FTX Collapse: 4 red flags that EVERYONE missed

Apologies for the typos, this is an AI transcription

Welcome to Happy Millionaire, a show about how to make profit with a positive impact and stay happy along the way. 


So not just so you can connect with nature, but literally so you can just switch off and just access that side of the brain that leads to more creativity. So basically, on Wednesday I drove up to Norfolk, right at the top of Norfolk. They don't tell you where you're going. They'll literally send you a pin, like a Google map pin and just say, go here and then park your car. 


And then the rest will be like sort of, you know, just instructions or whatever. So I went there with my dog, no one else, just so not big, just me, just Nutmeg. And I had like a a three piece of paper. I left my laptop. I haven't left my laptop at home for literally, So drove up there, you park your car and then no one's there. 


Literally like you're just parking off, uh, this little A road like country road into this, um, like dirt road sort of thing. There's a wheelbarrow. And a torch and it just says like, go this way. So you put all your shit in the world bar, including your food and everything, and you, you walk into the forest like 400 meters and then suddenly you come to this clearing and there's like a little bonfire, there's a modern looking cabin, solar panels, and uh, you go in and it's all like, It's actually quite nice. 


It's kind of like a Soho house did, like cabins in the woods. 


But the best thing about it is the windows. So there's, it's almost like floor to ceiling windows. And when you wake up in the morning, all you see is forest and it's phenomenal. And so I woke up in the, in the morning, the, the following night after cooking myself dinner and, uh, me, and were just like stirring out into the, into forest rages. 


It was raining and then I was like, oh, sod this. Let's just go out. Put my overalls on, went out and then we just went for a walk and got lost for two hours. And mate, I can't, it sounds so douchey to talk about like, you know, I'll do this in real life and get back to nature. But honestly, for someone who spends so much of their time on social media, consuming social media, creating content, and generally being in front of a laptop, it was amazing. 


I recommend it to. 


And so, you know, I I, I did my best lumberjack impression and I put, you know, my, my, my logs on created a fire that 


But, um, what were you like? So then you went to bed. Next day you woke up, 
I'm assuming that's when,

I've gotta make sure I make that phone call. Or I've gotta, you know, you're just kind of like going through a to-do list and then you kind of like realize, oh, those are my thoughts. And then you start watching your thoughts and then you smile internally and then you just get into that, okay, well I'm just walking and I, or I'm just sat here, or I'm just like concentrating on my breathing. 


And actually when I was. In the forest with, with nutmeg would just walk in and it was rain. So this is listening to the sounds and it was, yeah, it was, it was great. Uh, I, I, I, I feel like a dose of boredom is necessary as an, as the antidote to our sort of hyper connected, very busy lives. And it's not just like literally busy. 


It's like busy minded lives. So yeah. No, no, it was epic. It's 


And he talks about just the brainwaves, cuz right now in our crazy lives, What he calls it, like the beta wave, beta state, right? Where we're just constantly chasing that dopamine, right? That next hit, um, whatever it is, whether it's making money or whether it's through friends, social life, food. And essentially what he's saying is that we all to go to the alpha state where things just slow down, and that's the moment where you can be creative. 


You're relaxed. That's where you can hit the loving, joyful state. So it felt like this whole trip you. Out of that beat state, into that alpha state where you are relaxed and he, you being more creative, you can be more connected to your soul. I guess selfishly what I wanna learn from you, well what did you take away and for others I did some 


She's just like, you know. It's 10 years in the future, you're waking up, where are you? Uh, what does it smell like? What, what are you sleeping on? What are you getting up on? How does your body feel? What's the temperature? What's the weather outside? You know, all, all these different questions. And basically what came to me was like this picture of this future that I want to create for myself and this, you know, we weren't on psychedelics or anything like that. 


And I looked back on that whilst I was away and. It's incredible how many things I've ticked off. Say I'm married this year, I run my business from wherever I was in Australia for a month earlier this year. You know, the podcast is, is taken off, uh, all, all the, the other elements of my business. By virtue of having an agency that's based in Berlin allows me to do loads of remote work as well. 


Mm-hmm. , the app is obviously, you know, it doesn't really matter where in the world I am. I can still run that. It, it was, it was a really big realization, one that I hadn't realized before. And then the exercise, I actually, I would've brought in with me as like a show and tell. Were they three papers? Yeah. 


Yeah. I put it in the log burn cause I wanted to make some, some other ones. So I don't have that anymore. And I basically mapped out all the different things that I want to do with my business, uh, aspect to the life. And then like living aspect of life, like we talked about that long. Central table. Mm. So I wrote that out and I, I basically just kind of like put the building blocks of my life together, uh, what kind of, uh, business I have, the different elements of the business. 


One thing that I came to realize is actually I love. Uh, almost like consulting or giving guidance to other entrepreneurs, uh, because even though I'm still kind of junior on my journey, I think sometimes you can still be a teacher of other people along, along the way. Funny, funny thing actually, while someone in this monologue, I was just, uh, interviewing someone for a position, uh, doctor's Kitchen. 


Uh, he's a UX designer and we just got chatting and I was like, just tell me like, you know, what things you. Tinkering around with on the side of like working for the last start Euro and he was like, oh, I've been thinking about creating this company. It's sort of like where you can source really high quality meat from, cuz it's very hard to actually source that. 


Even when you go to Reper butchers, it's sort of like Butcher's box, but for like for the uk. And he was like, yeah. And I was like, is there a butcher's box in the, in the uk? And he said no. And I was like, why aren't you doing. Yeah. And he was like, oh, well I did, and I started creating a marketplace and I had this dev guy and like, you know, he ended up doing another project and I was like, what? 


What's the state of that now? And he was like, well, I got involved with this other startups and so I kind of like shelved it for a bit. And I was like, Dude, you're sitting on a really good idea. There's information asymmetry about the, the quality meat products. I know that's something that I would use and a lot of like, you know, people that I know within this C would use health conscious people for sure. 


People are coming around to the idea that most meat that you find in supermarkets is sort of poor quality. Mm-hmm. with Brexit. We know that the, the quality of meat is gonna go down cause we gonna get to import it from all these other un reputable sources like America. This is a really good idea. So like, I just basically, and he was like, yeah, yeah. 


And I was like, this is what you need to do next. Yeah, yeah. You need to go get your first hundred customers. Go and get them to pre uh, pre-sell it. Start something on Kickstarter, get your first 10 K in, and then build your proper marketplace. And then, and he was like, yeah. 


He's got the skill is he UX designer 


who's 


Yeah. So I'm constantly reading, but there's more advanced techniques and I do recommend, I wish this was something we were taught at school. Right? Yeah. Like, Hey, do these visualization techniques show it does actually work? I know some people might be listening to us going, oh my God, this is Boohoo stuff. 


But it does. Work because if you can get your mind in that place, basically your thoughts become your feelings. Your feelings become your action. And it all is linked. Like there's neuroscience that proves it. So there's something called mind movies. I dunno if you've seen that. So mind movies, Jodi Spender talks a lot about it, but also a lot of other people where Robert being just words, the next is doing in pictures, right? 


So you visualize, hey, you know, publish sure of your Lamborghini or your perfect couple, or whatever it's gonna be, right? My movies are is you're putting short video footages. Maybe you've created them or you can get stock photos, but at the same time, you're also putting words of information on these videos. 


So it's, these are words that connect deeply with you. I wanna feel energized and be healthy, right? And on there you've got pictures of you doing some yoga and some workout, right? Maybe yourself, or it might be someone else, but these are words that connect with your soul and connect with your heart. And these are videos that connect with you. 


And then thirdly, the element is of music, because music. Is what creates emotion. So what my movies are is basically like 30 informations with connected footage and at the same time there's music that essentially uplifts you. And there's a fourth area on this is, um, there's been a lot of science and again, I'm. 


Obviously being a fanboy of Joe, but what he did was, um, he says the kaleidoscope. So basically if you do kaleidoscope visuals, that takes you to the alpha state much quickly takes the mind to the alpha state because you need to basically remove yourself from where you are today, like this craziness that we're living in, and you to quickly go into an alpha state, which is a calm state. 


Yeah. So if you look at kaleidoscopes to colors, that's something that hits your brain. How do you create kaleidoscope? So you can get visuals online, like on YouTube. So basically you're just looking at kaleidoscope visual. On. So, you know, there's really s Oh, literally kaleidoscope. I thought you meant you putting a whole bunch of images together. 


Mashing. So basically what he says, go look at some kaleidoscope images to put yourself in an alpha state, like a relaxation. Yes. And then watch the mind movies. Gotcha. And if you do that in that sequence, um, that's known to be like the most powerful visualization, more powerful than words. More powerful. 


Pictures. This is the ultimate. So I've done something quite basic in this, but I've never done an advanced one. So you can go on like websites, you can get someone to make it or you can make your own. But that's what I'm gonna do. I think, 


Don't think are scientifically based. Mm-hmm. , there are other people who I respect who essentially say similar things like Dr. David Hamilton, who is a chemist who wrote, uh, why Woo Woo Works. You love that book? Yeah. Um, and then Tara Swat, who is a neuroscientist, teaches at MIT and is also a qualified psychiatrist, like she comes from the the medical path who wrote the source, which is. 


I always recommend people cuz she basically talks about the science of manifesting, which is basically what we're saying the same thing, but like people, you know, choose your, your different adventures, whether it's Joe, whether it's, yeah, talk, it depends on who like chimes with you. Right. I completely agree. 


I think looking at something, having a visual and then focusing. Ideally once a day and sort of visualizing yourself in that scenario, I think is a really, really powerful tool that literally creates connections in your brain that will, you know, subconsciously lead you down that path. So you're gonna be careful what you wish for as well. 


Like Rochelle did this recently, so she. Uh, she's had a, I don't wanna put her on blast, but like, you know, she, she, she's got a life coach. Uh, she did a lot of work with her. She created her own board and stuff, and one of the clear things on her board manifested itself within six or seven months. But in that manifestation, she's now like looking at the next thing and it's kind of like, well, I didn't really want that actually. 


So figure, this is actually the next thread I wanted to talk about. We are pretty lucky to know what we want in life. We've really lucky. Do you know? 


Towards what I truly want to happen. And, uh, that, that's quite unusual, dude. A lot of people are like doing the same thing every day, you know, day in, day out, in the vacation, whatever it might be, and they're not really truly following their passion. Mm, I get it. You know, it's, it is easy for us to say we're in a position where we can actually manifest that, but a lot of people. 


Don't even ask the question what they 


So, but to manifest, you need to know what you want, right? So I feel, I think I've just invested time in that area. Maybe I'm lucky to have invested that time, but I know what had happened when I was. Every Sunday. I dunno. I just made it as a me day quite early on. Yeah, I think that was what happened. So on Sundays I generally won't do much. 


When I was younger I used to just sit there on my couch really weird, like since quite a young age do I never did that. Yeah, it was really weird. I was such a busy body. No, I just, on Sundays, I dunno why I just said, Hey, it's such quite cool to sit on a couch and it used to write stuff. I dunno why I was really weird. 


Really? Yeah. Yeah. Actually it was after uni. It wasn't during uni, it was after. And I think a lot of it probably spread from like Tony Robbins and some other stuff I went on. Cause I realized that this whole aspect of. And thinking what your brain wants and putting on a piece of paper, like that's, it's been something that's in me. 


And I also like write down my values and so in a way to, I have program myself quite early on. I'm not surprised where I am. We, yes, some things have happened, which have blown me away, but in a way, do I have manifested this mate? This you 


Yeah. You're basically doing that 


I thought it'd be more funny. I thought it'd be more funny. You do, you too. Just working 


I was kind of um, just whiteboarding whilst I was, I was driving somewhere with Rochelle the other day cuz she's in that sort of position where, you know, she's in a job. She's good at her. But is it something that gets her fired up in the morning? No, not really. Does she want to do a side horse or find out what side horse or, yeah, probably. 


And for that to happen, you need to sort of like let go of all your. Uh, inhibition. So I did this exercise with her and I was like, look, imagine you are not tied down by money. Let's just say like, you know, you, uh, I don't know your mom or dad like, makes it super big sells, uh, their company for like a hundred million or whatever. 


They gift you 50 mil. They're like, you don't have to work any day in your life. What do you want to do? You've got 50 million now you've got, you know, you've been in nice holidays, you've, you've got a nice car, you've done all the things that you want to do, and now you know, you're, you're sat in your nice flight in the middle of London. 


What are you gonna do next? You wanna do, so you wanna start something? What industry really fires you up? And so you're getting that person, that state of life. I can do whatever I want. I can do travel, I could do wellbeing, I could do. I could do podcasting, I could get on front of tv, like what do I wanna do? 


And so you map out those different industries and then you figure out, okay, where's my skill set? Like where do I, where am I curious? What do I wanna learn a bit more about in those different industries? And then you just start drawing all these different circles and seeing how they intersect with each other. 


And then you can sort of graft or like research that. So there's, there's two levels there. And then the third bit is research. Now you research those areas and then you figure out, What could I do in these different verticals? And honestly, I think that was really helpful for her and it was helpful for me to figure out, again, on my vision board exactly what I wanna be doing. 


Mm. One of the things that I was saying to her is like, think about the idea and then think about the leanest way in which she can test that idea. We can bring on the podcast if she, if she ever, oh, I don't think she wants to be, but No, no. , right? 


Right. You. No, no, no, no, no, no. . That's not my mate. It's not my mate . Um, but yeah. Wow. What's just happened? So, I'm sure some people may know bits about the ftx by the time this goes live, it might be a week after. Um, the big news. Essentially, FTX is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, right? And, um, They've just filed for bankruptcy. 


Yeah. So what happened is the owner of FTX is this really big character, is this 30 year old who's worth 25 billion? Well, no longer, but he was, um, and it's called, his name's Sam Bankman Freed. Right. And so they call sbf, that's his like nickname. And he basically had hedge fund and he was lending money from. 


Like, essentially it's like a trading platform to, um, his hedge fund. His hedge fund was then taking risks on just general like markets. And FTX also had their own cryptocurrency called ftt and. This hedge fund was also protecting that cryptocurrency. So when it started declining, like the hedge fund had to buy stuff, and it turned out that the hedge fund was making a lot of losses in loads of different places, and they were using money from the deposits of customers in the exchange. 


So basically everyone's money was being used. For a hedge fund and also other things. And yeah, essentially now FTX five bankruptcy, we are talking like billions and billions of people's money has been lost. Um, VC money to also accounts like people who had money on the account. So this is a huge, huge bit of news, but now, I don't really wanna talk about the crypto side or um, the markets. 


That's not really why I wanted to start in this thread. I wanted to just talk about some of the really major like red flags that were there. There's like four massive red flags. Red flags in my mind, which before you point that out, go. Can 


So basically exchange where I can buy Bitcoin or 


So crypto market's not really regulated as tightly. Right. Um, so banks are, so right now there. There's like ratios. So there's a, um, deposit to lending like ratios. So right now, if you're a bank, let's say you've got a billion dollars worth of deposits, right? You can, you need to have a certain amount of capital on your balance sheet. 


Um, otherwise regulates can come after you. Yeah. So I dunno what the current ratio is, but let's just say it's 50% for reasons, right? Yeah, yeah. But basically with the case here, they were lending pretty much most of the money that was on the accounts. And it's not being regulated. There's no rules. It is a bit. 


Um, so with this crypto situation, yeah, there was that like, I guess, yeah, there was, this was one of the flags, but it's not being regulated and this is, this is one of the red flags was, you know, the VCs like, we're talking big VCs like Sequoia, who are um, invested in, he's huge. Yeah. The thing was this guy, this SPF guy, like he. 


Prob like, so he was talking about effective altruism. He was talking about, you know, helping politics. He was bailing out companies. Oh, that's how I know about this guy. Yeah. This guy was a 30 year old. Like honestly, I was a fanboy. Yeah, yeah. I was like, everyone, everyone is. Whoever saw his interviews, they were like, wow, this guy is the fi. 


Finally, we have a saint in the finance world, right? Yeah. Like he was, he was thee and. It turns out, yeah, obviously now we know what actually was really going. Cause like I was scratching him, I was like, man, this guy is like, , this guy's too good. This is amazing. Like where's this guy been my whole life? 


He's like, okay, I know Elon must have got, you know, some, like, I think he's got more fans, right? But they were saying like, he is the next prodigy. Right? He was the person the next Elon. So what happened was like, you know, the, one of the red flags was this order issue, right? So VCs, and it's now public, Sequoia, when this guy pitched to Sequoia, right? 


Which is probably, you know, arguably the number one fund or. The best VC funds. They in the internal, uh, memo on like making the investment. They all just said like, this SPF guy is one of the greatest people they've ever met in their life. Like, literally, they'll, they were all Oh wow. Just saying how incredible this person was. 


What happened was, and this is what happens in a lot of businesses, if the founder and that business is doing so, so well, right? Everyone just like backs off and goes, oh, just let that person do what they gotta do. Right. It's a bit like, bit like the LAMA situation, right? It's like just let that person be great. 


Yeah. Or be like, there are no situation as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. So if they're, if they're doing so, so good, it's like, oh, why? Why are we getting involved guys? Like this person knows so much more. So there wasn't much auditing going on. Okay. Right. The VCs didn't really know what was going on. They just kept an arms land. 


So I think that was one massive red flag that we can definitely learn from. Right. The other massive red flag. Some of the team, um, in ftx. So now it's starting to come out. Some of the people who are on the team of ftx, um, I was reading some of the, so article, and it's crazy, there's, so the guy running compliance used to run this, um, poker company, which was for huge fraud , right? 


So they were like taking, so they were people within the business. So the employees of this, um, poker company were basically playing against. Their customers and they knew what hands they hold God. So they went under, yeah. So this guy running compliance for ftx, right? . So I feel like that's the second red flag is like if you are a big company, there needs to be proper reference checks in, you know, the team because that's a massive flag, right? 


That's insane. Another, um, Big red flag in this. It was, there was a lot of whistleblowers, right? But they all got hidden, right? No one like it never, it never hits the press because it's hidden. You would've heard the same thing happened. Like Theos, right? So Theos as we knows that blood company, right? Yeah, yeah. 


There's so many whistleblowers, but everyone just chooses not to talk about it. If you think about it in. business, and this is actually deeper human psychology issue, and this is probably a good time to mention, is that I do believe that humans are good, right? We're all, we've got, all got this good part to us, right? 


But then there's other values, right? So you've got this element of like serving, giving back, you've got this element, we all have it, right? But there's also other values like greed, right? And in this case, I just felt that maybe the SPF, when you were speaking like it was believable, there was some. 


Goodness coming from him. But the second value, which is greed, was a, or making money, whatever you wanna call it, right? That value was so much more greater than giving back that it was just next seed. It was exceeded and whistle blows were mentioning this, but um, like how are you supposed to catch it? But I think when you take the whistle blows a bit more seriously. 


Uh, but the other thing is like if someone isn't displaying the fact, They are greedy, and let's be honest, we are 


Mm. You, you're not like hiding away from the fact that you are trying to generate wealth. Right? Yeah. And I think it's an important balance, and if you're hiding behind this whole effective altruism thing, it's easier to say this in h. That's a red flag. That's a red flag. If you're running a finance company, you're like, oh, but you know, we also just want give all this money to ch 


You, he, he always also willing to help Elon on his, on the Twitter buy out, so Oh, really? Supposedly he put himself down with 3 billion and Yes, he did. He put to have 3 billion, like this is a bit weird. . So there's been, there's some trail for that's come out fanboy as well. Um, yeah, he's an love fanboy. 


So the fourth one. So this is something actually my brother mentioned as one I think is so right. It's, there needs to be like more peer reviews, more peer feed, peer to peer feedback. So his peers are the Coinbase guys, the Binance people. They flagged his model that, um, they knew what was going on in the background. 


They knew about people knew what was going on, right? But they weren't taking the, you know, the peers feedback that seriously. And I feel like that's something that somehow we need to. Be more, um, open to hearing for companies because But 


True. But I feel like just talk a lot of shit about each other. That's true. Lyft, an Uber. That's true. But I feel like fair enough. It doesn't have to be competitors and it has to be people knowledgeable in that space and they know that. You know, it is not biased. It's just, maybe it's just like experts in this area, right? 


That's maybe the form of regulation that they have to go speak to these people, you know, every six months they have to go speak in front of 'em and they have to open up their books and Yeah. Yeah. You know, it is all NDAs, all protected people did flag whether it was a Com competitors, but lots of people did flag some of the issues and it just got ignored. 


Because the thing was this guy was a marketing genius. He go was on New York Times, he was on Wall Street. He was doing interviews with all these people that everyone, billions of people watching and why this guy is incredible. 


He almost. Almost lost absolute everything. I mean, this is outright fraud, so you can't really compare it. But at the same time, like I think it's gonna be, it's hard to spot these when you've got so many moving parts in an industry that a lot of people don't understand. Like it's almost like having that independent body of like crypto experts, who the fuck are they? 


Mm-hmm. , like, I barely know the, the basics of 


But like then there's just like extreme levels where you're literally taking people's money and putting it into a hedge fund, like, yeah. Yeah. So I just feel like hedge level. Yeah. So I think hopefully these are some, I dunno, something needs to be done cuz I know so many stories and don't. Like, I know so many situations that happening where like, you know, the marketing looks so great from the outside, but actually inside we know there's something wrong. 


Right? If you, if someone's listening to 


Like, but the thing is, it's so, it's complicated. Yeah. So complicated. But there's, the thing is a bit like gambling. Like speak to How much of your wealth would you, me, I haven't got much, I haven't put much in like 5%. No, no. Nowhere near, like, no. Near. Oh, okay. Right. I just, I've just, I'm just watching from the sidelines. 


I might miss it, but I'm all good. I'm like staying in my. 


There is, there's a paradox with everything in life, right? But this is, this is a really extreme situation, right? And I think. It's a good one to just understand because you just don't know what's underneath. Right. Yeah. And this was a prime example where it got exposed, but let's see. Did you watch 


Netflix? Yes. Yes. Oh my god, that's so good. Yeah. Yeah, it was crazy. Like the whole sort of background to that story is amazing, and I think you're gonna see that again and again. Of course, we're gonna see a lot more. I wonder what the next one's gonna be. I'm glad you. From the woods. Okay, mate. , that's, swear it sounding like Little Red Riding Hood. 


Um, we had stopped doing the ratings for a couple of weeks, but it's backed by popular Demand. . Oh no. Um, yeah, I thought, I thought that was a great episode actually, cause uh, okay. You enjoyed it. 


Mm. It's amazing how like pleasant that is for like the soul or you, you just feel so refreshed from those type of activities. And a lot of the tech advancements are yeah, moving us away from human values. And there's this, uh, uh, movement called Humane Tech by one of the early guys at Google on, uh, tech that Tristan Harris. 


Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know he's done, he's done a really good TED Talk and there's a Netflix show on it as well. It's almost like, you know, people are using psychedelics to access the default mode network, right? Yeah. The dmm, which is, you know, your sort of like, uh, balanced state, whatever you want to describe it as. 


I think more activities to access our default mode, which is essent. Stimuli less. Yeah. Apart from what you see in our natural surroundings. Yeah. The it is gonna become very, very common. The second thing was the vision board and something you guys didn't, uh, mention specifically, but I thought I'd add is that you both like speak it into existence as well as like you have the vision but then you share it with others or eat like the most vulnerable state of sharing it is to share it on a podcast. 


And then the third thing was, uh, knowing what you want in life and having me days. So yeah, you don't need to. Go into the woods and be all like doctor's, kitchen about it. You could just on the 


what 


So I think they might help 'em, so they 


You'll 


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