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Crypto Kingpins
Sep 19, 2023

Episode 2: Money and a Hat

Starting his career at a secretive Wall Street firm, Sam learns to gamble and is praised for taking big risks. He embraces Effective Altruism, a movement aimed at doing “the most good,” and starts “earning to give” big donations to charity. He strikes out on his own to found a trading firm, Alameda Research, and exploit bitcoin price differences between Japan and the US — but is his origin story of immense arbitrage profits really all it’s cracked up to be? When staff quit in protest over his ethics, Sam doubles down and turns to…

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Episodes

Sep 19, 2023

Two cryptocurrency titans, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, and Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, the founder of Binance, face off in an epic struggle for the soul of…

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Sep 19, 2023

Starting his career at a secretive Wall Street firm, Sam learns to gamble and is praised for taking big risks. He embraces Effective Altruism, a movement aimed at doing “the…

Read More
Oct 18, 2023

Sam moves Alameda Research’s headquarters from Berkeley to Hong Kong to take advantage of the unregulated crypto market there. Caroline comes along for the ride, struggling to manage the stress…

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Oct 18, 2023

Sam spends hundreds of millions to buy name recognition and political influence for FTX in the U.S. — and suddenly his upstart crypto exchange is everywhere, from the Miami Heat’s…

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Oct 18, 2023

Life’s a beach for Sam — he moves FTX to the Bahamas just as China starts cracking down on crypto and lands a jaw-dropping $200 million funding deal with Sequoia…

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Oct 18, 2023

With FTX’s debts spiraling and Alameda’s books a blackhole, Sam needs to bring in more cash fast to keep the two companies afloat. But CZ has been biding his time…

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