FTX (with Sam Bankman-Fried & Mario Gabriele)

Acquired

Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

Venturecapital, Ma, Investing, Acquisitions, Startups, Vc, Investment, Business, Technology

4.8 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2021

⏱️ 95 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Note: This episode was published on Dec 14, 2021, approximately a year before FTX’s subsequent meltdown. The apparent negligence, fraud and self-dealing at FTX has given us much to reflect on after we — and many others — gave Sam a platform to share his and FTX’s story with all of you. We’ve decided to leave this episode up in-full as a historical artifact of the industry’s view on FTX at the time. For a broader Acquired discussion on frauds, and specifically the similarities between FTX and Enron, see our November 2022 Enron episode.

We tell the definitive (audio!) story behind FTX's "speed run" — how this upstart crypto exchange became the fastest company in history to reach a $25B valuation, just two years after founding. And to do so we're joined by not one but TWO of the very best people in the world to help: FTX's wunderkind CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, and special guest host Mario Gabriele from The Generalist, who Sam gave extensive access to FTX's internal data, employees, and investors for his canonical 36,000 word trilogy on the company this past summer. We cover it all — from the "$20m/day" trade that started everything, to Tom Brady & Gisele, to Sam testifying last week in front of Congress. Don't blink or you might miss it!

Sponsors:
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta

Statsig: bit.ly/statsigacquired
Modern Treasury: https://bit.ly/acquiredmoderntreasury

Big news!! All back catalog LP Show episodes are now free and available to anyone!! You can follow our new public LP Show feed here in the podcast player of your choice. It's already chock-full of 60+ great episodes like our VC Fundamentals series, interviews with founders of top early-stage startups, and master classes on pricing, marketplaces, SaaS investing and many more topics. Happy listening and happy holidays to everyone!!

Links:

The Generalist's FTX Trilogy: https://www.readthegeneralist.com/briefing/ftx-1
FTX: https://ftx.com
FTX US: https://ftx.us
Sam's Twitter: https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX

‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, acquired listeners. David and I are recording this in November of 2022, while lots of news is
0:06.1	coming out about FTX's collapse in real time. We recorded this episode about a year ago and we
0:13.4	want to do acknowledged there's been lots of accusations and lots of very apparent wrongdoing
0:18.8	by FTX and potentially Alameda since we recorded this. We wanted to leave this up for posterity.
0:27.0	We recorded this interview. We think it's worth watching with full context.
0:30.8	Indeed. Rather than making any sort of statement instead, we just finished recording a three
0:39.1	plus hour long episode about the history of Enron, which felt like a much more appropriate
0:44.9	acquired way to add to the conversation around FTX.
0:47.9	If you're watching this, we also recommend watching the Enron episode and hearing the discussion
0:52.8	on that show as well. With that, onto the episode.
1:12.6	Welcome to season 9 episode 7 of acquired, the podcast about great technology companies and the
1:18.2	stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert and I'm the co-founder and managing director of
1:23.2	Seattle based Pioneer Square Labs and our venture fund PSL Ventures. And I'm David Rosenthal
1:28.8	and I am an angel investor based in San Francisco. And we are your hosts. Today we are telling the
1:36.8	story of the crypto trading exchange FTX started just two and a half years ago and today worth
1:44.0	over $25 billion. They're by far the fastest growing crypto exchange. In the research, I found
1:50.4	that they grew an astonishing 10X by volume in the year 2020. I went to look if they repeated
1:56.7	that unbelievable feat in 2021 and found out that they actually 10Xed just in the first half
2:03.0	of 2021. So the answer is no, they didn't, they doubled it.
2:07.6	Unbelievable. So the pace is accelerating for FTX. We're still waiting on end of year numbers,
2:12.6	but this company is just astonishing. So FTX is now the sponsor of the Miami Heats basketball arena,
2:19.1	FTX arena. And you can see their logo on every major league baseball umpires uniform. You can see
	...

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