Zeke Faux on His Crypto Adventures and His Relationship With SBF - Ep. 545

Transcript

Everywhere I went in crypto-land, I always thought people would say like basically everybody bought into this number go up philosophy. People try to pretend that they have some other plan for their business, and time and time again, I would find that their business plan boiled down to number go up. And that's what Alameda's business plan was. Hi everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no-hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto 8 years ago, and as a senior editor at Forbes, was the first major media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the September 19th, 2023 episode of Unchained.

Toku makes implementing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Make it simple today with Toku. The game has changed. The Google Cloud Oracle built for LayerZero is now securing every LayerZero message by default. Their custom end-to-end solution sets itself up to bring its world-class security to Web3 and establish itself as the HTTPS within LayerZero messaging. Visit layerzero.network to learn more.

Arbitrum's leading Layer-2 scaling solutions can provide you with lightning-fast transactions at a fraction of the cost, all while ensuring security rooted on Ethereum. Arbitrum's newest addition, Orbit, enables you to build your own tailor-made Layer-3. Visit arbitrum.io today. Buy, trade, and spend crypto on the Crypto.com app. New users can enjoy zero credit card fees on crypto purchases in the first 7 days. Download the Crypto.com app and get $25 with the code Laura. Link in the description.

Today's guest is Zeke Faux, author of Number Go Up. Welcome, Zeke. Hey, thank you so much for having me, Laura. Yeah, I'm excited to chat. You just came out with your book, number go up. Congratulations. Tell us what it's about. Number go up, I've started out as uh it's my the story of like the two years I spent going down the crypto rabbit hole. And when I started out, I was just kind of curious and skeptical and I was arguing with my friend about the reasonableness of betting on Dogecoin. It's like the height of the pandemic. And I don't know, I got kind of sucked into investigating crypto. Two years later, I was uh cut to I'm in the Bahamas

going to Sam Bankman-Fried's penthouse just before the cops showed up interviewing him about the collapse of FTX. And so, you know, you said that this was your uh period of going down the crypto rabbit hole. What had you been doing before? So, I've been an investigative reporter for Bloomberg for a long time. And at Bloomberg, I generally write about kind of the shady side of Wall Street. So, I'd written exposés of predatory lenders, penny stock scams.

Um one of my favorites was about a uh Patriots fan who stole the New York Giants Super Bowl rings after the 2008 helmet catch game. So, I'd always been looking for like wild stories to tell in this world of business and finance, but I kind of resisted crypto as a potential topic. I just didn't really see it as like I mean, you're going to laugh at me now, but I just didn't really see it as like a good target for an investigative reporter. And it wasn't cuz I thought crypto was like the the future. It's just like this may be hard to believe if you're like a big-time crypto guy. But actually maybe not cuz you I'm sure you talk about it with your family and everybody. But like

outside in the traditional finance world, people were actually a lot of people are so skeptical about crypto that they were like investigating a crypto company and finding out something bad about it, you wouldn't find anything surprising. I don't even care about that story. But what I realized was that my first crypto conference was Bitcoin 2021 in Miami. And I showed up there and I just met I realized there were so many crazy characters in crypto. There were so many people that I'd love to write about. And I'm like these are the kind of people who I need to get to know. One of the first people I sat down with was I met

Sam Bankman-Fried there. I met Alex Mashinsky of Celsius who was very prominent there. I had Michael Saylor saying all sorts of crazy things about Bitcoin. And I came back and I I told my editor like I was wrong. There's all sorts of weird stuff going on in crypto. This would be a great topic and it'll be uh you know, it'll be a long time before there's too many stories to choose from. Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny um in terms of the years that you quote unquote went down the crypto rabbit hole, those were two of the craziest years and in a way like some of them were unusual years of crypto, I would say. Just So before we

dive into, you know, the different escapades you underwent in your book, um you mentioned earlier that you were both curious about crypto but also skeptical. So um you know, before we yeah, dive into what you were looking into, I wanted to hear your overall take on crypto. You know, when you say you're a skeptic, how much of a skeptic? Cuz there are some people who are skeptics and they completely dismiss crypto, but I didn't get that feeling from reading your book. I'm sort of like a skeptic in general. I'm skeptical of everything. That's why like I'm an investigative reporter. So, if somebody tells me, "Hey, like Alex Mashinsky did, hey, I'm going to pay 18% interest, and if you want a loan from

me, I charge like as low as 0%." Uh this is like in the world of traditional finance a very backwards business model. When you say something like to that to me, I'm going to say, "Yeah, I'm I'm kind of uh can you provide some evidence? Like what How are you investing your money? How does this uh How does this make sense?" But, I tried to keep like an open mind, and the question I was always asking was, "What does your product do? Can When I'd meet crypto founders, can I see it in action? Can I talk to your users? Is it being used in the real world somewhere?" That's one of my favorite questions because as a writer, it's hard to write about things if you can't see them being used. And so, that took me to,

you know, El Salvador to see the Bitcoin experiment there, but it also took me to, you know, ApeFest to see what it was like to be a member of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. And I was kind I was pleased I got a uh one of the first reviews for the book the other day from uh John Jeff Roberts in Fortune, and he's uh I think feels fairly positively about crypto. He thought that my take on crypto was a little shallow, but that the book was so funny that he didn't care. And I'm like, "You know what? I'll take that." I think we can all enjoy reliving these last two crazy years, and like whatever your

take is on crypto, like there are crazy things that happened that we have all just like so much has happened. There's no way to like remember it all, but I have done the work of writing it down so you can go read it. Yeah. Yeah, no, it was definitely um it covered the range of events. But let's actually talk about one of the main storylines and I believe, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, that this was actually meant to be a book about Tether. Um and cuz I remember like a long time reading that it was coming out and I think that's what it said. And um you kind of keep saying this to yourself that or

you keep saying to yourself in the book that you know, you're getting these tips about Tether and you're trying to investigate them and you keep coming up against these dead ends. So um before we go, you know, into all that, why don't you at least just tell us so what do you feel were your main findings about Tether and like what were you trying to resolve? So probably old for like most people listening but Tether's a big stablecoin. Each coin is supposed to be worth a dollar because each coin is supposed to be backed by real dollars that are held in a bank somewhere.

And when I started out, um I wrote like a story for Businessweek about Tether. That was sort of the start of this project. I always saw it as kind of like a good jumping-off point. I pitched the book as like this is the craziest financial mania we've ever seen in the world and it's not going to last and I want to be there to chronicle it and I see this like interesting central mystery that is going to like take me through. And that was Tether.

They at the time when I started, Tether said that they had, I think it was around $50 million in the bank. It was weird cuz on the one hand, every it was pretty widespread to be and correct me if I'm wrong if I'm describing what crypto people think cuz you probably know better than me but like even people who are pretty into crypto in general even like major users of Tether when they were talking to me they'd be like I'm I'm not so sure about their assets like this I don't know what's going on with Tether this is like a good question to be asking and it was being asked at like the highest levels of the US government like Janet Yellen called a meeting of all the top financial regulators and the topic was like what's

going on with Tether and like could this affect the world financial system and I just thought it was a little when I started looking into Tether and I saw that you know among its co-founders was a child actor from the Mighty Ducks I was just like like what is this and that the company I write in the book the company was quilted out of red flags like in the world of traditional finance you did never you would never find a company with so many weird things to look into and yet here it was like at the center of the crypto world and I just thought it was it was funny to me that the heads of state were discussing this coin that was like dreamed up by

a child actor from from the Mighty Ducks and I was like this is my kind of mystery I want to dive in I'm going to try and find Tether's 50 billion dollars I see so you know as we mentioned at different points in the in the book you do talk about how you feel like you keep coming up against dead ends in your investigation so what's your conclusion about that fact like do you think it means that concerns about Tether are overblown does it make you more convinced that like the company is just really hidden everything really well or like what are your thoughts right now Tether has only grown bigger. Midway through my reporting, I found that Tether had

invested a lot of its assets into Chinese commercial paper. And there's kind of like this conflict of interest at the heart of Tether's business model, which is that if you give your money to Tether, you want them to keep it really safe, so it's there when you go to cash in your Tether tokens. But Tether doesn't pay any interest. And the way that Tether makes money is they can take the money that you trusted them with, and they can go invest it. And so there was this theory that, especially when interest rates were very low, they might be doing weird things with your money in order to earn higher profits. And that So I found that they were doing some unusual things. That included the Chinese

commercial paper, and also making loans to crypto companies like uh Celsius and others. So to me that seemed like that's kind of risky. What's going to happen there? And as I followed along in the summer of 2022, like crypto companies fell one after the other, and Tether did not. There was even like a little run on Tether where users cashed in, I don't know, 5, 10 billion dollars of Tether. And I'm sure if those people did not get their money back, like we would have heard about it, right? So now Tether still hasn't like the the

truthers. Like they haven't produced the audited financial statements that the Tether's critics have been asking for. But if you believe the like attestations that they're putting out there, they're sitting on like 80 billion dollars. And now they can invest those in treasury bills. Interest rates have gone up. They can earn 5% a year, and that they're just clipping 4 billion dollars a year in practically pure profit as a small operation. So, the way the Tether story ends is that at least in the book is that the guys who run it are all presumably billionaires. Tether again, still just like kind of funny to

think about, is one of the most profitable companies in the entire world. It's like a more profitable company than Nike and definitely not what I would have predicted at the at the beginning of this quest. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I don't even know if like Nike is the greatest comparison cuz I feel like anything involving physical goods just is going to have a a lower profit margin. But yeah, you're right. Like for such a small team I'm just talking about like the absolute profit, like the amount of money they make every quarter.

Oh, got it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one thing so I did wonder, you know, you spent a lot of time in the book trying to get the executives to talk to you. You do partially succeed in a way like maybe with just couple people. Um, but I wanted to hear your take on why you think it is that number one they were so hard, you know, for you to pin down. What like why do you think they kind of were super cagey? One of the things that I wanted to talk with the Tether founders about was about the evidence that Tether is being used by criminals for illicit activities.

And I had learned a lot about its use in these pig butchering romance scams. Um, and in the book I even described like I going to Cambodia to investigate some of these scam compounds where workers are trafficked and forced to work into in these crypto scams. Like these are some tough questions to answer. And so I don't It does not surprise me that the Tether executives would not want to sit for an interview about them. Have you had any of them on on your podcast?

Um that's a good question. I don't think so. Like 700 of these shows so I don't know what everyone else thinks. But anyway, so yeah, so assuming no then what were you going to say? Look, I mean a lot of uh corporate executives don't want to sit for an interview with an investigative reporter and will only speak to friendly outlets. It's more an outlier, the kind of person who will sit with the reporter, even one who's does investigative stories. That's more surprising to me. Like when Sam Bankman-Fried was like, "Sure, come on down to the Bahamas. Sit with me at FTX.

Like meet all my employees. See everything that's going on. Just hang out and wander around." Like that's the weird that's the weird approach. The Tether approach is like the standard one. Oh, okay. So you feel like it doesn't necessarily indicate anything sketchy. You feel like they're just following the traditional playbook for handling media. Is that what you're saying? I do not get offended if someone doesn't want to talk to me. That's what I'm saying. Okay. But what is so but what I'm asking is, you know, again like what is this say about Tether? Does it say that they're a company on the up and up? It's just, you know, they you know, it's privately run. They don't want to really reveal too much or

you know, do you still think there's more you could dig into, Larry? Are you going to try to still do that? Um you know, or or do you think I mean cuz you full-on admit in the book like you talked to so many people that are like that like a lot of people say, "Oh, I think Tether's probably fine. Like I don't think that there's a major hole in their reserves or anything like that." There were a few different people. Sam was one of them. Well, I other I wouldn't characterize Sam's comments that way. Actually, he was like he was like their their portfolio is probably full of all sorts of weird stuff, but I don't really care. And I to me I took that more in hindsight that's like more a sign of his sloppy approach to risk management,

which we've since seen demonstrated than like some sort of really big endorsement of Tether. Um I do have to say that like towards the end of the book we're doing a lot of spoilers here, but I promise the book is actually really funny and like read the whole thing. I flew down to the Bahamas like when things were crashing. I sat with Sam and like as I did think you know, maybe now's the time when he's going to tell me the big secret. You know, I was still hopeful that he would and he did not. But I don't take that really as proof that there is no big secret, especially cuz at that time he had just tried to get a bailout from Tether and had been rebuffed, but maybe was still hoping that Tether would come

through. Cuz they're like you know, if you need 5 10 billion dollars, there's not that many people in crypto you can call. That is true. Um but you're right that Tether would be one of the few. Although, you know, if they really are handling their reserves the way they should be then yes, they would not be lending that money out. Well, they were lending to Celsius. They were lending to like a lot of crypto companies. So I don't think it was like a it was like a yeah, crazy thought. I mean, where do you come down on Tether? What do you think? Well, I should make the disclaimer that I have not investigated it. You know, back in 2017 Bitfinex was reaching out to me a lot.

And I talked to a few different people um who you know, work at places where they would use a lot of Tether. And I got some opinions and like pretty much nobody really thought there was anything to it. So in your book when you said that you met with him, I was interested to hear and then, you know, what you say sort of sort of largely comports with with what they had said to me. So, I was like, oh, okay, like I definitely like do not intend the book as an endorsement of Tether if that's what you're getting at.

No, no, I don't think so. Um everyone should, you know, other reporters should pick up the ball and keep looking into their claims. Um No, I I I And I would say clearly it's not. Um but I what I kind of feel like I was asking a few times is like, what do you think it means that like you didn't come up with a smoking gun? Like, do you have a conclusion or do you like would you still look into them or do you feel like you kind of exhausted all that or do you have maybe you don't even have an opinion, maybe you haven't decided yet. What I would say is that I'm saving space in the paperback for an epilogue.

Oh interesting. It does happen that after you publish a book, sometimes people come out of the woodwork and reach out to you. So, hmm. You're just smiling, you're not really responding to what I just said. Well, what I I guess what like what I'm saying is that at this point, I almost as a writer find this question less interesting and like as you can tell in the book, I got really interested in like how is Tether being used? There's certainly enough reasons why someone might worry about trusting Tether with uh a billion dollars. At this point, there's one big strike against Tether as a potential thing where I would keep my

money. I can keep my money in my uh like Apple savings account and they'll pay me 4% interest. So, like why are people still keeping their money at this stablecoin that doesn't pay interest? I mean, you know, you're you're an American and as you know from the book, like a lot of other people that are using Tether are not necessarily American. They're not necessarily people who can have an Apple savings account. Yes, and as I found in the book that many of them may be like Chinese gangsters who are running crypto scams in Cambodia. Although like I which I I was skeptical this could be like a major use case until I flew to Cambodia and saw that like the scale of

these crazy operations where uh people run these pig butchering scams. Yeah, yeah, I know. This is uh it's just a terrible terrible story. Um but we're going to get to that later. Um we had started a segue to SBF, but why don't we go there first? You know, you you meet SBF uh Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, multiple times. And obviously your impressions of him evolve throughout the book. So, um tell us, you know, what your impressions were the first time you met him.

When we met, he explained his sort of effective altruism thing. And I thought, just as a writer, this is a fascinating story. Like here's a kid, he's like 19, 20 years old. He's at MIT. He's into philosophy. Like we know these things are true. We can go read like his blog from that time. And he's thinking a lot about how to do good for the world. He's giving out pamphlets for like a vegan charity or something. He meets this philosopher Will MacAskill who's pushing this thing called earn to give. Will MacAskill is like, "Hey, you're pretty smart. Wouldn't it be better if you made a lot of money and like gave it to charity? Then we could hire lots of people to give out pamphlets." Sam's like, "Hmm, that

sounds good." And then like less than 10 years later, he's sitting in front of me and he's one of the richest people in the world. And making the story even more interesting, even though he says, "Yeah, that's the only reason I got rich was to give it away." At that point, he had not given away very much money at all. Uh the when we first met, it was in at Bitcoin 2021 in Miami. He was there to have the Miami Heat arena renamed FTX Arena. And he They were doing They'd sponsored that e-sports team. They're spending tons on marketing, definitely more than he was giving to charity. So, I thought that was a really interesting question. And right away, my mind was filled with like

really intriguing possibilities. And in one of our first conversations, I was like, "Sam, so like if you don't If you're not familiar with like the basics of utilitarianism, the idea is that each action should be judged by the what does the most good for the greatest number of people. And that can like quickly lead you to some tricky places. Like Like look, if I stole like a thousand bucks from you and gave it to like a panhandler on the subway, that might be net positive if like the panhandler really needs the money and and you're doing pretty good. And so, I was like, "Sam, I understand this

philosophy that you're saying, but like you know, what about that sort of thing?" And I said something along the lines of like this is like mid-to-late 2021, I think. And I'm like, "You've got a lot of credibility in the crypto world. I think that right now you could do some sort of shitcoin. You could rug everybody. You could probably clear several several billion dollars." I mean, how much do you think he could have cleared in like a rug situation at that point? I mean, he was kind of doing it with his Sam coins.

Yeah. all a little pump and dumpy, and then apparently, you know, Alameda was like listing them and screwing over the the founders. And so, he was sort of already again? So I don't know how much you would add up like the maths and the options. it was not clear that he was already doing it, but I was like I think you have a lot of credibility if you were willing to blow it all, you could probably clear several billion dollars. You could feed, you know, a whole country worth of starving people. Why don't you just do that right now instead of this sort of long game where like you're not you're just always thinking that oh in the future I'll give it away.

You're not really giving very much away at all. And he said to me, first of all, like most CEOs hang up the phone when they realize they're talking to some jerk who asks questions like this, right? He is just like, oh interesting question. I love thinking about things like this. Uh yeah, like you're probably right like about that I could do make some money with the scam, but I actually think that FTX is such a good business. It's valued now at 32 billion. I think I could get it valued at 100 billion. I can make more money the honest way and that will do more good for the world in the long run. And I was like I sort of was doing the math in my head and I was like based

on what you've done so far, that kind of seems right. Like if you are really an effective altruist, it would not make sense for you to run a scam. But clearly like there was some error in my logic. Um and I think I think the error in my logic is this. In my scenario, the scammer gets caught. They do the scam, they get like three billion dollars, they give it away, and then they're caught and like they can't do any more scams. I don't think that scammers expect to get caught. I think they expect to get away with it, in which case the profits from scams could just like keep going and like the logic might be different.

Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, you talk about this in the book multiple times about his um expected value equation. And I think there is some it like when you use that equation too much in the wrong places, it can lead you to a sort of twisted morality, I think. And so it's sort of like it can end up being an ends justifies the means type of um, philosophy. So, Totally. Yeah. But it's so do you feel that like effective altruism was kind of the catalyst for what ended up happening with FTX?

I'm really looking forward to hearing all these guys and women talk at the Bankman-Fried's trial, but yes, like as as I write in the book, I feel like Sam and his lieutenants were truly committed to effective altruism and utilitarianism, and that actually made them more dangerous and made them willing to do things that violated traditional rules of ethics, such as don't use your hedge fund to borrow huge sums of customer money from your exchange and then lose it.

Yeah and in a way like borrow is almost not even quite the right word, but um, yeah. The bankruptcy examiner was like, this is straight-up embezzlement. It's not even it's that simple, you know? It's not even sophisticated. to give it back, which you know, maybe he did, but um, Well, I this is so the title of the book is number go up, and like I go into the book my friend the argument that starts off the book between me and my friend Jay about Dogecoin, it's he's basically like, you should buy Dogecoin cuz other people are going to do it and the price is going to go up. And I'm like, that's not a good investing strategy, but he

does do it and he makes money. He goes to Disneyland. He's taunting me. He's like, "I'm freaking Nostradamus." He's sending me, you know, sending me pictures. I mean, he wasn't really trying to be mean, but like, you know, I was jealous. Everywhere I went in cryptoland, I always thought people would say like, basically everybody bought into this number go up philosophy. People try to pretend that they have some other plan for their business and time and time again, I would find that their business plan boiled down to number go up. And that's what Alameda's business plan was. And so, when you say they didn't intend to give it back, like, I don't know. I don't know what they're thinking, but I kind of think that they got caught up in this number go up philosophy and we're

like, we're geniuses. We'll make it back, you know, when the when the price of Serum hits like 173 or whatever. Yeah, yeah, I didn't mean to say they didn't intend to. It's more that if you specifically say borrowing, it assumes that they intended to and it's just not clear. Um but anyway, small point. Um so, in a moment, we will talk also about something you alluded to earlier, which is SBF's relationship to the media. But first, a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible.

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One other part of the book that was just like a a funny moment for me cuz so, you know, as you just discussed, you first meet him and your thought is, "Hey, I should dig into, you know, is he really going to be as sureable as he's claiming?" Blah, blah, blah. I I don't remember if it was the second time or the third time, but there was a point where you're you meet him again and you ask him, "Did I go too easy on you?" And he kind of says, "Yes." So, tell me Yeah, how did that happen? And what were your thoughts at that time?

So, I published this profile of him. I I it's not my proudest piece. I don't think it's like the worst one ever. If you go and read the piece again, the sort of like the nut question at the center of the piece is like, "Will he give this money away or will the quest for money and power corrupt him along the way?" And like it's not like the worst question to be asking. It I it seems to be you could encapsulate what happened with FTX with that question, actually. So, I actually think it's a good question.

Yeah, but like let me tell you what would have been a lot cooler. It had been if I had uncovered what was really going on behind the scenes and had exposed it all to the world before FTX collapsed in November. So, like as an investigative reporter, I have to like kick myself that I did not do that. Even though like he tricked a lot of people, I don't really care. I I'm the person who's not supposed to get tricked. You know, that's my job. So, I mean, yeah, but there are a lot of investigative reporting, you know, I I do investigative reporting, too. You know, obviously, with my book I did a lot.

But, I think we all know now that only a very small number of people knew what was going on. And um Well, yeah, but I even I met those people. Like I should have I should have got them to slip me the secret documents and uh tell me what was going on. But, okay, the scene that you're describing is after I published the story, I went to Crypto Bahamas, which was like the big conference celebrating Sam. And it was sponsored by FTX. All the celebrities came in. He paid Bill Clinton to speak. Um Tony Blair, Anthony Scaramucci was the host. At this conference I met all these other crypto founders

who were kind of in the FTX orbit. And I got pitched all sorts of like crazy stuff. And one of the things that was like hot around that time was Stepn. This was like the move-to-earn app where you bought like a digital shoe for like a thousand bucks or something. It lived on your phone. And then it was sort of like this janky health app that paid you green Satoshi tokens if like you walked enough that day. And it was just so obvious to me that this was a bad idea. It's unsustainable. There's no way that like this is not like a system that will produce money for me in the long run.

This is like an unsustainable bubble. And so many of the like Web3 pitches that I heard were just like that. They were It was like I had been learning a lot about Axie Infinity. And I It had by the time of the Crypto Bahamas conference Axie Infinity, like if you're not familiar, is like the it's like Stepn but instead it's Instead of walking, you have to play this sort of Pokemon-ish game on your phone. And instead of buying a shoe, you got to buy your Pokemon thingies. So, I was like this is clearly not the future of finance. This is like a series of ridiculous ideas that seem totally unsustainable. And so, by the time I met with Sam at that

conference, I'd just been hearing I Okay, maybe I like I'm a sucker, but I I went to that conference and I'm thinking I'm going to hear some interesting ideas. Like these are the grownups in the room. I'm going to hear about like some really interesting use cases for crypto. And instead, I'm just getting pitched all these different versions of Steppen. So, by the time I sat down with Sam again, I was just feeling very, I don't know, I'm just kind of depressed that this was this was what was going on. This was like these were the big ideas that were supposedly going to like revolutionize the world of finance. And I was wishing I had written more about that in the in the initial story rather than this like effective altruism thing.

And Sam had just gone on the Odd Lots podcast. And this is the interview where he's speaking with Matt Levine, my colleague at Bloomberg. And this is where he's describing how DeFi works. And Matt Levine is like, "It sounds like you just described a Ponzi scheme." And Sam Bankman-Fried is like, "Yeah, kind of." And like, so that's the context. That that point I was feeling kind of bad about my article. And I was like, "Sam, did I go too easy on you?"

And he's just like, "Yeah, maybe." And then he went to lunch with Tom Brady. And then but so what like the reason I am asking about these encounters is cuz it's just so interesting to me to see your evolution in terms of your relationship with him. And it made me wonder, you know, so obviously you you know, you also spent that really long time with him when he you know, the the insolvency out the exchange had been found out. It was before he'd been arrested and um sent to the Bohemian jail. So, you know, you kind of saw him at these sort of pivotal moments. And I wondered if you had thoughts on either how he treated you or what his attitude was toward you or the media, you know,

throughout. Like, did you feel that he was like using the media a lot or tell me a little bit about what you think his relationship was to the media. He was super accessible. Like I said before, like when I wanted to go profile him, him and his people were like, "Come on down. Sit with him. See him do his thing." And like there was no minder sitting with him while we talked. And I know from talking to other reporters that he was very open to like I'm just using this as a hypothetical, but like if CoinDesk called and they needed a quote about like Ethereum prices today, like he'd do that, too. And even now it's come out that while he was on house arrest, he made something like 1,000 calls with members of the media.

So this is like a very unusual strategy. This is why I think he did it. On his in his like rise to power, this strategy worked great. Like he would talk to reporters and they would write stories about him. It raised his prominence and he became like a darling of Silicon Valley. Uh like traditional finance guys were like dying to talk to him. Like while I'm I'm sitting with him in the Bahamas, the CEO of some bank is like, "Hey, can I get 5 minutes with you? Like I've flown to the Bahamas."

And he's just like, "Meh." So like he always made time for the press. He was able to get good coverage and it made him more famous. And then when things were going poorly, like a lot of people were like, "Well, why would he talk so much to reporters when things look so bad?" My thinking is that it worked for him on the way up and now things look like horrible. So like how much worse going to get? Give it a try. That's basically my theory of his media strategy.

Interesting. Did Did you talk to him much? I wouldn't say that I talked to him much, but obviously I have talked to him multiple times. Uh you know, honestly what my take is on that is that at least just from my interactions with him, you know, he first of all, he's on like all these different drugs for his depression and his ADD and you know, whatever. He clearly has not been sleeping properly. Like, you know, he was doing the beanbag sleeping and he was sleeping for like a few minutes here and there and between meetings. He was sleeping with the lights on overhead. I just feel like he wasn't in his fully right state of mind. This is I'm by the way, I'm not trying to justify what he did at all.

This is not where I'm going with this. I'm just saying in that period when you know, they'd already um declared bankruptcy. He hadn't been sent to jail yet. He was doing so many interviews. I feel like he was just kind of doing these habitual behaviors. He was so used to just doing these media interviews and he I think he was like overwhelmed and I think because you know, because of like I said all these things like the lack of sleep, you know, being on some mix of drugs that who knows really what effect that was having on him. I you know, as everybody has pointed out if you're like in your truly right mind, like like every lawyer is going to give you the opinion that you should not

talk. And the reason that they all do that is because that probably is the best strategy. And the fact that he so completely went against his own interest, I feel like is kind of probably a function like I said of him not not fully being in his right mind and then second having that habitual behavior of like talking to the press and just rather than the cognitive load of like having to think should I change my strategy, he just kept doing what he'd always done.

Does does that make sense? Like that's also a plausible theory. I mean, I think you could justify talking to the media in logical terms, but I also have like a third theory that's kind of sad, which is that like I've spoken to people who worked with him and said that he they actually had a lot of trouble getting time with him, that he was kind of distant. And it occurred to me that like if he's speaking to reporters a thousand times while he's on house arrest, having them come visit him, that he might just be bored or want somebody to hang out with.

Okay, I but he would choose a reporter over his own staff? Well, at this point the staff doesn't want to hang out with him because they are but in the past, yes, I have heard that like he was always had time for the media, but not for not for all of his colleagues. Huh. Well, yeah. I mean I and I don't even want to say I feel like I went too far in my theory in the sense that I do think that Sam can um take that calculating attitude or or mode. I mean it's all of the E- EV thing, right? The the expected value.

It's literally a calculated frame of mind. So, it's probably a mix of things. But um yeah, we we're actually, you know, getting close to time and there's just so much more in your book that I want to cover. So, um let's um we haven't even gotten to talk about Dr. Scum, my mutant ape. Well, but so I was going to end on that cuz it's a little bit more fun. But it's since we're on the subject of like alleged frauds and scams, let's talk a little bit more about the pig butchering which you had brought up because I also agree with you like this is such a huge problem. I mean and it's a really a tragedy in in so many ways.

Um and you are at least uh so far the only person that I've talked to who, you know, has like physically gone to very near to where these scams are being perpetrated. So, tell us about your experience of investigating the pig butchering scams. I teamed up with two reporters in Cambodia, Meck Dara and Danielle Keaton Olsen. They work for this publication called Voice of Democracy. And for like a year or more, they're writing stories like "Hey, in this town Sihanoukville, there's like whole compounds and like people who are inside them are trapped.

And there people who've escaped tell us that like you can't leave unless you pay ransom and we're getting tortured and we're getting tazed and people are there's like a string of suspicious deaths in the area. The police find like a unmarked body outside. Like they're reporting all these horrible things about these scam compounds from which and I feel like I kind of shorthanded this a little bit. Like if you're not familiar, essentially these are the people who send you the spam text messages. Like in a many cases, those spam text messages that are like, "Hey Bill, did you like get the milk yesterday?" Those are coming from someone who has like a let's say like a someone from Thailand who got tricked with the offer of like a good paying job in customer

service, flew to Cambodia to take this job or traveled in a van or whatever. And then when they get there, they're stuck in like this tower. They're not allowed to leave unless they pay ransom and they're like forced by these gangsters to run scams which often involve uh cryptocurrency. So, by the time I get there, I don't want to claim that it was like super groundbreaking work because these two reporters had exposed the scam. It had become their work also a lot of other reporters had reported on it, too. It had become like a national embarrassment. As I write in the book, like if this was the United States, Danielle and Dara, maybe some of these other reporters would be given uh prizes, you know? There's like

investigative reporter of the year. In Cambodia, the president ordered their newspaper closed. So, they're like practically unemployed by the time we got there. And I'd already been talking to a lot of people who'd escaped from these compounds, like Americans or people from other well-off countries who had lost their money in pig butchering scams, but I just really wanted to see it for myself. One of our first stops was this place called Bokor Mountain. And is honestly like everyone told me it was weird. This is like the spookiest like I'm getting it's like the spookiest evilest weirdest place that I've ever been in my life. It was way weirder than I even expected.

It's at the top of a mountain in a national park. There's this hotel, a big big hotel, like 400 rooms, full fully staffed, no guests. So I'm just like walking in and the the clerk's eyes are all like looking at me like you know, like owls, like they're like looking at me as I walk around. There's like a restaurant, no one's in it. The week all the the rooms we walk through like the corridors with the rooms, they're all dark. It's like we're in The Shining. Like the casino's got no one in it. The like spa's got no one in it. And there were like two confused tourists who were like, "Why did we come here?" Like this we should have checked Yelp. Um And but I mean I know I'm joking around, but like behind this hotel were eight buildings where

uh another reporter in Cambodia, Jack Brook, had written about how these buildings were full with of trafficked workers who were running scams. So this was like one of these big compounds. And I interviewed a police officer from Taiwan who had come to Cambodia to rescue Taiwanese people who'd been trapped there. And he was like, "Yeah, it's still going on. Um like these girls were brutally tortured. It's like a hor I think he said people were killed there." Like it's like a horrible horrible place. And I mean this is where like I'm I mean he's like I've investigated so a lot like the a lot of people have said, hey, like is this really all about crypto?

Like isn't human trafficking like an age-old problem? And so I asked that to this Taiwanese police officer and he was like I've investigated human trafficking for a really long time. It has always been a problem. The human traffickers when they would buy and sell people in the past, they used bank accounts and in order to open a bank account, you have to leave your name and your address. Maybe it's like some money mule or something, but at least that's a clue. Now, they're using Tether. This is making my job a lot harder. Like I'm it's like you know, the this wallet address means nothing to me.

But this is where I'm saying like my ability to investigate is pretty limited. Any information you get from these compounds comes from like people who escaped. So my idea was that if I'm just like a stupid tourist, nobody's going to care. So I snapped on my fanny pack. I bought um I bought an ice cream from the from the hotel and Danielle had warned me this would be like the worst ice cream you ever had because like, you know, they sell like one ice cream for 6 months. So it's like 10-year-old ice cream. So and it was. It was like both gritty and chalky. And so I'm thinking that this will help me as I walk to the scam compound to appear extra dumb. So I'm sort of like eating my ice cream as dumbly as possible and I

walk up to the I mean, I could only laugh cuz it's like so terrible and insane. Um but I'm walking up to the guards and this like big scary dog comes out barking at me. He's on like a big fat chain and they're just like no, you can't come in. And I'm I mean, I'm not like sneaking in there. Um and meanwhile Dra, while I was acting dumb, Jarod had actually speaks uh Cambodian had spoken to some other guards who had said that like yes, these these buildings are all still full of uh workers who can't leave. Like I'm thinking to myself, shouldn't we do

something about this? Like like what should we like call the police or something? But Jarod and Danielle are like no, like the essentially there's a lot of corruption in the country and the authorities make some token efforts to stop these scam compounds and shut them down, but in reality are not interested in uh helping the workers and in fact often even if they do rescue workers, they'll arrest them and charge them with immigration violations. Um and that reporting this is hopeless. And that's also what the Taiwanese police officer said to me. He's like they helped us rescue like the Taiwanese people, but they weren't interested in like arresting the bosses or shutting these

places down. And it's like the government's benefiting in some way or like why why aren't they interested? There've been a lot of reports that the people who own these properties, who are renting them to these like gangsters who run the scam compounds, have high-up connections to like you know, the most powerful people in the country. Yeah, one of the other compounds I visited, the street that run through the middle of it is named after this uh Chinese oligarch who is on the there's like a Interpol red notice out for him, but he's, you know, lives openly in Cambodia. Yeah, and like I cannot claim to be like an expert on Cambodia or how

all of these things work. I just sort of went there because I was like I need to see this with my own eyes cuz it's so hard to believe that it sounds like some sort of conspiracy theory. And yeah, I'm glad that there are reporters out there who are like continuing to investigate this and that it's now come to the attention of the UN who put out a big report about what a huge problem this is. Interpol's also recently put out a report about it. And it seemed they're the number one movie in China right now, or at least until recently, was about young people who'd been trafficked into working in like a scam compound. So, I I'm hopeful that in cooperation like some of these Southeast Asian countries will like crack down on this for real.

Yeah. One other aspect of the story is that you had I mean, we all get them, you know, I literally think I got one today and then one yesterday. But, you know, you you get one of these text messages and you just decide to respond. And you end up sending a little bit of money into the app that um you're the person who was texting you, who was some kind of slave laborer or trapped in one of these compounds, was, you know, sending you like, I guess quote unquote she, who knows if it really was a she, um you know, wanted you to send Tether into the app.

And later, I think you approached Tether about um either freezing the funds or I I don't remember exactly what your request was, but they refused. So, talk a little bit about that. I mean, if it's not clear, I wasn't legit tricked by this person. I was sort of playing along to like see how it worked and if she would really like ask me for Tether cuz all the victims, the money victims, were telling me like they asked for Tether. Because which it wasn't really clear to me exactly why they would prefer Tether. Um but, I did see that um some of these victims provided copies of exchanges that they'd had with Tether's customer service where they'd be like, "We've been scammed. Can you freeze the account?" or whatever. And

Tether's customer service had like a number of excuses for why they couldn't. And all one of them that I thought was really ridiculous was like we would only intervene in cases of violence. And I'm like, first of all, what kind of like quasi bank gets to make up rules like that? And second of all, there's actually a lot of violence in in pig butchering. So, I'm not even sure that applies under your own made-up rule. Um Yeah it's uh interesting cuz it is contradictory when you look at how they do freeze funds for like DeFi hacks and stuff like that. So, um you know, it's Well, I think they would say, if they were here, they'd say we comply with law

enforcement requests. Um Oh. Like I think I think that's their position is that if they get a letter from like a valid authority, they will comply with it. Although, wasn't there that instance where they said they would not comply with like a certain sanction order recently? Was it the Bitfinex one? I don't remember. I don't remember. So, like it My feeling is it seems like they sort of pick and choose how they how they want to handle it. I joke in the book that like you know, I knew that the one of the gangsters involved in this Bokor Mountain compound went by the nickname Big Fatty. And I I say in a book like kind of joking, but like I mean this

real, you know, I had no reason to think that I would find Jean-Carlo Devasini, you know, the CFO of Tether, you know, having dinner with Big Fatty on top of the mountain. Like I don't think that Tether necessarily has anything to do with any of these people. They've just created a system which is very useful for gangsters who want to like have Americans zap their life savings to, you know, a scam compound in in Cambodia. Um and I thought it was like this 100% does not prove anything, but I'd spent like a long time investigating crypto by this point. And when I'm on the bus to Cambodia from Ho Chi Minh City,

across the border, I get off in Bavet, which is like uh casino town, real dusty, kind of a dump. It's known to be a headquarters for many scam scam compounds. I'd watched uh videos of like workers trying to escape and getting beaten at this from this one uh scam compound. Literally in the parking lot, I just got there, and there's like a money exchange place in that like a little booth where you can trade exchange currencies that's advertising like we take Tether. And I'm like, literally I had never seen that anywhere in the world, and this is this is the first place that I see it. And like again,

just like I don't know, it just struck me as something that was very strange. Not as like I'm I don't I don't like to like jump to conclusions to suggest that really means anything, but I just thought it was like very weird that this is the place where I see it actually being used. Yeah. Yeah, no, I I totally get that cuz obviously just from the physical description of your environment, it would be a little bit jarring. Um however, I I do think, you know, Tether is widely used in Asia generally, um but I do, you know, like I said, from what you unearthed, um it does sound like there's a lot of Tether circulating in that area for various reasons.

Yeah, I even um in Phnom Penh in like the a neighborhood where there's a lot of Chinese residents, I found another money exchange place where I was able to uh exchange, you know, Tethers on my phone for crisp $100 bill, no questions asked. And I was like, "Hey like uh cuz I a lot of the book I'm trying to to to see how crypto's used in the real world and like I'm kind of disappointed to you know frankly but in this one I was like okay like I can see why people would want to do that. I mean he did charge me more than the ATM but like and I had to wait for a long time. While okay I'm

waiting there for like you know the the guy to come back who has the right like app on his phone or whatever and while I'm waiting there this like really hungover looking Chinese guy wearing like pajama pants and a t-shirt walks in and goes behind the counter and just walks out with a a brick of money that the clerk later told me was 50 grand and I was like I get it one of these things that like just like a odd scene to observe as I'm off investigating or whatever. Well speaking of odd scenes you also ended up at ApeFest. It took you you had to overcome some hurdles to get there.

Um but I think for you at least just from other interviews you've done and also something you said earlier I feel like this was in some ways I don't know it's sort of like epitomized your time down the rabbit hole or was definitely one of your more fun escapades. So tell us yeah what happened um you know that enabled you to go to ApeFest. A lot of people in the crypto world would ask me well how are you writing about crypto? Do you invest in crypto? Do you know about crypto? And I would always just tell them I'm a Hexican.

But they didn't like that. Oh my god. I did not actually say that but I am a Hexican. Okay okay well I'm just trying to get some like crypto jokes in for the people for like the you know the the real um engaged audience who's on like crypto Twitter all day. I think for you to be a Hexican you'd have to be wearing a lot more Gucci than you are right now. So uh um I wanted to do a Richard Heart chapter, but Richard Heart had a different media strategy that did not involve people flying to come see him.

Um So, okay, so people but people started to say like you don't you're missing out if you don't try it for yourself. And I'm like, you know what? Maybe they're right. I should try it for myself. And that the person who specifically who kind of got to me was telling me I needed to buy a Solana Monkey Business NFT. Which like literally I had to go like double check this. It's hard to believe even as I say it right now, these cost $25,000 at the time. And I'm just like How much are they now? How much are they now?

I mean they're still something. That's actually it's surprising to me that uh that I don't know they could still be like a thousand bucks or something. But uh I'm like I'm like all right. Like this is just like if I'm paying that kind of money, I want a good one. I don't want like some knockoff. Come on. And at the time Bored Apes was the one that had all the celebrities. And I was like if I want to join a club, it should be like uh yeah, it should be the number one club.

And I'm like at the time like a a floor Bored Ape I don't was maybe like 500 grand or something like maybe 300. I forget. That was not that was out of my budget. And you needed an ape to go to ApeFest, which was going to be like this week-long party in New York headlined by Snoop. Eminem showed up. And I'm just like this would be a great way to meet some of like the people I see on Crypto Twitter and like some of the I mean anybody who's there is a pretty big crypt has a you know, has at least one ape and is like might have an interesting story. It'd be fun to see how they hang out when they're like when it's just apes.

Um so I'm like I want to go. So one night after bedtime I was like said to my wife Nikki I got I got to talk with you about something important for the book. And she's like all right, what is it? I'm like I explained all this. I was like I want to go to the party but you need an ape. They're kind of expensive. And then she's like how much is it? She's thinking she told me she knew it was going to be a lot but she's thinking maybe five grand. And I'm like so for the image the ugly image of the cartoon monkey the absolute cheapest one I can get that will still get me into the party going to be $40,000.

And she's just like uh she's not happy. Uh she's just like her face looked horrified but she's always been really supportive of the project and like I had an advance to write the book and I explained that like these trade all day like every I mean not all day but every day like several apes do trade and that it was unlikely that I would lose the whole $20,000 and that I could go to this party and see what it was all about and she was like all right that sounds pretty good. And like hey you know you never know maybe it'll go up right? I mean that would be cool. I could I've spent like a year learning about all these people who got

rich off crypto. Like it would be cool if that happened to me. So when I went to go buy the ape the price of the floor mutant ape had dropped to like it had been a couple weeks before I got around to it and the floor mutant now cost uh like 20 grand. And that was cool cuz I didn't want to spend 40 grand but it was also not cool because that meant the price in fact could drop quite a lot in just two weeks. And this is the part of the book that I feel like you I'm curious what you thought of because I feel like it's the part where you're like this guy is so dumb he can't even use a computer because I actually found the process of sending my money into like metamask into like cuz so many people say they've like got some

crypto but I would say that like in my informal surveying like a very low percentage have actually ever used any decentralized products. Would you agree? Oh yeah. Yeah. And you know, like your experience when I go to use them I'm scared and like I've definitely lost money from using them and it's confusing and you know, like I don't know you especially now with all these layer twos and stuff that whole thing and I just I'm like you guys you got to make this easier because I live and breathe crypto most of the week and I can barely do the thing.

I mean, I'm so relieved you said that cuz I felt like people were just going to make fun of me and cuz I've I'm like I'm telling you this is very hard. Like you might do it every day to the to the people who are thinking it's not hard, it is hard and like when you when you install metamask at the time it made you watch this video that was like just trying to scare you about what would happen if like you typed the wrong numbers or you lost your password. The video literally suggested that I should write the seed phrase I should engrave it on a metal plate and like bury it in my backyard. And I'm like I just want to go to the party with Snoop Dogg. There's no way that I'm doing that. Like and also and so like

I yes advice to is that the user experience if you want my mom I was barely able to do it and I had to do it for my book. Like if you want my mom to do it to like get you know tickets to the Red Sox game, you're going to have to make it like 1 million times easier. And so I actually found this to be quite instructive because I'm like, wait, I felt like nobody had really told me just how horrible it was, and I was just like, by doing this, I was like, oh, no one will do this. The only reason that anyone is doing it is because I think they're going to get rich. And like this idea that there would be widespread adoption of this is like a pipe dream.

Um so the actual process of like buying the ape just like people tease me and they're like, you don't know how it is unless you try it. They were right. I did try it and I was like, whoa, I just I didn't It was a lot worse than I even though my expectations were kind of low, it was a lot worse than I expected. Um and then I got to ApeFest and uh you know, it's pretty good for like a crypto conference, but like everybody's wasted, people are stoned. But here's the problem, too. Everyone's telling me this stuff about community, right? Like and I'm like, I want to be part of a cool community, and they're like, collective storytelling. I'm a storyteller, that sounds cool. And so coming into it, I my mutant ape

he was smoking a pipe and he had like a sweater made of maggots. And that's what it It was the floor mutant ape. And I was like name was Dr. Skum. You named him Dr. Skum. Yes. So I created some lore. I was like, I'm going to name him Dr. Skum and like he's tormented by the maggots, but like he smokes weed in this pipe and that gives him superpowers. He's like a Sherlock Holmes of the Bored Apes. And I was hoping that by giving him some lore, maybe he would become more valuable and this would prevent like too many losses on what I when it came time to sell him.

But this is this is the problem, okay? So I told all my friends and family that I got this mutant ape and I'm like, look at my mutant ape and my mom is like, uh like I sent her the picture of it and she just like sent the picture back and is like it's my mutant ape now. And I'm like or something like that. And I'm like I'm like it's not it's cuz of the blockchain it's mine. It can never be yours. But it's very complicated to explain why. But it's mine. You can't have it even though you do have it on your phone.

And then I get to ApeFest. I'm showing people my mutant ape. And there is sort of this like love bombing thing where people will kind of pretend to be interested in your mutant ape. Like people didn't want to talk about their apes cuz it's boring. We all have apes. There's nothing to talk about. So like and I would try and talk about Dr. Skum and like I don't know I'd pull him out. People didn't really care. And then like even like pimply teenagers people would insult Dr. Skum. They'd be like that's a floor ape. Like pimply teenagers would be like look at mine it's worth like a million dollars. Yours sucks. It's like the ugliest one I've ever saw. And but also like there was nothing to do with Dr.

Skum. I didn't even bring him to ApeFest cuz everyone said he would get stolen if I did. So like there was a rumor going around that there was like a I tell me if this is true or just a rumor. You may remember. There was like a billboard in Times Square that was a ad for a dating app. And it was like for hot girls to meet people who own bored apes. But if you took a picture if you used the QR code it just stole your apes. This was like a rumor that I heard. I don't know if it's true. But like oh but lots of people did get their ape stolen. So I didn't bring Dr. Skum to ApeFest. I left him at home to like not get stolen. So if there had been any like activations where you had you got

to use your bored ape in cool ways at ApeFest, I wouldn't have been able to do it cuz I didn't have him with me. But also there weren't. There was nothing to do with Dr. Skum there. I did get to meet Jimmy Fallon and discuss the logic of ape investing with him. So that that So I did feel like that was worth the price of admission. Wow, like $20,000 to see Jimmy Fallon. And I sold him and I only lost like 2,000 mostly in transaction fees. But the other funny thing about it was um not only did you not bring in, but I can't remember what the reason was, but in the end like I think like you actually couldn't use your mutant ape for admission. And so in the end somebody just had to make you their plus

one. So like you went through this whole rigmarole role, and then in the end there was like no need. Yeah, I mean I wanted to buy that mutant ape. Like I I wanted to see what it was like. I'm glad I did and it I was not like mad that I had to be somebody's plus one. There was this like tricky thing where you had to use this like other app to get the tickets. Like the NFT was not the ticket. There was maybe like a second NFT that was the ticket. Oh, wait. So this is kind of funny though cuz it was block like OpenSea. I could see who bought my bored ape. And I'm I once I bought the mutant ape, I immediately was filled with like panic that I would be the last idiot who paid 20 grand for

one of these. Like I could see on my screen that people were buying and selling them, but I just felt like I don't know. Like once it was mine, I was like nobody will take this off my hands. I I I knew that somebody would, but I still didn't feel like they would. But this one guy did buy it and I could see on the on chain who it was and he had his wallet like labeled and we actually had a little chat and I started I was feeling guilty and I was like I'm sorry for selling you this terrible mutant ape. Um but he actually they'd gone up a little bit and he told me he was up five grand and he didn't mind. So like my anxiety was relieved and I felt like I could leave the ape world with like a clean conscience.

All right. Well, that's a good way um to end for listeners who as I did uh very much enjoyed that we need story. It gives you a taste for um what the book is like. I mean, I I I agree with you that you know, it is sort of like your escapades through crypto for these last 2 years. And it's just so interesting kind of the extremes. It's like at the one end you have, you know, something super light-hearted like this. On the other hand, it's like, you know, these big um frauds and like basically slavery going on. Um so, yeah, I mean, and and everything in between. There's like Celsius. There's just a lot. So, um people should check it out. Um is there

Are there any other, you know, last thoughts you would like to give the audience? No, I I've I've always wanted to write like a crazy adventure story, like something like Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich or like Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. I never thought I'd find the right story. I'm like, but I you know, I'm like 15 years into my career as a reporter or whatever. But when I got into the crypto world, I was like, "Oh, like this is the adventure you've been waiting for. This is what you got to write about." And I was at first I was a little scared when I found out that uh that Michael Lewis was also writing a book about crypto.

But after like after writing the book and putting these stories out into the world, I'm just like I'm really so excited about it. I think it's really fun. And I'm I I'm I'm more worried about where am I going to find a story that tops this? Like I don't even really care what he does. I'm just like, "This was These 2 years were insane. I don't know where I'll ever find something like this again. I'm just really glad that I was there to like to write about it." Yes. Yes, it clearly you you had a lot of fun. All right. Well, where can people learn more about you and your work?

You can follow me on Twitter at Zeke Faux z e k e f a u x and number go up is available wherever you get your books. Perfect. Well, it's been a pleasure having you on Unchained. Thank you so much Laura. It's like a a big honor. I appreciate you having me on to interview me. Yeah, yeah, I really enjoyed it. Thanks so much for joining us today. To learn more about Zeke and number go up, check out the show notes for this episode. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin, with help from Kevin Pukes, Matt Pilchard, Juana Ranovic, Megan Gavish, Jinny Hogan, Shashank, and Margaret Caria. Thanks for listening.

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