FTX: A crypto crisis
Tech Life
BBC
4.3 • 227 Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2022
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The collapse of the FTX currency exchange, and the downfall of its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried has been astonishing. Where does the industry go now? The biggest ever satellite, BlueWalker 3, has successfully been deployed - what will it mean for global communications and the night sky? Plus, why Chinese army veterans are being drafted into the world's biggest iPhone factory. And why has a video of a meteor got a woman thrown off Twitter? Astronomer Mary McIntyre explains how her account was banned after a video of a meteor streaking across the night sky she shared, was flagged as porn.
Producer: Tom Singleton
(Photo: Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of FTX, testifies at the House Financial Services Committee hearing Digital Assets and the Future of Finance: Understanding the Challenges and Benefits of Financial Innovation. Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On Radio 4, the more you listen, the more you see. |
| 0:04.7 | Hello, I'm Brian Cox. |
| 0:05.6 | And I'm Robin Ince, and this is The Infinite Monkey Cage. |
| 0:08.3 | In this series, we're going to have a planet off. |
| 0:10.8 | I feel like Jupiter wins. |
| 0:12.8 | And after all of that, we're just going to chill out a bit. |
| 0:15.9 | We're talking about your bog standard. |
| 0:17.8 | Ice, not the fancy one. |
| 0:20.1 | Science with funny bits. |
| 0:21.9 | The new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage. |
| 0:24.1 | Listen on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. |
| 0:31.4 | Welcome back to TechTent with me, Zoe Kleinman. |
| 0:34.7 | In a moment, we'll discuss the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried and his |
| 0:38.8 | multi-billion dollar crypto empire. But also this week, the company which is creating a new |
| 0:44.8 | generation of super-sized satellites, answers criticism that it's ruining the night sky. |
| 0:51.6 | China's solution to a recruitment crisis at a giant iPhone factory, drafting the |
| 0:56.2 | veterans. And the Twitter meteor mix-up with a twist in the tail. |
| 1:04.2 | First this week, the downfall of the FTX crypto empire and the man who created it, Sam Bankman |
| 1:09.8 | Freed, has been astonishing. |
| 1:12.6 | I know, I guess I got lucky. I don't happen to have a whole lot of desire for a yacht. |
| 1:17.7 | I kind of don't get it. It's never been something that has viscerally appealed to me. |
| 1:21.0 | And so combined with the fact that it'd be a dumb use of money, I'm just not very tempted. How much might I be able to give? I mean, ultimately, |
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