You know before we get to some of the concerns that youve had in this space worth noting in full transparency that um, you are part of a crypto skeptic group uh that has taken short positions in crypto, so so lets start there. I mean to what extent have you benefited from the declines that we have seen over the last few weeks? Uh, you know Ive benefited significantly uh, because Ive been shorting biddo, the Bitcoin Futures ETF Ive been shorting, coinbase, microstrategy, silvergate bank, and you know the collapse has already happened to the degree of 70 or 80 from the peak, and that is uh. You know putting a significant money in our pockets as crypto Skeptics. Now you are a skeptic now, but you started kind of early on to say that you thought that things could work out. You were an early investor in coinbase as well. What shifted for you yeah? So the original thesis was very Visionary, you know Bitcoin decentralized, currency, um and it really just was a matter of you know, seeing how how little success was happening and also just thinking about the macroeconomic considerations. As I became more educated, I was like look. The vision is basically to move to the gold standard right, thats, the vision of Bitcoin thats, the idea of a limited currency with no Central Bank, and frankly, we have tried that right. We didnt try it with a blockchain, but we tried it with gold and it it just doesnt make sense as a currency, which is why youre not actually seeing it used as a currency youre only seeing it used for speculation, weve been talking so much about the Crypto space as a whole, but theres been plenty of guests weve had on who say look.

This is a time to kind of differentiate between Bitcoin and ether. Those are the more established crypto assets versus some of these other tokens weve been talking about including ftt. That was issued by FTX. Do you see the differentiation there or is this time to raise the red flag on crypto as a whole? So Bitcoin is kind of the exception, because it has this vision of being this decentralized currency, with no Central Bank, its a vision that I think is harmful and would lead to a depression, but at least it is a logically coherent Vision. Now, if you look at ftt, if you look at all these other this explosion of tokens and these projects, you know blockchain web3, all this other stuff thats grown around outside of Bitcoin in, in this token ecosystem, its all logically incoherent. There is absolutely no reason why any of this stuff is ever going to create net value for society or for the economy, its all, basically just an excuse to play casinos and speculate, and you know weve had uh John Reed Stark on before hes. Obviously, a former SEC enforcement division, as I understand that hes part of this crypto skeptic group that you have increasingly tried to organize whats the end game of this group. What are you trying to achieve? Is it about maintaining you know, crypto, but also bringing in the regulation to make sure customers arent left holding the bag, or is it to sort of see the space as a whole, just kind of burn out and collapse? So you know part of it is we did call the crypto collapse, I mean we think its inevitable, because we did recognize a speculation bubble, but part of it is, as you say, we do want to do our part.

To help with the lobbying I mean you have so many companies that are lobbying Pro crypto right. You have investors like Andreessen Horowitz. They really want all this regulation to enable this new crypto space, but all youre getting out of it, is youre, seeing us based retail investors, losing their life savings into these schemes, and you know hypothetically the regulations supposed to stop that, but theres really theres no upside To even enabling all the stuff in the first place so whats the next shoe to follow. You think, if you call the collapse of this, or at least the bursting of the bubble, what are you watching next yeah theres major contagion in the crypto space? So you know, silvergate bank is something that doesnt get discussed enough its basically the only connection to uh Fiat banking that the crypto system has and deposits are being pulled out of that. So that may collapse Im sure at silvergate bank um and you might see nexo, which is a crypto lending platform that could be the next FTX. You know its another centralized crypto lending platform, but it could be anything it could be bitfinex and tether. These things have a way of all intermingling right behind the scenes you cant tell whats going on, but the dominoes just fall one after the other. What about somebody like binance? I mean, as weve shown CZ whos founder and CEO there and hes been taking a bit of a Victory lap, obviously uh their rival FDX has now collapsed.

I mean is this a platform that you think customers should feel comfortable in or do you see red flags there too major red flags? You know and good for CZ for being one of the last ones standing right, but that also just means hes. The next Domino to fall, like theres theres, no positive indication that binance isnt pulling all the same Shady tactics that weve seen from all of these centralized crypto players. I mean based on what well, what have you seen that that leads you to make that statement? So one thing is: their balance sheet also has the same red flags where theres a lot of their own tokens on their balance sheet, so the accounting is already fuzzy just from that, and so you think the same thing could happen the way it did with FTX. I do think the contagion will eventually call come from binance and its hard to time, whos going first, but every time a domino Falls, it you know makes it harder for the next Domino to stay standing right if it pokes more holes in the balance sheets uh. Finally, you know we have seen um those like Jeremy Lair over at Circle, calling for more regulation, hes talking specifically about stable coins, but the argument has also been that, because U.S Regulators have been so slow to move so much of UA U.S based trading has been Pushed to Offshore exchanges like FTX, like finance and thats, what ultimately caused all this that Regulators are also to blame because they didnt move quickly enough.

Do you agree with that thesis? Well, you know you can you can say it got pushed offshore and it was outside of U.S regulation, but the thing is thats where all the fun is right, so you have coinbase to their credit. They are regulated, theyre not going to lose anybodys money, probably but theyre boring right. All the good stuff is happening offshore thats. The reason why people get into crypto because they want to make the kind of Leverage speculative bets that these casinos, like FTX and binance, are you know, theyre better at facilitating angel investor. Leron tripura its good to talk to you today appreciate your time.

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