Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver.
Thank you so much for joining us.
It has been a busy week:
Fox agreeing to pay nearly
$800 million for broadcasting lies,
U.K.'s deputy prime minister resigning
due to a bullying investigation.
But we're gonna start
in the Tennessee House,
where Republicans recently voted
to expel two Democratic lawmakers
for violating House rules
in protesting against g*n v*olence.
One of the Republicans
who voted to expel them was this man,
Scotty Campbell, who himself
abruptly resigned on Thursday.
And I could tell you why he did that.
But I'd rather let you watch
as he sees his political career
evaporate before his eyes.
As I understand, you admitted
to sexually harassing this intern?
- Give me just five seconds.
- Okay.
Scotty Campbell knew we were
investigating some serious allegations.
One second.
About his relationship
with at least one legislative intern,
although he would soon divulge
there was a second intern.
- Which direction do I need to look?
- Just look at me.
I've seen a lot of politicians
get caught out on this show.
Some get angry, some run away.
But in 10 seasons, I've never seen
someone so thoroughly f*cked
that their only response is "Give me
five seconds to quickly chug this",
followed by "Okay, where should
I look while my career ends?"
Kudos to everyone
involved there.
A House ethics subcommittee
found last month that Campbell
had violated the policy on workplace
discrimination and harassment.
There are allegations that he'd
sexually harassed at least one intern,
reportedly making her "progressively
more afraid and uncomfortable",
through actions like, at one point,
offering to give her cannabis gummies
to see her tattoos and piercings.
The subcommittee
issued their findings last month,
but nothing happened until reporters
started asking questions.
And while Campbell
denies the allegations,
it's not great that he doesn't seem to
comprehend some pretty basic things.
So, are you saying the ethics
subcommittee is lying?
I'm saying that I did not know
that a workplace policy
could be enforced
when you're not at work.
What are you talking about, Scotty?
I'm not sure saying "Whatever I did,
I wasn't at work when I did it!"
is quite the ironclad defense
he seems to think it is.
If your office had a sign
in the kitchen that said,
"Please do not f*ck
the Keurig machine",
and you responded by taking it outside
the building and f*cking it there,
I think you're still
probably getting into trouble.
I could talk all night about this story
but for now, let's turn to beer.
Drinkable bread
that makes talking less scary.
Specifically, Bud Light.
The beer you'd give a child to drink
to teach it a lesson.
A few weeks ago, Bud Light partnered
with influencer Dylan Mulvaney
for the sort of Instagram promotion
that you see all the time.
Check out my Instagram story to see
how you can enjoy March Madness
with Bud Light and
maybe win some money, too!
Okay. Seems basically
as inoffensive as an ad can be
when it is promoting Bud Light,
a beer that asks the question,
"Are we allowed
to call cat urine beer?"
"Because if not,
this factory tour is over."
But people on the right
absolutely lost their sh*t over this
because Bud Light
partnered with a trans woman.
There have been calls
for boycotts,
and this incredibly stupid video
from Kid Rock.
Let me say something to all you and be
as clear and concise as possible.
f*ck Bud Light and f*ck
Anheuser-Busch.
Have a terrific day.
Okay, a few things.
I don't think there's a more dangerous
way to dispose of Bud Light,
other than, of course,
drinking it.
And second,
not to g*n-shame Child Rock here,
but you are 20 yards away
from a target that's bright,
identifiable,
and, crucially, stationary,
and you're spraying
b*ll*ts all over the place.
Perhaps that is why it sure seems
like he may have had help there.
Because if you watch it
slowed down,
you'll notice the three blasts
that actually destroy the cases
appear to be coming
from the right.
And the thing is, it's not just
there have been multiple videos
of people destroying cans of Bud Light,
and other Anheuser-Busch brands.
Because if there's one thing
that hurts a company,
it's destroying their product
after it's already been purchased.
This is all very stupid, but there's
some real nastiness under all this.
It's part of a general moral panic
around trans rights,
arriving at the same time
as a rash of bills
banning gender-affirming care for kids
and, in some states, adults as well.
And maddeningly, Anheuser-Busch's
response to that ugliness
has been to equivocate
in the face of it.
Its CEO put out a statement saying,
"We never intended to be part
of a discussion that divides people.
We are in the business of bringing
people together over a beer".
Which, sure, although again,
not technically "beer"
so much as it's "fizzy water
swished around a dog's mouth."
And it is pretty annoying
to be both-sides-ing something
when the two sides
are "I am trans",
and "that makes me so mad I'm gonna
sh**t $65 worth of nonrefundable beer".
And Budweiser just released
this equally empty new ad.
Let me tell you a story
about a beer,
rooted in the heart of America.
Found in a community
where a handshake is a sure contract.
Raised by generations
willing to sip,
share,
risk,
remember.
This is a story
bigger than beer.
This is the story
of the American spirit.
Okay. There is both nothing
and a lot going on there.
They are clearly so afraid
of offending anyone,
they put out an ad essentially saying
"America something, something,"
and made a point of stopping down,
for some reason,
at a sh*t of the New York City skyline
so they could say, "Remember."
Is that a 9/11 reference, Budweiser?
Because sh*ts of a horse running
through the plains and "remember 9/11"
feels less like an ad and more like
the results of feeding an AI program
the prompt
"America freedom I'm sorry".
This feels like a huge misfire
for Anheuser-Busch.
Because when bigots are loudly
announcing they don't like your beer,
because they are bigots,
that is an opportunity for you to say,
"Then our beer is not for you."
But if you're just going to cozy up
to them with platitudes,
stock footage, and, frankly,
distractingly fuckable horses,
why not at least really go for it?
Let me tell you a story
about a beer.
One that believes in simple values,
like flag, hello, and troops.
A beer that admittedly
does taste like the piss you make
after drinking lots of a different
and better beer.
But it's more than that.
It's about horses, and living your life
however you choose.
Unless, of course, that freedom
alienates our base of frat bros,
on-duty cops,
and emotionally unavailable dads.
Look, honestly,
we're running scared
because Kid Rock told
his followers our beer was woke,
instead of what it actually is:
what you get when you ring out a bar
rag at the end of a shift at any bar.
To that end, we're hoping to make
an ad that won't offend anyone.
So, what's our beer about?
Our beer's about the Grand Canyon,
trains, and dogs being reunited
with soldiers.
It's about fireworks,
one kid pushing another
kid in a wagon,
and sharks.
American-made sharks.
Sharks who go to church.
It's about hot dogs,
landing on the moon,
remembering 9/11,
and the Civil w*r,
whichever side you like.
The bottom line is,
please buy our awful beer.
To drink, to sh**t,
we honestly don't care.
We never created it
to be enjoyed, just purchased.
Bud Light.
Moving on.
Our main story tonight
concerns cryptocurrency.
The only word that makes
Elon Musk nut immediately.
We first covered crypto five years ago,
when I was 10 years younger,
and since then, a lot has happened,
including, unfortunately,
this video from last year promoting
the general concept of trading crypto.
Hello,
it's me.
Would you like to learn
about exchanging cryptocurrency?
We'll go over everything,
cause you got coins
from different blockchains
and wanna do some trading.
I mean, a lot to dislike about that,
from her choosing to parody a song
by one of our greatest singers
while having a voice that I can
only describe as a "no chair turn,"
to wearing those earrings,
which scream,
"I do my best
shopping at airports,"
to the fact that her name
is Randi Zuckerberg,
and yes, she is Mark's sister.
Meaning that, incredibly,
she is the cool one in that family.
And that wasn't even
the only song that she did.
She did this one about how everything
with crypto was gonna go great.
We're all gonna make it,
yeah, we're all gonna make it.
We're all gonna make it, everyone!
"We're all gonna make it in crypto" is
a phrase that's aged about as well as,
"Welcome aboard
the unsinkable Titanic!"
Those videos came out when crypto
fever was still near its absolute peak.
Stadiums were getting
named after crypto companies,
Matt Damon and LeBron James
did commercials for Crypto-dot-com,
and celebrities
from Larry David to Tom and Gisele,
pre-divorce but postlove,
hyped a crypto exchange
called FTX that was run
by a 29-year-old supposed genius
named Sam Bankman-Fried,
a.k.a. SBF.
He was on the cover of Forbes
and Fortune, with one calling him
"The Next Warren Buffet",
and others calling him "JPEG Morgan".
And Sequoia Capital, one of the biggest
venture capital firms,
had a $213 million investment
in the company.
But since then, to put it mildly,
there has been an implosion,
which really broke through to public
consciousness before last Christmas.
In a span of 24 hours,
Sam Bankman-Fried
was whisked by federal agents
in the Bahamas to New York City
where he faced a judge
and walked out of a federal courthouse
after posting bail
on a $250 million bond,
which prosecutors believe
is one of the largest in U.S. history.
SBF was arrested for defrauding his
customers out of billions of dollars,
and to be honest, it seems like
the courtroom sketch artist
may have been one of them.
Because this is one of the rudest
illustrations I've ever seen.
The whole "innocent
until proven guilty" thing
clearly doesn't apply to the side
of the law with the coloring pencils.
SBF's arrest was a big deal.
And as his company imploded,
some, like CNBC's Jim Cramer,
were furious.
That guy is a clueless idiot.
He's a pathological liar.
He's a con man.
We're talking about nearly four years
of getting away with financial m*rder
just because they could.
Those are some harsh words there
from the squawking parrot
on every pirate's shoulder.
Especially as, just a year earlier,
Cramer was saying this.
Tonight, we're going to educate
ourselves with Sam Bankman-Fried.
Sam, it's an honor to have you,
I think you're pretty much a visionary.
Yeah, not great,
but also, not surprising.
After all, this is the same guy that
proclaimed that "Bear Stearns is fine"
literally days before it folded,
told his viewers to buy Netflix before
it lost almost 70% in five months,
and once, and this is true, said
that Google, Facebook, and Twitter
should hire Kevin Spacey
as a spokesperson.
Jim Cramer is the only person
who could look you in the eye,
say "You are going to die tomorrow",
and give you
an immediate sense of calm,
knowing that you're gonna live
for another 50 years.
But FTX has been just one of the many
dominos that fell in the crypto world.
Over the past two years, the market
value of all cryptocurrencies
fell from around three trillion in late
And there are small investors
who got badly hurt by all of this.
One in five Americans has invested in,
traded, or used cryptocurrency.
You can find countless stories of people
losing most of their life's savings
in the recent implosions.
Underscoring that everyone in crypto
was never actually going to make it,
no matter how much Randi Zuckerberg
scream-sang otherwise.
Tonight, we'd take a look at what has
been happening in the world of crypto
by looking at three of the biggest
collapses over the past year.
Each of these companies
was founded on the promise
that they would replace
some part of our financial system.
There is Terra, a cryptocurrency.
Celsius, a crypto bank.
And FTX,
a crypto trading platform.
In theory, they were supposed
to be our next dollar,
our next Bank of America,
and our next stock exchange.
But in reality, they are fiascos.
And before we start, we're not going
to be discussing the merits
or the technology of the blockchain.
We did that five years ago,
it's still on the internet,
you can go watch it there,
or not.
Not watching this show
is always a strong option for you.
But just as a reminder:
every single crypto coin is something
someone with a laptop made up.
That is true for all of them,
like Dogecoin, Catcoin,
Panda Coin, Furry Coin, CumRocket,
Elon Sperm, and Monkey Jizz.
Those are all real, by the way.
We were going to come up
with a fake one as a joke,
but then we saw Monkey Jizz
and it felt like a hat on a hat.
To the extent
any of these coins have value,
it's based on whether
people believe they do,
which often comes down
to their confidence
in the person
or group who made the coin.
And that basic fact
makes the crypto business
very attractive
to a certain type of person.
One columnist who's covered
this intensively sums it up like this
"If you are running a scam,
you will be drawn to crypto.
You are running a confidence game,
and crypto offers
the most efficient market
for turning confidence into money."
And the story for all three companies
that we're gonna look at tonight
is one of confidence gained,
and then squandered.
And let's start with Terra, which
was a cryptocurrency launched in 2018
by a brash South Korean entrepreneur
named Do Kwon.
People had faith in Terra, in part,
because Kwon exuded confidence.
Here he is on Twitch,
responding to a question
about the volatility of companies
in his space.
How many of these companies
you think are entering this space
just because it's hot
and there's a lot of funding
versus the ones that will still be here,
you know, two to five years later?
But there's also entertainment
in watching companies die too.
That's pretty cocky.
But I guess he is kind of right.
There can be entertainment
in watching a company die.
Incidentally, I believe
that's the new slogan for Max.
Do you like HBO, but want ads,
the Property Brothers,
and also don't like HBO?
Max! There's entertainment
in watching a company die!
Kwon's company made something
called a stablecoin,
the idea of which is that,
unlike something like Bitcoin,
it would always be worth
a stable amount.
So, one unit of Terra, or UST,
would always equal one U.S. dollar.
And the way they guaranteed this
was truly absurd.
Because rather than collecting a dollar
for every unit of Terra that it issued,
which would make sense,
it instead tied its value
to a different coin, Luna,
which it had also made up.
And it said that it would turn Luna
into Terra and Terra into Luna,
with a special algorithm.
And if that sounds both complicated
and stupid to you, it is.
Here is how the company
explained it,
and you don't need to understand
anything that's happening here,
because it doesn't make sense.
Let's imagine the entire Terra economy
as a pool.
The size of the pool is determined
by the total supply of UST.
If more people want UST,
the tide rises,
and if less people want UST,
the tide falls.
To bring back the water level
to $1,
we can expand the pool
by introducing a new supply of UST.
But where does new UST
come from?
At Terra, we've designed a machine
that swaps $1 worth of Luna to one UST.
Okay. Imagine if someone came up
to you when you were at the ATM
and said, "Give me that money,
and instead, I'll give you blorps.
One blorp is always worth $1,
and the reason I can guarantee that is,
I'll sell as many fleezles
as it takes to make that happen.
Also, I make the fleezles."
You would probably say no,
wouldn't you, immediately.
But if they then said
"I do it with a special algorithm,"
suddenly, you might think that
they know something that you don't.
Well, that's basically
what happened here.
And to be fair, some people did see
the problem with this.
In 2018, an analyst looked
at Terra's business model
and said, "This is crazy.
This obviously doesn't work."
And Kwon would shame anyone
who dared question his model.
After a financial writer
raised questions about
the vulnerabilities of crypto,
Kwon tweeted,
"I don't debate the poor on Twitter".
And for a while, his confidence worked.
At its height,
Luna's total value ballooned
to more than $40 billion dollars.
The Washington Nationals
entered a partnership with them,
Kwon's followers
"called themselves Lunatics,"
and one of his backers
even got a Luna-themed tattoo.
And that is a bold move
from Crypto Moby there.
I would say it is the worst tattoo
I've ever seen,
but I have also seen this tattoo
of R. Kelly with the words,
"I don't see nothing wrong",
and that's around 5% worse.
But we now know,
according to the SEC,
the algorithm
didn't work as they'd claimed.
In fact, at one point in 2021,
Terra nearly collapsed.
While Kwon told people the crisis had
been averted thanks to his algorithm,
saying it was "automatically
self-healing", it turns out,
it was only saved by the deliberate
intervention of a third party,
which was quietly purchasing large
quantities of Terra to restore its value.
But last May, a few big trades
destabilized the price of Terra,
prompting a panic in which
both Terra and Luna holders
started selling en masse.
And since they weren't backed
by anything but good vibes,
both coins' value
were trading at essentially zero,
and the implosion erased
tens of billions of dollars of value.
As for Kwon, he now faces
charges in multiple countries.
And he went on the run for a bit,
but before he was caught,
managed to find some
emotional support on a crypto podcast.
Here he is, mid thought, getting
surprised by an unexpected guest.
You're you haven't slept in a while
and you feel almost…
Holy sh*t,
is that Martin Shkreli?
Do, I just wanted to let you know,
jail's not that bad.
It sucks, but it's not
the worst thing ever.
So don't fret, if that…
I hope it doesn't happen.
But if it does happen,
it's not that bad.
Good to know.
I don't think there's ever been
a more cursed Zoom call.
And I'm very much including
that celebrity "Imagine" video.
And, quick sidenote,
if you're wondering if Jim Cramer
ever saw
Martin Shkreli's scandal coming,
you should know
that Shkreli actually got his start
at Jim Cramer's hedge fund.
So, another ace in the hole
for the Crame-game.
But it's not just cryptocurrencies
that can be built on sand,
the same can happen
with crypto banks.
Which are already
a bit of a misnomer,
'cause unlike traditional banks,
they're not regulated or insured.
But they are firms that will hold
your crypto, pay you interest,
and lend it out.
And that brings us
to our second company: Celsius,
one of the biggest crypto banks,
founded by this guy, Alex Mashinsky.
Now, his whole sales pitch,
as you can see from his cool T-shirt,
was "banks are not your friends".
Which is clearly true.
But he really doubled down
on that message in ads like this.
Banks are not your friends.
We all know that.
And we decided to create a replacement
for the banking system, right?
Something that acts
in your best interest.
A place where you can actually
have your money work for you.
Not just you work
for your money.
And basically, three years
since we launched the product,
we've paid a billion dollars
back to the community.
Despite the fact that he sounds exactly
like Tommy Wiseau in "The Room",
Mashinsky built
one of the biggest crypto lenders
with more than $12 billion
in deposits.
And one of the ways
that he did this
was by promising customers would get
up to 18% interest rates on deposits,
that's versus the average of .06% then
being offered by traditional banks.
He liked to say that banks could pay
those sorts of rates if they wanted to,
adding, "Somebody is lying".
"Either the bank is lying
or Celsius is lying."
And hey, porque no los dos?
Two things can be true!
Like how Frankie Muniz
can be both 37 years old
and 12 at the same time
or how The Rock can be one of the
highest paid actors in Hollywood
despite never actually acting.
Mashinsky went out of his way
to build trust among customers,
holding weekly livestream AMAs,
sometimes featuring dumb stunts,
like when he started one
wearing a Mandalorian mask.
And on these calls, he would brag
about all the great things
that his company
was doing for people,
while occasionally engaging
in the single worst attempt
at a dab I have ever seen.
The beauty of what Celsius
managed to do is that we deliver yield,
we pay it to the people who would
never be able to do it themselves,
we take it from the rich,
and we b*at the index, okay?
That's like going to the Olympics
and getting 15 medals
in 15 different fields.
Okay?
What the f*ck was that?
A heads-up dab?
And to be honest,
why a dab at all?
It's not 2015
and you're not a guest on "Ellen".
Also, you're 57 years old.
That demonstrates a lack
of judgment frankly terrifying
in someone supposedly
running a financial institution.
Mashinsky insisted "we are probably
one of the least risky businesses
that regulators worldwide
have ever seen".
Which was just flagrantly untrue.
A court-appointed examiner found that
he was making incredibly risky loans
and was using customers' money to pay
the high yields that he'd promised.
Which sure sounds like the textbook
definition of a Ponzi scheme.
Eventually, Celsius started minting its
own coin to inflate its balance sheet,
a coin that its own employees
said was "worthless"
and that its price "should be zero".
One even said that the whole thing
was "very Ponzi like",
and at one point,
the company's former finance chief said
"we are doing
something possibly illegal"
"and definitely not compliant".
And what an office
that must've been to work in.
Finding yourself wandering
over to Sheryl's desk like
"Hey girl, great top! Quick question,
are we like doing crimes?"
"'Cause I'm getting like major
crime vibes in here."
"Also, have you seen our boss dab?
It's very weird".
And when Celsius inevitably
collapsed, people got hurt.
Especially because, in the fine print,
the company's terms of use stated
that customers transferred all rights
of ownership in their crypto assets
by depositing them
in a Celsius account.
Meaning that when people
tried to withdraw their money,
they found out it legally
wasn't theirs anymore.
And while Celsius and Mashinsky
have not been criminally charged,
tens of thousands of customers have
digital assets trapped on the platform.
And Celsius has reported
that it owes them $4.7 billion.
Is enough to make you think that,
while "banks are not your friends",
this guy may actually be
your enemy.
So, we've got bullshit money,
and a bullshit bank.
Which brings us back
to Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX.
It was basically
a whole bullshit trading platform.
The pitch was that FTX
was an exchange
where you could buy and sell
cryptocurrencies just like stocks,
and its ease was emphasized in ads,
like this one with Steph Curry,
that play, in hindsight,
like a bit of a red flag.
This is Steph Curry. The world's
leading expert on cryptocurrency.
I'm not.
Quick messing around, man,
give me some tips on crypto.
- No.
- But you are an expert, right?
No. I'm not an expert
and I don't need to be,
with FTX app, everything I need to buy,
sell, and trade crypto safely.
Yeah, "you don't even have
to understand it, just use it."
Their pitch for a major money app
was basically the same
as the attitude
that we all have towards semicolons.
You're never 100% using one of those,
are you?
It's a real
"go with god" punctuation.
Although I will say,
it kind of makes sense
they'd get Steph Curry for that ad
considering that he's already
a spokesperson for Subway,
a restaurant whose slogan
is officially "Eat Fresh"
but spiritually "Trust Us, It's Tuna."
And, again, for a while,
that pitch worked pretty well.
FTX held a conference
in the Bahamas less than a year ago
that included a panel
with Tony Blair and Bill Clinton,
and appearances
by Orlando Bloom and Katy Perry.
Tom Brady was even there in person,
too, making videos like this.
What's up, guys?
I'm here with my boy Sam from FTX.
We're at Crypto Bahamas conference,
we're gonna start the day,
we're gonna do some TikToks
for you guys,
and it's gonna be an amazing day,
we're gonna get started,
we'll do a get ready with me…
Sam, where you going, bro?
Look, Sam…
Sam, from one Ohio six to another,
never stand that close to Tom Brady.
It's doing you no favors.
There is a reason that I've never been
photographed with Chris Hemsworth,
no matter how much he begs for it.
Now, the joke there was that Sam
was a shy, self-effacing genius.
And that's the general vibe
that he went for,
it's why he dressed
like every day was laundry day.
And combed his hair with a balloon.
Obviously, we now know
that things came crashing down,
but even after they did, SBF was still
defensive about what he'd built.
A lot of people look at you
and see Bernie Madoff.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't think
that's who I am at all,
but I understand
why they're saying that.
People lost money.
When you look at the classic
Bernie Madoff story,
there was no real business there.
The whole thing,
as I understand it,
I think, was just one big
Ponzi scheme, right?
FTX, that was a real business.
Yeah, but was it though?
Because I understand that no one wants
to admit that their business was a scam,
it's the same reason no parent
wants to admit that their child sucks,
saying it out loud makes it real,
doesn't it?
But the truth is some kids do.
Some kids are, just to put it nicely,
not a fun hang.
You still love them, of course,
but do you like them?
Exactly.
But it's worth understanding
what SBF's real business consisted of.
Because it turns out that,
in addition to FTX,
he had a hedge fund
called Alameda,
and he also produced his own coin,
because of course he did, called FTT.
And very basically,
according to authorities,
what he did was filled up
his hedge fund's books
with the coin that he produced,
using his exchange
to inflate that coin's price.
And once his hedge fund
had a giant stash of his own coin,
it used that as collateral
to take out several loans.
Essentially, the feds say
that he created fake money,
inflated its price, and then borrowed
real money against that.
But wait, I'm not done.
Because he was also taking money
from actual FTX customers,
the ones, remember,
who were putting money into FTX
because Steph Curry
told them it was safe,
and then loaning it back
to his hedge fund.
The whole thing
was honestly pretty blatant.
After everything collapsed, a new CEO
came in to handle the bankruptcy,
and as he told Congress,
he was shocked at how sloppy
and poorly run everything was.
This is really old-fashioned
embezzlement.
This is taking money from customers
and using it for your own purpose.
Not sophisticated at all.
Literally, there's no record
keeping whatsoever.
They used QuickBooks,
a multibillion-dollar company
using QuickBooks.
- QuickBooks?
- QuickBooks.
It's true, they used QuickBooks.
And look, I'm no accountant.
I mean, I should be.
I look like my most formative childhood
memories were in an H&R Block.
I look like I fell into a vat
of radioactive itemized receipts.
I look like what appears
if you say "Microsoft Excel"
into the mirror three times.
But I'm actually not an accountant.
Even I know that using QuickBooks
for a company of that size is absurd.
That man also revealed that FTX let
thousands of un cashed deposit checks
sit around "like junk mail"
and approved millions of dollars
of expense reports via emoji on Slack.
And I'm dying
to know which emoji they used.
Because we all know, emojis on Slack
have very specific meanings,
for instance thumbs up means
"I'm done with this conversation".
This means
"I'm too lazy to type thank you".
This means
"I'm dying inside, don't talk to me".
This means
"Feeling cheeky, let's goss".
And this one means
"Look at me, I'm Italian".
But I've yet to discover
which emoji means,
"Go ahead, spend millions
of dollars of company funds".
But if I had to guess,
I'd say it's probably money barf.
But it is no wonder
that that new CEO has said,
"Never in my career have I seen such
a complete failure of corporate controls
and such a complete absence
of trustworthy financial information
as occurred here.
Which is really saying something,
given his career includes
overseeing the bankruptcy of Enron.
And if you don't remember
how bad Enron was,
Google it,
I can't do everything for you.
Suffice to say, it's very bad.
The throughline in all three companies
I've talked about tonight
is them confidently
presenting a veneer of expertise,
even as, beneath the surface,
they were a complete sh*t show.
And it kind of says something that,
even as they imploded,
all three of the men behind them were
trying to bluster their way out of it.
That interview where SBF insisted
his company was a "real business"
came after it had declared
Chapter 11.
As for Do Kwon, he spent time
pushing a new Terra 2.0 coin,
and was finally arrested last month,
after a lengthy pursuit,
including at one point him tweeting
that he wasn't "on the run"
from South Korean authorities,
to which they responded
that he was "obviously on the run".
And as for Mashinsky,
here is audio of him
trying to buck up his team
at an all-hands meeting,
even as his company
was crumbling around him.
Pepsi filed for bankruptcy twice,
right?
Does it make the Pepsi
taste less good, right?
Delta filed for bankruptcy, right?
Do you not fly Delta
because they filed for bankruptcy?
Okay, but that's not
the same thing, is it?
Celsius was supposed
to be good with money.
If Delta crashed four billion planes
and drinking Pepsi gave everyone
infinity diarrhea,
then people might lose trust in them,
and for a pretty f*cking good reason.
And the thing is,
there are still companies out there,
making all the same claims
that you've seen tonight.
And I'm not saying
that they are all scams.
Maybe these three are the exceptions,
although they would be joining
all the other exceptions
that we haven't had time
to talk about tonight,
from Bitconnect to Quadriga
to so, so many more.
But in a financial system where
the only real currency is confidence,
scammers are going to thrive.
I know that we usually like to point
to a solution at the end of our stories.
And that often means
calling for more regulation.
But I'm not sure
that's a good idea here.
The danger is, regulation might
give this sector more legitimacy,
it'd make a risky investment look safe,
when it is clearly not.
And that might entice banks to start
getting more involved in crypto,
giving the sector
even more legitimacy,
and also,
exposing all of us to its volatility.
It really says a lot that one of the
leading advocates for the government
to strongly regulate crypto
was Sam Bankman-Fried.
I'm absolutely not saying that
we should get rid of crypto entirely.
It could eventually be useful.
Maybe the third time
that we talk about it,
we'll all be using a digital coin
to buy everything.
I doubt it,
but I can't predict the future.
After all, I'm no Jim Cramer.
But we should recognize that right now,
the main thing you can do with crypto
is gamble with more crypto.
This is all still a casino.
So, if you do want to invest,
do your own due diligence,
never put in more
than you can afford to lose,
and if you ever see
someone doing this, run.
And now, this!
And Now:
A Look at a Few More
of Jim Cramer's Great Calls.
Could this be the future
of preventative medicine?
Let's take a closer look
with Elizabeth Holmes.
To me, it's reasonable to compare you.
I usually don't do this,
to Steve Jobs
and what he did for computing.
The ninth best performer year
to date is SVB Financial.
This company is a merchant bank
with a deposit base
that Wall Street
had been snakily concerned about.
I think the fears were not justified.
It's a very compelling situation.
Zoom video. What can I say?
This is their economy,
the Zoom economy.
It's the greatest story I've seen since
the dawn of the personal computer.
Bear Stearns!
It was… now it's…
Great investment banking.
Ukraine, they have an army,
but that army's going to be overrun,
within the first two hours.
I felt like a million bucks
in the metaverse,
but that's not enough
to get the stock moving.
- I have many doubts.
- People should be buying this stock.
Let me say this about this.
I made a mistake here.
I was wrong.
I trusted this management team.
That was ill-advised.
Thanks so much for watching.
We'll see you next week, good night!
10x09 - 2021–2023 cryptocurrency crash
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American late-night talk and news satire television program hosted by comedian John Oliver.
American late-night talk and news satire television program hosted by comedian John Oliver.