In Episode 285 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Stephen Findeisen, a fraud investigator who goes by the pseudonym "Coffeezilla” and runs an eponymous YouTube channel dedicated to exposing scams, con artists, and fraudsters. His work has been widely covered in the media including on the BBC and VICE and Coffeezilla himself was recently profiled in a feature article for the New Yorker.
Stephen’s investigations into FTX, Tether, Digital Currency Group, and the continued fallout and contagion sparked by the collapse of Luna and other related crypto companies, hedge funds, and lending platforms are the subjects of today’s incredibly timely conversation.
Coffeezilla and Demetri recorded this episode on the afternoon of Friday, November 25th, and spent the first half bringing everyone up to speed on the latest developments. In the second hour, they do a deep dive into the crypto firm Genesis and its parent company DCG, including the important role played by the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust in serving as collateral for much of the firm’s counterparty exposure. They also devote a great deal of time discussing the stablecoin Tether, otherwise known by its acronym USDT and some of the recent revelations that have emerged from the FTX-Alameda bankruptcy. These revelations include suspicious and troubling connections between Sam Bankman-Fried’s empire, his political relationships, and the executives and proprietors of several corporate entities based both in and outside of the Bahamas, including a US Federally insured bank (Moonstone) in Washington state that has become the source of immense speculation.
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 11/25/2022
In Episode 284 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Marshall Kosloff, the co-host of the Realignment podcast about the recent mid-terms, Trump’s announcement that he’s running for President of the United States in 2024, the politics of the Ukraine war, and an Ubermensch culture in tech that has influenced conversations about US domestic and foreign policy.
The underwhelming performance of republicans in the 2022 mid-term elections has cast into doubt many pundits’ expectations about the strength of the Republican party and Trump’s own electability in 2024. What caused the underwhelming performance of Republicans in the mid-terms and whether or not that weakness will continue in the next election cycle is something that Demetri and Marshall discuss in the first hour of their conversation today.
The second hour is primarily a conversation about the politics of the Ukraine war and the rise of what Demetri describes as a new “Ubermensch” or “Superman” culture in tech. This culture, which intersects with elements of transhumanism, promotes its own version of global governance and a “transnational homelessness” that Demetri believes is antithetical to the wishes and desires of most people on earth.
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If you want access to our Hidden Forces genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, feel free to send an email to info@hiddenforces.io, and Demetri or someone else from our team will get right back to you.
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
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Episode Recorded on 11/17/2022
In Episode 283 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Vance Spencer and Michael Anderson about the downfall of FTX, the political back-story behind Sam Bankman-Fried’s legislative push to build a regulatory moat around his business empire, and the path forward for the crypto industry.
As the crisis at FTX was unfolding, Vance received a call from none other than Sam Bankman-Fried. The two had never spoken before, but Vance had become recently critical of Sam’s efforts to lobby Washington for regulation that many felt would benefit him and his companies at the expense of everyone else in the industry. The legislation that SBF was pushing for would be particularly detrimental to the ecosystem of crypto known as decentralized finance or “DeFi” for short.
Cashing in on the tens of millions of dollars that he spent to curry favor with lawmakers, Fried spent his time behind the scenes persuading them to pass a bill known as the ‘Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act.’ Sponsored by Senators Debbie Stabenow and John Boozman, the DCCPA would, according to some of its critics, make it impossible for open source developers to function within the U.S., limit access to decentralized financial products and applications for U.S. consumers, and create a regulatory monopoly for FTX in the United States.
On their call Sam stated multiple times that if the DCCPA didn’t go through the S.E.C. was going to come after everyone. It was going to come after the DeFi projects and it was going to come after some of Framework’s own investments. Sam Bankman-Fried was explicit, telling Vance Spencer that Framework would be “materially harmed if they did not get on side.”
This was apparently part of a larger narrative being pushed by Sam Bankman-Fried in the months leading up to his phone call with Spencer. It’s what Ryan Selkis, founder of crypto market intelligence firm Messari, described in a recent tweet as a “committed contingent of crypto policy people that want you to know that the Big Bad Wolf of Gary Gensler is coming to get you if the DCCPA doesn’t pass.”
At the same time there were rumors circulating that regulators may have somehow been working on behalf of SBF. Specifically, US representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota tweeted out a few days ago that there were reports coming into to his office suggesting that the chairman of the SEC was “helping SBF and FTX work on legal loopholes to obtain a regulatory monopoly.”
To our knowledge, Tom Emmer has not put forward any evidence to support his claims and no one on this call—not Demetri, Michael, or Vance—is making that assertion. While the facts of this story are still coming together, what we have learned thus far gives credence to every bias and suspicion that most Americans have about their government and the corrupting influence of money in Washington. It’s at the heart of everything that’s gone wrong with our political system and it’s a big part of why extremists on both the left and right of the political spectrum have gained the support of an increasingly radicalized electorate.
Demetri’s hope with this conversation, besides telling a newsworthy story, is to prevent the narrative from being hijacked and recast as the case of some rogue, evil genius that we can easily blame for a problem that is systemic in nature. Yes, Sam Bankman-Fried a bad dude, but our system rewards bad dudes. And too often it punishes good ones. We need to change that.
If we want to see a positive change in our country—whether in crypto, finance, the media, or in the nation’s capital—we have to work together to fix the problem. And we have to hold people accountable, including ourselves, because in a democracy there is no one else.
You can subscribe to our premium content and gain access to our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.
If you want access to our Hidden Forces genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, feel free to send an email to info@hiddenforces.io, and Demetri or someone else from our team will get right back to you.
If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 11/11/2022
In Episode 282 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with famed short seller Marc Cohodes about Sam Bankman-Fried, the recent bankruptcy of FTX, and the bigger story behind the alleged fraud that he and his network of enablers have perpetrated.
Marc Cohodes has famously exposing numerous corporate frauds at great personal expense and risk to himself and his family. So, when Cohodes began raising the alarm earlier this year by publicly calling FTX a scam, while describing Sam Bankman-Fried as a fraudster, many of us took notice. During this time, Sam Bankman-Fried was largely seen as the new golden child of crypto. He spent the last several years cultivating a cultish following and rubbing shoulders with some of the most powerful people in the world. He was the second largest donor to Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign behind only George Soros and worked hand-in-glove with politicians and policymakers to regulate the crypto industry in a manner that would favor him, his companies, and his network of financial enablers.
On its surface, this looks like your typical financial fraud case. And in some sense, it is. But there are elements to this story that are uniquely suspicious, like Sam’s own origins and how he developed his wealth to begin with. The origins of his co-founder Gary Wang—who no one talks about—and the backgrounds of other members of his organization including chief compliance officer Dan Friedberg and chief operating officer Constance Wang also raise concerns.
How this otherwise disheveled multi-billionaire who reportedly sleeps on a futon in the Bahamas came to exercise so much political influence and hold so many ownership stakes in companies and venture funds in and outside of crypto remains a mystery. But it’s a story that Marc Cohodes has been working on for almost a year and it is the focus of today’s explosive conversation.
You can gain access to our premium feed and listen to today’s episode by subscribing to any one of our three content tiers at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. This will give you access to our entire episode library which you can listen to on your phone using your favorite podcast app just like you are listening to this episode right now
If you want access to our Hidden Forces genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, feel free to send an email to info@hiddenforces.io, and Demetri or someone else from our team will get right back to you.
If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
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Episode Recorded on 11/10/2022
In Episode 281 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Meghan O’Sullivan and Jason Bordoff. Meghan O’Sullivan is a former deputy national security adviser on Iraq and Afghanistan. She is currently Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and a board member of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Kennedy School. She sits on the board of directors at Raytheon and the Council on Foreign relations, and is the North American Chair of the Trilateral Commission. Jason Bordoff is the Co-Founding Dean of the Columbia Climate School, the Founding Director of the Center on Global Energy Policy, and Professor of Professional Practice in International and Public Relations at Columbia University. Jason also served as Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and Senior Director for Energy and Climate Change on the Staff of the National Security Council, and, prior to that, held senior policy positions on the White House's National Economic Council and Council on Environmental Quality.
Our episode today focuses on energy policy and the immense challenges inherent in trying to balance national security concerns with international climate objectives. As Meghan and Jason have both argued, moving to a net-zero global economy will require an unprecedented level of global cooperation. It will also lead to conflict along the way and inevitably produce winners and losers. While government investment and private sector innovation is crucial to managing this transition, conscious steps need to be taken in order to mitigate the geopolitical risks that this change will create, of which the war in Ukraine is only the latest example.
The goal of today’s conversation is to provide you with a framework for thinking about what this transition is going to look like, the challenges and opportunities that it will create along the way for governments, business, and investors, and what will be needed from all of us in order get it right.
You can access the transcript and intelligence report to this week’s conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
If you want access to our Hidden Forces genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can learn more at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you have further questions, feel free to send an email to info@hiddenforces.io, and Demetri or someone else from our team will get right back to you.
If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 10/31/2022
In Episode 280 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas shares the the audio from a live Q&A call that he recently hosted for members of the new Hidden Forces Genius tier with Wall Street Journal chief economics correspondent Nick Timiraos. These calls are part of our Investor Roundtable series and include discussions with experts who our members would like to hear more from and who they would like to have the chance to ask questions to directly. We had a chance to discuss some of the news coming out ahead of the FOMC meeting this week, including increased calls for the Fed to slow its rate of tightening and concerns about the Fed’s long-term independence in the face of political pressure.
You can access transcript to this investor roundtable by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
If you want access to our Hidden Forces genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can learn more at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you have further questions, feel free to send an email to info@hiddenforces.io, and Demetri or someone else from our team will get right back to you.
If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | CastBox | RSS Feed
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod
Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas
Episode Recorded on 10/26/2022