The Fertile Nigerian Blockchain Edition

Summary

Slate Money – The Fertile Nigerian Blockchain Edition (Feb 17, 2018): Detailed Summary

Episode Overview

This episode of Slate Money, hosted by Felix Salmon with regular Anna Szymanski and guest Erin Griffith (Wired), delivers a lively, skeptical exploration of three major business and finance topics: the wild world of cryptocurrencies (especially issues of fraud and the psychology of crypto followers), the economics of fertility and the gender wage gap, and a major corruption scandal involving oil rights in Nigeria. The tone is witty, sharp, and at times irreverent, with the hosts not afraid to call out nonsense, question dogmas, and point out both irony and deeper social implications.

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1. Cryptocurrency: Pump-and-Dumps, Tether, and True Believers

Key Segment: [05:03–26:23]

Pump-and-Dump Schemes in Crypto ([05:03])

• Listener question: A university student admits to making money in “pump and dump” crypto scams—buying obscure coins, hyping them online, then selling at a profit before the price craters.
• Is it illegal?
  • "Are pump and dump schemes illegal? Yes. Are they illegal in the cryptocurrency world? Unclear... The entire world of cryptocurrencies is extremely unregulated at this point." – Erin ([08:00])
  • Enforcement is lagging far behind the activity—regulators haven't caught up.

How Pump-and-Dump Works ([06:10])

• Buy a random altcoin on a small exchange.
• Promote it intensely on Reddit, Telegram, etc.
• Price rises; latecomers buy in, then “dumpers” sell out.
• Only the last buyers (the “greater fool”) lose.
• "The only reason to buy a coin is because it goes up in price." – Felix ([06:30])

The Tether Scandal ([08:32])

• Tether: A “stablecoin” pegged to the dollar, designed to reduce crypto volatility.
• Rumors abound about whether Tether is fully backed by real dollars, mirroring the flaws of the centralized banking systems crypto users claim to distrust.
• "The irony is that almost every part of it seems to mirror everything about central banks that cryptocurrency acolytes hate." – Erin ([09:42])

Technical Challenges and Regulatory Dilemmas

• Exchanges and wallets are frequently hacked or suffer from technical failures, e.g., Coinbase’s accidental repeated overcharges.
• U.S. exchanges like Coinbase are the most reputable; outside the U.S. it’s a “free-for-all.”
• The sector’s fundamental “trustless” premise is undermined by repeated, high-profile failures (e.g., Mt. Gox collapse).

Why Crypto Survives Despite Repeated Scandals ([11:46])

• Felix questions why “the whole thing isn’t dead” after so many trust failures.
• Erin responds: It’s a combination of short memories, technological optimism, and anti-institution populism.
• Crypto’s core supporters treat it as an article of faith, not evidence-based strategy. "People just like the idea of power to the people. And this represents that a little bit." – Erin ([13:11])

The “Religious” Mindset of Crypto Acolytes ([13:18])

• Crypto belief compared to religious fundamentalism: “There’s really nothing which can make them say anything else. There’s no—it’s an article of faith.” – Felix ([14:53])
• Even big, skeptical studies (e.g., Microsoft’s) are dismissed out-of-hand.

The Problem of Lifestyle Branding and Regulation ([15:28])

• Crypto is more than a currency—it's a lifestyle and identity.
• Community is highly resistant to regulation but increasingly recognizes some oversight is necessary to weed out bad actors.

James Altucher: The Crypto “Thought Leader” ([17:28])

• Example of how self-promoters exploit the hype cycle:
  • Altucher, a self-branded “crypto genius,” peddles expensive newsletters that may influence tiny markets.
  • He’s emblematic of a space where some make money via hustle, not conviction—by selling shovels during a gold rush, not mining gold.
• “The best example of this... [on Reddit]: are you guys finally admitting there’s some value to financial regulation because it is against the religion to want to invite any kind of regulation.” – Erin ([16:18])

Inequality in Crypto: The Hobbesian Landscape ([24:22])

• The distribution of crypto wealth is extremely unequal; most coins are owned by a tiny minority.
• Felix: "…something like terrifyingly Hobbesian about the entire blockchain world..."
• Anna: The platforms claim to democratize finance but in reality, inequality is as stark or worse than in the traditional system.

Notable Quotes:

• "If you say anything skeptical about bitcoin, you will be told by a million people you don’t understand." – Felix ([21:55])
• "...the emperor has no clothes idea; people don’t want to appear stupid, so they don’t criticize it." – Erin ([22:04])

[Transition] From Crypto to Babies ([26:23])

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2. Fertility, Gender, and the Danish Wage Gap ([26:23–39:06])

U.S. Fertility Trends ([26:44])

• U.S. fertility is declining, now below replacement (1.7 children per woman). Surveyed women want more kids—2.8 on average—but are not achieving it.
• Policies in Europe show state support (childcare, family leave) correlates with higher fertility.

Denmark Study: The Motherhood Penalty ([29:48])

• Massive, persistent income gap for women after children—doesn’t recover even in egalitarian Denmark.
• Explanations:
  • Some women “drop out” or shift to part-time post-baby, echoing the patterns of their own mothers.
  • “It’s entirely a function, or nearly entirely a function, of whether their mothers did the same thing.” – Felix ([32:52])
• Corporate structure may matter: e.g., more interchangeable, flexible positions reduce the wage gap (as shown among pharmacists).

Corporate and Policy Implications ([35:23])

• Egg freezing: Nice perk or tool to keep women working longer without family break interruption? The panel is skeptical about its real value to female empowerment.
• Anna: “Hopefully more change will come from the corporate level, as both men and women ask for more flexibility.” ([38:30])
• FT story: Germany's mining union pushing for hours reduction, not more pay, signals changing priorities.

Notable Quotes:

• “There are some babies that got bitcoin when they were born... now they’re sitting on huge gazillionaire babies... buying Lamborghini diapers or something.” – Felix ([26:34])
• “Egg freezing... does feel a little Orwellian...” – Erin ([36:37])

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3. Corruption in Nigeria – Oil, Bribes, and Failed Reform ([39:06–49:47])

Key Segment: [39:06–49:47]

The $1.1 Billion Oil Bribery Scandal ([39:08])

• 2011: Royal Dutch Shell and Eni (Italy) paid $1.3B to the Nigerian government for oil field rights—but $1.1B was siphoned to Malibu Oil & Gas and used for bribery, kickbacks, paying off politicians (including ex-President Goodluck Jonathan) and key ex-oil minister Dan Etete.
  • “You can’t get more cliched than former Nigerian oil minister winds up at the center of a multi-gazillion dollar bribery scandal.” – Felix ([40:27])
• Companies claim plausible deniability but evidence (cash deliveries, emails) is overwhelming.

Why It Matters

• The original “owners” of the oil field got it through political connections during the military dictatorship, then essentially extorted Shell and Eni long after.
• “Part of the reason that this guy was able to extort everyone was because he had protection in the current Nigerian government...” – Anna ([47:49])
• Money lost to corruption is money not spent on public services.
• Even global banks (including those in Switzerland, the UK, Lebanon) refused to process the suspicious funds.

The Investment Consequences

• Scandals like this erode investor confidence, increase credit risk, and undermine economic development.
• Nigeria's repeated anti-corruption campaigns haven’t produced much actual reform; such campaigns themselves can be a cover for political purges (cf. Saudi Arabia, China).

Notable Quotes:

• “If someone did something corrupt back in the ’90s under the military dictatorship, you don’t just go along with that in 2011 and say... I guess that corrupt thing was done, so now we have to pay this guy...” – Felix ([46:49])

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4. Numbers Round and Memorable Moments ([50:33–End])

Anna: The Jacob Zuma Charges ([50:33])

• 783: Number of corruption charges against ex-South African president Jacob Zuma.
• Despite South Africa’s advancements post-apartheid, inequality remains stark.

Erin: Cryptocurrency Heists ([52:30])

• $50 million (250 Lamborghinis!): Value stolen in a phishing scam using Google Ads for blockchain.info, particularly devastating for underbanked populations in countries like Nigeria.
• The flaw: fake sites collect credentials, then drain digital wallets—highlighting crypto’s ongoing security and trust issues.

Felix: The Overpriced “FDA Arbitrage” Drug ([56:48])

• $2,979: Cost of Duexis, a pill combining over-the-counter Advil and Pepcid, which would otherwise cost about $15. The scam is to package old drugs together and charge insurers a fortune.
• Insurance makes customers insensitive to price, incentivizing these pharmaceutical arbitrages.

Notable Quotes:

• “[On crypto ATMs] Why do—who uses Bitcoin ATMs? They always just say, ‘Well, drug dealers obviously. Obviously.’” – Erin ([56:37])
• “This is the classic FDA arbitrage that somehow if you combine these two things into one pill, you can charge thousands of dollars for stuff you can just buy over the counter.” – Felix ([58:13])

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5. Timestamps for Key Segments

• Crypto Pump-and-Dump and Regulation: [05:03–14:53]
• Tether, Trust, and True Believers: [08:32–15:28]
• Altucher's Crypto Empire and Hype Cycle: [17:28–24:22]
• Inequality in Crypto: [24:22–26:23]
• Fertility, the Wage Gap, and Denmark Study: [26:23–39:06]
• Nigerian Oil Bribery Scandal: [39:06–49:47]
• Numbers Round (Zuma, Crypto Heist, Drug Profiteering): [50:33–End]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

Crypto

• “Are pump and dump schemes illegal? Yes. Are they illegal in the cryptocurrency world? Unclear...” – Erin ([08:00])
• “The only reason to buy a coin is because it goes up in price.” – Felix ([06:30])
• “If you say anything skeptical about bitcoin, you will be told by a million people you don’t understand.” – Felix ([21:55])
• “Crypto is a lifestyle brand… decentralization is better… A world without institutions is better.” – Erin ([15:37])

Fertility & Gender

• “Some babies got bitcoin when they were born… they’re billionaire toddlers… buying Lamborghini diapers.” – Felix ([26:34])
• “It’s entirely a function… of whether their mothers did the same thing.” (on the Danish wage gap) – Felix ([32:52])

Nigeria & Corruption

• “You can’t get more cliched than former Nigerian oil minister winds up at the center of a multi-gazillion dollar bribery scandal.” – Felix ([40:27])
• “If someone did something corrupt back in the ’90s under the military dictatorship, you don’t just go along with that in 2011...” – Felix ([46:49])

Numbers Round

• “It’s not the biggest hack… but, you know… this is an easy way to lose your money. You have to…” – Erin ([56:21])
• “This is the classic FDA arbitrage…” – Felix ([58:13])

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Closing Thoughts

The episode is packed with sharp, entertaining analysis and skepticism about much-hyped trends (crypto, workplace gender equality policies, anti-corruption drives). It’s clear-eyed about the persistence of inequality—whether in blockchain, the boardroom, or resource-rich developing countries—and critical of financial fads, regulatory avoidance, and faux-progressive corporate perks. Regular listeners and newcomers alike will leave with a hearty dose of perspective (and perhaps a few laughs at the expense of crypto “thought leaders”).

Transcript

[A]

The following podcast contains explicit language. Hello. This is going to be such a great episode. Welcome. Welcome to the fertile Nigerian blockchain edition of Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week. It is going to be a fun episode because not only is Anna Shymansky here.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

But we have the one and only Erin Griffith.

[C]

Hi.

[A]

Hello. Erin, introduce yourself.

[C]

You are now at Wired, a senior writer at Wired.

[A]

So exciting. Erin and I go way back.

[B]

Oh yeah, we sat next to each other or on the same floor at.

[A]

Reuters many, many years ago. And when Erin was writing for that noble publication, Pe Hub.

[B]

Yeah, that's a niche covering leveraged loans during the financial crisis for a very niche private equity blog.

[A]

It was a great blog. Not enough.

[B]

There's still a lot actually.

[A]

Yeah, that was, that was where Dan Primett got his. Made his bones before he went on to great things.

[B]

That's true. I think they have narrowed their focus a little bit more now.

[C]

They've narrowed it even more.

[B]

Yeah, no, it's true. To be about the middle market of private equity, which I'm not sure if you're aware that the private equity industry has a middle market. Everyone knows Blackstone, kkr, but there's a whole host of firms that invest, you know, that have, that are like 400 to $800 million and they, you know, they buy like sort of smaller family owned industrial businesses, although I feel like they've got to be running out of those now.

[A]

It's, it's niche. And so if you ever want to really discover Nichi Financial nerd nerdy Dom, don't be listening to Slate Money because we just talk about big hand wavy issues. Go to PE Hub where neither Dan nor Aaron still writes, but other people do and you get to find out about middle market leveraged loans. Yes, but we are not going to talk about middle market leveraged loans. We are going to talk about Nigeria, we are going to talk about fertility and we are going to talk about the blockchain. Because we felt that for all that we've been making, you know, snide and snarky crypto bashing asides on this show for a while. We haven't actually properly done a crypto bashing segment.

[B]

So on promise that there won't be plenty of those as well though.

[C]

Yes, but this will be a more straightforward smackdown.

[A]

This will be a straightforward. Well, we will see that there are interesting questions and there will be interesting answers and we're going to try and work out what is going on with the crypto as it's technically known.

[B]

Yeah. And I should actually say this. My. My cryptocurrency friends have corrected me on this. The blockchain is incorrect. It's. It' all block. There are many blockchains. So saying the blockchain makes you sound like you don't know what you're talking about. Plenty of people make this mistake. But I'm not putting.

[A]

I'm not putting. I'm not putting. I'm not putting Nigeria on the blockchain. I'm putting Nigeria on a blockchain. Now. Now I find. Now I am.

[C]

Now we're insiders.

[A]

Now we're insiders. Exactly. But before we get onto any of that, we have a fun thing on PI Day. Anna, what's PI Day?

[C]

That would be March 14th.

[A]

March 14th. 3, 1, 4. On PI Day, the entire Sleep Money crew. That's Anna and me and Dan and Jordan and anyone else who's listening to this, who wants to come along, we're all going to go along to the Public Theater on Lafayette street in Manhattan, and we're gonna go check out this play called the Low Road, which is about inequality and awesome stuff. So there's a bit of a sort of sleep money tie in there, and it looks kind of amazing. So we're psyched about this. And so we're just kind of putting the word out that if you want to go see the Low Road at the Public Theater, you should probably do it on PI Day for two reasons. Number one, we're all going to be there and we'll be in the pub afterwards and we will have drinks and we can hang out. And number two, we have a promo code for you if you want to use the code Money14 on the website. It only works on PI Day. It doesn't work on any other day. But if you go to the Public Theater website and use the promo code money14, you can get super discounted, like, $30 tickets. And so as many of you guys who want to come along, come along. We'll have drinks and we'll. It'll be fun. Anyway, on with the show. So we should move on to the crypto. We got an email from Thomas in Oxford, England, and he sent us a question. So, Aaron Griffith, can you answer our listener question?

[B]

I am probably not qualified to answer listener questions unless it's about custodianship, a very specific area I've been exploring, or perhaps startups that pivot to blockchain.

[C]

But you're more qualified than we are.

[B]

I will try my best.

[A]

Try your best. The Question is, I'm a professor and I was just talking with a student who sheepishly admitted he was having a great time and making a bunch of money doing cryptocurrency pump and dump schemes. I pretended this was totally normal and quickly googled it. Oh my God, this is a thing. And it seems widespread. I'd love to learn more. Is it illegal? Is it really a big thing?

[B]

Well, I think all of us could answer the question, are pump and dump schemes illegal? Yes. Are they illegal in the cryptocurrency world? Unclear. But I do love that the student was investing for pleasure and profit.

[A]

So to be clear, the way that a cryptocurrency pump and dump scheme works is you invent some kind of a token, or you just find some kind of a token which is trading for a low price.

[B]

Usually altcoins, which are not like, you know, the main cryptos like Bitcoin or Ether, like some random tiny little coin.

[A]

That'S listed somewhere or even or barely listed. You can only trade it on some obscure exchange. But in any case, what you do is you buy up a bunch of it and then you go all over Reddit and similar places or telegram groups, is a very popular telegram groups and you start talking about how amazing this coin is and oh my God, look how much it's going up in price. And everyone goes, this is an amazing coin, is going up in price. And then they see it go up in price and everyone else goes, oh my God, this is an amazing coin. It goes up in price because the only reason to buy a coin is because it goes up in price. And so if this coin in the kind of weird self fulfilling prophecy just winds up going up in price, that is in and of itself reason to buy it. And then it goes up in price. And then you sell all the coins that you bought before you started the campaign and then you make lots of money.

[B]

Except for unless you're one of the people who was buying it just because you thought it would continue to go.

[C]

Up in price, which is the reason that most people are buying.

[A]

But that's. But that's. It works. And lest you fail to sell it before it goes down in price.

[B]

Right, right, exactly. So the people doing the scheme have to have some suckers who come along with them.

[A]

Well, the point being that the only people who are the suckers are the people who go in at the end. Like if you're a sucker at the beginning, you can actually make money just by drafting on other people's.

[C]

Yes, that's why there's always a greater fool, the one that comes after you.

[A]

So. So, yeah, this is an interesting question. This has obviously been happening quite a lot. Two questions, I guess. One is just how widespread is this? And two, should people doing this be worried about going to jail?

[B]

I mean, I don't think. I mean, this has been. This idea has been around since, like, the boiler room days. And I guess people have gotten in trouble for it at some point for misrepresenting or perhaps pretending to have inside information. The whole entire world of cryptocurrencies is extremely unregulated at this point, and it's moving so quickly that regulators are just kind of struggling to even make statements that scare people. I don't. I don't know if people could actually go to jail for this. It seems like there's a lot bigger crimes happening in the cryptocurrency world that regulators will focus on first.

[C]

This does remind me of one of the recent scandals involving tether.

[A]

Okay, so tether is amazing. But before we get into the scandal involving tether, first of all, because at some point when there was that big stock market crash, or around the same time as the stock market crash, there was a bitcoin crash. And although there's absolutely no reason for bitcoin going up or going down, there was a bunch of talk about the reason why bitcoin was going down was something, something. Tether, something. So now, Erin, you can tell us what tether is and. Yeah, what is tether?

[B]

Tether is a protocol, I believe, that is tied to the dollar, and it is meant to smooth out all of the volatility in the bitcoin world. That's a very layman's term.

[A]

And somewhere along the line, there's a company which claims to have a bank account in, like, Denmark or Holland or something like that, where they claim to have hundreds of millions of dollars which are backing up all of these tokens because.

[B]

Which very much goes against the idea of bitcoin.

[C]

My favorite part of this scandal is that almost every part of it seems to mirror everything about central banks that cryptocurrency acolytes hate.

[B]

I mean, that is. That is what's happening in every piece of it. I mean, even the exchanges, even the wallets which are now getting hacked and which are running into their own security problems. Yesterday we saw that Coinbase was accidentally overcharging people by 17 to 50 times, just, like, taking repeat deposits. And this is something that if a bank did that, people would be losing their minds. And Coinbase had Been doing it for two weeks before they even told anybody about it.

[A]

And to be clear, Coinbase is. I mean, it's hard to be definitive about this, but I would say that Coinbase is the biggest and most established and most blue chip of all of the.

[B]

In the US I think outside of the US that's not the case. But in the US for sure they are. Outside of the US it's just a free for all.

[A]

But. But exactly. Outside of the U.S. it's a free for all. I mean, is there anyone even outside the US who has the kind of copper bottom standing, well, blockchain.info I'm not.

[B]

Sure if you're familiar with them. They're one of the other. They're based in London, I mean, on purpose, actually. So that way they can sort of avoid some of the regulatory dangers and uncertainty going on here. Because some of the European countries have been a little bit faster to adopt this stu, or been more clear about their regulations of it. They're pretty well known. And there's just a ton of Asian exchanges that have been around for a while and have had various run ins.

[A]

Yeah, of course, the first and biggest Asian exchange was Mount Gox, which went spectacularly belly up. And what happened with Mount Gox was that everyone saw that these very central parts of the bitcoin and blockchain economy were all built on sand. You couldn't trust anything. And that was the end of bitcoin. And basically then no one ever saw a cryptocurrency ever again.

[B]

And that is sort of the big overhanging challenge here is credibility.

[A]

So that's my question. Like after Mount Gox dies, how does this entire ecosystem continue? Like, why didn't that kill off the whole thing?

[B]

Because bitcoin still existed. But what are you. Do you think regulations should have killed.

[A]

Off the whole thing? No, I'm saying no. I'm talking about like the fact that when you're dealing with a trustless system like bitcoin, where the whole thing is based on mistrust, and you wake up one morning and you realize that you can't trust Mount Gox, which at the time was by far the biggest and most important bitcoin exchange, and you suddenly realize that in a trustless system you can't trust anyone, you can't trust Coinbase, you can't trust wallets, you can't trust your own self really, to keep your coins safe. At that point, don't you just give up and realize this whole thing is incredibly foolish and it's never going to work.

[B]

Well, I think memories are short. A couple years have gone by since the Mount Gox thing happened and a lot of technology has been built up around the blockchain. A blockchain use cases have emerged and people trust institutions less than they trust each other or themselves. And I think that has sort of been building. You could, you know, attribute that to sort of this kind of populist, anti government institution wave that we've been riding for the last couple of years. You could connect it to a lot of things, but I think people just like the idea of power to the people. And this represents that a little bit. Yeah.

[C]

And I think what we were talking about before, how a lot of people who are crypto acolytes are almost like fundamentalist, like Christians in the sense of they will not accept any.

[A]

I remember having this conversation years and years ago with Barry Silbert, who was one of the sort of early financializers of bitcoin. And I asked him very clearly, I was like, barry, is there anything at all? Is there like any hypothetical event or piece of evidence which could make you change your mind on like the future awesomeness of blockchain? And he was basically like, no, I'm a. I'm a hodler, you know, oh God.

[B]

Well, so I mean, but. And you meant like nuclear war? Anything because, you know, if we don't have an Internet connection, you can't use blockchain or bitcoin.

[A]

But it was really hard. It was really hard to sort of what the. Okay, so the thing we're talking about here was a year long study by Microsoft which came to the conclusion that blockchain based technologies are really not everything that they're cracked up to be.

[B]

And it was not scalable in a way that it was useful for them to use in certain parts of their business. They determined that.

[A]

And then the reaction from the bitcoin true believers was these idiots have no idea what they're talking about.

[B]

Microsoft hasn't been relevant for years. Why should we care what they say? They didn't study it. Right. They're not using it. Right. There was. I mean, yeah, the reaction is always. Is so immediate. It's like the. It is very much religious, like you were saying.

[A]

And the weird thing is, as Anna was saying, is that there's really nothing which can make them say anything else. There's no. It's an article of faith. And what is it like that creates this kind of fun, you know, unthinking faith?

[C]

Yeah, it almost seems similar to when you have certain people also in political parties who no matter what reality you show to them, they will say, no, that doesn't fit into my reality. So I'm going to explain it away.

[B]

Let me go to my Reddit board and find an answer to this for you and I will come back and present it to you.

[C]

And part of the reason I think this is important is that I think some people in this community, it's not just a currency they use. As Aaron, you were saying, it's, it's like an entire identity.

[B]

Oh yeah, it's a lifestyle brand. I mean, you buy into Bitcoin because you have adopted, you've, you know, you don't necessarily have to be on Reddit. You don't necessarily aspire to buy a Lamborghini. You don't necessarily have to like buy into all of this stuff, but you definitely have adopted this lifestyle of, or this, this belief of decentralization is better. You know, institution, a world without institutions is better. That this thing can empower, can be a revolution is the next Internet, all of that. You've bought into that and you sort of want to project it in every aspect of your life and you really don't want to be told anything otherwise. The best example of this that I can think of was a month around, a month ago when, you know, the really big sell off was happening and bitcoin was, price of bitcoin was free falling. There were some really interesting conversations inside Reddit board, the R slash bitcoin. And one of them was basically this kind of slow realization of someone saying, yeah, there's too many altcoins out there, too many of them are scammers. Maybe, maybe someone should, should do something so that way not everybody can, can mint and mint a coin. And then there was somebody who responded. It was like, wait a minute, are you guys, are you guys finally admitting that there's some value to financial regulation because it is against the religion to want to invite any kind of regulation. I think that might be changing though, or at least I'm hop, because it is in the best interest of the entire bitcoin blockchain cryptocurrency community to restore credibility and to have some regulations that maybe wipe out some of the bad actors or that help them to avoid some of these scams that are going to continually make headlines and overall hurt the idea and make it seem like this crazy sort of Mt. Gox style novelty of scammers and bad people that will kind of keep all of the credible people out of it.

[A]

So in terms of like high profile. Well, I don't know what the word evangelists. I need, I need to, I need to bring this guy up because I'm going to use, I'm going to use the word. I apologize to all listeners. If you have children in the room, cover their ears. James Altuchir.

[B]

I thought you were going to say the phrase thought leader which I also, as a phrase that I also think should not be uttered in front of children.

[A]

What like this guy who's been floating around the blogosphere and the kind of.

[B]

You know, he's a lifestyle sort of like get self help guru. He's got tons of best selling books, he's got a background of being, you know, at a hedge fund and he's a compelling blogger, he's got a big following and he has in the last year, a couple years decided that he's going to refashion himself as a, as a crypto genius. Literally the words crypto genius are on his ads. And if you've ever googled anything related to this stuff, you'll be chased around the Internet by these ads forever. I was actually just reading one of my old stories on Wired and it was about cryptocurrency and there was an altucher ad on it.

[A]

And so how. Yeah, like he had. Okay. The interesting thing about Altuchi is that he's been floating around, as you say, for long before this whole crypto thing came up and somehow managed to build himself some credibility by telling a lot of stories about how he was incredibly untrustworthy and would built people.

[B]

He loves to talk about failure.

[A]

Yeah, that is, I have failed many, many times. So you should trust me. It's like.

[C]

Okay, so this, I actually, I read your story that you wrote about seeing him.

[B]

Yeah. He owns a comedy club or is part owner of a comedy club. And he hosted a debate with a fellow financial advice guru who is a gold bull named James Rickard. And they debated wearing boxing ro gold versus bitcoin.

[C]

And one of the things I found really interesting, one of the details was when for no reason whatsoever he started talking about how his daughters were too dumb to understand bitcoin.

[B]

And I think it was maybe him just trying to be funny because like it was so like kind of shocking and weird and a little appalling that people laughed. And he just like kept going with it. And he actually has a little bit of a Trumpian way of speaking where it's like you say this thing and then you kind of go. And you keep saying it and then you go further and further and further and then you don't really remember what you're talking about. And it's funny, he made a couple other comments that were kind of sexist about like the fact that there are no women that buy into bitcoin. And, you know, that's maybe true, but maybe a little bit of a stereotype and if you continually repeat it, it's not going to make women feel any more welcome. He. It was very random. He was trying to make the point that young people don't understand or care about cryptocurrencies, which I don't think is true. I think they're adopting it a lot.

[A]

Including our listener, Tom's student who like, is this I. If you're pumping, that's a hustle, though.

[B]

That's not. That's almost less that. He might not be a hodler, he might not be a true believer. He sounds more like a hustler and hustling.

[A]

And you can do that. Right? Like the bitcoin space is big enough now that it's possible to make actual money Just on the outskirts of bitcoin. You don't actually need to own much or certainly you don't need to hold. You can just kind of run ads if you're James Altucher or you can pump and dump like you're this.

[B]

Well, actually, we should say that Altucher has been accused. There's been some reports of actually kind of doing pump and dump style schemes. Because what he's doing with all of these ads is trying to convince people to pay him $200 up to $2,000 for research reports that he writes that will reveal the next bitcoin or the next cryptocurrency that's coming up. And he has enough of a following that if he tells a bunch of people buy this like tiny little altcoin, it will drive the price up. And who knows what he owns or what is happening behind the SC there, but it seems extremely shady, right?

[C]

Yeah. And I think this is one of the central points about bitcoin in much of cryptocurrency is that fundamentally nobody understands it fully. People will tell you they do. The more they're in the community, they'll explain, they'll use lots of terms. We all do this. But I am thoroughly convinced that nobody fully understands it. It's like really complicated financial products.

[A]

The One thing I'm 100% convinced, financial and technology. If you say anything skeptical about bitcoin, you will be told by a million people you don't understand.

[B]

And that's What?

[C]

I mean, it's this emperor has no clothes idea that people don't want to appear stupid, so then they don't want to criticize it. And then you. And if somebody tells you, well, the reason that this seemingly obvious thing isn't true is because you're too stupid, how do you respond to that?

[B]

This is very prominent, I think, especially at aging Fortune 500 companies where they don't want to be the one. They don't want to be Andy Grove in the early 90s, who says, oh, intel doesn't think phones are going to be a big deal. We're not going to mobile business phones. That's a stupid idea. And then, you know, obviously fast forward. So they're eager to speak the language and at least pretend that they're in on the next hot cool thing.

[A]

Are you subtweeting Kodak here?

[B]

Kodak or Atari or I mean, even. Do you remember Hooters, the parent company of Hooters, which had just filed up for bankruptcy and they had, I don't know, like a market cap of like $10 million, something very low. And they just like whispered the word blockchain in one of their press releases and their stock completely shot up. I'm sure it's, you know, back down lower now, but.

[A]

But the interesting thing about Kodak is that it's stock. They whispered the word blockchain with, as far as I can make out, nothing really backing it up.

[B]

They did a little more than whisper. They were at CES and they had a physical mining rig. Yeah, mining rig. Which a lot of people on Twitter were just like, this is a joke. You have got this. And they had these guides that said, you will make $3,000 every single year. And it doesn't even make sense because as we know, bitcoin becomes harder and more expensive to mine over time.

[A]

But in any case, Kodak comes out with this rig and various other stuff, which is ludicrous on its face. The stock pops in much the way that stocks do pop when the word blockchain gets associated with a company. But the weird thing to me was that it didn't go back down.

[B]

Oh, it did though. I was looking at it. I mean, it's still about double what it was. It was trading around 3. Went up to maybe like 12. Now it's now like around 7. So it still worked. Yeah, they did, in the attention. You know, we're talking about Kodak. Like, would we be. What other thing would make us talk about Kodak?

[A]

So I think the one thing which I want to sort of just grip onto because it's very hard amongst all of these different coins and tokens and companies. And it all seems to be a mess.

[B]

It's very easy to just be like, I don't get it.

[A]

Yeah. But the one thing which I do get is that there's something like terrifyingly Hobbesian about the entire blockchain world or bitcoin world or whatever you want to call it, crypto world, especially when it comes to the degree of inequality that you see there. That because everything is written on the blockchain. You can look at the blockchain, you can see that 0.01% of the holders of these currencies own like 95% of the currency. And there's this just massive, massive degree of inequality which makes, you know, some kind of sub Saharan despotism look perfectly equitable. So.

[B]

And it's ironic then that it has this image of power to the people, decentralization. Anybody, you know, we're going to rise up.

[A]

Is there any reason to believe that in any kind of best case scenario for this entire weird crypto economy that the degree of inequality would ever improve or like that this thing is not just baked in from the beginning?

[B]

Well, I think the creators of a lot of the other coins would say that they're trying to fix that. Be it like ether or any of these ICOs, that's an opportunity for you to then buy into.

[A]

Isn't the distribution of ether just as unequal as the distribution of bitcoin?

[B]

Yeah, but with ether, then you can hold your own token sales, and people are creating lots of new tokens based off of that platform.

[A]

Aren't all of those tokens also just as unequal this bitcoin?

[B]

Okay, yes. All right, I see where you're going, and I can never win this. But like, I'm just trying to argue why I think that people would view it that way. But I agree. I mean, if, when, when you have a market, especially like with bitcoin, where some of these major holders can just move the market whenever they want to and there's definitely manipulation happening, I think that's. That. That just feels unfair.

[A]

Okay, so enough about bitcoin. Let's talk about babies.

[C]

Not many babies.

[A]

The good thing about babies is that the amount of inequality in babies is relatively low.

[B]

I actually know some babies that got bitcoin when they were born, you know, many years ago, and now they're like, you know, sitting on huge gazillionaire babies. Yes, exactly.

[A]

They're billionaire Toddlers they're like buying Lamborghini diapers or something. Oh yeah, I love that. So I mean, it's the classic hoddled gift, right?

[B]

Well, right. You have to hold it until at least you're 18. Who knows where it'll be?

[A]

You know, I try and give babies bottles of wine because I like. Because I'm like, nah, you know, when you drink it, it'll be nice and aged. But no, I should totally be giving them dogecoin. Happy Year of the Dog everyone. By the way, I'm very excited about the Year of the Dog anyway. Babies. America's fertility rate is plunging. It always used to be like the one place in the developed world which was having a relatively high fertility rate and was above replacement rate and this kind of stuff, even as the Italians and the Irish and Europeans in general were seeing their populations inexorably decline. That's not true anymore.

[C]

Yes. So there are a few things interesting about a few studies that have come out recently now. One is showing that now for Americans women, the average fertility rate is 1.7, so below 2. And also women, not only are they having fewer babies, but they want to be having more. So the gap between what women are saying they want and what they are having is actually growing. So women are saying they want 2.8, which I think we can round up to three children. And yet they aren't able to, or they aren't for some reason. And if you're interested in these studies about fertility, I would really recommend reading Sarah Clifford Vox. She's written quite a bit on this and I think there are many reasons. I think the most obvious for women who are in higher socioeconomic levels is most likely going to be education, marrying later. And for women who in lower socioeconomic levels, there are also a number of factors. One is the availability of better forms of contraception. Frankly, these kind of reversible but long acting contraceptives have also massively reduced the or not massively, but have reduced the rate of unplanned pregnancies.

[A]

And what. And the sort of dirty secret of the high US fertility rate was always that the difference between America and Europe was largely in unplanned pregnancies rather than in planned ones.

[C]

It's interesting when you do compare us to Europe and you also compare within Europe and this is something I think we'll probably talk about more when we get into the other study, but that policies really matter, that when you look at Europe and you see where there are higher fertility rates in, in I think France, if you look at rates of fertility in France or in Scandinavia versus in Italy, they're significantly higher. In places where it's easier to have children, where they have more family friendly policies, where women are more able to both work and have children, where governments make that harder, fewer women have babies. We see this in Japan as well.

[A]

So, okay, so let's, let's talk about Denmark. It was Denmark, right?

[C]

It was Denmark.

[A]

It was Denmark. So this is the economic angle here is basically this thing which is true in most every country, but certainly in Denmark, which is this massive, massive discontinuity in incomes between men and women after they have babies, that when men have babies, their incomes just keep on going on the same trajectory as if they didn't have babies.

[C]

And actually it can help them, they can get a boost from having children.

[A]

It's, it's, but like to a first approximation, it's basically exactly the same. And if men, and if women don't have babies, their income trajectory is basically the same. And men and women, to a first approximation, there are small differences, but they basically are on exactly the same trajectory for as long as they don't have babies. And then after they have babies, men and women, men continue on that trajectory and women without babies continue on that trajectory. But if you have a baby and you're a woman, then your income plunges and it never recovers.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And is there a policy that they have that, that they attribute this to?

[C]

Well, this, in the, in this particular study in Denmark, this was actually really interesting because Denmark is what many people on the left in America would love America to be. They have it's 52 weeks of paid maternity paternity leave. They have very affordable universal childcare till the age of six. They have lots of vacation time. It seems like the ideal place to raise a child. Nevertheless, there continues to be this gap between the wages of men and women. And it's clear that it's related to having children. And this is interesting because this raises the question of, well, what do we do? Because if in this society where in theory they're doing everything right, you still have this gap.

[B]

Does that just come down to a perception?

[A]

No, it's actually behavior. And the really, really fascinating thing about this study is that it's not all women. Some women, after they have babies, basically continue on their earning paths just like men do. And having the baby is something they do along the way, just like having a baby is something that a man does along the way. And it's, that's economically not dissimilar. And then Other women do this thing where they effectively drop out of the workforce for, you know, a couple of years, or they go part time or there's, there's a big sort of step change in their lives and they're like, okay, economically speaking, I'm, I'm just choosing to become less of a full time employee and more of a, you know, spend much more time being a mother. And the new thing in this study that I hadn't seen before is that the difference between the women who work less and earn less and the women who work more and earn more is entirely a function, or nearly entirely a function of whether their mothers did the same thing.

[B]

I think that's fascinating. Yeah.

[C]

And I would say that, frankly, didn't surprise me at all because it seems like in a society like Denmark where in many ways you're kind of, of controlling for economic necessity, then whether or not you continue to work at the same level in the same role after would seem to be more based on personal choice and probably what you grew up with.

[A]

And it had nothing to do with what they're, you know, what the father's mothers had done, and it was only a function of what the mother's mother had done.

[B]

I just, I find that interesting because I feel like so many people, at least in my generation, this is completely anecdotal, make their decisions based on. It's a generational thing. It's like what you are sort of taught in school and what you like, all of the, like, you go girl sort of messages that you get all throughout growing up and, and to learn that it actually comes, you know, back to your parents. It feels like very Freudian and feels like very fate is all set out for you. And it like, feels like you can't make your own decision and it takes agency out of it. That's why I don't like it.

[A]

And no, and I think that's absolutely right, that, like, does this mean, Anna, that that it really. These wage gaps are kind of like biologically baked into our societies.

[C]

So this is where I think some other studies are interesting. So there are some studies done in the pharmaceutical industry and, well, in, particularly in pharmacies, because it used to be when there were mom and pop pharmacies, there was a lot more of a wage gap between male and female pharmacists then when it switched to being more chained. So essentially nobody cared who was giving them their prescription. It could be anyone. The wage gap almost went away entirely. And this suggests that having the type of occupation where you can have more Flexible hours and workers are frankly more interchangeable in a way, could actually be really beneficial for women because then that can enable them during the years where, I mean, yes, men are doing more, but women are probably always going to be doing more during some of those years when they're having kids. They can have more flexible schedules, yet continue to be in the workforce. And so I find that interesting in terms of thinking of, well, what do we do next with this information as opposed to just kind of throwing up our hands and saying, well, if your mother didn't work, you will then will certainly not be continuing on. What can you do? I think this suggests, well, maybe if the culture and corporate culture potentially would start shifting more towards, towards these kind of, this kind of flexibility, that ultimately this could be good for women.

[B]

I think you're right that this does have to come from the corporations, because I don't necessarily see a lot of these changes being made at a government level. One thing that I think is really interesting about this is I was just reading Emily Chang's book Brotopia, and she talks a lot about how the tech companies have been super out in front about providing services to women to help them deal with, you know, difficult pregnancies, to their providing egg freezing services. Now, a lot, a lot of all the big tech companies have started doing this, but they have done almost nothing in terms of dealing or helping the women with the childcare after they're born. There's not really daycare services. There's not really like, you know, a lot of flexibility around these jobs and how that is a huge gap and which is likely leading to a lot of the women who leave STEM do it in their 30s when they're kind of at that child, childbearing, are like about ready to have kids. And so I think that that's gotta be the next step for a lot of the companies, especially tech companies, that think that they're the most progressive of everyone.

[A]

I need to come in and ask, you know, in the absence of Cathy o', Neill, I need to, I need to ask the Cathy o' Neill question here, which is like egg freezing. Is that in any way like a feminist thing or is that just a way of keeping the women like in the workforce and working and not having babies yet?

[B]

Yeah, it does feel a little Orwellian. Like I, I, I think there was a lot of controversy and I think when you talked, I think Facebook was to do this, and when you talk to Sheryl Sandberg, you know, the reason they did it was because there was one Employee who found out she had cancer and she couldn't have kids unless she froze her eggs now, but she couldn't afford it. And so Sheryl Sandberg was like, of course Facebook will pay for this. And then realized, well, we shouldn't just do it for cancer victims. Let's do it for everyone. And then. And it seemed just like very. A common sense, kind of nice perk to provide. But then all the tech companies did and everyone started asking, wait a minute, you're just trying to, like, exploit them before they have kids, and then you're not helping them care for the kids they have them or try to help them put that, Put it off for as long as possible. So, I mean, I, I applaud the. That's fantastic. It's very expensive and fertility treatments are very expensive. And it's great that companies are wanting to help people, you know, in their building families, instead of just saying, no, we only. We're not even going to bother. Let's just hire young bros who are nowhere close to starting families. I think it's great, but I agree that it does kind of look bad.

[C]

Yeah. And I think, I also think it's important for this probably to happen at the corporate level because when we've seen some of the policies, seemingly progressive policies that other countries have instituted, they can have negative effects. So in a lot of Scandinavian countries where you do have really long maternity leaves, that also is often what causes more of a gap, because first, if you offer longer maternity leaves, people are going to take them. So then they're out of the workforce potentially for a year, two years. And also employers know that. And so when they're thinking, who am I going to promote? Who am I going to put on certain tracks? It will also lead to fewer women in kind of management executive roles. So having a very, very. I'm not saying we shouldn't institute. I mean, we obviously should have paid maternity leave in this country, but.

[B]

And paternity leave.

[C]

Agreed, agreed. But I do think, hopefully more change will come, I think, from the corporate level, as both men and women ask for more flexibility. There was actually an article in the Financial Times, I think, yesterday about how in Germany there was this, like a mining union and they asked for fewer hours as opposed to more pay because they wanted to spend it with their families. And I think that's a really good sign because when both men and women are asking for it, then women won't be the only ones who are penalized.

[B]

Solidarity.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Let's talk about corruption in Nigeria, shall we?

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Because it's been a little while since we had a big Nigerian corruption story. There was, there have been big attempts to deal with Nigerian corruption over the years with predictable effects of absolutely nothing. But this one, this latest one has now managed to wind up with like big Western Oil Company CEOs being crazy in the lead charge.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

So that's really what makes this different. It's also just huge. So I.

[A]

There was, there was like the big headline number here is $1.1 billion.

[C]

Yes. Because so Royal Dutch Shell in 2011, Royal Dutch Shell in any this Italian company paid the Nigerian government $1.3 billion for the rights to this like, prized offshore oil field. But 1.1 billion of that was then funneled to accounts for this company called Malibu Oil and Gas, from which it was used to pay kickbacks to any executives, from which it was paid to a number of Nigerian politicians, including allegedly former president. Good luck, Jonathan. And it was used to pay this guy, Dana Tete, who is kind of at the center of this entire controversy as a former oil minister.

[A]

So I mean like, you can't get more cliched than like former Nigerian oil minister winds up at the center of a multi gazillion dollar bribery scandal. But so there's some fascinating stuff here going on. Number one, the thing which really jumped out at me was the official any defense, any being the Italian oil company, the official any defense is look, we just paid the Nigerian government $1.3 billion for this oil field. Right. And after that, what happens to the money is nothing to do with us. We didn't bribe anything. We just gave it to the Nigerian government. What were we, how were we supposed to control whether there was bribes being done after that point? Which would be a hell of a lot more believable if it wasn't for the fact that in any executive got $50 million in cash delivered to his Abuja house.

[C]

Yes. Also, if there weren't countless emails and like recorded phone calls having people talking about it, it's, it's absurd. And, but hey, I will say one of the good things is that these executives are actually being charged. I think the current and former CEO of any are both being charged, which is not something that normally happens.

[A]

So here's my, here's my question is on the one hand, it's ludicrous. Of course they knew that this was going on. On the other hand, how do you actually, what were they meant to have done? What you have here is a situation where, where this former oil minister claimed that he owned the Oil field, which, under various readings of the law, he probably did. And so what he basically said was, look, if you want to buy this oil field, light will power to you, but you have to pay me for it. And then eventually a deal was done where of the $1.3 billion that went to the Nigerian government for the oil field, $1.1 billion went to him. Him for the oil field, because he colorably owned it.

[C]

He was given it by a military.

[A]

Dictator, and he was given it by a military dictator. But at that point, on the one hand, yeah, it's extremely dirty and nasty. So I can absolutely just understand anyone who would say, listen, you just don't do that. You don't wind up doing deals where former oil ministers get paid a billion dollars for an oil field which they only owned because they were gifted it by a former military dictator.

[B]

Can I ask you a question, though? Was that expensive? Is that what they would normally have paid for it, or was it an egregious overpayment?

[C]

I wouldn't say it was an egregious overpayment, but it was high.

[A]

I mean, they wanted to buy it for 200 million or something, but that.

[C]

Was only 50% of it.

[A]

And then the price kept on going up and up and up.

[C]

Got it.

[A]

And certainly, yeah, the price of oil fields is like, you know, you kind of put your finger in the air and you make up a number.

[B]

It would seem that there'd be a market for it, given how scarce they are.

[A]

But I think what happened is the Shell in particular kind of thought that it had the inside track on getting this oil field.

[B]

Well, they had the suitcases full of money.

[A]

And then what happened is various Russians and other people started sniffing around, and they started getting very scared that someone else would get the oil field.

[C]

Yeah, the French and the Chinese were both. And this is actually, to me, somewhat interesting part of this story is that this all started. Well, initially it started in the late 90s, but then it really started in around 2002. And then for about 10 years, Royal Dutch Shell clearly wasn't paying out bribes because they couldn't close this. They kept trying to kind of, like, court and then sue this guy, but they couldn't get the deal done. And then it appears that 2011, and he comes on board, they're seeing potentially more competition. And so then it appears that maybe they were, like, willing to let any do the dirty work and they would just kind of stand back and let it happen.

[A]

That certainly looks like it. I mean, Chell doesn't have completely clean hands here, but they were very happy for any to wind up greasing whatever the wheels needed to be greased in order to make this happen. And they just come along for the ride.

[C]

Right, but I, I understand what you were saying before with the idea that, look, in theory maybe this guy kind of had rights to this, so why don't they just pay him? But I do think this speaks to why corruption really is problematic, is that the original reason that this guy, in theory had rights was because there was this fake private company that was created that was actually owned by people directly tied to the government. It was a way to kind of essentially engage in corruption at the very beginning. Beginning. So to simply then pay him later and say like, whoa, well, he owned it. I feel like you're both reinforcing that. The idea that that type of behavior is okay. And this is also money now that is not going to the Nigerian government. This is not money that can be used for infrastructure, for health, for education. This is money that's going to be used from some criminal to. This was actually one of my favorite details. This tete used $1.7 million to pay off money laundering fines that he had from France. So he used his bribe to pay off his money laundering fines and then.

[A]

He used another 56 million to buy a private jet, of course. But yeah, you're absolutely right. And the other thing which is worth noting here is that when the Nigerian government tried to send the $1.1 billion to this guy Swiss bank account, the entire global banking system just said like, you know, like, no, no, no, this is just clearly corrupt. You're not allowed to do it. And so then they tried to send it to another bank account in.

[C]

So it was Switzerland, the uk in the uk it was frozen. And then they also tried in Lebanon.

[A]

Lebanon.

[C]

And they said no, even the Lebanese were saying this thing, this looks sketchy. So then they actually had to send it directly to accounts in Nigeria.

[B]

But wouldn't that have been a red flag at a certain point? Would it be like these institutions know something we don't ex.

[A]

This is exactly why the claims of sort of innocence by the oil companies are so ludicrous, is because it was obvious even to the Lebanese bankers that this was crazy. And I think Anna's point is, the main one that you have to remember is that if someone did something corrupt back in the 90s under the military dictatorship, you don't just go along with that in 2011 and say, oh, oh, I guess that corrupt thing was Done. So now we have to pay this guy a billion dollars for this action, which was clearly corrupt at the time. The correct thing to do is for the Nigerian government to sell the oilville to NEHL for $1.3 billion to keep the money for itself, to then use that money for the benefit of the Nigerian people. And if the former oil minister comes along and says, hey, that's my oil field, you can't sell it, they say, well, sue us.

[C]

Right? And yeah, agreed. And this is really important because part of the reason that this guy was able to essentially extort everyone was because he had protection in the current Nigerian government or the government at the time that he had all these political protectors around him that enabled him to do this. Those are the same people who then got paid out.

[A]

Exactly. This is why good luck, Jonathan. And everyone else in the, in the government wound up getting their cut because ultimately they had every ability to tell him to go take a hike and no, you don't own this oil field. Right.

[B]

What I'm curious about is how high were the stakes here for Dutch or for Royal Dutch Shell? Because, I mean, it's one thing to sort of enter into this potential. Clearly they knew the risks when they were doing it. It's one thing to enter into it when it's like you're staking the business on it. This is the. You need this to survive. But they're so massive. Was this a nice to have or was this like essential for the rest the future of their business?

[A]

So. So Shell has always been the biggest foreign oil company in Nigeria and they've made a huge amount of money in Nigeria. And this deal was big, but not huge by Shell standards. It was actually bigger by any standards. Any is a smaller company than Shell. And so their half of the deal was a much bigger deal to them than it was to Shell. But you're absolutely right that for both of them they could have just kept on, on doing what they were doing and that they would have been okay.

[C]

I honestly wonder if it's just like sunk costs that it was like 10 years. You're probably like, dude, it's been 10 years. I'm going to get that oil.

[B]

Do what it takes.

[C]

Right? But again, I think that the most important thing to remember is why this is not just, you know, one more story of corruption is that this has real consequences. This erodes the investment climate. This makes it harder for other investors to come in. This makes credit more expensive. This makes everything more expensive. This hurts the fiscal position of the Nigerian government. Like serious.

[A]

And it's, and it's a indication that for all that a series of Nigerian presidents and finance ministers have come in with massive anti corruption campaigns, none of it seems to have very much worked.

[C]

This is correct.

[B]

That's a greatest cover. An anti corruption campaign with the intent of being corrupt.

[C]

Actually a side note, but it is true that often in countries when you hear people using that, they're saying they're going on an anti corruption campaign, that can really often mean I'm going to try to arrest all of my enemies.

[B]

Or you're trying to drain the swamp.

[A]

We're talking about Saudi Arabia.

[C]

Yes, we are in fact talking about Saudi Arabia or China.

[A]

Let's have a numbers round.

[C]

Can I go first? If only because mine ties in?

[A]

Yes.

[C]

So My number is 783. 3. Those are the number of corruption charges that one Jacob Zuma faces, the former South African president.

[A]

Woo hoo.

[C]

End of Zuma's exit. So yeah, this is a, this is a big deal in, in South Africa. Jacob Zuma has been engaging in very corrupt practices involving state capture and this Gupta family and many other things for a very long time. And as a result of this, the investment climate in, in South Africa has just eroded. Faith in institutions has just eroded. And you have a country where, you know, is the most industrialized nation in Africa, you know, big economy, but is I believe the most unequal country in the world. The income inequality is so enormous and what's so tragic is that it's like almost 25 years after the end of apartheid and, and yet most of the wealth in the country is still owned by the white minority.

[A]

And the weird thing is that Zuma's replacement, Cyril Ramaphosa, the former ANC leader and labor leader, is at the crazy rich end of the income and wealth spectrum himself. He somehow managed to become dynastically wealthy over those 25 years.

[C]

Yeah, we can maybe have another segment about this, a full segment about this at some point because, because yes, Sierra Ramaphosa is definitely an improvement. But this is a guy who has his own complicated history and working within the anc, the current governing party. He's in the same party as Jacob Zuma is going to be hard. I think he's going to engage in anti corruption activities. He already has their utility company, Eskom. He replaced the board. I think that's good. But he's going to have a very difficult. Got red.

[A]

Aaron Griffith. You have a number.

[B]

I do. It's $50 million or expressed as I like to do In Lamborghinis it's 250. And that is the amount of cryptocurrency that was stolen or reported stolen this week from one of the wallets called blockchain.info which I mentioned. And that's. It's not the biggest hack or heist that we've seen, but I think it's interesting for a couple of reasons. One is that the way they're doing it, the way this one happened, was a phishing scam. So the hackers bought Google Ads for blockchain.info you would click on them, or people who would be searching, you know, for the website would click on them, find a website that's almost exactly similar, put in all of their info, and then their wallets would immediately get emptied.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And this is. This is really interesting because it's not the fault of. Of blockchain.info. they did nothing wrong. They can't help it if people are. They're like Royal Dutch if people are copying their sites and, you know, making it believable enough that people will put their personal info and their passwords in and then have their wallets be emptied. The problem, though, is that, you know, the platforms like Google and Facebook or any other advertising platform now has to play an increasing role in policing this stuff because, you know, obviously they don't want scammers buying ads, but at scale, it's really, really hard. And it was interesting to me also because, you know, this is one of the perils of naming your company something with bit, Blockchain or coin, which almost every single one of these companies seems to have, which is that, you know, you have a sort of generic name like that. It's very easy for people to replicate and scam you. The other thing that was kind of interesting about this, this hack, was that it disproportionately affected people in underbanked countries that are, you know, pouring a lot of their money into digital. And ironically, one of them was. One of the countries that was affected the most was Nigeria, which is, I mean, a little bit ironic to me, given the stereotype of the Nigerian Prince 419 scams.

[A]

But, I mean, the obvious question I have is, don't they have two factor authentication?

[B]

I mean, yeah, the security on a lot of these sites, I mean, even with Coinbase, I have to send them a picture of myself, like a picture that was taken today. You scan your id. There are a lot of ways, but I mean, hackers are smart. They find ways to get around it. And the Reason that the hacks and the heists have been so prevalent and scary and such an issue is that it's a one way transaction. You cannot take it back. It's irreversible and it's done immediately. And it's very difficult to track. There are now firms that are sprouting up that do these kinds of forensics that basically try to unravel all of the public ledger and figure out where the money came and went. But there are no names attached to this. It's very difficult to do.

[A]

And do we know who the scammers that are? I mean, is this organized crime? Is this Russians? What do you think?

[C]

Yeah, I'm gonna go with Russians.

[B]

Sorry.

[A]

Yeah, you can blame that Russian. Is it North Koreans? I hear that North Koreans were interested in me.

[B]

Yeah, it is. I mean there are known like basically groups and then there are vigilante groups that are springing up to sort of go after and investigate these. But it sort of speaks to the issue we were talking about earlier.

[A]

So like in the early days of Bitcoin when we were just learning about it back around like 2011 or whatever, everyone's like, oh, bitcoin, that's that thing which is used on the dark web to buy drugs. And it's all about illegal activity. And then over the subsequent years, there have been occasional attempts to make the case that maybe most blockchain based activity isn't illegal after all. But it still does seem to be a huge amount of the active going on is some kind of scam or something.

[B]

The headlines every day are dominated by either hacks or. Yeah. Or scams and you know, both very different. But it's an easy way to lose your money. You have to.

[A]

Are people still trading drugs and doing that kind of stuff on the blockchain?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, whenever I ask somebody in crypto world why do who uses Bitcoin ATMs they always just say, well, drug dealers obviously. Obviously.

[A]

Talking about drugs, you can go to a pharmacy, a mom and pop or a corporate pharmacy and you can buy a packet of Advil and a packet of Pepcid for $15. My number is 2,979 and that is a number of dollars. For $2,979, you can get a packet of Dewexis, which is a drug made by a company called Horizon, this Irish drug company. The only ingredients in due a basically Advil and Pepcid. You can get exactly the same effect by taking an Advil and a Pepcid. But instead of getting $15 worth of Advil and Pepcid. You can get this thing called Duex, which do exist, which combines the two. They have now done this again with another drug called Vimovo. You can combine Aleve and Nexium. That will cost you $36.

[B]

It's like a craft cocktail.

[A]

It's a craft cocktail, but if you get a. But you can also buy this other thing called Vimovo, which is an FDA approved drug, which is nothing but a combination of Aleve and Nexium. And that too is $2979.

[C]

We, we have some way to combine these drug names and like blockchain names. Yeah, it would be amazing.

[A]

So, yeah, this is. I mean, this is the classic FDA arbitrage that somehow if you combine these two things into one pill, you can charge thousands of dollars for stuff which you can just buy over the counter.

[C]

You know what I find interesting, though quickly, that there was this allergy medication. I only know this because I have allergies and it was actually less expensive for me to get it through my insurance. I'm sure my insurance company was charged significantly more, even though it was available over the counter. But it was more expensive for me to just buy it over the counter than for me to use my insurance.

[A]

To get it right. And this is. And this is the horizon scam, right, is that they bend over backwards to make sure that Your copay is $10 or 0 so that you don't feel the price and that the only. And that the people paying the $3,000 is someone else.

[B]

It's like the classic example of the band aid, the $60 band aid or whatever that they always talk about. So in the end, this ultimately hurts healthy people, right? Because we have higher insurance premiums. Because insurance companies are hurt by this.

[A]

Well, healthy people and sick people. Anyone. Anyone with insurance premiums or even those without. And. And that's actually. That's true. Everyone, pretty much. So I think that's it for us this week. Thank you for listening to Slate Money. Thanks to Dan Schrader for producing. Thanks for coming along on PI Day to the Public Theater. Remember, the code if you want to come join us at the low Road is money. 14. Just type that in. Get your $30 tickets and we'll meet you in the bar afterwards. Do listen. To Hang up and Listen, which comes out on Monday afternoons and is hosted by Josh Levin and Stefan Fatsis, which is a podcast all about sportsball. I know absolutely nothing about it, but they do. So if you want to learn about sports listen to that one rather than to me because you will actually learn something. Keep the emails coming. Our email address is slatemoneylate.com and we will talk to you next week on Slate Money. It.