2017
Sam Bankman-Fried said Bitcoin price differences between major crypto exchanges were about 5-10% in late 2017.
“The spread between the exchanges was about five to 10%.”
Topic
Sam Bankman-Fried
18 facts from 3 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2018
Bankman-Fried said Bitcoin in Korea traded 10-50% above US prices, but Korea's restricted won currency prevented a simple arbitrage between them.
“Korean Bitcoins were trading 10 to 50 percent above American Bitcoins.”
2018
Alameda Research was able to start its logistically complex Japan Bitcoin arbitrage around the start of 2018, according to Sam Bankman-Fried.
“around the start of 2018, we finally were able to turn it on”
2018
Bankman-Fried said Alameda made about $1 million a day from the Japan arbitrage despite lacking the hundreds of millions of dollars of capital to exploit it fully.
“We still made like a million dollars a day from it during that period”
2018
Bankman-Fried said Alameda started with a few million dollars cobbled together and grew its capital base without taking external equity.
“we cobbled together a few million dollars, then, you know, sort of like iterated on that capital base over time”
2018
Bankman-Fried estimated that in late 2018 crypto exchanges processed $5-10 billion a day at about four basis points in fees, giving the industry about $1 billion a year in revenue.
“They're making like four basis points on average on that. That's a few million dollars a day that they're making. It's a billion dollars a year of revenue.”
2018
Bankman-Fried said the largest crypto exchange in 2018 was losing about $1 million of customer assets a day because its risk engine failed to liquidate positions properly.
“The biggest exchange at the time was bleeding each day about a million dollars of customer assets to a risk engine that didn't work.”
2018
Bankman-Fried said a rival exchange covered losses from under-collateralized accounts by paying winning customers only about 83% of their profits each week.
“each week, they would email the customers and be like, congrats. You got 83% of your P&L this week. The other 17% went to bail out people who were underwater.”
2018
Bankman-Fried said the crypto futures market was effectively served by only two real players, whom he considered badly run.
“There are only two real players in it. And they're shit shows.”
2019
Sam Bankman-Fried said FTX launched in spring 2019 after being built out from Hong Kong.
“And we launched spring 2019. And so, you know, we built it out from Hong Kong.”
2019
Bankman-Fried said FTX solved the exchange cold-start problem by having a large amount of trading volume from its sister company Alameda on the platform.
“a giant amount of volume from our sister company, Alameda, on the platform”
2021
Sam Bankman-Fried said that in December 2021 FTX ranked third among crypto exchanges by volume and second by open interest.
“Today, we are the third biggest by volume. We're the second biggest by open interest and actually pretty close to first, I just realized.”
2021
Sam Bankman-Fried said derivatives made up about two-thirds of global crypto trading volume, while in the United States they were less than half.
“Derivatives are two-thirds of global volume in crypto. That's not unusual. That's true in most asset classes.”
2021
Sam Bankman-Fried said FTX's endorsement and sponsorship deals were meant to build its brand and were not an efficient way to acquire customers.
“It's not the most effective way to acquire customers. It's gotten us some, not an enormous number. We think of it as brand rather than marketing”
2021
Host Ben Gilbert said Sam Bankman-Fried gave Mario Gabriele access to FTX's entire data room for his series about the company.
“You also gave Mario access to your entire data room so that he could write his pieces.”
2022
A host said the hosts regret interviewing Sam Bankman-Fried because they are not investigative journalists.
“I feel super self-conscious that we interviewed Sam Bankman-Fried. And we're not investigative journalists.”
Undated
Yakovenko says he demoed Solana's break demo to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who then wanted FTX's engineers to see it.
“And I demoed this to Sam and he was like, okay, everyone else needs to see this.”
Undated
Sam Bankman-Fried described FTX's acquisition of Blockfolio as a sign of a strategy to reach users beyond power traders.
“I think it represented a pretty clear strategy that we'd not previously been emphasizing. Where, you know, we're looking beyond the power user.”
Episodes