All-In PodcastE104: FTX collapse with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong + election results, macro update & more
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,035 words- 0:00 – 6:20
New bestie game show!
- JCJason Calacanis
Sacks, the United States is maybe not gonna send weapons to Ukraine indefinitely, and they're asking them to sit down and negotiate something that people on the left started to do and got, uh, got smashed for, something you've been pushing for. So, I guess mini victory lap for you, Sacks. What, what's the end game here?
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, yeah. I mean, I've been talking common sense about this for months, just saying that we need to be open to diplomacy because total defeat for Russia also means a, a maximum risk of nuclear war. I mean, these things go hand in hand. That's the paradox of this war is that if Russia faces the prospect of a total defeat, that's when they're most likely to escalate this conflict into something much, much worse. So, therefore, we need to be open to diplomacy. But it was good to hear administration officials over the past week say things that I've been saying for months, and that I've been accused of being like a Putin sympathizer for. So, apparently there's a bunch of Putin sympathizers in the administration. And just to read you some of these remarks, actually I wanna play like a fun game with you guys instead of just-
- JCJason Calacanis
Oh, really?
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah. Instead of just mentioning these quotes, I wanna play-
- JCJason Calacanis
Guess.
- DSDavid Sacks
... a game called Milley or Sacks.
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sacks
So, I want you guys to guess-
- JCJason Calacanis
Okay.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Hmm.
- DSDavid Sacks
... whether it was General Milley who said the quote or whether I said the quote.
- JCJason Calacanis
Hmm. Okay.
- DSDavid Sacks
Does that sound like a fair, fair game?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Yes. Fair game.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah. Let's put-
- DSDavid Sacks
Fair. Okay.
- JCJason Calacanis
Let's put some game show music here. (instrumental music plays) Milley or Sacks?
- DSDavid Sacks
I'm gonna read you like four or five quotes and you guys are gonna say whether it was Milley-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
... or Sacks who said it.
- JCJason Calacanis
First quote, who said it, General Milley or Sacks?
- DSDavid Sacks
"One of the lessons that should have been learned from World War I is that European powers' refusal to negotiate compounded the human suffering and led to millions more dead." Milley or Sacks?
- JCJason Calacanis
Sacks. I'm going Sacks. I'm going Sacks. It's a very historic-
- DSDavid Sacks
Milley said that.
- JCJason Calacanis
God.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
No. Come on.
- JCJason Calacanis
Next one. Next one. Go, go, go.
- DSDavid Sacks
Okay. "A regional war turned into the First World War because all parties made maximalist demands and assumed others were bluffing. It can happen again."
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Sacks.
- DSDavid Sacks
Milley or Sacks?
- 6:20 – 20:47
Election recap: Red wave falls flat, Republican party flips from Trump to DeSantis, a rebuke of extremism
- JCJason Calacanis
to talk about. Let's just start with the elections.
- DSDavid Sacks
I think we have to start with my mea culpa.
- JCJason Calacanis
Usually, this is like throwing red meat to sacks. But I mean, at this point... All right. So DeSantis won by double digits in Florida. He got a huge, uh, amount of the vote, but all the Trump, high profile Trump-backed candidates seemed to have lost. Dr. Oz, Dan Cox, just it was a shellacking, I guess, or the red wave became like a puddle or like an eyedropper or something. But some of the Trump backed candidates did win some of the, um, uh, Peter Thiel collection. J.D. Vance won. So I guess that's a big win for sacks.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
That wasn't a Trump candidate though, because if you remember when, uh, Trump went to stump for J.D. Vance, he forgot his name. (laughs) Got his name wrong.
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs)
- DFDavid Friedberg
Got Trump-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
So-
- JCJason Calacanis
When you've got Trump on your side, you don't need friends.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... anybody that Trump actually cared about turned out to be just a complete dud and lost.
- JCJason Calacanis
Hmm.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
And everybody that kind of, you know, had to keep him somewhat around just so that he didn't throw bombs, actually did decently. But I mean, Trump is a just, a, a weight on the neck of the Republican Party, and it's time to just get rid of him.
- JCJason Calacanis
Sacks, what happened-
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
... to your red wave?
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah. Listen, I got this wrong. Um, I think there's a few reasons for it. So I think when you get an election wrong, you have to admit it and figure out what you've, what you, what your mistake was. Otherwise, you're not going to improve. I mean, number one, I was looking at, you know, the RCP polling, this RealClearPolitics, where they take an average of all the different polls. They were adding a factor to it. They were showing, by the way, plus three or plus four in the Senate for Republicans, but they were adding a factor to it based on the underweighting, uh, that the pollsters did in the last election cycle. And it turns out that the pollsters, I think, did a pretty decent job correcting their polls. And so the RCP overweight turned out to be just basically completely wrong. The other thing that I got wrong was I was just looking at the fundamentals. I mean, three quarters of Americans think we're on the wrong track and we're in a recession. So based on that, you would think that this would be a great year for Republicans. And in fact, the out of power party usually wins in a midterm and Biden's popularity is at historic lows, at like 41, 42%. So everything seen- was teed up for the Republicans. So what went wrong? I think a couple of things. Number one, two days before the election, Trump basically comes out and pre announces that he's running.
- JCJason Calacanis
Oh, yes.
- DSDavid Sacks
And you know, this basically plays into the narrative-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Ah, yes.
- DSDavid Sacks
... that Biden has already created, that this is a... this is not a referendum on Biden. It's a referendum on democracy. And basically, Trump made it into a choice election. Who do you like better, Biden or Trump? And the fact of the matter is, if you look at the exit polling, as unpopular as Biden is, Trump is even more unpopular. So that did absolutely nothing to help the Republicans. And I think it really hurt them at the margins. The other thing that turned out, I think the other big thing that helped Democrats was Dobbs. And I never thought that it wouldn't be a factor. But if you looked at the polling before the election, 15% of likely voters said that it was their number one issue. If you looked at exit polling after the election, it was 28%. So Dobbs turned out to be twice as significant as what the early polling was showing. And if you remember, Jason, go back to the episode we did on abortion. I said the shrewd play for Republicans here was the Roberts compromise. What did Roberts want to do? He basically was going to allow the 15-week restriction on abortion, but not have the headline of Roe v. Wade overturned.
- JCJason Calacanis
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Sacks
And that basically is what DeSantis implemented in Florida. He basically restricted abortion after 15 weeks. It's the purple state compromise. It's where I think-
- JCJason Calacanis
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Sacks
... the purple states and where most of the country is going to end up, and the sooner Republicans get their heads wrapped around that fact, the better they're going to be long term.
- JCJason Calacanis
To ask you one question there, Sacks.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
Who stacked the Supreme Court deliberately to turn over Roe v. Wade?
- DSDavid Sacks
Listen, I mean, there, this was a long term priority of Republicans, obviously.
- DFDavid Friedberg
That's not a question. That's, that's not a question, J Cal.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yes. Look, but, but, but-
- JCJason Calacanis
Well, no, I mean, we do have to recognize that Trump said he would do that. He did it. So this is doubly Trump's fault.
- 20:47 – 43:32
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong joins to break down the FTX collapse, further contagion risk, regulation, and more!
- JCJason Calacanis
we got-
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
... call breaking in here. Uh, we have a special bestie guest. You know, it's been a big news week. It's not just the elections. FTX crypto exchange went belly up and, uh, we thought, well, let's bring somebody in who's super credible in crypto, and that's friend of the pod.
- BABrian Armstrong
He's credible 'cause he's wearing a tie.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah. Hey, Brian Armstrong. How are you doing, brother?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Brian Armstrong, you look fantastic.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah. What are you, testifying today?
- BABrian Armstrong
I'm doing great. It's not, it's not Moncler-
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs)
- BABrian Armstrong
... and it's not, uh, Loro Piana, but um...
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- BABrian Armstrong
You know, normally I just, I just wear the black T-shirt and the hoodie, but you know, when... At times like this, I gotta go talk to media and policymakers-
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- BABrian Armstrong
... regulators, and it's a, it's a good time to, you know, spruce up the image.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
This is a week to break out the tie?
- BABrian Armstrong
Yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
Hey, listen, Men's Warehouse, it never looked better.
- BABrian Armstrong
(laughs) You look great.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Thank you.
- DSDavid Sacks
I see a red tie and I think fiscally responsible.
- NANarrator
(laughing)
- JCJason Calacanis
All right. Um, I guess, Brian, just to kick it off-
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
... FTX, in, in spectacular fashion, blew up this week, and, uh, it's pretty gnarly. You run an exchange as well. What's your take on what happened with FTX, and then what is your position in terms of making sure your customers understand that Coinbase is not gonna have a similar fate to all the other exchanges that seem to be blowing up every couple of months?
- BABrian Armstrong
Yeah. Well, first of all, I mean, I think we were all shocked that somebody like Sam, who seemingly is so smart and s- and capable, ended up in this really... the situation where he appears to have done something quite unethical and illegal. So, you know, my job right now this week has been to go out there and just help people understand that Coinbase is not like that. We've been pursuing a different strategy for the last 10 years. We're a public company. We're, we're regulated. Our, our financial statements are audited. They can show that, you know, customer funds are segregated. They're backed one-to-one. We're not investing customer assets without their explicit direction. And so that's been the first step, is just to make sure people understand that. But then a- after that, we need to kind of think about how we go forward as an industry here, and both take a long-term perspective, make sure the good companies in the space aren't allowing one or two bad actors to kind of mess it up for everybody else. And then it, it feeds into the whole regulatory story too, because companies like Coinbase are already regulated, but we're regulated like a traditional financial service business, but we don't have clarity about the crypto-specific regulations, like what's a commodity, what's a security? And that lack of regulatory clarity, I believe, has pushed a lot of this business offshore to these less regulated exchanges. That's part of what caused the blowup today. Uh, they, they were based in the Bahamas, you know, and they just... there's not sophisticated financial regulators overseeing what they were doing.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Brian, there's a lot to unpack, but maybe we can just take a step back, and for the uninitiated, or for the person who's only been just following this very superficially, can you just, in a nutshell, explain what happened?
- BABrian Armstrong
Yeah. So, uh, my understanding is, and again, this is from people I've talked to, and I spoke with Sam and CZ briefly during this, but I didn't get details from them. I got it from other people.
- JCJason Calacanis
You spoke to them this week?
- BABrian Armstrong
Yeah. I mean, this was all going down. I mean, I, I spoke to Sam about, you know, he was trying to raise emergency fu- uh, financing and things like that. And I spoke to CZ about why he was considering buying the asset. I thought it was a bad idea. But my understanding of what happened at this point, and again, I don't have all the facts, this is just my, my understanding, is that, you know, FTX was in a position where they had this market maker, Alameda, that was investing in risky things. And that's fine. Like, market makers, hedge funds, they're designed to take more risk. It appears, at this point, that back during the last, uh, shakeup in the crypto industry where, you know, Th- Terra Luna and Voyager and Celsius and Three Arrows went under, it appears that, uh, Alameda took a big loss at that time as well. They may have even been underwater. And instead of just saying, "Hey, you know, this hedge fund's gonna blow up too," which would have been unfortunate, people would have lo-... you know, Sam would have lost money, it's embarrassing, but it's not illegal for a hedge fund to blow up.It happens with some regularity. Instead of just letting it blow up, it seems like at this point he took customer funds-
- 43:32 – 1:06:00
Red flags exhibited by Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX, lack of governance/diligence
- BABrian Armstrong
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
We're probably running outta time with you 'cause you said you had a hard stop, so let's ask the million dollar question. Tell us about SBF. Like, what's... Who is this character?
- JCJason Calacanis
When did you first suspect-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah, what's your read on the psychology-
- JCJason Calacanis
... that this wasn't legit?
- DFDavid Friedberg
Do you think that it was his altruistic intent that allowed himself to convince himself to do this or do you think this was, like, malicious the whole way or what, what's your sense of the guy?
- BABrian Armstrong
Hmm. So again, I'm speculating here. I mean, I, I've spent time with him. I've, I've met him a bunch of times and I have to say, I di- I did not see this coming. Like he, he appeared to me to be, um, a very bright, credible, competent person. Perhaps a bit young, perhaps, you know, a bit reckless at times, but not unethical and not, not committing fraud. I di- I definitely did not see that. You know, if I look back to see were there any warning signs that I should have thought twice about it? You know, one of the things I noticed was that, uh, in 2021, you know, Coinbase had a good year. We, we did seven billion in revenue, four billion of positive EBITDA. We went, we became public as a company. At that time, FTX did about 1 billion in revenue. And I knew how much money we had for our venture budget and just, like, different investments we wanted to make and I, and I knew their revenue and I had to scratch my head a bunch of times and I was like, "Where is this guy getting all this liquidity?" Because he was like buying 9% of Robinhood. He was putting like a billion dollars into this, he was donating to all these politicians and I was like, I, I... It did not make sense to me where he was getting all this cash. People would, just kept telling me, "Oh, his market maker, Alameda, is just printing cash." And I guess like, okay, I guess, you know, it seems like a conflict of interest to own an exchange and a market maker, that's why we haven't done it, but more power to him, I guess. And so I was surprised, I didn't speak up. I cannot, I can't explain the psychology of it at this point, whether he's a pathological liar or if he's started off good and somehow under the pressure of this whole thing went bad, but the minute... You can, you can go watch the interviews. He's, he's, he's lying to people about why he's, he's ba- uh, you know, uh, bailing out Voyager and, and BlockFi and these, and he, he knew at that time that, most likely he knew at that, at that time that they were not solvent, Alameda was not solvent. And so that's where he crossed a major line i- in my book.
- DFDavid Friedberg
And we see it time and time again. Elizabeth Holmes, Bernie Madoff. I mean, once the lie gets too big, you can't get out of it anymore, uh, if that's the case. Really incredible.
- JCJason Calacanis
A- and the most-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Wow.
- JCJason Calacanis
... important thing at this point, Brian, is that the United States makes a decision on do we wanna be in crypto, do we wanna have a say in this and create a regulatory framework that entrepreneurs like yourself can deal with? That is the most important thing to happen in the next year. But you're saying the SEC is not motivated. I guess why are they not motivated? They're just CYA, wanna slow-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Oh, they're motivated now. This is a political issue now, so they-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah, but let's hear Brian-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... they'll be very motivated.
- JCJason Calacanis
... a- answer here. What do you, what do you think, Brian?
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, let's find out who, who did SBF give all this money to because he was touted as one of the future biggest donors to the Democratic Party.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Democratic Party. Yeah.
- DSDavid Sacks
If you want signals, so if you want signals, I would say-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Oh boy, here we go.
- DSDavid Sacks
... there were some pretty big signals here. Number one, he said he's gonna donate a, a billion dollars to the Democratic Party. And he kept touting this like effective altruism, whatever, the saving the world stuff. Now-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sacks
... why do you need to do that unless you're reputation laundering and trying to buy political protection? Come on.
- JCJason Calacanis
Okay.
- DSDavid Sacks
You don't think that was a little bit of a signal? Brian?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Well, here, I'll tell, I'll tell you an e-
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs)
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
I'll tell you an even more explicit signal. We, he pitched us-
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs)
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... in that $17 billion round and I did a Zoom with him and after the Zoom I'm like, "This doesn't make much sense but I'll have my team do some work." We did some work and we sent him a two-page deck and we said, "Here are our recommendations for taking the next step." One was the formation of a board, the second was the creation of dual class stock, the third was some reps and warranties around affiliated transactions and related party transactions. And the person that worked there called us back and literal, I'm, I'm not, I'm not kidding you, said, "Go fuck yourself."
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs)
- 1:06:00 – 1:12:26
Macroeconomic picture, lower than expected CPI print catalyzes market tear, advice for founders
- JCJason Calacanis
and it's the best step.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Should we talk about the economy?
- JCJason Calacanis
Sure. You want to talk about Facebook with the 11,000, you want to talk about the, uh, market popping?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
So at the beginning of October-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
I think what we basically said, kind of generally speaking, is market's up, right?
- JCJason Calacanis
Market's up. Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
It went from nibbling to being constructively positive and basically being-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yep.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... positioned long. Here's this really interesting setup. We have a bunch of very positive news that I think we all have to process. First positive news was that inflation ticked down. Now, here's what I'll tell you. There's a caveat here. I talked to a bunch of pretty smart sharps on Wall Street, and oh, two things. Number one is they all gave credit to David Sacks and they said, "Sacks was totally right. Double dip recession is coming." But then they said, "Tell Sacks that we think..." That these are the sharps. "We think that there's a double hump in inflation coming," which means it's coming down to come back up. And there's a bunch of reporting vagaries that may cause that. So keep that in the back of your mind. But positive news number one is inflation ticking down. Um, number two, Jason, we talked about this. Uh, a federal judge basically stayed...... Biden's attempt at giving student loan relief. Now, that would have been a $500 billion transfer payment from the government into the hands of individuals. It is deflationary to not put, give that money to people. It's effectively taking stimulus away from folks. Number three, it looks like we're headed towards a split government, which means that, um, we are not probably gonna see any more stimulus over the next two years. Number four, uh, Ukraine wins in Kherson. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Number five, the United States, uh, announced yesterday through the Wall Street Journal that they had essentially said no to Ukraine's request for advanced drones. And they said to Ukraine essentially, "You need to go and negotiate an endgame here." And number six, China has started to relax its COVID policies and Xi is pivoting to economy first. So if you took all of those things-
- JCJason Calacanis
Wait, take seven. Don't forget seven.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Seven.
- JCJason Calacanis
Facebook, which would not take the medicine, they refused Brad Gersten's letter, cut 11,000 people 48 hours ago.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
I don't-
- JCJason Calacanis
One of the big-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... think Facebook matters that much, to be honest with you.
- JCJason Calacanis
Well, but it, it matters that big tech is... And they're taking-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
No, it matters to us-
- JCJason Calacanis
... the medicine. Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... but it doesn't matter to the economy, to be completely honest.
- JCJason Calacanis
Oh, I, I think it does if people are gonna start cutting jobs. But okay, keep going.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
My m- my point is these seven things are macro level things that affect everybody.
- JCJason Calacanis
Yep.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
And I think if you take them together, what it says is that, wow, there's, there's the potential for a lot of great positive developments over the next six or nine months.
- JCJason Calacanis
Mm-hmm.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
And I don't think that that was adequately priced in the market. But here's the problem, and this is what's, why we've been rallying. The problem is that most of this rallying has been because of a bunch of short covering by folks that who were pretty pessimistic and negative after the last few inflation prints. So this is not really net new buying that we saw over the last couple days. So you take it all together, I'm like, it's still gonna probably trend up a little bit, but then again, you know, we talked about this, Jason, when the VIX gets into the low 20s or the high teens, that's probably the short-term top, and then it turns around and unfortunately we're near (laughs) -
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... the, the low 20s, high 18s. So that's kind of my thought on things right now.
- JCJason Calacanis
Okay. Friedberg, you got any thoughts on the inflation print?
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah, so I think there's two things. One of which I'll, I'll give credit to a guy named Carl, uh, Chou. Uh, I hope I pronounced Carl's name right. He's from William Blair. He puts out these excellent research reports and we used one of his graphics a few weeks ago so I've put it up here, and basically he showed that with the, uh, the NASDAQ move that we saw this week... So you can see this here, he basically tracked the move in the 10-year Treasury against the, the one-day move in the NASDAQ. And, uh, he said that it, it really indicates a unique sentiment shift. Whereas in other times you've seen big moves in the NASDAQ but weren't really seeing significant moves in, in the Treasury rate at the same, on the same trading day and that this is such an outlier what happened, uh, this week. The only other time that we've seen anything like it was when the Bank of England issue happened back at the end of September, uh, in the last, you know, 20 times that we've seen this big of a move in the NASDAQ in a single day. And so we saw a 31, um, basis point move in 10-year Treasuries in, in a single day, at the same time that we saw, what, a seven point move in the NASDAQ. So he said because y- you don't normally see the bond market and the equity market trade in this way together, it really speaks to a big shift in sentiment. Now, at the same time-
Episode duration: 1:25:17
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