Ryan Salame reports to prison today. But before he self-surrenders himself, he gave a tell all interview. Here’s the link & I’d be interested to hear people’s thoughts on it: “You pled guilty to crimes that are not actually crimes?” “Correct.”
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Really pleased to see him speaking out! Very brave thing to do.
I found another one recorded just before he self-surrendered that I think is even better:
It’s a shame that this interviewer is so irritating though. If you don’t really want to listen to your guest, fair enough, but then don’t attempt a back-and-forth with them, just run through your prepared questions.
Anyway, one of the parts I found most interesting was when Ryan says that, in this emerging industry, “commingling” fiat deposits was literally the only option available to them at first:
SHIN: The commingling of all that money is obviously not how things should be done and is concerning, but let’s move on.
SALAME: I agree. That’s why we didn’t want it. We were fighting to get, that’s why we tried to get FTX a bank account from day one and then worked with Silvergate for other solutions until they finally did give FTX a bank account. But yes, I agree, the interaction between banking and crypto exchanges is terrible and not how it should be.
It was also decent of him to have said:
These are all actually decent human beings, and that’s, like, the challenge. You know, I met a lot of assholes in this industry. I met a lot of assholes in the world, like Sam, Caroline, Gary, and Nishad are fundamentally, like, good people to their core.
I can’t see what the ulterior motive would be here? It just sounds like he’s speaking openly and honestly. I’m not sure how much I agree with him, but I have a ton of respect for people who voice unpopular opinions when it’s clearly coming from a place of kindness (as opposed to bitterness or disagreeableness).
It was also kinda interesting hearing his fervent advocacy of crypto, as I hadn’t appreciated how passionately he believes in it before. E.g. in this interview he says, “I love the crypto industry more than anything else on the planet.” To Tucker Carlson, he says, “In a world where trusting people doesn’t always work out, as I’ve learned, trusting math does work” and that crypto “can’t be perverted in its base core” and “can’t be racist, can’t be sexist” because “it’s just math working.” Which all sounds nice in theory, but you’d think the last two years would have humbled him a bit about crypto’s real-world impact. Alas, he has a “stronger faith in crypto now" and looks forward to “the new blockchain based world.”
I wonder if he’s even noticed the irony in his scathing condemnation of “expected value” which, he says, “on paper, doesn’t sound terrible” even though “in the end, millions of people lost all their money.” It’s not EV’s fault, dude – it’s just math working.
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