The Chopping Block: Market Meltdown, CZ vs. Star Feud, and Tarun's Epstein Files Cameo

Summary

Unchained Podcast: "The Chopping Block: Market Meltdown, CZ vs. Star Feud, and Tarun's Epstein Files Cameo"

Host: Laura Shin (not present; regular Chopping Block hosts lead the discussion)
Date: February 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Chopping Block is a candid, freewheeling roundtable featuring DeFi insiders—Siv (Dragonfly), Tom, Tarun (Gauntlet), and Robert (Superstate)—who dive into the tumultuous state of the crypto market. The conversation ranges from the ongoing market downturn and community finger-pointing, to the public feud between CZ (Binance) and Star (OKX), to an unexpectedly hilarious cameo by Tarun in the newly-released Epstein files. The group also dissects moral controversies around startup founder secondaries, industry scapegoating, and the cultural fascination with Epstein’s connections to crypto.

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1. Crypto Market Meltdown: Causes and Sentiment

(00:52-11:20)

Key Discussion Points

• Crypto markets plunged: Bitcoin dipped below $75K, Ethereum at ~$2200, metals emulating meme-stock volatility.
• Psychological impact: Market feels fragile; risk sentiment is low; bid support is scant.
• MicroStrategy’s break-even: Market watching whether MicroStrategy’s cost basis holds, as their confidence (or selling) could cascade.
• Bitmain’s historic ETH loss: Noted as one of the 5th largest trading losses ever.
• Narrative vacuum: Few bullish catalysts or positive stories to drive investment.
• Hash rate decline: Underlying Bitcoin fundamentals are weakening.

Notable Quotes

• Robert [02:04]:
  “We’re basically at the point where MicroStrategy is break even...psychologically that’s seen as pretty important...as confidence is lost in MicroStrategy’s ability to be a continued buyer and, or a potential seller.”
• Tom [04:09]:
  “I think this is the karmic consequence of DATs...the universe is looking at the set of actions the crypto community did over the last...”
• Siv [06:30]:
  “Whenever someone is selling bitcoin, especially an OG, they need a smart thing to say...the smart thing to say is, ‘oh, quantum risk.’”
• Tarun [08:47]:
  “I think part of the issue too is I think there seems to be non consensus in bitcoin land that this is a nearish-term issue (quantum risk) worth addressing...But I agree with your bigger point, every time something bad happens, people want a monocausal proof as to why this is happening. And I just don’t think it’s that kind of simple.”

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2. The CZ vs. Star Feud & the 10/10 Liquidations

(11:20-20:23)

Key Discussion Points

• 10/10 event: Largest day of liquidations in crypto history, breaking historical price correlations between BTC and Nasdaq.
• Community blame: Asian crypto traders are increasingly blaming CZ for orchestrating 10/10’s cascade, fueled by Star (OKX) alleging that Binance’s Athena Earn campaign triggered the collapse.
• Online drama: Siv was drawn into the public spat, retweeted by both CZ and Star.
• Lack of consensus on cause: With no single culprit or narrative, frustration is mounting.

Notable Quotes and Moments

• Siv [13:46]:
  “There seems to be now a lot of reinterpretation of what happened on 10/10...especially now that crypto’s in the doldrums. It’s a very important question that people don’t have a satisfying answer to still—what happened and why did it break the market so deeply? And second, whose fault is it?”
• Tarun [15:04]:
  “Athena is pretty small in the grand scheme...Only $2B on Binance among all the USD supply...that took down $40 billion in open interest and the entire market? Obviously that’s not true.”

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3. Market Scapegoating, Meme Culture, and Secondary Sales Judgment

(18:32-39:55)

Key Discussion Points

• “Knives out” mentality: With tokens down, people lash out—blaming CZ, founders, even social media interns.
• Meme culture: “Vesting cliff unlocked” has become a widespread way for the community to sarcastically react to project exits.
• Moral outrage: Criticism of Dan Romero (Farcaster) and others for raising large sums and/or selling secondary stock even when not launching a token or reaching product-market fit.
• East vs. West perceptions: Asian chats more scandalized by founder secondaries; Westerners more likely to mock VCs for over-funding.

Notable Quotes

• Siv [20:23]:
  “Most people who are in crypto are not actually in the industry...they have no empathy for anybody who actually works in crypto.”
• Tom [18:45]:
  “The vesting cliff meme...now it’s like anyone who leaves, like, even a junior social media analyst at this project...’vesting cliff unlocked.’”
• Siv [24:08]:
  “I think there’s reasonable arguments to make that the problem with secondaries is not that founders are doing them, but that they’re not uniform among everybody who holds common.”
• Robert [27:12]:
  “A small amount of secondary is actually positive sum...it actually enables a founder to swing harder...but if a founder cashes out $25 million and the company’s deeply risky...people have a right to be mad.”

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4. Deep Dive: The Morality & Fairness of Founder Secondaries

(25:28-41:56)

Key Discussion Points

• Most on the panel set their personal “acceptable” numbers for secondaries between $5–10 million, depending on value created.
• Tom and Robert voice concerns about large founder secondaries, especially pre exit or success, and the lack of employee participation.
• Siv takes a laissez-faire stance: the founder owns the company, deals are negotiated between consenting parties, and risk is distributed according to power law outcomes.

Memorable Exchanges

• Siv [36:36]:
  “Your net worth is still 99% in your startup...making $15 million is not like ‘great, done, don’t need to work hard anymore...’ No founder is selling 10% their ownership in a secondary.”
• Tarun [41:56]:
  “There is a post hoc rationalization of what has happened...people thought (Farcaster) was too high, or maybe now they think it’s too high because it didn’t work.”

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5. The Tarun Epstein Files Cameo & Crypto's Brush With Infamy

(42:42-51:53)

Key Discussion Points

• Tarun discovers his name in the Epstein files—turns out he appeared in a Quora Digest read by Epstein, not from any actual meeting.
• Discussion of other surprising crypto/Epstein connections:
  • Epstein invested in Coinbase (2014), entry arranged by Brock Pierce and Blockchain Capital.
  • Apparent connections with Blockstream’s Adam Back, and communications with devs like Jeremy Rubin.
  • Random, sometimes hilarious, sometimes bizarre correspondence, including Zcash devs discussing theology with Epstein.

Notable Quotes/Moments

• Tom [43:36]:
  “Jeffrey Epstein uses Quora and probably follows some topics I used to write answers in...and I’m in the Quora Digest, which is like the answers you should read for the day.”
• Siv [47:16]:
  “Jeremy actually pitched Jeffrey Epstein on a Grin SPV...2 and 20 on this thing.”
• Robert [49:57]:
  “He’s kind of this, like, dark Forrest Gump, like evil Forrest Gump. He was everywhere at all times.”

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6. Reflections on Scapegoating, Elite Connections, and Morality

(51:10-61:01)

Key Discussion Points

• How to judge association with notorious figures?
  • Panel muses on “acceptable blast radius” from Epstein (e.g. actual visits, business, just emails, or none at all).
  • Modern public's fixation on identifying and scapegoating “the villain” in times of social stress.
  • Siv draws parallels: “If Adam Back was on the island, that’s good to know. I will avoid Adam Back.”
  • Deeper philosophical reflection on the impracticality (and sometimes danger) of guilt-by-association or seeking absolute moral clarity in ambiguous situations.

Notable Quotes

• Siv [51:38]:
  “You want to be tastefully distant from Jeffrey Epstein, but not invisible to Jeffrey Epstein.”
• Robert [55:09]:
  “That was his whole business, right? Basically, to create mountains of evidence and compromise with the world’s most powerful people.”
• Siv [60:42]:
  “The instinct of really needing to know who is a sex fiend and who’s not, if you don’t know these people...feels an unwise instinct to feed, is my view.”

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7. Closing Remarks

(63:46-end)

Key Discussion Points

• Expectation that the episode will provoke strong reactions (“angry letters”) over both the secondary sales and Epstein segments, given their emotional resonance within the crypto world.
• Siv and the crew stand by having challenging, uncomfortable conversations, even if unpopular.

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Timestamps Quick Reference

| Topic | Start | End | |-------|-------|-----| | Market Meltdown, Quantum Risk | 00:52 | 11:20 | | CZ vs. Star, 10/10 Liquidations | 11:20 | 20:23 | | Community Scapegoating, Meme Culture | 18:32 | 24:08 | | Founder Secondaries Debate | 25:28 | 41:56 | | Tarun Epstein Cameo & Connections | 42:42 | 51:53 | | Judging Elites, Scapegoating | 51:10 | 61:01 | | Wrap-Up | 63:46 | End |

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Summary Tone & Style

This episode’s tone is irreverent, insider, and darkly humorous—matching the stress and gallows sensibility of crypto insiders during a brutal market drawdown. The hosts intersperse sharp industry analysis with meme culture references, personal anecdotes, and unfiltered reflections on the ethical gray areas that define both crypto and startup life.

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Memorable One-Liners

• On finger-pointing in downturns:
  “It’s like, there’s an eclipse in the sky, and it’s like, oh, you’ve angered the gods and we gotta find the thing to please them again.” – Tarun [08:47]
• On being named in the Epstein files:
  “I’m not Brian Johnson, okay? I didn’t get, like, a plane invite.” – Tom [00:00, 44:57]
• On the market mood:
  “Right now it’s a question of, like, who is the next buyer, where does it come from and why?” – Robert [02:04]
• On CZ’s new reputation:
  “How did this happen that CZ went from the most beloved figure in crypto to SBF-level villain?” – Siv [16:03]

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Takeaways for Non-Listeners

• Crypto markets are deeply uncertain, psychologically fragile, and there’s no consensus on their next direction or on what caused their recent meltdown.
• Industry leaders and communities engage in narrative battles, scapegoating, and moral policing—especially when times are bad.
• The “CZ vs. Star” feud exemplifies how public drama and finger-pointing can shape (and distort) market narrative.
• Startups’ practice of founder secondaries is divisive, with strong feelings about what’s “moral” and “deserved,” reflecting broader questions of risk, reward, and fairness.
• The release of the Epstein files, while rich in crypto cameos, serves more as a vehicle for meme humor and philosophical musings than for any actionable insight.
• The emotional fabric of the crypto industry is, as always, tightly woven with narrative, blame, and a healthy dose of gallows humor.

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For anyone inside or outside the crypto world, this episode offers a raw snapshot of the industry’s collective psyche as it weathered one of its shakiest moments—unfiltered, contentious, and unafraid to ask how (and why) we assign blame when confidence finally runs dry.

Transcript

[Tom]

I'm not Brian Johnson, okay? I didn't get, like, a plane invite.

[Robert]

Listen, there might be additional files released in the future. We don't know if this is the true extent.

[Siv]

That's true. That's true. We got to get to the bottom of this. We got to get to the bottom of the Tarun Epstein connection.

[Tarun]

Not a dividend.

[Tom]

It's a tale of two Kwan.

[Siv]

Now your losses are on someone else's balance sheet.

[Tarun]

Generally speaking, airdrops are kind of pointless anyways.

[Siv]

Unnamed trading firms who are very involved.

[Tom]

Pollock eth is the ultimate puzzle.

[Robert]

Defi protocols are the antidote to this problem.

[Siv]

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the chopping block. Every couple weeks, the four of us get together and give the industry insider perspective on the crypto topics of the day. So, quick intros. First you got Tom the Defi maven and master of memes.

[Tarun]

Hello, everyone.

[Siv]

Next we got Robert, the crypto connoisseur and czar of Superstate.

[Robert]

Good morning.

[Siv]

And then we've got Tarun, the Giga brain and Grand Poobah at Gauntlet.

[Tom]

Yo, yo, yo.

[Siv]

And I'm a Siv, the head hype man at Dragonfly. We were early stage investors in crypto, but I want to caveat that nothing we say here is investment advice, legal advice, or even life advice. Please see Chopping Block at XYZ for more disclosures. So it has been a rocky week in crypto land. We now have Bitcoin below 75k or it's. It dipped below 75k. It's now right back at that level. There's been a lot of volatility in the market, and we've seen everything in crypto bleeding. ETH is at 2200 something. Metals have pulled back quite a bit. There was a blow off top in metals where gold went up to like, 56, 57. I don't know what went really high. Pulled all the way down below. Yeah, it was absolute craziness. Basically, metals are trading like meme stocks and there's. There's just a lot of uncertainty in the market about where this is going. I was looking at Polymarket odds, and according to Polymarket, it is equally likely for bitcoin to hit 45k this year, as it is to hit 130k this year, basically meaning we're. We're right now on a razor's edge of whether this year is going to be a good year or an absolutely horrendous year. How are you guys feeling about the current moment? It looks like we're a Little bit on a precipice right now. What's the feeling?

[Robert]

I'll just talk about the things that my friends are talking about when it comes to the feelings surrounding the crypto market right now. The conversation that a lot of people are having, at least in my group chats, is that, you know, we're basically at the point where MicroStrategy is break even as an investor in bitcoin, period, in the aggregate across multiple cycles. And I think psychologically that's seen as a pretty important threshold and that there's a lot of concern and consternation that if we continue to decline it could become a negative feedback loop just as confidence is lost in MicroStrategy's ability to be a continued buyer and, or a potential seller. And so the threshold that a lot of people are watching right now is like, are they in the money and what is the health of that business from a profit perspective? The other major dads, I mean people are also saying, laughing at how much money bit mine has lost purchasing ether. They're now, I think it's the fifth largest trading loss in human history is one of the measurements I saw in terms of total dollars lost on a trade. So there's general consternation. I mean, there's not that much bid right now for any of these crypto assets and there's not many narratives that people are looking forward to as reasons to be investing. I think a lot of the major mania drivers we've seen over the last couple months and years has been adoption of bitcoin. That doesn't seem to be happening. And it just seems like right now it's a question of like who is the next buyer, where does it come from and why? And I think it's being compounded by the fact that we're seeing like a hash rate decline in bitcoin. We're seeing like these underlying fundamentals start to erode a little bit and there's just like a solemnness to the market. Clarity is stalled, you know, which is bad for all of the alts. And you know, I, I think people are just a little bit sad.

[Siv]

Tarun, how are you feeling? That said.

[Tom]

Not really. I mean, I think this is the karmic consequence of DATs. You know, this is like karma. It just like you, you.

[Siv]

It's not that related. There's no, there's no. Yeah, I'm saying, I'm saying the you.

[Tom]

The universe is looking at the set of actions the crypto community did over.

[Siv]

The last punishing us. The universe is Punishing us preemptively. If the punishment is coming, it's going to be a lot worse than this for DATs, because, like, if DATS are actually net sellers, it's going to be a lot worse than this.

[Tom]

I'm just saying I feel like this feels like a little bit of karmic justice over the last couple of years.

[Siv]

All right.

[Tom]

I would say that the one interesting thing.

[Siv]

I didn't know you were such a religious, you had such a religious fervor about this stuff.

[Tom]

Because I don't. But I love when I can pretend I like astrology when I really don't believe in it. You know, it's like, okay, but I. More seriously, I thought the most interesting thing I saw today was Novogratz and the galaxy earnings, which were like, bad because of the overall market decline. AI couldn't save them. Was this idea that there was one client who sold $9 billion of Bitcoin, partially because they're worried about the quantum cryptography or quantum computing type of stuff. I know we've been meaning to talk about that on the show, but I kind of actually seeing that size sold for that reason and then also talking to a lot of people who are work at ETFs or kind of do sales for a lot of stuff, I think they're on the tradfi side. That's actually like a real risk people care about. Like, it's like, it's, it's, it's, it's funny because, like, you talk to crypto native people, there's like, whatever, everyone will move to a post quantum and like, sorry, Satoshi, your coins are fucked. But then everyone on the tradfi is like, oh my God, like, and so I thought that was kind of interesting because, like, you know, maybe it's like someone doing post hoc rationalization after already losing money, but like, could also be causal. Like a lot of people, enough people in the market believe that. And that's why it kind of like lost the gold debasement stuff, right? Like, that's why all the gold bugs were making fun of bitcoin. And maybe the quantum side is actually, you know, I, I, I, I kind of always thought it was like a little too far afield, but the galaxy thing made me suddenly start to be like, actually, maybe this is a real macro view in tradvi.

[Siv]

Yeah, I, So it's, it's an interesting point. I do think it's like whenever someone is selling bitcoin, especially in og, they need a smart thing to say about why they're selling Bitcoin and like this is the smart thing to say is that oh, quantum risk. And like I don't know if they're going to get their act together. I think if somebody were to actually even that whoever that, we don't know who that guy is. But whoever that guy is who sold does he think there's no way that bitcoin can solve this problem? Like I don't think he would say that. Does he think there's like a 50, 50 chance that a quantum computer is invented before bitcoin gets its shit together? I don't even know that he'd say that either. I think it's more that like look, there's some percentage of people that this will be the thing they say this will be their objection. And the objection might be even like a sort of low context objection that it's like I've heard about this quantum thing and like there's no good rebuttal to it right now within bitcoin land other than what you mentioned Tarun, which is like, oh, people will get around to it when it's more real or when it's closer or whatever. I think Ethereum had the exact right answer, which is, look, quantum's a ways away and it maybe is too early to do this in a wise way because there's going to be a lot of churn in the cryptography itself about how to do post quantum in the most efficient way. But just create a pile of money, create a committee, like do the thing that every government does about a risk is that like look, we, we checked the box, we've got a group of people doing something and, and we put money on it and that feels really good. That's like great, great, great answer to the objection. We now have stuff that we're doing. It's like, don't just stand there, do something. Here's something. Bitcoin doesn't have that right now there is really no congealed something that people are doing. And it's such an easy win to just do what Ethereum did and say here's something, here's $5 million and a council that is the post quantum council. And they're not doing anything yet. But like you can just point at this and say here's something that's being done and now that's your answered objection. And Even if again 90% of people are like yeah, obviously they'll do something when quantum is getting closer, but here is the box checking exercise that 10% of people who are so low Context that they're like, I heard quantum is happening, quantum stocks are ripping. I heard Google is building a quantum computer. That's the perfect answer is that, well, here's a committee and something is happening.

[Tarun]

Yeah, I think part of the issue too is I think there seems to be non consensus in bitcoin land that this is a nearish term issue worth addressing. So it's like, yeah, I don't think any other chain or system has a solution, but they acknowledge that it's like a real risk. Whereas I think I get a lot of my info on this. I think Nick Carter had this essay or this post about kind of quantum risk vis a vis bitcoin. And it seems like they're still even split within bitcoin core as to how real is this risk and therefore how we're going to allocate resources to it. But I agree with your bigger point, which is every time something bad happens, people want a monocausal proof as to why this is happening. And I just don't think it's that kind of simple for I was like, oh, it's association with Trump and it's Trump coin or it's like the FBI is going to sell a bunch of bitcoin or it's the dats or it's always going to be something. And I think it's frustrating maybe where we don't even really have something we can sort of strongly attribute it to. And so people kind of, it's like there's an eclipse in the sky and it's like, oh, because you have anchored the gods and we got to go find the thing that we have to do to please them again. And I think there's probably many, many variables that are going into why bitcoin's having this sell off.

[Siv]

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, bitcoin is a consensus game.

[Tom]

I just thought this is the first time I ever saw a public company state this. That was sort of more my. That was what was elevated to me.

[Tarun]

Yeah, I think there's something Jeffrey's like two weeks ago was also talking about quantum. So it's definitely to your point, Naseeb. It's a reason you can get good segue into our next segment. No, it's just reason you can think it's going to be smart. Right. Versus like what is it like? Oh, well, I'm concerned about bitcoin's security budget or oh, I don't know if bitcoin's going to add, you know, opportunity. Like, you know, there's always some, some thing you can say and people like, oh, yeah, that's a, that's a thing you can say. Not just like, it's over 100k and I have $9 billion, so I'm out.

[Siv]

Yeah, I, I think this is a better explanation, which is that like, I was, I was holding through all the ups and downs so that we could get to the promised land of 100k and prophecy's fulfilled. I don't know what's going to happen now. I don't really know what the next catalyst is. So, yo, I'm out. I feel pretty good. Or I, I caught 90, you know, I. A hundred K. I felt a little greedy. I caught 90. I'm saying as though I'm this bitcoin. Unfortunately, I don't have that kind of money. If I did, I would probably be selling at 100k too. I'd probably be selling 100k2 to be, to be fair.

[Tarun]

And the good answer is, you know, someone, someone's buying that $9 million of, of Bitcoin.

[Tom]

So, yeah, see, has paper hands.

[Siv]

You heard it here first. You heard it here first. Yeah. All right, so, okay, so speaking of monocausal explanations, one of the other big stories that took place this last week is a battle of the titans, but between CZ and Star. So cz, of course, founder of Binance. I don't think I need to recapitulate too much of his story. Star is the founder of OkX, which is one of the other large crypto exchanges in the space. And of course, cz, he's been in the news a lot lately with respect to his connection to World Debris Financial, as well as, you know, the presidential pardon that he received recently. And everybody in crypto is now suddenly mad at cz, but not for those reasons. I mean, maybe some people in America are mad at him for those reasons, but overall, people are very, very mad at CZ because they think increasingly that CZ caused 10 10. So 10 10, of course, was the biggest day of liquidations in crypto history. And it's also the point, if you go back and, you know, splay the chart of Bitcoin prices versus the NASDAQ versus risk assets, generally, 1010 is the point where all of a sudden the correlation between the NASDAQ and crypto broke. And you can see all these time series which show very high correlation before 1010. After 1010, Bitcoin does this. Risk assets do this. And so people claim that CZ caused this in some way, and this got Amplified by Star. So Star made a post that went super viral. Got like 5 million views claiming that the core cause of 1010. It's sort of like, look, I can't keep my silence anymore. The core cause of 1010 was that Binance ran an Athena APY promotion and they were incentivizing people to basically loop Athena on Binance through a Binance Earn program. And that's what caused 10 10. That's what caused the enormous liquidation cascade that spread through all of crypto and collapsed the market and broke things in some kind of semi permanent way. And that CZ has not taken responsibility for this and he's now speaking out. This is four months later, after 10:10. CZ then punched back and said, basically, this is full of shit. This makes no sense. You know, the Athena unwind that took place on Binance happened after crypto bottomed on that day. He ended up retweeting. He ended up retweeting guy. Yeah, well, 30 minutes later. 30 minutes later. So there's quite a bit of latency between the market actually tanking and causing a huge liquidation spiral.

[Robert]

And.

[Siv]

And when Athena started pulling back on Binance. And so I sort of got enlisted into this fight because CZ kept retweeting me in response to Star. Star then clapped back at both me and cz. Anyway, there's a big fight. What's interesting about all this is that one, there seems to be now a lot of reinterpretation of what happened on 1010 and a lot of argument about what really caused 1010, especially now that crypto's in the doldrums. It's a very important question that people don't have a satisfying answer to still, of like, what happened and why did it break the market so deeply? And second, whose fault is it? And it seems like now everyone is very ready to say that it's CZ's fault. Thoughts on Star versus CZ and you know, the understanding of 1010.

[Tom]

I think Haseeb purposely didn't inject the fact that he got in the middle of this fight and they both were retweeting. Haseeb's point here.

[Siv]

They were not Star. Yeah.

[Tom]

No, no. Then Star later took a screenshot and dunked on you. Like there was. There was the.

[Siv]

You.

[Tom]

You showed up a bunch of times. So you are actually in the middle of this. So. So I want the audience.

[Tarun]

The proxy state.

[Tom]

Yeah, yeah, Haseeb is here.

[Siv]

He's like, used to hit Star. That's basically my role.

[Tarun]

But yeah, I'm I mean, obviously I very much agree with the point around the timing, but also just the other facts are that Athena is pretty small in the grand scheme of the overall OI for futures. Right? It was like, I think USD was like 14 billion, which obviously was also not all in futures compared to 80 billion in open interest. And the timing for the Binance promotion was only four weeks before 10:10. So it's just like, just on those alone, even if you didn't know anything about it, it's like, yeah, obviously I think what, they added an extra 2 bill in Barker.

[Siv]

There was only 2 bill on Binance among all the USD supply.

[Tarun]

So it was, yeah, that took down 40 billion open interest and the entire market. Obviously that's not true. And if anything that makes me more worried that Star, the CEO of one of the largest exchanges doesn't have a deeper understanding or explanation for what happened. And so that's kind of the scarier part, I think.

[Siv]

I mean, what was striking to me is that, that's the striking thing to me.

[Robert]

Nobody knows, nobody really knows what happened.

[Tarun]

Objectively.

[Siv]

Yes, but like we, I, I thought there was wide industry consensus after 10:10 that there's no simple explanation for it. Like, if there was a simple explanation, we would have had one months ago when people were poring over all this data and trying to understand what do we do in order to not have this happen again. And the answer was like, well, there's like some stuff about ADLs, there's some stuff about liquidation engines, some stuff about downtime of APIs, some stuff about broken hedges, but like, there's no, there's no simple, like, oh, well, you know, Athena did it, or Binance, or, you know, CZ intentionally liquidated everyone so that he could make a bunch of trading profits, which seems to be what particularly Chinese people seem to believe now. So because CZ was retweeting me, like, this is not my audience. My audience is not crypto traders. My audience is like, you know, all these, I don't know, like founders and edgelords are mostly who reply to me when I tweet stuff. But when CZ was retweeting me, I got thousands of replies of people who are talking to cz, they're not talking to me, they're talking to cz. And they're all like, fuck you cz, you destroyed the market, you're a scammer. And I'm like, how did this happen that CZ went from like the most beloved figure in crypto to being public enemy number One and basically an SBF level villain, seemingly because crypto is down and I think also because of Binance Alpha. A lot of Binance Alpha assets have done very poorly. And so I think that has caused this total reversal, particularly within the Asian community of just crypto. Traders hate CZ now. They think CZ is like a criminal mastermind and now he's I guess the scapegoat for like 10 10, which is also bizarre to me because I feel like that wasn't happening after 10 10. After 1010 there was no. Yeah, CZ did it, Binance did it. Obviously this is their fault and they should do something about it. Maybe people who lost money in $10.10 feel differently, but I did not have a sense that this was how people internalized what happened.

[Tarun]

There is also very much this knives out kind of mentality, I think, across projects where I see people sending screenshots of a token price to, you know, a founder and they're like, oh, you know, you're down so bad. It's like, dude, look at the market. Like everyone is down so bad. And so you people who's like, you know, tokens are like not doing well sending screenshots and it's like, like the entire market is not doing well. So it's like picking out these like isolated pockets of oh, your, your project is down bad. It's like, how do you not look at the market more broadly and have some context? It's just like very bizarre.

[Tom]

Yeah, I mean I think there's also like the increase in the investing cliff reached meme everywhere is like correlated with the post 10. Like I feel like I, that that meme was only used like sparingly.

[Siv]

Explain that meme to rude.

[Tom]

Whenever someone posts on Twitter, that's like, hey, I am, you know, my last X years at this project have been great, but I'm leaving today. Whatever. There's just like this group of self assembling anons generally who will just retweet and post this picture of this guy running off a cliff and it just says Vesting Cliff unlocked, you know, which sort of just means, hey, they're quitting because they just got their tokens and they're dumping them. And I, I kind of thought that was always like save cheekily for like founder who did something bad or like did an OTC deal and everyone found out. And now it's like anyone, like, anyone who lead, like, it's like I'm a junior social media analyst at this project Vesting Cliff Unlocked. You know, like it's kind of of a weird. And I think post 10 10, I've just like observed the increase in the, the, the memetic meanness, which sort of is like similar to this.

[Siv]

I mean, I want to be sympathetic that like, look, people are hurting and they, you know, hurt people. Hurt people. And there's this like, you know, like, look, you, you guys did this to me. There's a lot of people, look, most people who are in crypto are not actually in the industry. They're not working at a company and so they have no empathy for anybody who actually works in crypto. And if you work in crypto, like, it sucks. It's not fun right now. And the feeling that like, oh, well, these people, you know, all of us who are trading are getting screwed, but the people who work there are making all this money and they're dumping tokens and they must be having a party. And like, look at this guy quitting his job. He's obviously just, you know, doing cartwheels now that he can dump his tokens on us. It's, you know, that's not, that's not the vibe, unfortunately.

[Tom]

I just think, I think it's like, okay, if it's like the founder or something bad happened, that's one version of this. But it's like the social media intern. Come on. Like that's a little.

[Siv]

Yeah, no, it's reflexive now. It's reflexive now.

[Robert]

And it's like, right, the social media intern didn't have like absolutely life changing money and is like not going to work again and is like quitting because of that.

[Siv]

This actually is also emblematic of. There was the viral post by this guy Mirza from Injective about, about Farcaster, Dan Romero for Farcaster, where basically he wrote this big long post that was like how to pull off the craziest scam of, you know, stealing or scamming. 180 million, which was the total amount that, that Dan Romero raised. And he just like, just like, just absolute, just jealous slop, just like seething anger of like, how dare this guy be successful, raise money and not create a token that people make money from and return money to shareholders. What a disgusting human being. And it's just again, it's like a sign of the times is that you're just looking. Everybody's looking for villains, everyone's looking for somebody else to blame this on. And if it's not cz, then it's founders, every founder. And then, okay, the founders are not. That's not enough people to be Mad at. Let's get mad at every employee who ever leaves a project and doesn't like go down with the ship of a flailing startup.

[Robert]

I know. That's the craziest one, which is like, you've raised all this money, you didn't find product market fit and you didn't launch a token, like, shame.

[Tom]

Right?

[Robert]

Like, that one is like the least logical thing.

[Tom]

I mean, I mean, I think most of the criticism, if I remember correctly, was like, about some secondary thing. Not that like, wasn't there, like, but sorry, I wasn't really paying that much.

[Robert]

Yeah, because there was some secondary.

[Tom]

I think it was like in the time period where I took a Twitter break and I was like, I'm not reading this.

[Siv]

That's wise. That's wise. Maybe why it's taking like a six month Twitter break right now. Yeah.

[Tom]

So, but like, what was that? What people were angry about? It was like, not just.

[Tarun]

That was. That was one of the pits. But then it's like, like, why, why does that concern you? Like, you're not part of this transaction.

[Robert]

The VCs who bought shares from the founder maybe could have some reason to be slightly grumpy, but like, not a bicep.

[Siv]

Nobody who is an actual participant in that transaction was complaining. Everybody was like, Dan's great, awesome dude to work with, nothing but respect for him would do it again, 10 out of 10 experience. And then this guy's like this scammer. Can you believe what he did? And it's like.

[Tom]

But I will say similar to your, to your view that in Asia people are blaming CZ more than maybe in the West. I kind of think this view on the Farcaster thing was also kind of split between where, like I did, you know, group chats that had more people in Asia were like, oh, they scammed investors. Whereas, like, I think people in the west are like, well, I guess that VCs were dumb for funding that much. Right. Like, like it was like a totally different.

[Siv]

So to be clear, to be clear, to be clear, Dan clarified that he returned 100% of the capital.

[Tom]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know. I'm just trying to give you the.

[Siv]

One that is extremely rare.

[Robert]

Did he return 100% of the capital raised or 100% of what was remaining of the capital?

[Siv]

Is there is a 100% of capital raised, 100% of capital raised. So how VCs who invested in primary got 100% of their money back?

[Robert]

I guess the question is then, did the company spend $0? I mean, where.

[Siv]

Because I don't have any made money. They did. I don't know what they did, but they made money.

[Tarun]

You pay money to like, you know, activate your account. There's like a five dollar fee and there were some other things, but they made like a few mil. And they also were very thrifty. They spent like no money. But again I'm like, this is a private transaction between investors and a company.

[Siv]

That's not a requirement, it's a startup, it's supposed to spend money. That's why they gave them money. Yes, it's supposed to lose money because they gave the money to try something.

[Tom]

I wasn't trying to cause the fight to happen. I was just pointing out that those.

[Tarun]

Were, look at us, we're succumbing guys. Yeah, this is supposed to be peace. And we're, we got.

[Tom]

Those were the two types of views I saw in different group chats where like in the west everyone was like haha, those VCs are so dumb. Like why did they do that? Like that was like the.

[Siv]

Okay, I want to talk about this though because I think this is interesting. I mean this is, this story is a few weeks old, so it's a little, you know, passe at this point. But people have a very strong moral intuition about secondaries and I think it's worth us talking about given that we're all VCs. So the primary stuff, I think everybody kind of gets that. If you raise money primary and you don't get there, okay, whatever, it's fine you didn't end up building the thing, you return whatever money you have left, okay, that's an honorable discharge, you did your duty, whatever. But if you sell a dime of secondary, people have extremely different intuitions about the morality of what you've done. And that basically if you sell secondaries, most people think that selling secondary, if you are pre product market fit is immoral. People very strongly believe this and people will just outright say that even if they're like, is that what you really mean? People say yes, that's what I really mean.

[Tom]

Is it the investor's fault for giving it to you?

[Siv]

I tend to agree that's between you and your investor. But then second people think that basically if you sell secondary, you had better succeed. If you sell secondary and you don't succeed, then it's like straight to jail. This is the absolute worst sin committed by any human being. So I want to get your guys reactions to this.

[Tom]

I'm waiting for this to happen in AI because I already see people in AI Completely divorced from crypto. And they're nicer right now because their market is still bubbly. They're still complaining about this and being like, oh fuck this founder, their company didn't work and they took the exit. Know like the kind of wind surf style exit and they sold secondary.

[Siv]

But M and A is okay. M and A is okay. I've never seen anyone complain about this with M and A.

[Tom]

No, no, no. Even if people complain about the wind surf style M and A right, where.

[Tarun]

They just acquire the founders, that's kind.

[Robert]

Of different though over a bunch of other people.

[Siv]

Some I think that's different. I think it's a distributional thing.

[Tom]

No, no, no. But, but the place in AI this happens because like people aren't expecting a token or liquidity quickly, right? The way it happens that I've seen is have been companies where founders sold secondary and then the founder also on top of that does this M and A and then the employees are kind of left with whatever is remaining. Right. That's the equivalent of the crypto thing.

[Siv]

I think there's reasonable arguments to make that the problem with secondaries is not that founders are doing them, but that they're not uniform among everybody who holds common.

[Tom]

Right.

[Siv]

So usually when there's a secondary, it's only the founder selling and employees do not. Founders maybe sell 3%, 5% of their ownership in the company, but employees do not get to sell anything generally. I think that's a more principled argument against secondaries. I still don't agree with it, but I understand where I think I'm more sympathetic to that.

[Robert]

Here's my view as an investor and as a founder. I think a small amount of secondary is actually positive sum for the founder and for the venture funds that back them. I think a large amount of secondary might be adverse to the interests of the investors and benefit the founder over the investors. And here's why. I think if the founder has $6,000 in their bank account and they live in New York or San Francisco and they are skating by on fumes and they're finally raising money and all of these things and it's like a series B and it's just starting to work and you don't know if the outcome is positive, but there's more demand for your company stock than supply. I think a founder selling a small amount, like half a million, a million dollars, and they don't have to worry about like how much groceries cost, I think that is a positive. I think it actually takes brain cells away from the Cost of living and, like, the stress and the complexities of a startup, and it actually enables a founder to swing harder at the thing they're supposed to be building. And I actually think it's extremely good for the founder to be, like, comfortable where, like, 100% of their brainwave is focused on trying to find product market fit. I think secondary done a small amount to add, like, a little bit of cushion, and the founder doesn't feel like they have to, like, pull a ripcord or do something bad for the business to create liquidity for themselves. Positive. I think if the founder cashes out $25 million and the company's deeply risky and nothing has been proven yet, and it's $25 million that could have gone to the company's bank account and the company doesn't work out. I actually think it's partially caused by the founder, and people have a right to be mad.

[Siv]

Okay, so, Drew, what's your take?

[Tom]

Yeah, I basically think the same thing. I just might adjust the numbers Robert has from up a little.

[Siv]

What would you adjust?

[Tom]

Yeah, probably like, less than 5. I kind of agree with the Bill Gurley thing of, like, less than 5.

[Robert]

Is kind of 5% or $5 million.

[Tom]

Five million. Like a hard cap of 5 million.

[Tarun]

Hard cap.

[Siv]

Okay. So very few secondaries get capped at 5 million. I.

[Tom]

No, no, no. Sorry. That's what he says. That's what he's. I'm just saying, like, that's.

[Siv]

You agree with that? You agree with that?

[Tom]

I just think. I don't know if you need to have such a hard cap. I'm just saying that seems like a good median number or something, Right? Whereas, yeah, I think when it's like a hundred, I mean, in some of these AI secondaries, I think you're starting to see the adverse selection, which is, like. Because, like, in crypto, this was, like, 2021. But in AI, you're seeing, like, the crazy much crazier secondaries right now. Right? Like, 11 labs sold, like, 300 mil of employee secondaries. I mean, it wasn't just founders, but it was like. I was like, that's crazy to me. That's like. That's like, what's their valuation? Five, Bill, you know, maybe. Yeah, maybe it was. I think it was the earlier round.

[Siv]

Okay, so they sold, like, 3%, but.

[Tom]

But it was still, like, a lot in. In a way that I thought was, like, kind of crazy because it was like, only a secondary round. There was, like, only no preferred. I think that's why I was five because it was like discount to the preferred round. But there is clearly some boundary. I just don't know where it is. It probably varies from sector to sector.

[Tarun]

Probably more in this bucket of hey, letting founders de risk a little bit and not have to have brain damage about paying rent or getting groceries. Obviously that is good. I think also there is this sort of officer's privilege kind of thing where it's like, yeah, if you're captain of the ship, you get the nicer quarters because you're going to go down with the ship and you have to do all the other shit people don't want to do. So obviously it's going to be nicer. And founders, in theory, that used to be kind of the contract, right? You don't bail, you go down with the ship and so of course you get nice dinners. I think to Zeb's or to Tarun's point around Windsurf type aqua hires, it feels like that kind of breaks the social contract where it's like, oh, actually maybe they don't have to go down with the ship. Maybe they can just bail after getting a nice offer or vesting cliff reach kind of meme. And so I don't quite know how people kind of think about it today, but ultimately I do just find the judgment and the moralizing from third parties kind of silly. It's like ultimately these are like two consenting adults agreeing to a transaction. And as long as everyone is doing what is said in the contract and no one is making fraudulent claims, I'm like, that's fine. Maybe you think it's a bad investment, maybe you think it was, you know, misallocation, but like that, that's just your opinion, like no one, no one's doing wrong by you. And so I'm just like, don't people have better things to be doing with their time than like, you know, hemming and hawing about, oh, this private market transaction?

[Robert]

Well, one thing I'll add just from the denture hat, is that most startups actually have horrible corporate governance. Most startups have horrible control. Most startups honestly are run by the founders and investors have a lot less say and input than the average bystander thinks they do. Founders drive bad terms with investors all the time. Board consents and like shareholder consents and all these things get rammed through. Most VCs have had like some experience with the founder who's done something terrible.

[Tom]

Right?

[Robert]

Like I think there's a perception difference between what people think a startup is like on the inside and what it's actually like on the inside. Right. Like, to your point, Tom. Yes. Like, if it's a contract signed by two adults, like, one is like a venture fund, like extremely, like big boy investor, and the other one is a founder. Yes, it's fair. But oftentimes, like, I do think there's a power dynamic where like a founder's like, I'm selling secondary or else kind of thing. There's a lot of different types of pressure that shouldn't exist. And I don't think all of the deals are necessarily fair. I think at the end of the day, and I stand on my point here, I don't think founders should be selling a lot of secretary. It is money that could be going to the company's bank account to hire people that create Runway, like to increase the probability that the startup succeeds and lives. Right. I don't think a large amount of money should go to the founders. And while a founder could bully their VCs into anything, getting them to literally sign off on anything, I don't think it makes it right.

[Siv]

Okay, so I'm going to take the other side. I think I'm probably the most laissez faire about secondary compared to all of you guys. So here's, I think, where my intuition departs from you guys. So, one, the founder owns the company. That's the whole idea. Capitalism means if you own a company, you get to decide what you do. The company does not belong to the investors. It doesn't belong to the VCs. It belongs to the founder because the founder usually owns 70, 80% of the company, depending on, you know, obviously there's companies where you've sold a lot more shares.

[Robert]

If there's founders, sure.

[Siv]

If, yes, fine. But like, the whole idea is that you own the company and you get to decide what transaction takes place. There are a lot of companies that never go public. There are a lot of companies that are just permanently private. And to the extent that there is turnover and ownership, it is through secondaries. Now, the thing about startups is that we have developed this code of startups in Silicon Valley that has now grown to be a much larger phenomenon around the world. And there's this idea that, okay, as a founder, you're supposed to do this, you're supposed to do that. VCs are supposed to be stewards of this process by which these things take place. But the reality is all these things are ultimately negotiated. They're all subject to power dynamics, as is every transaction in a capitalist system. And at the end of the day, If a founder decides one, I want to take some secondary. I want to take some risk off the table. Usually even in these cases where there's, you know, an egregiously large amount sold, which, you know, it sounds like for most people here in this conversation, 10 million is a big number. 10 million is like beyond the pale of a normal amount of money.

[Tom]

No, no, no, I wouldn't say that. I just was saying, like, there needs to be some, like, commensurate.

[Siv]

Okay, let's say 30. Let's say 30. 30 million. So you know, Dan sold 40, right? 30 million. I think everybody in this conversation would say that's too much.

[Tom]

30 million usually when it depends, depends on how much value they created for the investors.

[Siv]

That's what I would say. That's what I would say. I would say it depends on the amount of value they created. So, like for 30 million, if you're selling at a billion dollar valuation, I think Farcaster was a billion right at the time that they raised that round.

[Tarun]

It was a little over it, but 1.2 or something.

[Tom]

But I forget what the token was relative. But yeah, whatever.

[Siv]

Whatever it was. Let's just round numbers. Let's say it's a billion. A billion. Selling 30 million means you've sold 3%, right? So as a founder, let's say you own 70% at the end of the actual primary transaction now you're down from 70% to 67% after selling that, your net worth is still 99% in your startup. That's the difference between you being a 30 millionaire and a 700 millionaire is whether or not you end up actually getting there with your startup. And if you're in Silicon Valley or you're like in these circles that you now are, if you're a successful startup founder, there's a huge difference between being worth 30 million and being worth 700 million. And of course, after taxes, that's like half of that, right? If you live in New York or whatever. So there's a cold reality that I think if you look at the lived experience of these startup founders, making 15 million is not like, great, done, don't need to work hard anymore, don't need to make the startup successful. I can just ride off into the sunset. Anybody who's at this scale that's driving this hard, no founder is selling 10% their ownership in a secondary. No founder, I very rarely Even they sell 5% in a secondary.

[Robert]

But if they did sell 10% of their holdings in a secondary before the.

[Siv]

Company, that would be, that would Be really, really rare. I would say that's, that's a, that's a extreme level of secondary that I have never seen. Even like we work was not 10%, you know, and we work was like the canonical. Oh my God, I can't believe how much money this guy made before a company went public.

[Tarun]

Yeah. I think maybe also reading this, it is to your point, around value creation for investors, I think the hand wringing around Dan's secondary was also people that believe their forecaster should be valued at a billion dollars. No one was pissed about figma, people taking secondary because everyone's like, oh yeah, figma, great software, I think it's going to be a good ipo, it's going to be successful. But then people look at forecaster and they're like, oh, this shouldn't even be worth this much, period. And so therefore your math doesn't really make sense because I think it should be worth way, way, way, way less. And therefore this feels like he's just like getting money from nothing. Not that it's accurate, but.

[Siv]

And this is the weirdness of power laws, right? Is that like VCs invest in power law distributions. That means a small number of startups will be super, super successful and most of them will fail. And when you're sampling from a power law distribution, you're going to get weird results. One of those weird results is that it is actually correct for somebody who's very likely to have their startup failure to be paid for doing so. That's weird. Most people do not jive with that intuition because they do not like probability distributions. They're like, no, I want this to be a uniform distribution. You only get paid if you definitely pay out, if you definitely get to ipo, if you definitely create shareholder value. But if you go to zero, you have sinned, you have done something fundamentally morally wrong. And that's not how VC works. It is actually in expectation value creation because you don't know ex ante which ones are going to be worth 10 billion and which ones are going to go to zero.

[Robert]

I agree. The outcome should not be zero or insane binary outcome where you're worth like a billion dollars. Right. I do think as a startup founder, speaking as an investor, and what I want the space to provide is that a founder should always generally be more comfortable than if they just took the job at JP Morgan or whatever company off the shelf. Right? Like they should be more comfortable, you know, as the leader of a company, raising capital, building a team, bringing products to market like they should. Most of the time, walk away, I hope with like half a million dollars or like some like feeling like they've done okay just for being in the seat and like swinging the bat and trying to hit a home run. For a large group, I don't think it should be zero, but I don't think you should be hunking away with $30 million in the scenario where like you vaporize all of your investors money.

[Tom]

I think you guys just have like different duration questions. Like one person is like, do I mark to market up front how much enterprise value was created from the fundraising or do I mark to market like how much is created after the round over time, right? And for some people, they're like, I only believe a priori value, like what we're investing in is the true price, true enterprise value created that you're secondary is from. And for others it's like, okay, it's like over the lifetime, like what's revenue, whatever other stuff that people use. And I think that's fine for people to have different views on that. Like, you don't have to. Everyone doesn't have to have the same view on it.

[Siv]

I just, I think, I think there's genuine, like there's a wrong side and there's a right side. Like look at biotech, Biotech companies that ipo, so many biotech companies that IPO never make it past stage three trials. The drug goes to zero, doesn't make it, nothing goes to market.

[Tom]

They also have crazy ownership structure. They have crazy ownership structure where like the VCs take 80% so or 50 plus.

[Siv]

But like the criticism of Vivek Ramaswamy, right, is that he IPO'd some biotech company or maybe more than one. I forget. And he's like, I'm a successful biotech founder because I took a company to IPO and it was very successful and I made $100 million. And the argument is like, well, no, you didn't. You scammed people because you launched a company that didn't. The drug didn't go to stage past stage three, it produced nothing. And it's like, well, yeah, but the world is probabilistic. Like when, like it's sort of like you get paid for the value and expectation that you bring to the market, right? Even something like peloton, right? The peloton founders, they got paid huge amounts of money in their ipo, sold their shares, and at the time people would say like, this is product market fit. This is an amazing company. This is going to change the world. Peloton is now like down only, you know, I don't know what it's worth now, but it's like in the toilet, if you bought it during COVID and it's like, okay, did they do something wrong or. No, they didn't because it was an ipo. An IPO is a magical time when now it's okay for you to destroy enterprise value and get paid, but before that point, it's immoral for you to destroy enterprise value and still get paid. Like, I just think these are arbitrary.

[Tom]

These are arbitrary.

[Siv]

Things are probabilistic.

[Tom]

I think the main question is just like, what do you define enterprise value as? It could be the value of your preferred shares now could be value of the metrics. And those are very different philosophies. Right.

[Robert]

Third party valuation would say from the founder's perspective, it's the value of the common stock.

[Siv]

Not.

[Tom]

Right. Also that. Also there's also all this other. Yeah, so I think there's like, to me, they're all. Are actually kind of. You have a single kind of view that the problem is you don't know what methodology you're using for the valuation. And that's the thing you're disagreeing on, in my opinion.

[Tarun]

And there is like a post hoc rationalization of what has happened, like to my point around the forecaster valuation, like, oh, people thought it was too high, or maybe they think now it's too high because it didn't work. But like, you know, I remember when OpenAI was raising around to like 100 billion and people were like, oh my God, it's a bubble. How could this possibly be 100 billion? And now those people are clamoring to get into like triple layered SPVs at like 800 billion. And you know, you can see another world where it's like, oh, Sam's a scammer. He sold $100 million at, you know, 100 billion valuation. And it's like, I don't know.

[Tom]

I will say one of my favorite tweets I saw today was the scam crypto VC to five layered anthropic SPV pipeline. And I couldn't stop laughing when I saw that.

[Robert]

My favorite tweet today, just to change topics quickly, was tweeting that Tarun was in the Epstein files.

[Siv]

Yeah, very, very smooth transition there, Robert. So let's talk about the other. The other big story this week, of course, has been the release, the full release of the Epstein files. So turns out that Epstein. We're obviously not going to talk about the general Epstein Story, but turns out there's a crypto connection or a number of crypto connections with the Epstein files. And one of our co hosts, Tarun, turns out to be in the Epstein file. So you can go home yourself to justice.gov and type in Tarun's name and see what salacious involvement he has had with Jeffrey Epstein, infamous financier. So, Tarun, any reports about the island? You know, like, what. What did you guys get up to? Did you attend any of the parties? Yeah, any. Any comments you'd like to make to. To our audience about your involvement?

[Tom]

I think actually this morning when someone said, oh, my God, you're in the Epstein files, I was like, oh, my God, what the fuck? How did this happen? Like, did someone, like, spoof my email? And then I looked and I was like, okay, so Jeffrey Epstein uses Quora and probably follows some topics I used to write answers in in 2014. And I'm in the Quora Digest, which is like the answers you should read for the day.

[Siv]

And that's why he invited you to the island, out of admiration for your Quora answers. And there's all these photos now.

[Tom]

Who knows if he even read it? There's like 20 different suggestions in the Quran.

[Robert]

I'm sure he read it to Rin. Let's not.

[Siv]

Oh, he definitely read that also.

[Tarun]

That's one of those things you get subscribed to and you can't unsubscribe. I feel like I subscribed to Core digest for, like, 10 years.

[Tom]

One day I was just like, all right.

[Tarun]

Yeah, I was going to say famed Dragonfly Portfolio company founder and I believe Robot Port co founder Vlad Novikovsky of lidr. Also very famous Quora poster. Yeah, I think he was like, top 10 Quora poster. He was also in the Epstein files from the Quora Die Tie.

[Tom]

But the funny thing is the suggested post that I had written was about homomorphic encryption. So at least it's consistent. He got a, like a math cryptography suggested post to read. Wow.

[Siv]

Okay, that's. Well, Tarun, that was kind of a half apology, but I guess we'll take whatever we can get from you at this point.

[Tom]

I'm not Brian Johnson, okay? I didn't get, like, a plain invite.

[Robert]

Listen, there might be additional files released in the future. We don't know if this is the true.

[Siv]

That's true, that's true. We got to get to the bottom of this. We got to get to the bottom of the true Nepstein connection.

[Robert]

Yeah, we think it's limited to one One Quora post, but it could be five.

[Tom]

It could be a stack overflow too. It could be math overflow too. Like he probably just followed my math overflow post.

[Siv]

Okay, so there was a few notable other Epstein connections besides Tarun. So first, Epstein apparently was an investor in Coinbase in 2014 at a 400 million valuation. Pretty insane. Fred Ersam was apparently aware of this. The deal was arranged by Brock Pierce and Blockchain Capital. Apparently Jeffrey Epstein was quite close with Brock Pierce. Photos allege that he and Brock Pierce got close after a failed Mindshift conference. And Epstein at one point mentioned that Brock was interesting. Pierce described the fundraising round as the most platinum plated deal in the space to get Jeffrey Epstein to invest in the round. So bit of a. I guess he's on cap table Coinbase maybe. I don't know how that proceeded. And apparently there's also a big Epstein Blockstream connection, particularly with Adam Back. So Adam Back, one of the extreme OGs in the Bitcoin space, OG Bitcoin dev, part of Blockstream leadership team. And apparently Adam Back was all over Epstein Island. He was hanging out with him, going on the jet, doing all sorts of stuff. And I haven't, I haven't really followed this very closely because it just leads to a lot of brain damage for me personally. But obviously there is the infamous connection between Jeffrey Epstein and the MIT Media Lab by Joy Ito, who they made donations, I guess, to Bitcoin Core via the MIT Media Lab. And that was. He was like kind of the fixer, I guess.

[Tom]

Poor Jeremy Rubin. Poor Jeremy Rubin. Because like Jeremy Rubin, bitcoin dev, who is in there, I feel like he had this whole long diatribe and like Jeremy was writing and Jeremy's a good old friend of mine and I. He was writing in great grammar, great diction, good vocabulary. And then you afterwards see the Jeffrey Epstein reply was like dot, dot, space, question mark, dot. And you're like, okay, what's going on here?

[Siv]

Equal sign. Equal sign with a bunch of equal signs thrown in there.

[Tom]

Yeah, it's like what? Like, like.

[Siv]

And that. So Jeremy, Jeremy actually pitched. He pitched Jeffrey Epstein on a grin spv, which. All of which you can get in the Epstein files. And it's 2 and 15. No, I'm sorry, 2 and 20. 2 and 20 on this thing. And I don't know whether it was consummated, but I think it was. And then there's one other story that Phil Diane posted about Epstein, I guess Austin Hill and Adam Back, apparently coordinating to try to Get Epstein to not buy ETH under the claim that ETH is not decentralized and it's a scam or whatever. So there's all this. I mean, to be clear, I think all this is stupid and I don't understand why it matters. But like, Jeffrey Epstein is now just, you know, he is like the. The source of this atomic bomb that you just have to get away from the fallout.

[Tom]

Otherwise, like, there's one other. One other crypto person who I found, or I forgot who found. And then I was reading the emails. So one of the zcash paper authors and developers who's what used to be at MIT DCI maters versa, has a long thread with Epstein talking about Christianity and like, formal theological kind of views on Christianity. And I'm like, after reading all the other memed jokes Epstein wrote, I was sort of like, wow, how is he having this serious conversation? But yes. Anyway, the zcash developer, one zcash developer, loves talking about Christianity with Jeffrey Epstein. That's the headline.

[Siv]

Ah, okay. Any. Any thoughts? Tom Robert Epstein, Crypto files.

[Robert]

I mean, just to speak generally, I mean, he was connected to basically every industry. I am just floored by how prolific he was. Of a connector, right? Regardless of crypto. Like, he seemingly was literally everywhere, right? Like, he was a one man, like, hyper connector, right? And. Or maybe not one man. Maybe there's like intelligence agencies behind him or whatever. Right? But like, the fact that he was interacting with some very important crypto timelines in our history is not a surprise. He was interacting with all of the most important timelines in every industry. His relationship to, like, all the things that were happening around the great financial crisis and the creation of SPACs and like, all of these things. It's like he's kind of this like, figure, you know, like this forest gump, like, figure that like, happened to be everywhere at all times.

[Siv]

Forest Gump, like figure.

[Tarun]

Dark forest Gump.

[Robert]

Yeah, dark forest Gump. Like evil forest Gump. Right. He was evil forest Gump. And so the crypto stuff, you know. Yeah, it's like, funny. It's like, oh, my God. He was involved in like these crypto conversations, but you. He was also in the extortion, slash, money laundering business. Like, he was a bad dude. And so the fact that he crossed.

[Siv]

Money laundering business, I don't know, doing.

[Robert]

All sorts of shad.

[Siv]

All right, I actually. Never mind. I don't. I unasked the question.

[Robert]

Yeah, he was doing so much shady stuff. He was getting tipped off about like, central bank moves before they happened, you know, like the. He was evil, dark forest Gump. So many ways. And so, you know, I think in the scope of things, his crypto involvement is actually pretty light and insignificant relative to all the other things he was tangled up.

[Tarun]

Yeah, I think again, maybe more just surprised, like how, like, we talk about the grin spv, and like, I feel like that's a deep cut by. By any standards. And, you know, probably thank God it was not consummated because I would hate to be losing 99% of Jeffrey Epstein's money. I feel like I'd get disappeared or something.

[Tom]

RIP Nikolai.

[Tarun]

Yeah, there you go. Washed up on a beach somewhere. But I think the thing everyone in tech is kind of grappling with now is what is the acceptable distance to be in terms of blast radius from Epstein? It's like if you went to the island, obviously not okay. If you did some sort of business deal, maybe not okay. If you met or an email, it's probably okay. That feels like that's basically everybody, and if you weren't on an email, then you're a loser. And so that's also not okay. And so there's. There's some sort of ring in which you.

[Siv]

You want to be tastefully distant from Jeffrey Epstein, but not invisible to Jeffrey Epstein.

[Tom]

Where does Korra digest fall in this?

[Tarun]

Yeah, no, you're good.

[Siv]

You're not close enough. No, no, no. You're not close enough. That's uncool. Extremely.

[Tarun]

He may have known your name, but. Yeah, I don't know. It's great.

[Tom]

Yeah.

[Siv]

Yeah, that. I mean, it's what it makes me think about. I mean, I haven't followed this Jeffrey Epstein stuff because I just find it to be so inane. But what it does make me think about is we're now in the throes of being connected to powerful people, and we go in these circles or whatever, and in 20 years, there's going to be somebody who is a Jeffrey Epstein, like, person. And you can tell from the way that people interact with Jeffrey Epstein that people just thought of him as some rich, powerful guy. And I've interacted with a lot of rich, powerful guys, and I don't know who they are. I don't know what they do. I don't know what their business is. Like, you just. You. You go meet somebody at a thing, and someone says, oh, this person. This person is a blah, blah, blah, and they're really powerful, and, like, you should know them. And I'm like, okay. And you talk to them for whatever, period. Of time and then you move on with your life and you never think about it again. And like, with. There's going to be someone who we all are going to look back on and, like, we will be judged for our passing interactions with some random person.

[Tom]

Okay, I would love to hear who you predict. Who do you predict of all your interactions?

[Siv]

Well, apparently CZ is now that. Apparently CZ is now like an Epstein level villain.

[Tom]

What?

[Siv]

No, I think it'll be random.

[Tom]

That's the thing.

[Siv]

I don't think. I don't think people, like, you can tell. No, I'm obviously being facetious, but, like, I think there. I think what you can tell when you read these emails is that people had no idea this would be the center of their professional lives in 20 years. Like, there's so much like just stupid, whatever, throwaway flipping stuff in there that, like, I mean, look, I know people who probably are, like, just not great dudes, but that's not enough of a reason to say, okay, well, I'll never interact with you or I won't get anywhere near you because I think you have loose morals. It's like, okay, there's loose morals and then there's like, okay, this person is like a legendary sex offender.

[Tarun]

I mean, he was kind of a legendary sex offender.

[Siv]

I mean, he was already convicted after the first indictment. After the first indictment. But there's a lot of people before that first indictment that are just like.

[Tarun]

Everything that we're talking about is after the. After the first conviction.

[Tom]

By the way, sometimes I go look at my old telegram messages with sbf, which I'm sure everyone here probably has some SBF telegram messages. And I'm like, did he. Did someone delete them yet? They're still there.

[Siv]

Yeah.

[Tom]

I'm like, all right, well, maybe that's the equivalent.

[Siv]

Well, okay, I think the lesson to internalize is that. Okay, so I didn't. I didn't realize this was all post first because the first thing was in 2008 or something, right?

[Tom]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tarun]

So he was already convicted of, like, soliciting child prostitutes.

[Siv]

Yeah.

[Tom]

I mean, and he still.

[Siv]

All this stuff is after that.

[Tom]

That's why the emails are crazy. Because he's, like making jokes about it in the emails, like, it's like a little demented.

[Robert]

That was his whole business, right? Was basically to create mountains of evidence and compromise with the world's most powerful people. So this whole shenanigan was having emails being like, oh, like, you got an STD from a 2. You know, we're like, oh, remember that time where you bought drugs. Like, his emails were on purpose, extremely scandalous and compromising and he was manufacturing a paper trail because that's how he extorted people.

[Siv]

Maybe I'm just naive. I. Clearly I am naive because I.

[Tom]

It's actually, it's interesting to me that like, Haseeb really loves going deep into these kind of like pseudo conspiracy things, in my opinion. Like, I feel like when you, you're interested in. No, when you're interested in one, you, you, you like go in fully and like this one is completely uninteresting to you, which is like weird to me because it's like, it's so wide ranging and covering everything in society.

[Siv]

Wait, hold on. How do. How am I a conspiracy theorist? What? Where does this come from?

[Tom]

Conspiracy theorist? I think you like, you like going like when there's something that's like kind of controversial like this, you like going deep in, in like, you know, I think of it even how you, you showed up in the CZ versus Star argument. Like, you know, somehow they were both lobbing like ah, Dragonfly didn't invest in. In me early and Dragonfly invested in me, but like still dunking on me, huh? And like, you know, you, you somehow end up putting yourself in. In these types of things where it's like there's a lot of secrets and I find it's funny. You have no interest in the Epstein secrets.

[Siv]

Are you accusing me of something? It's like.

[Tom]

No, no, no, no, no. I'm just saying it's like someone searches.

[Siv]

Seeb justice.gov Epstein Suspiciously quiet about the DEP seed files. I wonder if he's hiding something.

[Tom]

No, no, no, not.

[Siv]

Okay, I'll tell you why. Yeah. Like, this feels like kind of salacious for its own reason. Like for its own sake, where it's like, I remember the Jeffrey Epstein prosecution when it happened and people were like, oh, that's bad. Some fucking weird guy did a bunch of horrible things. There's just stories like that all the time. But it's like metastasized into this larger cultural witch hunt of that this guy's now the devil. And all sin flows from your distance to Jeffrey Epstein. And it's mostly because of Trump. If it wasn't for Trump and his connection to the Epstein files, this would not be such a broad cultural phenomenon.

[Robert]

I don't know about that. I don't know about that. I don't know about that. This is like one of the most dark Forrest Gump evil people in the history of America. I think There would be a lot.

[Tom]

Of curiosity of the US Virgin Islands.

[Siv]

Like, look, look, I remember when the Epstein prosecution was happening. I remember when he killed himself. It was not this big of a story. It was a big story. People talked about it and like. But the fact that it's now all consuming.

[Robert]

It was a huge story. When he killed.

[Siv]

It was a huge story. Yes, it was front page news. I understand it was. Yes. But like, this has been months of this being the main story. And why is that? The answer is because of the fact that Trump has made it into this cultural circus.

[Robert]

No world leaders are caught up in this, Steve. It's not just about Trump.

[Tarun]

Bill Clinton. Yeah, I think the Clintons are testifying in front of Congress next week.

[Tom]

Israel.

[Siv]

But like, they knew. But we all knew that. We all knew. We already knew that Epstein was like, we all knew this. We knew that Bill Gates was involved. We knew that Clinton was involved. We knew they were on the island. Like, we knew they flew together.

[Robert]

No, we didn't. Come on. We didn't know any of these people.

[Siv]

Okay, to be clear, I didn't even know that Stephen Hawking was involved. How is that even possible?

[Tom]

Oh my God. You didn't know the Stephen Hawking one? That one was like, like, I'm telling you, I didn't.

[Siv]

I'm not following this, guys.

[Robert]

I'm not following a midget affiliation. He really liked the midgets and Epstein would provide him.

[Siv]

Okay, hold on. All right, we need to cut the tape. I don't want to know this.

[Tom]

Wait, wait, wait. One thing I will say about this whole thing is like, I feel like 10 years ago I was staunchly like, oh, conspiracy theorists are all full of shit. And like now this thing just basically, I think makes everyone in society suddenly like, yeah, conspiracy theorists are probably full of shit. But like, maybe the but maybe is now true. Like, there's no way around that. That's just like.

[Siv]

Okay, so I guess the thing that it also feels like to me is that it's very. It's like the perfect Martin Gurry revolt of the public moment where you see all of the elites are like debauched, disgusting, like self contradicting pieces of shit. And that is such a satisfying story. It's exactly what the public wants to hear. It's kind of sign of the times. Look, I like, candidly, I don't really care whether Stephen Hawking got laid on Epstein Island. To me, it's just not important. I'm not sitting around worrying.

[Robert]

I think he just like to watch. I don't think he was.

[Tom]

Wait, wait, wait.

[Siv]

I don't need to know. I really don't need to know.

[Tom]

I didn't really even want to know that. Leshner doesn't curse, but he says shit like that.

[Siv]

Yeah, yeah. I'm like, look, let Stephen Hawking just die in the comfort of his home with whoever, whoever's disappointed in Stephen Hawking. Let them take it up with him. I don't need to be disappointed with Stephen Hawking because I don't care. That was never part of my relationship with Stephen Hawking, that he's not a sex fiend. So I'm just like, look, to the extent that people did actual bad things, there's a justice system for that. They'll be okay. They don't need me to be caught up in all of this and laboriously sifting through the files to understand who did bad things, because I don't care if somebody actually who I'm connected to. If Adam Back was on the island, that's good to know. I will avoid Adam Back. Sounds like a bad dude. But beyond that, I don't know these people and I don't really care whether they did bad things because I didn't vouch for them in the beginning. So I don't know. I feel like this instinct of really needing to know who is a sex fiend and who's not, if you don't know these people and you have no connection to them feels an unwise instinct to feed, is my view. But I'm probably the minority and people are going to accuse me of being a bad person.

[Robert]

But in your view, we should make the Epstein comma crypto list?

[Siv]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's important for us to know if. If there were people who are affiliate with Jeffrey Epstein after it was already widely known that he was a very, very bad dude, then yes, those people should be called out and, like, there should be consequences for that.

[Robert]

Are you going to call out Coinbase or, like, companies that he invested in? Like, where do you just.

[Siv]

Did we just did. We read out all these things on the show. So, yeah, I think if you were affiliated with Epstein after all of that, I mean, look, there was just this thing just yesterday or today about Neil Simani. Right. So Neil Simani, I think we alluded briefly to Neil Simani was the founder of Eclipse. He was pushed out for sexual misconduct allegations and then he basically left crypto, went into AI, worked on this Erdos problem with the aid of ChatGPT. And then there was this thing from Robinhood that Robinhood gave him, or Vlad Harmonic, which is a company founded by the founder of Robinhood, gave a grant to Neil Simani. And a bunch of people were in the comments. I was in the comments being like, yo, do you not know that this guy was just ejected from an industry for sexual misconduct allegations? And then I think the tweet got deleted. And I think that's what you're supposed to do, is that if you have a degree of separation, if this person is part of your community, there should be consequences for behavior. Now, that's not to say that Neil Simani should never walk the earth. It's not to say he should never be able to defend himself. If he has a response, he should go make it in public and go say, hey, guys, here's why I think that's an unfair treatment of me. He has the right to do that. But I'm not going to go on a crusade of somebody I don't know or I have no connection with, because that's not. I'm not qualified to do that. I don't fucking know any of these things. So I think the instinct of wanting to go chase down random people to the ends of the earth, and I wouldn't say I'm doing that with Neil Simani, but I think it is. What is the sin of which the people who affiliate with Jeffrey Epstein, what is the sin they are guilty of? Most of these people didn't go to the island. Most of these people didn't have. They weren't even accused of any kind of sexual misconduct themselves. Right. What are they accused of? The answer is they are accused of not being. Of not sufficiently socially punishing people who engage in bad actions. That's what they're accused.

[Robert]

Not diligencing their business partners.

[Siv]

Right, right to it. To a extremely low degree. Right. Of just like this person was literally convicted of sexual.

[Tarun]

He has a Wikipedia page. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Siv]

If you have a Wikipedia page about what you did, that's, you know, that's. It's on you. You know, you have to.

[Robert]

Are we going to make a Wikipedia page that says Tarun Chitra and his role in the Epstein files?

[Tom]

His role in a Quora Digest post on homomorphic encryption. Okay, great.

[Siv]

Notable figure. We should add just to the Epstein files. Notable figures at the bottom and just throw to room in there. Yeah. All right, so for anybody, anybody who's watching, if you're a Wikipedia editor, you know what to do.

[Robert]

If you're a Quora.

[Tom]

Anyway.

[Robert]

All right, contributor, We're.

[Siv]

We're up on time. So I think we gotta wrap. But I'm. I'm guessing we're gonna get a number of angry letters about this discussion, because one thing, one thing.

[Tom]

She's gonna get more angry letters. The secondary or the Epstein?

[Siv]

I. I think probably Epstein. I think Epstein. I think Epstein's gonna get more angry.

[Tom]

You guys don't even agree on that.

[Siv]

Yeah, it's true. That's true. I mean, some of these things just break people's brains. So I think this is. Yeah, I think people are not going to have a great reaction to the episode. But look, that's what we're here for, is say what we think. Yeah. Bring it on. All right, that's it. Thanks, everybody. We'll be back next week. Stay strong.