The cryptocurrency con
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 December 2022
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You're 30 years old, worth billions as a result of a crypto exchange you've set up - and in the space of one Sunday afternoon it all turns to dust. What must that feel like?
On this episode of The News Agents we speak to someone who's been there, done that and has got the badge (the prison sentence). Nick Leeson single-handedly brought down one of Britain's most famous financial institutions in 1995 - Barings Bank - and spent four years in a Singapore jail as a result. He speaks to us about the tight spot Sam Bankman Fried now finds himself in, and how similar it was to his own.
Planning: Melissa Tutesigensi
Social Media: Georgia Foxwell
Video: Will Gibson-Smith
Production: Gabriel Radus
Deputy Editor: Tom Hughes
Executive Producer: Dino Sofos
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.4 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:13.0 | Are you worried about going to jail? |
| 0:17.0 | There are a lot of things that are worrying me right now. And, you know, as best as possible, |
| 0:25.3 | I'm trying to focus on what I can do going forward to be helpful. |
| 0:28.8 | That is the moment that Sam Bankman-Fried was asked by George Stephanopoulos on ABC News about what it was like to face jail after losing 25 billion pounds |
| 0:43.4 | of other people's money. And today on the news agents, we're going to talk about what it's |
| 0:49.8 | like to collapse a company, a story as old as the hills. Enron, Robert Maxwell, Bairings, Nick Leeson. |
| 1:00.0 | In fact, Nick Leeson is going to be telling us today exactly what it feels like. |
| 1:05.0 | You say it's as old as the hills. I say it goes back to Icarus, someone who flies too close to the sun, it's all looking |
| 1:13.5 | fantastic, and then you come crashing to the ground. It is an epic story of how something can be so right |
| 1:22.6 | one minute and so wrong the next that all you can see around you is debris and chaos. |
| 1:31.6 | Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:36.5 | The Newsagents. |
| 1:38.4 | This is John in Newsagents HQ. |
| 1:41.0 | And this is Emily. |
| 1:42.3 | And today we're going to be talking about the man who became the world's |
| 1:46.6 | youngest billionaire, Sam Bankman-Fried. He was 29. He was looking to become the world's first |
| 1:53.3 | trillionaire. He comes from this very liberal West Coast academic family, parents at Stanford. |
| 2:02.0 | And he made his money by doing something that it seems even he didn't really understand. |
| 2:10.2 | He buys a $40 million penthouse in the Bahamas, an island with very loose regulation for cryptocurrency. So on the one hand, |
| 2:19.4 | this is a story about crypto, that rather murky, confusing, exciting world of money that is |
... |
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