Sam Bankman-Fried on Arbitrage and Altruism

Conversations with Tyler

Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 9 March 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Whether it’s scaling an arbitrage opportunity or launching an ambitious philanthropic project, Sam Bankman-Fried has set himself apart. In just a few years, he’s not only made billions trading crypto, but also become a leading practitioner of effective altruism, with the specific aim of making lots of money in order to donate most of it to high-impact causes.

He joined Tyler to discuss the Sam Bankman-Fried production function, the secret to his trading success, how games like Magic: The Gathering have shaped his approach to business, why a legal mind is crucial when thinking about cryptocurrencies, the most important thing he’s learned about managing, what Bill Belichick can teach us about being a good leader, the real constraints in the effective altruism space, why he’s not very compelled by life extension research, challenges to his Benthamite utilitarianism, whether it’s possible to coherently regulate stablecoins, the implicit leverage in DeFi, Elon Musk’s greatest product, why he thinks Ethereum is overrated, where in the world has the best French fries, why he’s bullish on the Bahamas, and more.

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Recorded January 6th, 2022

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everyone, this is Tyler of Conversations with Tyler.
0:08.3	Another podcast produced here at the Mercatus Center is MacRome Usings, a weekly podcast dedicated
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0:57.0	visit ConversationsWithTiler.com.
1:03.9	Hello everyone and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
1:07.4	Today I'm chatting with Sam Bankman-Freed, Sam is the CEO and founder of FTX,
1:13.2	a major cryptocurrency exchange, and the founder and head of Alameda Research,
1:18.2	a major cryptocurrency trading firm. Sam has in a very short period of time,
1:23.6	gone from just being a person who believed in effective altruism,
1:27.8	to being perhaps the world's leading practitioner of earning money to give it away.
1:32.6	Sam, welcome.
1:34.2	Thanks for having me.
1:35.8	Let me do this a bit in reverse and start with the Sam Bankman-Freed production function.
1:40.4	How it is you do what you do.
	...

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