So they're sitting on $100 billion.

It's earning 5% interest.

And it's like a real shoe string operation.

There's not that many people that work there.

So they're making more than $5 billion a year and have been the real winners of crypto lately.

I mean, the tether is more profitable than Nike.

I'm Ricky Mulvey, and that's Zeke Fox.

He's the author of Number Go Up, Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall.

The book was one of my favorites of 2023, and Fox is just an incredible

storyteller. I'm delighted that he joined us again on Motlew Full Money, this time to check in

on the crypto space with my colleague Mary Long. They discuss how the crypto industry continues

to tell a compelling narrative about its future, the most useful thing that people are using

digital currencies for, and how meme coins

catch on. As a heads up, this conversation was recorded on Monday, November 4th, before the election.

Zeke, I really wanted to talk with you because I've noticed what feels to be a bit like a paradox in the crypto universe. I am admittedly a more casual observer of crypto markets, but it seems

like that world has kind of gone quiet in the two years post-FTX. But while I'm sitting over here thinking,

oh, crypto's gone quiet, you actually look at the prices of these things and they've handily

outpaced the S&P 500. So what is, how can both of those things be true? Has crypto really gone

quiet or is something else happening here? Yeah, it's really weird. I mean,

when back in November 22, when FTX failed, I was down with Sam Bankman-Fried interviewing him in

the Bahamas about what had gone wrong. And it felt like this was, it was time to write an obituary for this whole crypto market.

I mean, like the face of crypto had been discredited as a fraud.

...