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Unchained

FTX's Ryan Salame Is Going to Prison. Here’s What He Has to Say - Ep. 718

Unchained

Laura Shin

News, Tech News, Business News

4.61.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2024

⏱️ 105 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ryan Salame, the former CEO of FTX Digital Markets, is headed to prison, but not before sharing his side of the story. Ryan talks candidly about the decisions he made at FTX, why he withdrew millions of dollars worth of assets in the days leading up to its bankruptcy, and the backstory behind the Thai prostitute trading scheme to unfreeze Alameda’s funds in China. He also disputes the claims about his campaign finance violations, while explaining why he thinks Caroline Ellison is “at least as guilty as SBF” and that Nishad Singh lied. Show highlights: Ryan’s life pre-FTX and how he got into crypto His three attempts to quit working at FTX How Ryan committed campaign finance violations Why Ryan disputes claims that FTX misled banks and misused customer funds How Ryan was involved in setting up trading accounts with the identities of Thai prostitutes to unfreeze Alameda’s funds Whether Ryan was involved in bribing a Chinese official Why he withdrew millions of dollars worth of assets from his FTX accounts right before its bankruptcy Why Ryan claims he was cooperative with prosecutors, despite common belief How he refuses to comment on his wife Michelle Bond's case, but denies wrongdoing Why Ryan pleaded the Fifth Amendment His allegations that prosecutors lied to his lawyers about whether they would pursue charges against Michelle Why he thinks that SBF could have never coerced Caroline Ellison and whether Ellison is “equally guilty” as SBF Why Ryan believes Nishad Singh lied to save himself and his take on Gary Wang How, if he didn’t know about the fraud, he could be so certain that Caroline or Nishad lied Whether the legal advice from FTX’s and Alameda’s lawyers should have been considered in Bankman-Fried's trial Whether testimony from more employees could have created reasonable doubt in SBF's trial Why Ryan is going to law school His plans post-prison What Ryan learned from the FTX debacle Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com Thank you to our sponsors! Polkadot Mantle Guest: Ryan Salame, former CEO of FTX Digital Markets Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hey everyone today's interview is with Ryan Salem the second FTX

0:04.2

executive who will be serving time. He was the head of FTX digital markets which

0:08.8

was the Bahamian entity. His part in the FTX story had to do with the campaign violations that were initially part of Sam

0:15.6

Pinkman-Freeze trial, but then got severed into their own trial due to technicalities involving the agreement that the U.S. and the Bahamas had over

0:24.0

SPF's extradition to the U.S.

0:27.0

However, that second trial never happened because the government got a sweeping

0:30.8

conviction on all seven charges in the first trial and so decided not to go

0:35.2

ahead with the second one. While SBF's trial did have bits and pieces of information involving

0:40.5

the campaign finance charges, the full extent of the government's

0:43.9

allegations never gotten airing at trial. This interview with Ryan helped bring more

0:48.9

of those details to life. Also for those of you on crypto Twitter, I'm sure you couldn't help but notice that Ryan has

0:55.2

been tweeting a lot leading up to his prison sentence. There's been a lot of juicy things

0:59.3

that he has said in those tweets so I asked him about some of his spicier takes.

1:04.0

When we recorded this episode we didn't know when we would be releasing it

1:08.4

and there was also a question in the era of when he would begin his sentence

1:12.0

but today the day we are publishing Friday

1:14.4

October 11th, Ryan is reporting to prison. Just hours after we wrapped our

1:19.0

recording he made a post on LinkedIn that referred to the federal prison that will be as home for the next several years.

1:25.0

Quote, I'm happy to share that I'm starting a new position as inmate at FCI Cumberland.

1:31.5

And now here's my interview with Ryan Salem. I think the way

1:36.1

Caroline portrayed the relationship between her and Sam doesn't do justice to the

1:42.2

fact that I think Sam was probably the least

...

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