because mister Beast is disgusted by his own product, Lunchly.
Speaker 2: And it got worse when this woman bought Lunchley to
Speaker 2: try it for the first time and there was mold inside.
Speaker 2: This is molded. That's mold and as will become relevant,
Speaker 2: gays I is on the similar Paul Brothers path of
Speaker 2: starting as a famous gaming streamer. And by the way,
Speaker 2: I thought it was funny that he talks about playing
Speaker 2: FIFA in a video game as if he is a
Speaker 2: professional soccer player himself. Does streamers do that? That was
Speaker 2: the first thing you got like really known for.
Speaker 11: Oh FIFA.
Speaker 10: So FIFA is like a football game or soccer game
Speaker 10: where you passed the ball around the pitch and then
Speaker 10: you put it in the net.
Speaker 11: H No, I did not come home.
Speaker 3: You just played it nice.
Speaker 10: I played the game, yeah, yeah, and then I just
Speaker 10: make various videos on it and it just went viral.
Speaker 2: I found that very distracting. What I was saying is
Speaker 2: that Gaysi has done celebrity boxing, first against Logan Paul
Speaker 2: at the Staples Center in LA in twenty nineteen, but
Speaker 2: really outside of knowing that he is also one of
Speaker 2: these guys and that it appears that the new strategy
Speaker 2: of the podcast is to bring on people who will
Speaker 2: not challenge Haley and also do not like Jake Paul,
Speaker 2: there's not much to say. The rest of the interview
Speaker 2: is about Kosi's career, some awkward flirtation, and Hailey speculating
Speaker 2: on what's next for her without addressing why she was
Speaker 2: in trouble in her career to begin with. Folks, the
Speaker 2: podcast is boring and the episode itself is devoid of
Speaker 2: any remaining sponsors, except for surprisingly, Haley's pet rescue nonprofit
Speaker 2: PAUS Across America. Honestly surprised they're still going. I hope
Speaker 2: they're doing good things. But that is all there is
Speaker 2: to report about the returning episode of Talk To. And
Speaker 2: worst of all, the episode ends like this, thank you.
Speaker 5: Oh, thank you for coming on.
Speaker 11: Thank you. Of course, is.
Speaker 2: It even talk TOUA if Haley doesn't ask KSI what
Speaker 2: he does in bed to make a woman go crazy?
Speaker 2: I was not impressed with the return of talk To,
Speaker 2: and I was not alone there, because, as I'm writing this,
Speaker 2: around a week after the episode launched on YouTube, it
Speaker 2: only has about sixty thousand views, compared to the height
Speaker 2: of two point eight million views while on the Better
Speaker 2: Network just six months ago, or Coffee Zilla's four million
Speaker 2: views for criticizing her just two months ago. The episodes
Speaker 2: of the podcast that have come out since have done
Speaker 2: even worse, and while they do reveal more information about
Speaker 2: what Haley and Chelsea were pursuing during those months of
Speaker 2: the SEC investigation interim, including a reality show, there's not
Speaker 2: much to go on. But as a loyal listener, I
Speaker 2: have consumed every goddamn second and I wanted to just
Speaker 2: share this sentence that made me laugh so much from
Speaker 2: guest Chanelle West Coast, but I really wanted to collaborate
Speaker 2: with Drake.
Speaker 13: I just did Drake's dad's podcast like two weeks ago.
Speaker 2: Actually, his dad his dad's a podcast.
Speaker 13: Yes, his dad is the funniest guy ever. You guys
Speaker 13: have to meet him.
Speaker 2: That is the worst brag I've ever heard in my life.
Speaker 2: But that's about all I have to say about the
Speaker 2: podcast outside of that. And that video only got twelve
Speaker 2: thousand views in two days. So Hailey's company, which I
Speaker 2: will remind you is called sixteen Minutes, now owns the
Speaker 2: IP or talk to A. But if this is any indication,
Speaker 2: does that mean anything? Honestly, I don't think so. And
Speaker 2: so while it's safe to say that Haley has technically
Speaker 2: survived the court of public opinion and that she didn't
Speaker 2: experience a legal consequence, I'd be surprised if she manages
Speaker 2: to get the relevance she had back without the support
Speaker 2: of a big internet piece of shit goliath like a
Speaker 2: Paul Brother propping her up. While I very much doubted
Speaker 2: that the hawkcoin team would get into much trouble given
Speaker 2: the administration and the increasing lack of regulation around crypto.
Speaker 2: I did want to understand how this was possible, because
Speaker 2: for the time being, this is a grift that has
Speaker 2: reached the highest levels of government. So are we going
Speaker 2: to see more of it? And how, besides staying the
Speaker 2: fuck away from crypto, can we protect ourselves when we
Speaker 2: come back. Investigator John Reid Stark explains why there was
Speaker 2: never a chance in hell that miss Haley was going
Speaker 2: to jail. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I fell asleep
Speaker 2: on a plane this morning and was woken up by
Speaker 2: the person next to me because I was literally man
Speaker 2: spreading what who am I when I go to sleep? Embarrassing?
Speaker 2: I am sorry to her. And here is my interview
Speaker 2: with John Reid Stark.
Speaker 12: My name's John Stark. I'm an attorney, a cyber attorney.
Speaker 12: I've been practicing law for but thirty five forty years now.
Speaker 12: Went to Duke Law School, then started working at a
Speaker 12: law firm, and then I joined the SEC in nineteen
Speaker 12: ninety one, and then I went on a detail to
Speaker 12: the US Attorney's Office and did street crimes, guns, drugs,
Speaker 12: and domestic violence for a little bit that I came
Speaker 12: back to the SEC and started doing cyber in nineteen
Speaker 12: ninety four, became the Special Counsel for Internet Projects at
Speaker 12: the US Securities and Exchange Commission in the Division of Enforcement,
Speaker 12: and then started teaching securities regulation and technology at Georgetown
Speaker 12: Law School around that time.
Speaker 3: And after that it just kept growing and growing and growing, and.
Speaker 12: In nineteen ninety eight they decided to create an office,
Speaker 12: and I was the founder of the office, the Office
Speaker 12: of Internet Enforcement. It was a first specialized group in
Speaker 12: the history of the SEC. And that was nineteen ninety
Speaker 12: eight and I was made the chief and threw that
Speaker 12: office to a great group of attorneys, enforcement lawyers and
Speaker 12: ran it for about eleven years, a little more than
Speaker 12: eleven years, and then I left there to lead the
Speaker 12: Office of Stras Friedberg, which was a data breach response firm,
Speaker 12: cybersecurity firm, forensic digital forensic firm, and ran their DC
Speaker 12: office for most of the next five years. And then
Speaker 12: Stras Freedberg got bought by AON, so I left and
Speaker 12: started my own firm, John Reed start consulting in twenty
Speaker 12: fifteen sort of does anything.
Speaker 3: I don't have anything to do with crypto.
Speaker 12: I don't have any financial interest in crypto, nothing short,
Speaker 12: nothing long. Started writing about it in twenty seventeen because
Speaker 12: I was doing a lot of ransomware cases and I realized,
Speaker 12: but for bitcoin, there would be no ransomware. Ransomware is
Speaker 12: when a firm gets attacked and they have to pay
Speaker 12: in order to get to decrypt their data or to
Speaker 12: stop a company a cyber attacker from name and shaming
Speaker 12: them from publishing their data. So yeah, you realize that
Speaker 12: suddenly these payments which were growing. So I started writing
Speaker 12: about it in twenty seventeen when President Trump, Maxiine Waters,
Speaker 12: and Hillary Clinton had one thing in common. They all
Speaker 12: hated crypto and thought it was a terrible thing and ridiculous,
Speaker 12: And we're in on the record saying that they didn't
Speaker 12: want anything to do with it. So I thought it
Speaker 12: was a non partisan issue back then, but it's not anywhere.
Speaker 2: First, well, thank you so much for being on our
Speaker 2: hawk Tua. I really appreciate it. In the last couple
Speaker 2: of months, you know, as Trump has become you know,
Speaker 2: nothing but pro crypto. Of course, it's not really talked
Speaker 2: about very much that this is a change. Can you
Speaker 2: sort of walk me through what that change looked like
Speaker 2: and why it happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 12: It was something that I predicted a couple of years back,
Speaker 12: because the crypto community, it's if not for the fact
Speaker 12: that they love crypto. I love the community, and there's
Speaker 12: a lot of irony in crypto, which you I think
Speaker 12: would appreciate more than more than most people. Is for example, right,
Speaker 12: crypto was created to decentralize after the financial crisis of
Speaker 12: two thousand and eight. Crypto was said, let's take away
Speaker 12: from the power from the big banks and let's find
Speaker 12: something where we can go peer to peer ourselves. We
Speaker 12: don't need these big banks in the middle. Well, what
Speaker 12: do we have today. We've replaced the big banks with
Speaker 12: a bunch of big crypto companies.
Speaker 14: So that's right.
Speaker 3: The number two one. The President talks about.
Speaker 12: This new bitcoin reserve, that strategic preserve that the government's
Speaker 12: going to have.
Speaker 3: But if you look into.
Speaker 12: The details, what's in that reserve are assets, crypto assets
Speaker 12: that have been seized in accordance with asset forfeiture laws,
Speaker 12: which any libertarian will tell you asset forfeiture laws are
Speaker 12: the most anti libertarian laws you could have, in the
Speaker 12: sense that this is crypto taken from people who've been arrested.
Speaker 3: They haven't been convicted.
Speaker 12: Of anything, and their crypto was seized like any other
Speaker 12: asset forfeiture. It's never an area, as a former criminal prosecutor,
Speaker 12: that I thought was appropriate. So sure, anyway, you can
Speaker 12: see lots of different ironies in crypto, but the idea
Speaker 12: was that I think initially that this crypto was going
Speaker 12: to undermine the dollar, that it was. No private currency
Speaker 12: has ever worked, and the intermediary is critical for the
Speaker 12: consumer and it's critical for the government. There's about a
Speaker 12: dozen or so anti money laundering laws that essentially tell
Speaker 12: you that you have no right to financial privacy. And
Speaker 12: I don't like that, and you don't like that. No
Speaker 12: one likes that. But this is the reality, and the
Speaker 12: Anti Money Laundering Act, the Bank Secrecy Act, the USA
Speaker 12: Patriot Act after nine to eleven, this is how the
Speaker 12: government gets bad guys. They cut off the way that
Speaker 12: they can use and spend money. And that means that
Speaker 12: you go into the bank and if you withdraw ten
Speaker 12: thousand dollars more than ten thousand dollars, that'll trigger a
Speaker 12: suspicious activity report.
Speaker 3: If you do something weird, that'll.
Speaker 12: Trigger a suspicious activity report, and your activities will be
Speaker 12: reported to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and a criminal
Speaker 12: prosecutor or the SEC might start looking at all your
Speaker 12: financial records because of that. And that's just that might
Speaker 12: be something you disagree with, and I respect that. So
Speaker 12: you can go to the government and say, hey, let's
Speaker 12: change those laws. But those are the laws that are
Speaker 12: on the books right now. So crypto essentially bypasses all
Speaker 12: of those laws. So, as someone said in one of
Speaker 12: my spaces the other day, I love crypto. I can
Speaker 12: take five million dollars worth of it and go on
Speaker 12: a plane and go anywhere in the world that I
Speaker 12: want and no one will know the difference. And so yeah,
Speaker 12: well that's not supposed to be allowed. So that's why,
Speaker 12: you know. So I think with respect to crypto, most
Speaker 12: people were against it. It's created incredible amounts of crime,
Speaker 12: drug dealing, child pornography, human sex, trafficking, ransomare attacks. North
Speaker 12: Korea has a stolen more than six billion dollars worth
Speaker 12: of crypto and is using it to finance their nuclear
Speaker 12: weapons operation.
Speaker 3: Why care about it?
Speaker 12: What utility does it have? It went away tomorrow? Would
Speaker 12: anyone care?
Speaker 2: You compare this moment with regards to crypto, but just
Speaker 2: also with the sec and where the economy is at
Speaker 2: in general to the nineteen twenties. Can you tell me
Speaker 2: a little bit more about that, because I know that
Speaker 2: that sets off alarm bells and virtually anyone who knows
Speaker 2: about the stock market cris.
Speaker 12: Sure if you look at any of the financial crises,
Speaker 12: whether it was a subprime crisis or the depression after
Speaker 12: the twenty nine Here's what happened.
Speaker 3: In the twenties, right, there was everybody everything.
Speaker 12: Was unregulated, and buying socks and bonds was like, you know,
Speaker 12: buying clothes at Target.
Speaker 3: There was no nobody protecting you or anything.
Speaker 12: So what happened was there was this terrible crash and
Speaker 12: it impacted everyone.
Speaker 3: And created this big depression.
Speaker 12: So the government sort of said, you know what, when
Speaker 12: it comes to investments, we're going to be different.
Speaker 3: It's not going to be like buying anything else.
Speaker 12: So they enacted the nineteen thirty three Act, the Securities
Speaker 12: Acted in nineteen thirty three, which essentially said, hey, if
Speaker 12: you're going to raise money for an investment, you have
Speaker 12: to register with the sec. Then they passed the thirty
Speaker 12: four Act, the Securities in Exchange Act of thirty four,
Speaker 12: and they said Hey, if you're going to create a
Speaker 12: platform to transact in these investments, then you have to
Speaker 12: register with the SEC, and you have to be subject
Speaker 12: to audit, inspection and examination, net capital requirements, all kinds
Speaker 12: of disclosure, licensure of your individuals.
Speaker 3: So that's a thirty four accent.
Speaker 12: And then the forty Act said, hey, if you're going
Speaker 12: to bundle all this stuff into mutual fund or if
Speaker 12: you're going to give people advice about securities and about
Speaker 12: investments they should buy, you have to register as well.
Speaker 12: So all of these big registration which are credibly onerous.
Speaker 12: It's very difficult to register with the SEC. Whether it's
Speaker 12: an offering or whether you're a platform or anyone else,
Speaker 12: you're going to subject yourself to this financial colunoscopy at
Speaker 12: the whenever the SEC wants, either routine or fore cause.
Speaker 12: But it's been pretty good, if you generally go back
Speaker 12: to all since that time, there have been a few
Speaker 12: bumps in the road, but generally the economy has flourished,
Speaker 12: and this sort of environment of heavy regulation has kept
Speaker 12: most people honest and has also given the consumer, the customer,
Speaker 12: all sorts of avenues if they get scammed, you know,
Speaker 12: they can reach out to the SEC. They can reach
Speaker 12: out to state regulators, they can reach out to the FBI.
Speaker 12: Everybody has jurisdiction over these entities who are So if
Speaker 12: they wake up in the morning like the Celsius Block
Speaker 12: five Voyager FTX investors did, and they can't access their
Speaker 12: money anymore, imagine the panic that they felt. And you
Speaker 12: can read the Celsius Celsius especially the investors submitted these
Speaker 12: affidavits and you can read how terrible it is. That
Speaker 12: was what my life was like at the SEC for
Speaker 12: the twenty or so years that.
Speaker 3: I was there.
Speaker 12: I talked with investors who'd lost their life savings all
Speaker 12: the time, and that you start to realize there's no
Speaker 12: standard composite or profile for those kinds of people. They
Speaker 12: can be sophisticated, they can be unsophisticated. They've all what
Speaker 12: they have in common is that they let their guard down.
Speaker 12: Maybe they got greedy, maybe they want to get rich quick.
Speaker 12: Maybe like the Madoff investors, they only wanted one percent
Speaker 12: over prime.
Speaker 3: They weren't greedy, so they had comforting that.
Speaker 2: So that was something that really struck me about when
Speaker 2: I was speaking with Molly and Ed a couple of
Speaker 2: months ago about crypto of how you know, the majority
Speaker 2: of crypto users, it's not quite an active desperation, but
Speaker 2: it's someone with a little bit of pocket cash trying
Speaker 2: to turn a little money in to more money because
Speaker 2: it's hard to exist. And how many like normal people
Speaker 2: end up getting scammed.
Speaker 12: That's the point, Jamie, is it's always the working person
Speaker 12: who gets scammed. In the end, everybody else gets away
Speaker 12: with it. The best example, you know, i live in Washington,
Speaker 12: d C. In the DMV, and I'm a Washington Wizards fan,
Speaker 12: and I've been a Wizards fan for whatever thirty or
Speaker 12: thirty five years. It's been torture, okay for myself and
Speaker 12: my family. But the good news is I know all
Speaker 12: the people who work at the Wizards games because I've
Speaker 12: been going to these games forever. So my son and
Speaker 12: I are in the elevator and we see two of
Speaker 12: the security guards and they're like, hey, Sark, I saw
Speaker 12: you on sixty Minutes because I was talking about this
Speaker 12: stuff on sixty Minutes a few months ago, and I said, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 12: did you watch it? And they're like, oh, well, you know,
Speaker 12: I didn't see it until the end. It was something
Speaker 12: about crypto. What were you talking about I said, well,
Speaker 12: you know, it's a dangerous investment. There's nothing to it.
Speaker 12: There's no there's no substitute. It's all fear of missing.
Speaker 12: And they kind of looked at me, both of them,
Speaker 12: and they were like, but we heard it was a
Speaker 12: great thing to get into. So we both invested and
Speaker 12: I was like, all right, guys, look, I'm not here
Speaker 12: to tell you what to invest in.
Speaker 3: Or what not to invest in, but do you understand
Speaker 3: what it is? Do you know what it is that
Speaker 3: you're buying?
Speaker 12: And they both like, we have no idea, And I said, well,
Speaker 12: start with no, right, start with that promise. If you
Speaker 12: don't know what it is and you can't articulate what
Speaker 12: it is, then don't invest in it. That seems like
Speaker 12: a pretty basic notion that people have completely forgotten about
Speaker 12: with this emperor has no close, no shit of crypto.
Speaker 2: I'm curious you also write in your editorial about and
Speaker 2: something that I'm trying to understand better too, is you know,
Speaker 2: just three months ago or three or four months ago,
Speaker 2: is having conversations about MS Talktua Haley Welch, who had
Speaker 2: a meme coin launched on her behalf. She was the
Speaker 2: face of it. She was pushing it and there was
Speaker 2: a rug pull. It seems like there has been a
Speaker 2: lot that's happened since then, because when I was doing
Speaker 2: these interviews, people were like, well, maybe she will be
Speaker 2: made an example of by the SEC. You know, like
Speaker 2: this could be because it was getting so much press.
Speaker 2: Maybe this is a chance for someone to be made
Speaker 2: an example of. So I mean, from your perspective, what
Speaker 2: has been happening with the SEC in the last couple
Speaker 2: of months that's giving you such pause.
Speaker 12: Well, it's really incredible, and I'm not being hyperbolic.
Speaker 3: I'm not exaggerating.
Speaker 12: I'm a bit of an SEC historian, having worked there
Speaker 12: for twenty years and taught securities regulation for both at
Speaker 12: Georgetown and Duke, and really study the agency. The about
Speaker 12: face that the agency has done on crypto and this
Speaker 12: radical turnabout is unprecedented in SEC history. So I'll give
Speaker 12: you some of the basic things that they've done. First
Speaker 12: of all, in the last three or four years, the
Speaker 12: SEC has brought over two hundred enforcement actions. The SEC
Speaker 12: is like any other civil litigants. They bring cases when
Speaker 12: somebody violates the security laws, and their civil actions you
Speaker 12: can refer it to criminal authorities. Which in our office
Speaker 12: we often did and have parallel actions. The SEC is
Speaker 12: a civil agency, so they bring their cases. They bring
Speaker 12: them in federal court in front of Article three judges,
Speaker 12: which are judges set by the Constitution who have life tenure,
Speaker 12: and they get to rule on whether the SEC is
Speaker 12: right or wrong about whatever they think, whether they think
Speaker 12: something is a security where they have jurisdiction. Those things
Speaker 12: all go to judges. So the SEC had filed over
Speaker 12: two hundred of those enforcement actions, and in my mind,
Speaker 12: they have won every single one of them. Okay, now
Speaker 12: that is unprecedented. Now you might say, well, John, I
Speaker 12: don't necessarily believe you. Well, I spoke at the SEC
Speaker 12: roundtable recently and I put together an eighty nine page
Speaker 12: statement and in those eighty nine single space is a
Speaker 12: section where I go over every single case the SEC
Speaker 12: has litigated with respect to digital assets. I explain what
Speaker 12: the ruling is is, I pull out the excerpts, and
Speaker 12: I'm telling you the SEC has won every time Telegram, Kick,
Speaker 12: Lbry Crack and coinbase Finance, win after win after win
Speaker 12: after win, and they'd been and these were filed that
Speaker 12: there were eighty or ninety them filed under J Clayton,
Speaker 12: who was President Trump's original SEC chair appointz. He's now
Speaker 12: the new US Attorney for New York, for the Southern
Speaker 12: District of York. But ninety of those cases, eighty or
Speaker 12: ninety of them were filed under a Republican administration.
Speaker 3: So then a democratic administrator.
Speaker 12: Came in and they created a crypto unity even they
Speaker 12: started bringing these cases in. Oh my gosh, was the
Speaker 12: SEC winning. It's one thing to win the cases when
Speaker 12: you're at the SEC. We won I think all of
Speaker 12: our cases when I was at the SC. But I
Speaker 12: never had cases against big law firms who were being
Speaker 12: paid tens of million dollars to fight against. But that's
Speaker 12: the way it was that the SEC. The SEC would
Speaker 12: bring these cases. These people would hire former SEC enforcement directors.
Speaker 12: They would litigate these cases with volumes and volumes of motions,
Speaker 12: massive discovery, and judges as a result, whether they were
Speaker 12: citing a motion to dismiss, which is when the SEC
Speaker 12: files the case, someone might say, you know what, no
Speaker 12: matter what you say, we didn't violate any laws, so
Speaker 12: this case should be dismissed.
Speaker 3: That's the motion to dismiss.
Speaker 12: Then later on after discovery, they say, look, no, matter
Speaker 12: what you found, there's been no violation.
Speaker 3: That's summary judgment.
Speaker 12: So the SEC was winning on motions to dismiss and
Speaker 12: summary judgment because all these defenders were saying digital assets
Speaker 12: are not securities, and judges were all saying, yes they are.
Speaker 12: Whether they're initial coin offerings, whether they're simple agreements for
Speaker 12: future tokens staffs, whether they're staking products, whether they're lending products,
Speaker 12: whether they're celebrity endorsement products, whether they're intermediaries trading digital assets,
Speaker 12: whether they all should be registered as exchanges, as broker dealers,
Speaker 12: as clearing firms. SEC is winning every single time, and
Speaker 12: the judges are these opinions that are one hundred pages long,
Speaker 12: like the Krack and decision one hundred pages long.
Speaker 2: Not for nothing. I mean this happening under not just
Speaker 2: like a democratic and a Republican administration, but literally under
Speaker 2: a previous Trump administration. It just like, yes, I don't know,
Speaker 2: so brain, brain, right.
Speaker 12: So here's what happened. So the SEC is on a role.
Speaker 12: They're suing everybody. Every day there's a new new decision,
Speaker 12: every day, there's a new lawsuit. All of these companies
Speaker 12: are running, are fighting back, and it's kind of interesting
Speaker 12: because the SEC action used to be.
Speaker 3: A scarlet letter.
Speaker 12: You know, if you were hit by the SEC, don't
Speaker 12: expect to do business with anybody ever again because I
Speaker 12: think of that kind of thing. Well, they were wearing
Speaker 12: it like a badge of honor. Like this rogue SEC
Speaker 12: has come after us their regulation through enforcement. They're using
Speaker 12: all these strange little catchphrases. But this is how the
Speaker 12: SEC brings cases. There's no such thing as regulation by enforcement.
Speaker 12: There's just enforcement. You bring cases insider trading, derivatives fraud,
Speaker 12: unibond fraud, foreign payments fraud, whatever it is, you bring
Speaker 12: it under their anti fraud provision. So the SEC are
Speaker 12: winning all these cases. All of a sudden, President Trump
Speaker 12: wins reelection. Acting chair Markuaeda takes over at the SEC,
Speaker 12: and he and Hester Purse, both of whom I knew
Speaker 12: when I was a staff attorney there, especially Hester pers
Speaker 12: I knew her pretty well. They had been dissenting on
Speaker 12: all these cases the SEC was bringing, but the SEC,
Speaker 12: the majority of the SEC commissioners were saying to bring them,
Speaker 12: and again they were winning everyone in court. All of
Speaker 12: a sudden, Mark you Ada comes in. Three things happen.
Speaker 12: Four things happen. Number one, he dismisses all the appeals,
Speaker 12: any appeal the SEC had anything like that. Gone number two,
Speaker 12: he dismisses or pauses every single crypto related enforced action period.
Speaker 12: Gone number three, he closes every major crypto investigation, maybe
Speaker 12: even more. I don't know how many he's closed because
Speaker 12: it's non public, but the ones that are public, they're all,
Speaker 12: you know, so excited because they're all suddenly they've transformed.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think this story we're covering is probably
Speaker 2: a part of that wave where it just went away
Speaker 2: exactly February.
Speaker 3: Exactly, so Haktua swept up in that wave.
Speaker 12: And then the third the fourth thing, so appeals, appeals,
Speaker 12: active litigation, investigations has three different categories, all gone zippo.
Speaker 3: Disappeared as if they never happened.
Speaker 12: Then the crypto unit, which the SEC had beefed up
Speaker 12: and celebrated with all kinds of fanfare, is shut down
Speaker 12: and is given a new name called the cyber Unit.
Speaker 12: The head of that crypto unit, who was the head
Speaker 12: of litigation, who had won all these cases, was on
Speaker 12: all the litigation. He was transferred to the Office of
Speaker 12: Information Technology. I don't know what he's doing there. He's
Speaker 12: like fixing prints, are picking out drivers for printers. He's gone,
Speaker 12: he's disappeared gone. There was one, There were two co
Speaker 12: heads of the crypto unit. One of them disappeared gone.
Speaker 12: At least twenty or thirty people in the crypto unit
Speaker 12: disappeared gone. I don't know if they've retired. I don't
Speaker 12: know what they're doing the new cyber unit. She spoke
Speaker 12: at our conference last week, and very nice lady Laura Delandria.
Speaker 3: I think it's her name of Delaired.
Speaker 12: Delaired might pronounce it wrong, and she really spoke about
Speaker 12: what they're not doing, which is, you know, we're not
Speaker 12: bringing these kinds of cases, we're not doing this kind
Speaker 12: of work. We're working towards retail investors. I'm not sure
Speaker 12: what she meant by that, but all I can tell you.
Speaker 12: And then the SEC started issuing these regulatory pronouncements. Some
Speaker 12: of them they just would put on Twitter on X
Speaker 12: and they would have said they said. One of them
Speaker 12: was mean coins are not securities. Boom overdone so any
Speaker 12: meme coin and that was done, you know, you know,
Speaker 12: I don't know. A week or two after President Trump
Speaker 12: and Milania Trump had launched their Mean coin.
Speaker 3: So the SEC said, are not securities?
Speaker 2: That blows my mind.
Speaker 12: Yeah, let's be clear here though. You know, President Trump
Speaker 12: campaigned to be the bitcoin president. He campaigned to throw
Speaker 12: out Gary Gensler. He campaigned to make the United States
Speaker 12: the crypto capital of the world. And he's he's this
Speaker 12: is a promise made and a promise kept. You can't
Speaker 12: disagree with that. He was very clear what he was
Speaker 12: going to do. These crypto firms, they weren't winning in court,
Speaker 12: but they spent about two hundred million to win the
Speaker 12: elections and they did.
Speaker 3: They did it brilliantly.
Speaker 12: They destroyed anyone who was anti crypto, just about everyone.
Speaker 12: I mean, I think Elizabeth Warren survived. A few of
Speaker 12: them survived, but most of them did not survive. And
Speaker 12: so this is the president's mandate. You can't disagree with
Speaker 12: that notion.
Speaker 3: I don't like it. You know, it's bad for the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's certainly been successful.
Speaker 3: He said this is what he's going to do, and
Speaker 3: he's doing it, so, you know, and he's doing it
Speaker 3: through the SEC.
Speaker 12: Now, the SEC historically has never done this kind of
Speaker 12: turnaround on anything ever, So it's very and mean coins
Speaker 12: is a perfect sample now one thing about mean points
Speaker 12: that I would say.
Speaker 3: So recently there was an article.
Speaker 12: It was just about everywhere about if you bought the
Speaker 12: president's meme coin, and you were one of the top
Speaker 12: two hundred and twenty purchasers of his meme coin, then
Speaker 12: you would get access to a special party he was
Speaker 12: having and get a tour of the White House. Now
Speaker 12: you know, here's the irony of this. Again more irony,
Speaker 12: which again I've studied you, so I know how much
Speaker 12: you love irony. Okay, so this is another great one.
Speaker 12: So my view has always been crypto has no utility,
Speaker 12: that if it went away tomorrow, blockchain is a bunch
Speaker 12: of bunk, a bunch of nonsense. You know, you spoke
Speaker 12: with Molly White and Zichron. You read the concern dot
Speaker 12: tech letter. The blockchain is just a glorified append only
Speaker 12: limited writer spreadsheet. It's not an iPhone. It's not transformative,
Speaker 12: it's not innovation. None of this is innovation. However, I
Speaker 12: might be wrong about utility because the reality is crypto
Speaker 12: is emerging with utility number one. Okay, it has utility
Speaker 12: for criminals, but I don't know if that's a bona
Speaker 12: fide utility. But the president is now created a utility
Speaker 12: because he's saying, hey, buy my mean coin and you're
Speaker 12: going to get access.
Speaker 3: Whether that's lawful or not.
Speaker 12: I'm not an expert in any of that, but he's
Speaker 12: created a utility for his meme coins now, the hawk
Speaker 12: Tua meme coin.
Speaker 3: I don't see every one of these is a facts
Speaker 3: and circumstance case. I don't see that having any utility.
Speaker 12: But if she didn't know, if she is said at
Speaker 12: the beginning, the top two hundred people will get to
Speaker 12: meet me and come and watch my podcast live, then
Speaker 12: you can sort of say, I mean, here's the thing, Jamie,
Speaker 12: is that the SEC now believes, suddenly, out of nowhere,
Speaker 12: that crypto is a collectible. Okay, that it's just like
Speaker 12: a collectible. It's not this mathematical computational equation, okay, this
Speaker 12: bladder of code, an unsolvable problem of code, is a collectible. Now,
Speaker 12: I can tell you. I can give you three quick
Speaker 12: reasons why it's not a collectible. Number one because when
Speaker 12: I talked about it on sixty Minutes, having no utility,
Speaker 12: I was talking about the XRP token. I got death threats.
Speaker 12: My family got death threats. They said, they're going to
Speaker 12: burn my house down. If I were talking about rolexes
Speaker 12: and Pokemon cards, I don't think I would.
Speaker 3: Have gotten that ruction. So that's number one.
Speaker 12: Number two, if you go to your brokerage account, right
Speaker 12: whatever it is, Robinhood or wherever you're buying your secure investments,
Speaker 12: you'll go to the tab and you'll see you know, stocks, bonds,
Speaker 12: maybe options, and then you'll see something that says crypto.
Speaker 3: So you don't see.
Speaker 12: Pokemon cards, Beatie babies, and American girl dolls on that
Speaker 12: pulldown screen.
Speaker 3: Okay, So that's the second reason.
Speaker 12: The third reason is is that every single Article three
Speaker 12: judge that has ever reviewed this idea of whether a
Speaker 12: digital asset is a security and whatever iteration be it, ico,
Speaker 12: simple Agreement for future token staking, lending, all those things
Speaker 12: I mentioned before, has said it's a security and so
Speaker 12: and those Article three judges, the mark uata is acting
Speaker 12: SEC chair can't disappear those decisions.
Speaker 3: They're on the books.
Speaker 12: So the SEC has just chosen to ignore them, to abandon,
Speaker 12: to abdicate its mission of investor protection.
Speaker 3: I talked about the.
Speaker 12: Crash and the depression that followed in twenty nine and
Speaker 12: the SEC was created to protect investors.
Speaker 3: They're not created, they're not supposed to protect collectors.
Speaker 12: So their idea is, hey, these digital assets, they're collectibles.
Speaker 12: It's caveat empt tour and it's a it's a walking dead,
Speaker 12: post apocalyptic marketplace where there's no protection anything, and it's
Speaker 12: all driven by fomo.
Speaker 3: There's no earnings, there's no there's no balance sheet, there's
Speaker 3: nothing you can look at.
Speaker 12: You can't get their ten ques or their ten ks
Speaker 12: or other SEC filings because.
Speaker 3: There aren't any. So it's just fomo.
Speaker 12: You're just betting that someone else is going to be
Speaker 12: dumb enough to buy this and it's going to go up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it, and gosh, that's so so. In short,
Speaker 2: crypto is being effectively treated by the SEC right now
Speaker 2: as if it's Beanie Baby.
Speaker 3: Yes, or American Crazy.
Speaker 12: I'm not sure Beanie Babies, American Girl dolls, or Pokemon
Speaker 12: cards that would be the three categories.
Speaker 2: People are being kind of professionally disappeared from that that
Speaker 2: we're working in the Bided administration just a couple of
Speaker 2: months ago. Has there been I mean, I know you
Speaker 2: have sort of been at the forefront of this, but
Speaker 2: has there been a lot of people speaking out and
Speaker 2: if not, why you.
Speaker 3: Know, Oh, there's a good reason. This is actually very
Speaker 3: easy question.
Speaker 12: Every single SEC lawyer, most of them go out into
Speaker 12: private practice when they leave the SEC and they work
Speaker 12: for a big law firm, or they work for a
Speaker 12: company whatever, But most of the time they go work
Speaker 12: for a big law firm. And big law firms make
Speaker 12: huge amounts of dollars from all these digital asset companies,
Speaker 12: and so you have a fiduciary responsibility to your partners.
Speaker 12: So you won't hear a lot of lawyer a lot
Speaker 12: of lawyers unless they're law professors or just You've got
Speaker 12: to find someone who's independent and objective to hear what
Speaker 12: their opinion is on crypto.
Speaker 3: I'm independent and objective.
Speaker 12: You can disagree with me, but I don't make a
Speaker 12: nickel from my opinion, not a penny, not a dime.
Speaker 12: All I get is grief from having this opinion. Nothing
Speaker 12: more right. You called me to ask me to do this,
Speaker 12: and I'm always very reluctant. For I'm sure you can
Speaker 12: attest I'm always reluctant. It's like, you know, I'm chasing
Speaker 12: windmills here and I'm all alone because none of my
Speaker 12: former sec colleagues who were perfectly happy to tell me
Speaker 12: to whisper in my ear.
Speaker 3: You're absolutely right about crypto.
Speaker 12: None of them are in a situation where they can say,
Speaker 12: where they can speak out, So very few lawyers will
Speaker 12: speak out against it. And from a political standpoint, it
Speaker 12: would be suicide to speak out against crypto. Only if
Speaker 12: you're the most one of the strongest politicians will you
Speaker 12: survive because the crypto lobby is incredibly well capitalized. They've
Speaker 12: already set aside one or two hundred million for the midterms,
Speaker 12: So fail not at your peril if you get out
Speaker 12: and speak against crypto and your political congress. I mean,
Speaker 12: why not just say, hey, if it's innovation, I'm all
Speaker 12: for it, and I want it to be done the
Speaker 12: right way. That's a that's a way to avoid getting
Speaker 12: these people from putting a target on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, it's so funny you.
Speaker 12: Say it's innovation, but in the rest of the sentence
Speaker 12: you say it's an American girl doll or a beanie baby.
Speaker 3: So you can't have it both ways.
Speaker 12: But they want it both ways, and so they'll masquerate
Speaker 12: it as innovation and they'll use that as they're sort
Speaker 12: of subterfuge to get you thinking. Well, you know, and
Speaker 12: and and you know, you can't really blame the president
Speaker 12: because he came out and he said he was going
Speaker 12: to do this, and he's doing it. So as much
Speaker 12: as you might this like what he believes in the
Speaker 12: reality is he made it very clear this is what
Speaker 12: he was going to do. And these people have been
Speaker 12: cut loose and they're running wild in Washington and they
Speaker 12: own the city. They really do better than any other
Speaker 12: lobbying group in the history of the world. And Molly White,
Speaker 12: I know you mentioned her, She's done some very meticulous
Speaker 12: studies on all of this and it's it's mind blowing.
Speaker 12: But you know, that's the way our political system works.
Speaker 12: So again that's not my area of expertise. Maybe that
Speaker 12: needs to be fixed. Everyone seems to agree that it
Speaker 12: should be. But right now these people are pedal extraordinary
Speaker 12: influence and you don't see it if you watch. Patrick
Speaker 12: Boyle on YouTube did this really great thing on crypto
Speaker 12: where he just went over every campaign that the Crypto
Speaker 12: Lobby was supporting and showed how you wouldn't really know
Speaker 12: that they were supporting them. So they do this brilliantly.
Speaker 12: I mean, they wrote there. They wrote their own playbook again.
Speaker 12: You know you got a hand to them. You know,
Speaker 12: they wrote their own playbook. They were losing in front
Speaker 12: of these judges over and over again, and they found
Speaker 12: a way to win. And they won big. They won huge.
Speaker 12: They got rid of Shared Brown in Ohio. They spent
Speaker 12: forty million dollars.
Speaker 2: If this remains unchecked, if most people who could potentially
Speaker 2: speak up against this feel like their hands are tied
Speaker 2: or their future is sabotage by speaking up about this,
Speaker 2: what are we looking at?
Speaker 12: Well, you know, if you're a financial historian, you know
Speaker 12: that all this is crypto is one big Ponzi scheme.
Speaker 12: I don't see how anyone can argue against that, because again,
Speaker 12: but what.
Speaker 2: If it was an American girl?
Speaker 12: Well, I get it, but in terms of Ponzi schemes,
Speaker 12: and a Ponzi scheme is just where you're just buying again,
Speaker 12: trying to beat out everyone out, and it's like a
Speaker 12: game of musical chairs.
Speaker 3: You don't want to be the last person holding it.
Speaker 12: So if the Ponzi scheme keeps going, sooner or later,
Speaker 12: all Ponzi schemes crash. They crash typically when things get bad.
Speaker 12: If we were to have a recession, maybe, for example,
Speaker 12: because of these tariffs we get the country goes into
Speaker 12: a discression, a depression, but the economic needs has been
Speaker 12: very good lately. But suppose the country goes into a depression.
Speaker 12: People generally this is what I saw a lot at
Speaker 12: the SEC When things get bad, people will flee to
Speaker 12: safety and they will take you. They will move out
Speaker 12: of their most risky alternative investments. And everybody agrees, no
Speaker 12: matter what how fanatical you are about crypto, that it's
Speaker 12: it's a risky alternative investment. You can't you can't get
Speaker 12: anyone to not admit that it's like gambling. So as
Speaker 12: soon as things go south with the economy, or the
Speaker 12: economy hits a recession, you know, with all the ransomware
Speaker 12: attacks growing and growing in sophistication.
Speaker 3: When I taught at Duke Law School and there.
Speaker 12: Was the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack where the Colonial Pipeline
Speaker 12: was shut down, you couldn't get gas in North Carolina.
Speaker 12: You couldn't get home from the airport, couldn't get a taxi,
Speaker 12: couldn't get an ubercar, couldn't get a rental car.
Speaker 3: There was no gas anywhere.
Speaker 12: And I got to tell you it started to get
Speaker 12: a little scary, you know, not just economically, but suddenly
Speaker 12: you were thinking, you know, the police can't get to
Speaker 12: my house, you know.
Speaker 3: And it just happens just over a few days. So
Speaker 3: if these ransomware.
Speaker 12: Attacks hit infrastructure or hit hospitals, when those things kind
Speaker 12: of start happening, I think governments like the National Security
Speaker 12: Division will wake up at the Department of Justice and say,
Speaker 12: we've got to stop the crypto, because that's what doing
Speaker 12: it all. If North Korea is able to build these
Speaker 12: nuclear weapons facilities purely because of crypto, which it seems
Speaker 12: like they are with the six billion dollars that they've stolen,
Speaker 12: think about that's the greatest theft in the history of
Speaker 12: the world. The banking regulators, the FDIC, the FED, the
Speaker 12: Office of the Controller of the Currency have been very
Speaker 12: very strict about allowing banks, traditional financial institutions from doing
Speaker 12: anything having to do with crypto. The crypto firms called
Speaker 12: this operation choke Hold, and I think that's a fair name,
Speaker 12: but I think it's what our name because it's exactly
Speaker 12: what made sense.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 12: The banking regulators, they didn't prohibit these entities from doing them,
Speaker 12: but They said to them, if you do anything involving crypto,
Speaker 12: we're going to come in and examine you, and there's
Speaker 12: no way to you know, these crypto are such dark markets.
Speaker 3: You don't know who any of these depositors are. You
Speaker 3: don't know what's going on in these marketplace, you don't
Speaker 3: know where on this pricing. So the choke hold was
Speaker 3: perfectly legitimate.
Speaker 12: Now the Trump administration has come in in all of
Speaker 12: those guardrails, from the Office of the Controller to the Conrency,
Speaker 12: from the FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and from
Speaker 12: the Federal Reserve have all been lifted. Okay, so suddenly
Speaker 12: banks can get in the business of selling crypto Morgan
Speaker 12: stand Only. For example, I read an article, I don't
Speaker 12: know if this is true, that fifteen thousand of their
Speaker 12: brokers are going to be cut loose to sell crypto.
Speaker 12: So if you're suddenly like, what can a broker say
Speaker 12: to you to buy crypto other than buy this crypto
Speaker 12: it's an asset, I don't understand, but it might go
Speaker 12: up because a lot of stupid people buy it. Anything
Speaker 12: else that's said. If you say it's a store of value,
Speaker 12: that's not true. If you say it's got great potential,
Speaker 12: that's not true. If you say it's an innovation, that's
Speaker 12: not true. If you say it's a great market, that's
Speaker 12: not true. But they're going to you know, brokers are
Speaker 12: great at selling products to the elderly, to the people
Speaker 12: who don't understand, and even to the big institutions. So
Speaker 12: these bogus investments are going to be peddled everywhere, just
Speaker 12: like subprime derivative instruments, and that can as a contagion,
Speaker 12: spread across the global financial marketplace. So those are the
Speaker 12: various scenario. It's a big ransomware attack, of financial contagion,
Speaker 12: or just a recession. Those three things will trigger a
Speaker 12: pendulum swing in the other direction, and maybe the SEC
Speaker 12: will wake up and decide not to abdicate its mission
Speaker 12: of investor protection because you know, they'll realize that, oh
Speaker 12: my gosh, investor, we're here to protect investors. Yet they're
Speaker 12: again they've labeled these people as collectors, and that's really
Speaker 12: not right. Everybody knows that's not right. It doesn't pass
Speaker 12: a straight face test. We have to protect people because
Speaker 12: not just to protect them themselves, but it also creates
Speaker 12: systemic risks. So you might just say, I was on
Speaker 12: a panel just a few weeks ago at George Mason
Speaker 12: University and one of the professors is like, go ahead and.
Speaker 3: Do with what your crypto, Go have your fun. I
Speaker 3: don't care. It's not going to impact me. And that's
Speaker 3: just wrong.
Speaker 12: You know, it will impack you because of the crime
Speaker 12: associated with it, and it'll impact you when it all
Speaker 12: comes crashing down and your four oh one k is
Speaker 12: suddenly work half what it was, or you're five twenty
Speaker 12: nine for your kids is worth half what it was,
Speaker 12: and you're freaking out because how are you going to
Speaker 12: afford to retire? How are you going to afford to
Speaker 12: pay for your kids' education? And then you want you
Speaker 12: want accountability, and you're going to say where was the SEC?
Speaker 12: And you're going to like you say, the SEC was
Speaker 12: watching Beatie Baby and Pokemon movies and not considering the
Speaker 12: reality of their mission, which is to protect investors. And
Speaker 12: that's a sacrisanct mission that they've just abandoned for political
Speaker 12: reasons that you know, historically, whether you're publican or Democrat,
Speaker 12: it's really unsettling and disturbing to be toast that.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much to John read Stark. You can
Speaker 2: follow his work at the links in the description, and
Speaker 2: before we get into the concluding thoughts on this second,
Speaker 2: hank to a series. This is Jamie from the Future
Speaker 2: the day before the podcast comes out, telling you one
Speaker 2: last thing somehow, which is that as Hailey Wells continues
Speaker 2: to hard launch herself back into the mainstream, she's been
Speaker 2: doing the rounds in press with a new publicist, not
Speaker 2: the one that got her into the cryptoscam, and one
Speaker 2: interview came out during the writing of this episode that
Speaker 2: I think is worth mentioning. So in addition to the
Speaker 2: fact that Haley is indeed returning to celebrity Poker and
Speaker 2: already has at the time I'm recording this, which there's
Speaker 2: that there was an interview published on May second in
Speaker 2: Vanity Fair with writer Chris Murphy, an article that even
Speaker 2: features a photoshoot of Hailey wearing a little white lace
Speaker 2: dress in what I absolutely am certain is an Airbnb
Speaker 2: rented for the photo shoot. It is the fakest looking
Speaker 2: place in the world. And I wanted to share two
Speaker 2: bits of this interview that are relevant. So first, Hayley
Speaker 2: does do this interview with her new publicist at her
Speaker 2: side and appears to be allowed to talk about the
Speaker 2: crypto scandal in public for the first time. From that,
Speaker 2: Chris Murphy asks, what have you learned from that experience?
Speaker 2: Do you have anything to say to the people who
Speaker 2: lost their money? Hailey replies, I would say personally what
Speaker 2: I learned from it. Let's see. I don't know. I
Speaker 2: just feel really bad for anybody that lost money. All
Speaker 2: my comments, if you read those, people are like, oh,
Speaker 2: well I lost a lot of money in this. Now
Speaker 2: my kids have to go without stuff.
Speaker 12: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It makes me feel like really sorry for it. Chris
Speaker 2: Murphy asks, after the crypto scandal you went off the grid.
Speaker 2: What were you doing for those three months? Where were you?
Speaker 2: Hailey replies, Oh, I hate to say this, but this
Speaker 2: was a much needed mental health Just what do you
Speaker 2: call it? A mental health break? I guess is what
Speaker 2: you can call it. Okay, So I think it's interesting
Speaker 2: that there's a lot of sorris in here, But of
Speaker 2: course the sorries don't have to mean anything because the
Speaker 2: SEC investigation is closed, no one, including Haley, is required
Speaker 2: to make this right on behalf of people who lost money,
Speaker 2: So her reply is sawey and the interview closes with
Speaker 2: Chris Murphy asking why, as someone who is so sowy
Speaker 2: about the krypto scam, why Haley Welch is about to
Speaker 2: head to Las Vegas to play celebrity poker. Here's that exchange.
Speaker 2: Chris Murphy says, you're playing in a celebrity poker tournament
Speaker 2: fresh off the crypto scandal. Do you have anything to
Speaker 2: say about those optics gambling after some people lost their
Speaker 2: money on your coin? Haley does not reply here. Her
Speaker 2: publicist does, replying, say the question again. Sorry, I'm just confused,
Speaker 2: Chris Murphy says, some might say that it's not a
Speaker 2: great look to be gambling so soon after a money
Speaker 2: related scandal. I'm just wondering if Haley has anything to
Speaker 2: say to that or has a response. Once again, Haley's
Speaker 2: publicist replies, Oh, we're gonna skip over that one. Aye
Speaker 2: ya yai. Okay, that's it for future, Jamie. Let's close
Speaker 2: out the episode, and that, I promise is the last
Speaker 2: you're going to hear of Hailey Welch on this show.
Speaker 2: For my own mental health, if nothing else. At this point,
Speaker 2: she has made it clear that she is not ready
Speaker 2: for her fifteen minutes to end, but man if the
Speaker 2: best guest for your comeback is the third most successful
Speaker 2: co creator of the Lunchables with Mold, and if the
Speaker 2: numbers and attention that the return pulled in, it's going
Speaker 2: to be a difficult road ahead. So while I do
Speaker 2: believe that Hailey Welch is very much a sign of
Speaker 2: the times, a young woman who had no social media
Speaker 2: aspirations or aspirations to fame being launched into prominence against
Speaker 2: her will signs that shady ass managers who immediately capitalized
Speaker 2: of and disposed of her, defrauding regular people out of
Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process. But even
Speaker 2: as an individual, there is a kind of desperation to
Speaker 2: this comeback that is hard to watch. And call me naive,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure that plenty of people on the Reddit
Speaker 2: board will, But I still think that this is a
Speaker 2: story about class more than anything, because it's hard to
Speaker 2: deny that Haley is a certified scammer or at best
Speaker 2: scammer accomplice at this point, and unfortunately coming from a
Speaker 2: low income family in Tennessee, I think the financial security
Speaker 2: and not having to return to her job at a
Speaker 2: spring factory is just as relevant to the story as
Speaker 2: the idea that she might be kind of hooked on
Speaker 2: the attention and might not be ready for the big
Speaker 2: moment to end. There is more than one thing going
Speaker 2: on here, and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying
Speaker 2: to just get your clicks. But the fifteen minutes are
Speaker 2: probably over, and as we talk about on this show
Speaker 2: every week, the fifteen minutes being over has a way
Speaker 2: of breaking someone's brain. But careers have highs and lows,
Speaker 2: and I can't say with confidence that Haley doesn't have
Speaker 2: a second act in her. We've seen it before and
Speaker 2: many people life is long, right, But for the time being,
Speaker 2: the most depressing part of all of that is, even
Speaker 2: with these already diminishing returns, I don't think that Haley
Speaker 2: or any of the parasites that remain on her team
Speaker 2: are gonna stop chasing whatever the latest influencer grift is.
Speaker 2: It seems like they're in too deep. And the reason
Speaker 2: I think that is because there's this one part of
Speaker 2: the KSI interview on the return episode where Haley all
Speaker 2: but confirms this, do.
Speaker 5: You ever think I could box?
Speaker 11: Would you want to box? I?
Speaker 14: Actually?
Speaker 11: Really?
Speaker 2: You gotta give her some tips?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I need some tips.
Speaker 6: You can just try me.
Speaker 2: They brought up bad baby, but that is.
Speaker 3: Perfect.
Speaker 5: It's like the world's biggest memes against oh my, that
Speaker 5: would be personally.
Speaker 15: I like her.
Speaker 5: I don't think I could. I feel like I have
Speaker 5: to have somebody.
Speaker 2: I just I just despise a yes, the next attempt
Speaker 2: to keep her fingernails wrapped around the right wing grifting
Speaker 2: machine sports betting via celebrity boxing. This interaction bummed me
Speaker 2: out for a number of reasons, the first being that
Speaker 2: this cheeky question from Haley almost exactly mirrors how she
Speaker 2: foreshadowed that her team was about to pull a massive
Speaker 2: crypto scam a few months ago. This is from the
Speaker 2: episode of Talk to U with Mark Cuban from back
Speaker 2: in November.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I give you some token?
Speaker 7: How do you okay?
Speaker 3: I'm sure you're gonna watch. I don't know. I'm not
Speaker 3: a big a fan about me coins. I love crypto,
Speaker 3: but but you can make some money from it.
Speaker 11: There's no doubt, no doubt, Abo.
Speaker 2: It's exactly the same. And while the cryptosports betting industry
Speaker 2: her former employer better being a pretty solid example of it,
Speaker 2: is a firmly modern act of desperation. For a person
Speaker 2: who's been professionally disgraced or, as in the case of
Speaker 2: many women, professionally disgraced and then humiliated in a very
Speaker 2: gendered way. Even though that is all true here, celebrity
Speaker 2: boxing as a means to hang on to relevance predates
Speaker 2: internet culture. And maybe I'm saying this just because I
Speaker 2: saw it Tanya in theaters fourteen times, but I really
Speaker 2: do believe this.
Speaker 15: And her opponent across the ring whiting out of the
Speaker 15: blue corner, wearing the stars and the bars, and also
Speaker 15: choosing not to disclose her weight to the world class skater,
Speaker 15: a two time Olympian, a World bronze medalist, and the
Speaker 15: United States trapion, the progismatic and unpredictable Tanya tnt.
Speaker 11: Hiding.
Speaker 2: This is Tanya Harding, a one time American Olympic figure
Speaker 2: skating forerunner who was extremely unbelievably talented, but was thought
Speaker 2: to lack the precise femininity associated with figure skating. She
Speaker 2: was a little bit rough around the edges and lacked
Speaker 2: the money to get the quote unquote right outfits and
Speaker 2: social graces. She had a difficult life. She was raised
Speaker 2: by a single mom and was in an abusive marriage,
Speaker 2: one that culminated in her then husband, Jeff Galuley, hiring
Speaker 2: the worst hitman of all time to take a crowbar
Speaker 2: to who was painted in the media as Tanya's primary
Speaker 2: figure skating rival at the time, a woman named Nancy Kerrigan,
Speaker 2: who by the way, was in the same tax bracket
Speaker 2: as Tanya, but was just thought to be better at
Speaker 2: being feminine the world as hell. Tanya's involvement in the
Speaker 2: planning of this attack was and I don't know, minimal,
Speaker 2: if anything, but it didn't stop this from ruining her career.
Speaker 2: She was banned from competing professionally in figure skating for
Speaker 2: the rest of her life, and this affected her ability
Speaker 2: to not just live with dignity, but to make a
Speaker 2: living at all. To quote my favorite movie I Tanya
Speaker 2: starring Margot Robbie.
Speaker 13: Once I was banned from figure skating for life, I
Speaker 13: didn't have a lot of options.
Speaker 2: Did what I had to do to just stay in
Speaker 2: the public eye. And hey, the bills breeze.
Speaker 13: I was the second most person behind Bill Clinton in
Speaker 13: the world. That meant something. People still wanted to see me.
Speaker 13: So I became the lady boxer.
Speaker 2: And so Tanya turned to one of the only ways
Speaker 2: that she could make money on that name, because she
Speaker 2: was no longer a name that could sell products like
Speaker 2: Nancy Kerrigan could, and she wasn't allowed to participate in
Speaker 2: figure skating professionally at all, and so she had to
Speaker 2: get creative. And there was this show called Celebrity Boxing
Speaker 2: that started in two thousand and two.
Speaker 3: Let's Get Ride.
Speaker 2: This was a franchise version of something that had proven
Speaker 2: to make for a pretty successful pay per view event
Speaker 2: all the way back in the nineties, and would usually
Speaker 2: pair up two people who were once very culturally relevant
Speaker 2: for some reason, but now were slightly less so a
Speaker 2: great example is about between former seventies teen idols Danny
Speaker 2: Bonaducci and Donnie Osmond. Celebrity Boxing, Not for Nothing, is
Speaker 2: a show that started airing on Fox around the same
Speaker 2: time that Girls Gone Wild, The show that would provide
Speaker 2: a template of humiliating drunk women that would lead to
Speaker 2: the Tim and D YouTube channel that Haley Welsh popped
Speaker 2: off on, was at its peak of popularity. But celebrity
Speaker 2: Boxing was a place where, as Tanya's character describes, notorious
Speaker 2: figures could take a last pass at monetizing their name
Speaker 2: by facing off against either another celebrity or a known boxer,
Speaker 2: and more often than not have their ass kicked. And
Speaker 2: because most of these figures had been somehow publicly disgriced
Speaker 2: already does or not, because plenty of these are deserved.
Speaker 16: Tonight you will witness an extraordinary boxing match between two
Speaker 16: celebrities who, until six weeks ago would never set foot
Speaker 16: in a boxing ring. Let me introduce you to our
Speaker 16: first fighter tonight in the Red Corner, comedian and star
Speaker 16: of the hit BBC two series The Office, mister Ricky Gervais.
Speaker 2: This is where Tanya Harding ends up in two thousand
Speaker 2: and two, and in a twist that made me so
Speaker 2: mad and sad, Tanya is matched up against a woman
Speaker 2: named Paula Jones, who was also dragged through the mud
Speaker 2: in nineteen nineties tabloid culture because Paula Jones credibly accused
Speaker 2: Bill Clinton of sexual harassment May ninety one. Bill Clinton
Speaker 2: harassed me on the job and then basically told me,
Speaker 2: let's keep this between ourselves.
Speaker 11: I just pretended that it didn't happen.
Speaker 2: And what's worse, La Jones stepping into the ring was
Speaker 2: said to be because Amy Fisher aka yet another nineteen
Speaker 2: nineties woman who was publicly disgraced in spite of being
Speaker 2: a victim of sexual abuse, called the Long Island Lolita,
Speaker 2: was not able to attend the.
Speaker 15: Winner by technical knockout Kanya Tea and ten. Are you
Speaker 15: surprised that Paula, who's never completed at any.
Speaker 2: Level like this and has never trained for sports at your.
Speaker 15: Level, was able to go into the third drone?
Speaker 7: Oh, she did really well.
Speaker 2: I knew that both of us would.
Speaker 7: Come in and get to know each other a little bit,
Speaker 7: and you know, it wasn't a catfite.
Speaker 1: It was that it was more like a boxing match,
Speaker 1: but have fun all at the same time. And you
Speaker 1: know I knocked her down a few times.
Speaker 5: That's all I'm happening.
Speaker 2: This is a clear pattern. When you look at the
Speaker 2: history of celebrity boxing, you're hard pressed to find a
Speaker 2: man competing who isn't either trying to recapture relevance, has
Speaker 2: been credibly accused or convey did of a sex crime
Speaker 2: or both. And with women, you're more likely to find
Speaker 2: someone who has just been publicly shamed in an extreme way,
Speaker 2: whether you think they deserved it or not. Men are
Speaker 2: trying to bounce back from something that they did, and
Speaker 2: most women are people that others will pay to see
Speaker 2: punched in the face. What's clear is that this is
Speaker 2: not what Tanya Harding wanted for her life. It was
Speaker 2: a choice that she made out of a need to survive.
Speaker 2: She wanted to not be publicly humiliated in the first place,
Speaker 2: just like Paula Jones or Amy Fisher didn't want And
Speaker 2: like Hailey Welch, Tanya was from a working class family
Speaker 2: and didn't have anyone looking out for her financially or emotionally.
Speaker 2: And like Hailey Welch, Tanya Harding did fuck up at
Speaker 2: different times, unlike Hailey Welch, who was a generational athlete.
Speaker 2: But you can talk to me about that, Ata Bar
Speaker 2: I love talking about on your herding. And while there
Speaker 2: are new venues for celebrity boxing today, I will remind
Speaker 2: you how successful the Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson Netflix
Speaker 2: match was last year. The gender dynamics kind of remain
Speaker 2: the same. The men are credibly accused of sex crimes
Speaker 2: and washed up. The women have been publicly humiliated, and
Speaker 2: their faults are generally connected to survival. But all of
Speaker 2: it is out of some desperation. It sucks it is
Speaker 2: very American. Hailey is willing to sign up for this
Speaker 2: not because she is secretly wanted to box for her
Speaker 2: whole life, but because it is a way for her
Speaker 2: to make money and keep her name out there, and
Speaker 2: regardless of whether it works, whether it's humiliating, or whether
Speaker 2: it matches up with how she wants her life to go.
Speaker 2: And maybe it'll be fun. I hope it is. But
Speaker 2: from where where I'm sitting, it's just the next grift.
Speaker 2: So Haley, welch, I'm gonna take a shot in the
Speaker 2: dark here. Your sixteenth minute ends now, and for your
Speaker 2: moment of fun. Here is KSI describing Los Angeles as
Speaker 2: a state, not a city, And there are at least
Speaker 2: five people in the room and no one pushes back goodbye.
Speaker 2: You've been to the.
Speaker 3: US a few times, right, way too many times?
Speaker 5: You have a favorite state or anything?
Speaker 11: Favorite state? Definitely not La? Definitely I can agree with
Speaker 11: you on that.
Speaker 5: Agree.
Speaker 11: I feel like LA's just gone downhill over the years.
Speaker 14: Man sixteenth Minute is a production of fol Zone Media
Speaker 14: and iheartwoy Depp. It is written, hosted, and produced by
Speaker 14: me Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans. The
Speaker 2: amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 2: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
Speaker 2: from Grant Crater and pet Shout outs to our dog
Speaker 2: producer Anderson, my cats fleeing Casper, and my pet rock Bird,
Speaker 2: who will outlive us all. Bye.