The Crypto Boom, Bust, and Backlash (ft. Ben Mckenzie & Dave Miller) | April 16, 2026

Hey Mac Redocing listeners, you can find us every Tuesday and Thursday on Apple Podcast, Spotify or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Stella Blue Coffee is more than just great coffee. It's coffee with a purpose. Introducing We Brew to Rescue, a nationwide campaign using proceeds from our new ready-to-drink cans to help fund 1,000 pet adoptions this year. Every can you crack open helps a real pet find a real home. As simple as that, made with 100% Colombian coffee each 11 oz can delivers smooth, drinkable energy with a boost of protein. Available in Espresso Cafe Mocha and Espresso Sweet Cream. Built for mornings, long days and everything in between. Drink Stella Blue, fuel your day and help save a pet's life. You can follow our progress in real time throughout the campaign by watching the adoption tracker on our site. Grab yours now at StellaBlueCoffee.com, Amazon and select retailers nationwide. Trust no one and accuse everyone. And who's the bad guy? The official Barstool Sports social deduction game from the brilliant mind of Nick Teraney. In what's quickly becoming the most popular new party game around, players are secretly assigned unique roles with the good guys trying to expose the bad guys and the bad guys doing everything they can to stay hidden. Each game unfolds under alternating day and night phases with roles like the cool chick, the shy guy, the gambler, El Presidente, the mentalist, the planner, the funny guy and more. Every round is unpredictable, chaotic and ridiculously fun. Who's the bad guy? Is great for parties, pre-games, family gatherings or groups who just love deception based games. Game night will never be the same. Shop now on Walmart.com. Big T what else you got? Well this is a hard pivot. I don't know if we want to save it for the end, but you played flag football with Drew Brieze growing up? Yeah, yeah, yeah. How was he? Was he awesome? He was awesome. Welcome back to another episode of Macward Ossink. Today is Thursday. It is April 16th. I hope you got your taxes in yesterday. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. I'm going to be back in a minute. They should be arriving. I can probably track really easily where they are. I would imagine that they're going to be arriving maybe by the end of the week. So maybe by next week on Macrodosing you will see I'll start wearing the new pairs. And you can see for yourself. They are great shades. I'm pumped to get them. And yeah, highly recommend use promo code macro at shadyrays.com. I wasn't planning on starting the show this way. But you brought something up. About tracking. I learned something yesterday. Did you know that like the shipping carriers can they're notified how many times you check a tracking number? And apparently if you check something if you check a bunch of packages a lot that's an indicator that like you're shipping drugs or something. I obsessively track every package that I know is coming to my house. Now it said 99.9% of people they don't care because they know that's not what's happening. But if you apparently are like shipping and receiving enough stuff and you're checking in a bunch that it flags something in the system and it tells them to like look into your stuff. I had no idea about that. Me neither. I mean I guess it makes sense. But I do know that there's like various algorithms that track a lot of different activities that determine like banks for example. A lot of banks track if you it's probably a lot different now because times have changed but I know back in like the 2010s maybe late 2000s if you bought a lot of stuff at like CVS's or Walgreens or like local drug stores if you had a certain pattern it would get flagged as potential methamphetamine behavior. So you're buying Sudafed at a lot of different places. So like yeah banks in order because they have a lot of regulations that they have to follow too in terms of like they're not supposed to just take money from whoever and not ask any questions if there's a reasonable expectation that they could figure out that somebody is like laundering money or involved in illicit drug sales they're supposed to kind of monitor that stuff. So but now you're saying that if you check I assume it would have to be a ridiculous amount of times and on a number of packages for you to do it. Yeah if there's something I want that's coming to my house I'm checking it multiple times a day. Yeah me too. I know when it gets to Elk Grove Village Illinois at the Processing Center I know when it's on its way here I know everything. Yeah I do check I check a lot especially if I do like fast shipping. Also people steal shit off your porch so. That is true but that's mostly that's mostly just my clothes and I think they learned their lesson last time when they opened it up and they're like there's just a million track suits in here. The Napoleon jump suits? The Napoleon jumpsuits yeah that's not I don't think that's the high ticket item that they were hoping for. I did speaking of retail therapy I did spend also a fair amount of money this morning. I had a big time I'm never going to financially recover from this moment when I woke up this morning. But you probably will. I might I probably will recover from it but it's a fun meme. Yeah good meme. The commanders released new uniforms this morning. And so I saw that and I was like I will 100% buy the new uniforms. Great job by the commanders let me just say that like we've had some pretty terrible PR with that franchise going back 30 about 30 years or so they just they hit one they had a fastball that was grooved right down the middle of the plate and they knocked out of the park with the uniform redesign it's just essentially what they wore for about 40 years. They just kind of went back to the old uniforms so they look awesome great job the new uniforms and by new I mean like after the commander's rebrand so the uniforms that we've had for the last five six years were probably the worst in the NFL and I think most people would agree with that but the new ones very nice so good job I had no choice but to log on this morning. There is one point that people are bringing up online that I find myself somewhat agreeing with when it comes to the uniform redesign do you know what I'm about to say? No. I'm not sure that the W with a spear logo through it I don't think that's physically possible. Some guy did it with the straw. Yeah but then you can look at it depends on what angle you look at it from. So the W is supposed to be three-dimensional and if you look at the W like the W is pointing out to the left I don't know that the spear can go through it that way somebody did reenact it and recreate it with a piece of folded paper showing how the W weaves around the straw which I see and I think that there's some truth to that but then if you change how you look at the W and you look at the W as if it's coming out into your left out into the left Yeah so like if... So look, imagine this is the paper right? It goes over this part under this part, over this part, under again. Right, that makes sense but if you're thinking of the W as being like a three-dimensional tent that's pointing out that way that part of the spear and this is bad podcasting because I'm just saying this and that but the second part of the spear the part of the spear that's in the middle of the W should not be overlapping that piece of the W You're saying it should alternate the ones that it's over and under? The bottom line is I'm not entirely convinced that the W with a spear redesign is physically possible. I get nervous when I look at it. It gives me anxiety when I look at it but maybe if you're a player on the other team you're looking at that W the whole time and it's making you feel uneasy too Yeah. Part of the war I like it. I think it's solid I do, sir. Yeah, I think it's a really good redesign. So great job to the commanders How many jerseys you buy? About two this morning Oh, you made it sound like you bought eight. Well, I'm not done. Here's the thing You can maybe call me conceded for this but I don't think that I am I got a text from one of my friends on the commanders and he was like, hey, what's your address? This was like, I don't know, a month ago and it was right along the same timeline as when they said that there was going to be a uniform redesign so I gave him the address of the Barstool Sports office here so I'm thinking there might be I'm thinking that there... Why did you give him your answer? Like people... You do that to people like you you're unsure of their what they might do to you I'm not unsure. I'm just saying like he asked me for the address and so I gave him the address Oh, I thought he asked for your address And also I usually do give out the office address just in case like it gets dropped off at my house and somebody takes it You do have a thievery product Fair enough So I gave him the office address and so I'm thinking that there might be something for me next day or two. So I don't want to buy too much just in case that's what they sent me It's fair. Does that make sense? So you got a Jaden, presumably No. Did you get like a...the punner? I have a Jaden from I have the white Jaden from last year when the white jersey was...that was their alternate last year And you have the LSU one? I have the LSU one and I've got the old Burgundy from Jaden That wasn't even Burgundy. That was like a red uniform that we had. It sucked I'm so glad that they're done. But So I did not buy Jaden. I bought a Burgundy Luke McAfrey and then a black Mike Sanrist trail Nice Yeah, I feel like maybe my next one up might be a black Sean Taylor My problem with that is like Sean Taylor is my favorite football player of all time and I want to buy his jersey The black Sean Taylor jersey is going to be very intimidating I don't know that it goes in my vibe It doesn't bother you at all that he didn't wear that? See that's the thing I...like you could do one of the other colors Right. That's the thing I was thinking was Well, because I already do have a white Sean Taylor and a Burgundy Sean Taylor But yeah, he never wore the black one so it's just kind of like that part is a little bit weird Also, I don't...I'm not... I don't think I'm badass enough to wear a black Sean Taylor uniform I feel like that's a jersey that if you wear you have to be able to...you have to be willing and able to back it up with violence if necessary Right? Like there's a few uniforms like that If you're...if you're walking around town wearing a Bill Romanowski uniform You have to have your head on a swivel ready to knock somebody out Bill Romanowski That's a throwback name Yeah, but not the world peace one Correct I would say the the uh Aaron Hernandez blue Patriots uniform. If you're wearing that one you have to be willing to go to prison Dennis Rodman Rodman jerseys you gotta be ready to throw down as well Any Raiders Yeah, Raiders jerseys, because it's like you're representing the fan base as a whole when you put on the silver and black like that Those are probably the big ones, I would say Alright, well Welcome back to MacRodosing It's good to see you guys We have a cool interview coming up later on in the show with the director and star of Everyone's Lying to You for Money Ben McKenzie and his friend Dave His friend Dave also from the film and you can see it. I think it's playing in select eaters right now probably should be streaming soon but we got a chance to take a look at it and really good movie it's about crypto and Ben's a fascinating guy so we got a chance to talk to him. I think it was a good interview and before we get to that we got some other stuff in the news to talk about today Big T Where on this list do you want to start I was going to ask you would you like to start with Clavicular Allbirds becoming an AI company mhm or Columbia killing all of Pablo Escobar's hippos All three of these I think I might have a controversial take on Wow really I think so I might go three for three on these Let's start with with Clavicular Okay My take on Explain to me who Clavicular is Oh my goodness I'll do my best So Clavicular is a guy We've talked about him once or twice He's the looks maxing uh ambassador Hammers to make himself look better His whole thing is like I know to make himself look perfect But what is looks maxing I can give context It's what it sounds like Be as attractive as you possibly can By any means necessary AKA hitting your face with hammers Does he really do that Yeah I've seen it I've seen it on clips I don't watch his streams obviously He's also a streamer so he's one of these guys who just I get they just follow themselves around with a camera like all day Every day and they're live And last night he overdosed and went to the hospital and it was all just live on camera Like they were He and his buddies were sitting in a booth that looked like in a club or something And he just starts like nodding off And the guy sitting next to him is this comically like just roided out guy And he's looking at his friend like clearly Something very bad is going on He goes you need an addie You need an addie bro And then And then at some point They took him to the hospital And he tweeted this morning that he was released So I have a take on it It's going to be a bummer take Just a heads up That this shouldn't be content Clearly it shouldn't be But that cat's out of the bag It is content It's pretty clear to me that Clavicular has body dysmorphia And that he will And he will never be happy He needs some like He needs drastic mental health treatment Because it's no different what he's doing than a young woman with a severe eating disorder That is just not going to get better and will turn to self destructive behavior Unless they get therapy and they do like years of work on themselves mentally It's pretty clear that Clavicular has some bad body dysmorphia problems that he needs to just like probably needs to log off for a while Because the chat's probably not going to help with him getting over any of that stuff And it's affecting his world view on just how he sees everybody else and everything and he's self medicating and it's going to end really bad for him unless he gets help I think I despise you guys for introducing me to this I'm sure your older daughter is aware of this I'm a Texer right now What was the thing he said there's no way she would know and she did I can't remember I think he's super popular with kids and teenagers Did you also see Big T his 60 minutes interview Yeah, he stormed out of a 60 minutes interview the other day when they started asking him about Andrew Tate 60 minutes interviewed a looks maxing Clavicular Yo, let me off It was an interesting look It was 60 minutes Australia and it was an interesting look at and I don't want to put a diagnosis on this kid I think he might be a bit neuro divergent and it is really interesting to see him interact in a situation where he is not in complete control of what's happening like if you watch 60 minute clips there's one that went, there's two that went viral one is of him walking out because the interviewer asked him about his relationship to Andrew Tate because he's been seen with Andrew Tate and he was like, I didn't want to make this political and the 60 minutes guy was like, well, it's not political, it's about Andrew Tate then he walks out. The other one is about his relationship to is he an incel slash his relationship or proximity to the incel community and both questions that are very fair in a journalistic integrity type of way it is very interesting to see this kid like completely like just curl up into a ball when asked any sort of pressing question about it at all and he is he is so deeply like over his skis when it comes to the amount of influence that he has versus his wisdom on what's going on of anything and like, I mean, he literally Aryan you're gonna be so upset that these are even worse that are coming out of my mouth the guy, the interviewer said how like should you think I should start looks maxing like what do you think and the guy said and Clavicular said well they must have been over like a zoom of some variety and he said well I don't know you're giga far away. It's like that's just not those aren't words that come out of people's mouths and I am someone like to throw on stupid words from time to time like you aren't speaking in English like you're in 60 minutes so I think it's a really interesting thing to see him through like a streaming lens and a you know journalistic lens. P.F.T.O. I said it's the internet brain right it's just you kids are way too online and that's the world they exist and they just exist in an algorithmic cesspool and they think that's reality. The streaming thing takes it to another level and again I don't I feel bad I fear he I think he has talked about how he has some sort of like neurodivergence I don't want to say he's like autistic or like necessarily but like he has some some like something going on and I just kind of believe that his like special interest or something that he hyperfixates on is looks like how some people on the autistic spectrum really like bugs or sports facts or whatever it is I think his is genuinely how he can maximize his level of attractiveness which is so sad because like that's just obviously not going to get like that's never going to fill your cup. Yeah I know is he one of those in sales so that's what 16 minutes asked him and he was like why would you even ask me this you your last question was about my relationship to women and now you're asking me if I'm an in-cell like are you stupid um I don't know what I don't know he didn't he refused to answer the question I don't know I don't I'm not tapped in on clivicular enough to know if he is like having sex with women I truly don't know um it big day do you know no I know probably less about this guy than you do yeah I'm not sure if he's an in-cell I hate that I know he exists sorry adults have said this forever like it was TV then it was video games and what I am I am actually very concerned about the type of content that children are consuming these days because I mean this is very different then even like the worst video games like these guys uh I'm looking at a tweet right now pft I know you're not a drug guy but maybe you can help me a little bit clivicular's friend androgynic that's the roided out guy who was sitting next to him don't play dumb like you don't know androgynic that's the guy who was sitting next to him as he was as he was overdozing thank god okay I texted my daughter I said I said do you know who clivicular is she said yes lol why I said he got brought up on a pod and I hate that I know he exists now I said do you watch him she said Jesus though the kids are alright but okay clivicular's friend androgynic reveals the quote penta stack looks maxers used to stream which may have led to clivicular's od here is the here are the five drugs that he lists so just mixing drugs is that what it is so let's not poo the penta stack until we find out what's read that read that sentence one more time all the way through clivicular's friend androgynic reveals the penta stack looks maxers used to stream which may have led to clivicular's od I did need to hear it twice to know what you're saying here's the penta stack Adderall, ketamine okay DXM BDO don't know what that is and prega bailan no idea I'm two for five on the penta stack and it looks like they drink it out of a five hour energy bottle I don't know if they're mixing it with five hour energy or what the deal is what was the first initial one that you said DXM let's see what DXM is dextromethorphan oh it's robotosin it's like Robotrypid okay what's BDO BDO drug butanideal it's used in paint strippers I don't think they mean dancers I think they mean like to take paint off things yeah ingested BDO is converted into GHB got it GHB is a party drug sometimes known as the date rape drug but it's different than Rohypnol but GHB is like a party drug people use it at raves and clubs and stuff I've never done it but it's a pretty common rape drug but it can be used for some bad shit and then this last one prega bailan is a prescription medication used to treat neuropathic pain fibromyalgia partial onset seizures and generalized anxiety disorder it acts by calming overactive nerves okay so like an anxiety I'm not a doctor it does sound like you should not combine all five of these things but it's the pentastar sounds like a recipe for disaster my daughter said he does height maxing by tippy towing and sagging his pants to look taller I can start doing that this is obviously such a bad bad thing that's happening this is the content that children are getting now it makes me so sad to think that people like this that are so morally corrupt and so empty on the inside are doing shit like that wasn't there a movement like bring bullying back I'm starting to be more and more convinced of this shit because shit wouldn't fly like this back because you would get beat up for doing dumb shit or saying stupid shit and not all ass whoopins are justifiable but man it was some kind of order it's just this is I feel I'm old now across the threshold curricular has put me into the old man yelling at young society now what the fuck oh mom I'm old that is what it is yeah I don't it's bad I don't know I don't know why people like clavicular I think what they're talking about with the like in cell community is that he might not be in in cell but I think a lot of the stuff that he talks about appeals to people out there that are not having any luck with the opposite sex I think when he's talking about looks maxing and here's why here's what you have to do to make women like you if you don't do this women will always go for a higher value male than you like that type of stuff does appeal to an in cell audience or people that are more likely to become in cell so I don't know that he is but I think that him trying to like drill his own insecurities into his watchers and the people in his chat I think that does push them down a path that makes them like more likely to become in cell and just like hold it against women but yeah so my big takeaway is I think the guy he's got body dysmorphia and has some mental illness that he needs to take care of and probably the last thing that he needs to be doing is like constantly constantly streaming but that's what he does and I saw the interview that he did with Adam Friedland where Adam was just like talking to him about his life and it seems like every second clavicular is not on the stream he like he regrets it like he wants to be streaming constantly which is not going to be good for him so that's my take on it he tweeted this morning just got home that was brutal all of the substances are just a cope trying to feel neurotypical while being in public but obviously that isn't a real solution okay alright I feel like that's he's being honest with himself he then told me what this means the worst part of tonight was my face descending from the life support mask okay like an oxygen mask what does that mean no I think he's my face descending from the life support mask like getting worse meaning that his face got worse because he wore he might have been intubated he's bloated yeah so he woke up this morning like with saggy skin what he woke up like dehydrated maybe and his face doesn't look good does he have a dad like in the picture I have no idea it doesn't sound like it I don't I don't want to cast too wide in that but that sounds like something he didn't have shut your ass up in the house but he might have been I don't know says he was born on December 17th 2005 to a businessman father and stay at home mother was raised in Hoboken, New Jersey oh hell yeah attended Seton Hall Preparatory School interesting he's 19 of course he's from New Jersey no 21 Brayden Eric Peters he looks like a Brayden he does Brayden Eric Clevecular Peters I suggest a hard pivot from this fucking guy sorry I don't unless you guys I'm just over him yeah it's sad stuff I also think right now we're living in a day and age where Frank the tank's mental health is about a million times better than Cleveculars for both being from like the same part of the country and both how's he doing with his weight loss he's down I don't even know how much he weighs right now because he's so skinny probably like 280 I think maybe even maybe even less than that but he's kind of I don't want to say he's he's done losing weight because he's not weight loss has slowed because he's lost so much of it and now he's doing like muscle workouts and strength training and things like that every day yeah I've got I got some inspiration from Frank as well recently so I've been dealing with like repeated calf strains and muscle pulls in my legs and in my hamstring I do think it's connected to my back which by the way I got an MRI on my back yesterday gonna find out more about what the issue is with the the fused vertebrae that are going on back there but hopefully get some answers on that soon but in the meantime I'm just trying to like stay as active as I can without re-injuring myself so I decided that every Wednesday now that the weather's getting nice I'm gonna walk to work and back which is about like 50 minutes to an hour to get here so I was all ready to do it this morning and then it started to rain and I don't have an umbrella so I was like alright but I do think I should get credit for having every intention of walking to work this morning until I check the weather app right? yeah good job. Thank you. You could do it tomorrow. No. Yeah but it's a Wednesday thing like Wednesday walk. Right. It's got the W's. Well tomorrow you gotta be here early. I gotta be here I'm not gonna walk to work at 5am. Why? I don't want to be walking you would feel safe right? On the streets of of any city at 5am. Oh. Okay. I would feel safe but maybe that's just me. Yeah. Are you packing? Why don't you have an umbrella? I should. I should buy an umbrella. I like that. I don't do umbrellas either. Yeah. I only pack. What do you mean you don't have an umbrella? I mean if you're a real get wet for a minute. Yeah. If you're a real one you don't need an umbrella. Like try going to Seattle with people that are about that life in the rain and walking around with an umbrella. They're gonna be like pussy. I've never heard of this weather max. Yeah. It's called yeah. I do. We rain max. In Viro max. No I gotta use umbrellas man. It's all weather. Get the sun up off you get the rain up off you. But if it's if there's any wind at all while it's raining the umbrella doesn't even do anything for it. Still just blow it in your face. Chicago is a different story. We don't got wind like that here. Yeah. You have a point over there. Yeah but like I mean I'm sure somebody in Chicago has invented like ultra umbrella where the wind came affected like that. Maybe. PFT is little though. That shit might just take you away. Wee! Did you hear the rumors? PFT you're tapped in with the big time golfers. Did you hear the rumors that live might be shut down? I did. By the time this episode comes out we might know more about it. They're having an emergency meeting. Emergency meeting going on right now. I got a question for you guys. Did Donald Trump kill live golf? And I say that. I say that because I don't know enough about it. Live golf is funded by the public investment fund in Saudi Arabia. The state investment fund. Money's getting a little tighter. Belts are being tightened in Saudi Arabia over the last couple months with the war in Iran and Iran firing missiles and sending drones and attacking our allies that are nearby including Saudi Arabia where there have been numerous attacks and they're having to expend a lot of money on their own defense over there. They have less money to devote to their sports washing and to their investments in various leagues. That might be a reason why they have to say we can't spend $500 million every year on a golf league that does not bring in revenue. Interesting point. Think about it. It isn't. I don't know. They money is long. I don't know that it would affect the money. They could probably just press the cash machine and just get more money if they wanted to. But I do think that it's interesting that they started a league that whether or not it made money was not important to them until just now. Yeah. That's interesting. I'm not a pierce in the sense of I was against it for any kind of moral reasons. I'm a pierce in the sense of I just want to see the best compete against each other. You know what I mean? I hope it does end not for any of those kind of reasons but just for like, I just want to see Bryson DeChambeau and Scottie go at it every week. You know what I'm saying? I hope that's the case. I don't know though. We'll see. You know who they just gave a bag to and saw it. Who? Matt Crocker. You know who that is. You didn't see this story? He's the US soccer director. I forgot the guy's name. He was the guy that was in charge of hiring our last coach. They saw his track record over here for US soccer and we want to be in the Matt Crocker business. So he's going to Saudi? Yeah. Okay. Good luck with that. For the record, I would join the LiveTour podcasting for $100 million. That is the price. That's always been the price. $100 million and you can get me to do or say pretty much anything. That's it. $100 million. Now you sound like our conch. $100 million is $100 million. Well, I said take your podcast elsewhere. You said you can get me to do and say anything. Not do and say anything. I'm saying that I will do a podcast for an audience of Mohammed bin Salman. $100 million. Yeah, 100%. I was in PFT the War Monger. $100 million is $100 million. I'm sure I'm correct. I believe what you're describing the Lux Maxer crowd. They call that jester gooning. Yeah. It refers to wasting time by engaging in foolish low IQ or obsessive trans like antics. Often as a coping mechanism for social rejection or as a misguided attempt to attract women. So you would be jester gooning for MBS. I woke up this morning not knowing what Lux Maxing or jester gooning was and I was a better man. Sorry. Yeah. Welcome to reality, dude. Sorry to educate you. What else we got in the news? Big T. You said you had controversial... I guess we'll go to Allbirds next. They're an AI company now. Their stock at last check to like $18 from like one it's at 1794 right now up 620% today. So they announced that they are pivoting from being a shorts company to an AI company. Now what that entails I have no idea. Okay. Allbirds Allbirds to shoot the shoes? Well, no longer. So I've got to take on this. Maybe we might have some listeners out there that are able to educate me on whether or not I'm talking completely out of my ass along this one or not. I don't think that they are going to become an AI company, Big T. I think this could be like we saw in the late teens there were a couple companies that did this that just put the word blockchain in their name. You remember that? And I think what they were doing they were trying to pump their price up real quick I think they were fucking with people that had short positions on their company and putting a squeeze on them. You know how like when AMC and GameStop like went to the moon because there were some institutional investors that had short positions on them and they wanted to fuck up their money so they drove the price up. I think Allbirds there might be somebody that's got a position a short position against Allbirds betting for their stock to go down and to Crater that they put this press release out to fuck with them to artificially drive their own price up to fuck with a person that has a short position. I don't know if that's against the law I don't know what's going to happen in the long term and I could be very wrong about this guess that I have. But that's my reaction. It says they plan to buy GPUs and rent out computing power to AI developers who cannot get access through Amazon or Microsoft. It sounds like they have like a plan of some sort. I just don't know what being a shorts company and a shoes company has to do they have the space for GPUs? They have the server buildings. Also their shoes, bird dogs is the shorts. I'm wearing bird dogs the shorts right now. Oh really? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of birds. A lot of birds. Yeah. All birds is the shoes company. I'm wearing the bird dogs right now which actually got me into trouble at the MRI yesterday. Why is that? Well because I wore my bird dogs there and the nurse came into the room and she was like okay I need you to strip down to your underwear and put this gown on. It's the double. And I had to stop her. I'd be like hey I kind of screwed up this morning wearing shorts that have the underwear built into them. Should I just keep the shorts on? And she's like nope. Well yeah she was like nope but we do have we've got some shorts that you can borrow. Yeah like paper boxers or whatever? Yeah then she reached in the cabinet and got the most hilarious pair of like it was like if you designed underwear out of a moving blanket and she's like you put these on. I wish I had taken a picture. They did look very very funny. But yeah that's happened to me a couple of times when I've been caught in a situation where I have to like get changed or something. Whether it be for like an ad shoot that we're doing here at Barstool or in this case an MRI and I'm wearing the bird dog. So I'm like so here's the thing is I don't have underwear on but I do have underwear on. I'm not a freak. There is underwear but it's just I have to take them off with my shorts. But yeah so anyways back to what's going on with all birds. I don't think that they're actually going to pivot to becoming an AI company. But the stock is up massively. It's up another dollar since we've been talking. Do we need to get in? Is it going to the moon? I did see I saw one of the funniest tweets about this exact situation. Comes from a recurring guest of this pod Anthony Pompiliano. 30 minutes ago he said imagine thinking the US economy is going to crash while all bird changes their name to AI and soars 700%. Imagine Imagine thinking that all birds stock soaring 700,000 or 700% because they changed their name to AI could be an indication of a bad economy. Imagine being that dumb. Guys it just keeps going up. We need to get in. Yeah you should do it. Should I go buy some? You should do it. Try to time this market. What is that right now? 1829. It just went down a little bit. So that's down from its peak already today. It got up to like 25. Maddie can you check our investment? What do you think about this one Arane about all birds? I mean I think you hit the nail on the head. The fact that the stock is soaring because they said it was going to AI is probably not a good sign for us in general. I don't know. But let's see what happens. This is just an interesting that's just crazy. I got off twitter so I'm not super aware of what's going on anymore like that. I have my sources of news that I get from but if you miss out a week of being on internet you just out of the loop and you feel just like it's hard to get back in honestly. I have to separate it because I have my own stocks on Robin Hood now. Not to flex. So we are up actually like I don't want one day I want all time. Now we're going to be down. No. We are up 10% all time. 100 bucks. 111. When are we getting out of this? When we're on the moon. I think we let it rise so we're retired. We haven't gotten enough return to Well I know but it just what's the play? We just check this once every six months until the show doesn't exist anymore. And then we empty it when we're down with the show. Our peak was $1,384. 60 cents. Oh. Like it was almost total. And then right now as we speak we're at $1,161. Okay. So our peak and that peak by the way was January 8th of this year. So whatever was happening January 8th shockingly enough been down a little bit since Middle Eastern tensions have risen. Yeah and it also took a big peak I don't know last time we checked it. It took a big spike in middle of November. A reason again I am not sure as to why. And it's NRG? We have American Airlines we don't have the best stocks right now again for what's going on. American Airlines. That might be a merger though. Oh yeah with United I heard about that. Man they said I seen the little thing that they're going to put like you can buy out a whole row. And then they have those little seat things so you can actually lay down the shit. I love that. American and United are merging? It's in talks. As a United guy I disavow we don't want that. How many United guys will? Big two anti-American. We have Apple Expedia another I don't know how they're doing right now with everything. And Apple. When did we switch? Because originally we did like Qualcomm right? Yeah. We did stadium sponsors. We switched I think it was something about the travel industry obviously. We were doing well again. That was a while ago obviously. And then Apple or do I just have Apple? We might all have Apple together. I might give you guys Apple. And then yeah. Do y'all use Expedia? I do. I'm still rocking with Expedia. Yeah is that one that most people don't use? I use it to like book hotels. Is that Boomer of me to use Expedia? I think so but I like it. I like to do everything there. Flights, hotel, rental car How do people that gesture Google bucket? Google Flights Google Flights What is this? Google does it but if you type in Houston to Chicago they does come up with a Google Flights page. Yeah. Google Flights is like how Google Drive the most trash airlines. Well you can pick it. What airline? Yeah but it goes from like load so all you see is frontier and spirit. I use Expedia sometimes for hotels. But I don't book hotels that often. But yeah I use Google Flights for all my flights. Really? I'm not beholden to one airline at this point in my life. So I like to see what is out there. Well first I have to drive home and then after I drive home I go to my office room and then I log on to the desktop and then I type in Expedia. That's a thing. That's like Boomer. Yeah whether you'll do it on a phone or not. No I buy just about everything on the phone. My fiance won't do purchases over like $100 on a phone. Yeah I'm with her. It does feel more official when it's on the laptop. Flights I do not book on my phone. Flights it's so easy though on the app. On your phone. Like when we booked our honeymoon I was doing it on my phone and she was freaking out. She was like be intercepted. She was like you can't do that. I was like I'm doing it. Everything seemed to work. Yeah everything big I do on my laptop. I wonder the psychology of that. I sometimes when it's like a flight or something like that or like a website if I'm on a website versus an app if I do it let's say I'm flying and I know I need to fly United I will just go to the United app. That's a different thing. Okay same. But if I am doing something on a website like I'm on my Safari app on my phone no. Cause the formatting is different sometimes the credit cards it's all just jumbled up and compressed together. But your credit card is saved on your phone you just tap the button and it's done. I'm not saying it's like but I'm just saying the formatting is often it doesn't work right and then sometimes it clicks back and then something pops up. Uh-uh. I like it when it's on my laptop if it's a website and I can see everything that I need to see and it's a cleaner process. Yeah like if I did it on my computer I'd have to go grab my credit card type in the number. Don't you have a credit card saved on your laptop too? No cause I needed to do something for it one time and I just never did it so it's only on my phone. Oh see my credit card is saved on my laptop too so then it's like Bing Bam Boom so easy. Bing Bam Boom. Right. Love it. So I big purchases or pretty much any purchase not made on an app I do on my laptop. But you could do those on an app. I know but sometimes I'm like again if sometimes I'm just not on the app or I don't have said app on my phone and I'm not going to go download the app to just make a purchase when I can go to type in www.whatever.com I will say I did. I downloaded a rental car app for my bachelor party and it was the worst app ever made. I don't know if the company does business with us so I won't say it but horrific app. Like PFT always says there's too many apps. Too many apps. You need apps for everything. But if you have an app it needs to be usable. I just got a vacuum cleaner the other day. Don't tell me it needs an app. I think you're just too rich to buy. Yeah that's a rich. I think you're just buying rich people things. I had to download an app in order to print something because I had to get something what is it called? Notarized. Notarized. And I had to print something off so I had to have a printer but I got it from my daughter and I had to download the app in order to print so this is a lot of stuff. Is it a robot vacuum? It is yeah. It's like pretty much a Roomba. Pretty much what it's it is a different type of Roomba. Okay. Yeah. A competitor to Roomba. But it's better because you need an app. No I don't I I don't know if you can like can you steer it? Can you steer it from that? I haven't tried to do that. Well the whole point is that you don't have to steer a robot vacuum. Yeah. Too story. Yeah. But if you want it to go get one more spot or something. I probably I might be able to I don't know it's charging right now but yeah in the past week I've downloaded an app for a vacuum. I've downloaded an app for a treadmill here at the office that we have a walking pad and then I started to get notifications like five an hour from the walking pad and so I had to just delete the app entirely so now I have to reinstall the app every time I use the walking pad. I had to just turn off notifications. I got I wanted to make a point. Big T. Why do you need the app to start it? Yeah. That's the remote. Yeah. Well there's also a remote but we have to get the batteries and that whole thing so I just did the app because the app was right there and I didn't have the batteries for it. Are you getting notifications from just a bunch of random apps? No. No. I've turned off notifications for the ones that I don't need. But this one just made me pissed off so I was like I'm deleted the app. I do notifications other than phone calls and text messages. It's probably a smart way to do it. No other notice. Probably a very smart way to do it. When I see people getting just random notifications all day it gives me anxiety. My MLB app is doing that now. It's kind of pissing me off. I'm not just getting brewers shit now. Now it's like leads news. Did you get the Kevin McGonigal contract today? I'm swiping up so I have no idea. I don't even look at it anymore. That's what I'm getting to. Brewers news. I need to change it. I just got two way Ohtani tonight from MLB. Can you keep it up? Shohei Ohtani carries a 0.00ERA and a Major League Baseball High 48 game on base streak into tonight's Mets Dodgers game. I did not know that Shohei Ohtani had a 48 game on base streak. Yeah but I don't count it. Okay. Because it's across seasons. The whole point of a streak is that it, you're hot. Like you've been doing it day after day after day. It shouldn't be able to carry over years. Now does this count the playoffs of last year? Is that part of the streak? I'm not sure. I don't think so. Okay so if it doesn't count the playoffs in this streak then that's bullshit. If it does, if it includes the playoffs and it's every game he's played I'm kind of in on it. 48 games is a long ass time. Yeah these one of the greatest players ever. It's great but the whole, the streak is, you've been doing it day after day. You don't count the off, if there's an off season it's over. Yeah that's not a streak anymore. It's a different season. Okay you can turn off news from around the league. I just did that. Sorry. I'm gonna have to do that. I'll think about that. Alright Big T before we get into the next story it's brought to you by DraftKings. NBA Play Officer here. DraftKings Sportsbook and SportsBetting partner the NBA boosts every game day the whole post season. When the lights get brightest the best players in the world show you exactly who they are. Playoff Stars turn it up round by round. DraftKings turns it up too. They got a profit boost available every single game day from the first round all the way to the finals. New Sportsbook customers bet just $5 and if your bet wins you're gonna get $300 in bonus bets instantly. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app. Use code macro so you're ready for the moment that's code macro. Turn $5 into $300 in bonus bets if your bet wins in partnership with DraftKings the crown is yours. Today's episode is also brought to you by Normal from the creator of John Wick and Nobody comes the new movie Normal it's a double barreled shotgun blast of pure mayhem it's got Bob Odenkirk playing Sheriff Ulysses and Sheriff Ulysses is a temporary sheriff in the quaint town of Normal, Minnesota and he's also a former professional football player. He's a former professional football player and he's a former professional football player and he's a temporary sheriff in the quaint town of Normal, Minnesota he's just trying to get away from it all the new job was supposed to be a welcome respite from recent troubles but when a botched bank robbery interrupts the piece a dark secret is exposed and we're gonna find out that Normal is anything but. Directed by Ben Wheatley starring Bob Odenkirk Henry Winkler and Lena Heady see it only in theaters starting April 17th that is this Friday only in theaters check it out from Magnolia Pictures it's Normal sounds like a good movie I love Bob Odenkirk Alright, pick T next story Yeah, the only other one are you familiarized with Pablo Escobar's hippos? I am Yeah, so he brought in I forget the number 80 maybe 170 hippos are currently loose in Columbia but Escobar brought in a bunch of hippos into his ranch and since he has obviously passed away they have I guess just broken contain and they're kind of just running loose all over Columbia and so the Colombian government is devoting I believe $2 million to trying to implement population control measures such as confinement and relocation before I think they're just going to have to kill them at some point if that doesn't work mm-hmm Roughly 170 hippos are roaming freely in the country according to a study published by Columbia's National University so yeah they've just got hippos going around not the animal you want Roman your villages No, I would say yeah, call them I say kill the hippos Yeah they can't be hippos can't be in Columbia I'm sorry I like you hippos you got to go a top three most terrifying animal to see great animals or if if there's a relocation program like get them over to Africa put them in the rivers their native territory I they can't they can't be here I'm sorry like if I saw a tiger I would be terrified but in the back of my mind I'd be like okay it's a cat like you can you can get it to act like a cat under the right circumstances hippos just going to eat you I'm saying there's a one you know sometimes you see the videos of the tigers and they they're like playing around with people and stuff not likely in the wild? No, but I'm just saying somewhere in there is a house cat you know somewhere I don't think so but the hippo there I like the optimism in a life in that situation you're like hey if I could we'll hang out but the hippo it's got nothing like that it's just ready to kill you Absolutely I say hippo is probably number one the second one to me is a bear Bear well not all bears it's my it's my it's my it's my number two it's true when I see a bear I'm fucking that's nothing I don't like it scary as shit I think the cat would be more scary though too because cats are really unpredictable and honestly if house cats had the size of lions they'd probably kill humans just as easy Yeah I think I mean most of them are assholes maybe just build a fence around them maybe just can't we just pin them in well I think they've gotten so loose that they're everywhere now Yeah are they predatory like that are hippos like predators I don't know that they're predators but they're getting into places that they they're finding themselves in situations where they're encountering people and then they're liable to respond like defensively against people Sure and that's bad are hippos ain't like going extinct or anything oh yeah just kill them or bring them or take them back why don't we just relocate them it's not the hippos we can PFT since we've been recording an article came out in the financial times that the PIF is on the verge of cutting its funding for live so it is going to happen seems that way damn alright poor went out for for John Rom poor went out for Bryson Brooks PGA poor went out for Phil for lefty for Dustin Johnson Cam Smith all the four aces so what happens it's a dark day in golf they gotta just let them back right I mean now the PGA is sitting pretty now the PGA can make them sing for their supper that's crazy sing for your supper hey you want to come back you want to play at the travelers bitch I need you to get a PGA tattoo over your heart show me some loyalty I can't just leave some of the most talented golfers in the world out there like in the wind I think they can I don't think so I think they've got a lot of leverage right now I don't think that they will they can make them work for it but they have to let them back to come back I mean you remember when Patrick Reed said that he was coming back and Brooks said that he was coming back to the PGA they set the deadline they're like you got two weeks to figure it out now they live right which I'm saying the people that were on live had two weeks they decided not to and then live went out of business and so now the PGA is like hey you kind of made your decision so if you want to come back the terms are going to be way way less favorable to you than they were a month ago I think it would be dope to I don't think they should but it would be really dope to see them go through like Q school again or something like that just make them earn their PGA tour card that would be fun to watch tear up your munis Arian I know you don't follow soccer but one of the biggest clubs in the world is in serious serious danger of getting relegated from the Premier League this year and if it happens like they would be playing in the championship which is the second division in like one of the best stadiums in the world they would have to sell their entire team so that could be a similar circumstance to what you're talking about could be interesting what was the Tottenham Tottenham wow never heard that word before Tottenham Hotspur in England they call the main teams the big six Tottenham's sixth on the list but they're one of the bigger clubs in the country and they're current if the season ended today they would get relegated relegation that's wild it'd be very funny if it happened very funny what NFL team would you equate this to being relegated it'd have to be a team that like Tottenham the knock against them is they've never won the EPL right yeah they're they're big in terms of name recognition but they don't win anything the Cowboys I mean the Cowboys have won just back in the day the Bills I was saying the Bills the other day but no because the Bills aren't like a massive market like Tottenham is so it'd be like a huge market team the Raiders like the Giants the Giants have won yeah the Jets yeah I guess probably the Jets but Tottenham's been good yeah I don't know that there is an NFL equivalent to it Giants might be Detroit maybe no I think it's Jets I think it's Jets they're the second biggest team in their own city maybe third as are the Jets the second right team in New York huge you know huge media coverage huge what third in New York oh yeah well second in New Jersey yes exactly yeah might be the Jets now Tottenham has been more successful than the Jets recently but I think it would have to be the Jets I know there's no way it could ever work but I am fascinated by the idea of relegation in America same I think college sports are the only ones where it could even be feasible but it's controlled by the very powerful schools right now right college sports is a cartel that would never allow that to happen it would have to be a start up league yeah have to be like the PGA tour kind of does relegation yeah but it's not the same it's not the same like it would be sick if Mississippi State went to the Sunbelt for a year because they you know you go 0 and 8 and 0 and 9 in the SEC you got to go play here in the Sunbelt and then that's actually interesting little like you give conferences a chance to play your way into the SEC that's kind of I don't hate that idea yeah dude we would fuck we want Bama we'd fuck up Bama I kind of like I kind of love that natural revenge game Billy Napier against Florida and the swamp yeah and the swamp they might have to come to the Berg yeah that was a good one it's better than the Harry people have had some interesting concepts around relegation in college football it would just the people who make the decisions are the schools that make money and they would never sign up to make less money so it'll never happen in theory it could happen do you think that something's going to change and Tottenham's going to figure it out like is there too much at stake for them? no I think they're going to get relegated because someone one of the soccer commentators was pointing out like if you're a player on Wolverhampton because they're in last place right now like most of those players don't have relegation clauses like they're on the team next year regardless so they have no incentive to lose all of the players on Tottenham for the most part have clauses in their contract that if Tottenham gets relegated you automatically predigent yes so they it's better for them to just lose and then they can go to a better team next year and then Tottenham's left with they have to get a whole new team for the championship and they have no money so for the players don't care they're not trying to I mean I'm sure they're doing their best but like if they lose they don't care and what would be honest what Americans have money invested in Tottenham uh Dave Portnoy he's a fan he is a fan yeah he be height maxing too yeah yeah we do Tottenham Hotspur owners E and IC controlled by the Lewis family trust have rejected multiple takeover bids including a rumored $1.5 billion offer from a US led consortium fronted by Brooklyn Eric so they might not have any any US are they being tanked is this an inside job I doubt it because they're still paying off their stadium right but if you were to in theory if you were to tank the team make them go get relegated to the championship then the price the equity of the team like the value of the team is drastically reduced right yeah especially especially if your players have clauses that say that they can all become free agents right yes for those who don't know like if you get relegated to the championship you get far less TV revenue ticket everything like you're it's a it's a financial nightmare and then there's a US led consortium that comes in and they buy the team but why would the owners want to sell it at a lower valuation I don't know because they're there that doesn't make it because they're worried about losing more money but if they wanted to do that they would sell it right now before the possibility of them getting real yeah I'm just saying like it's not unheard of in business practices to try to buy something from a desperate owner I think it'd be fun to watch granted they wouldn't be they would get worse probably because they would have to sell off their team to pay down debts and get other players but like they would still kick the shit out of most of the teams in the championship now see that's a documentary I would watch like welcome to rexham yeah except it's about like the opposite yeah a massive club going through like dog shit times yeah well there was did you watch the Sunderland one on Netflix no so they're back in the premiere league now but for years they they went down several leagues and they were like a big club and Netflix did a thing on them five ten years ago now maybe it's very good it was it was before welcome to rexham but they're back in the premiere league now after many years of toiling and in the lower levels so what do we think is going to happen with with live I don't know that I think I like what big T saying I think that you have to earn your spot back I mean how many emergency meetings have ever gone well right well what if what if this was Trump's whole plan the whole time and it was just to just to get the DJs war back together his whole Iran war move was just just to get to live out of out of out of pink I told cam smith I said we're going to get you back he's a great golfer beautiful golfer by any means necessary great man said that guess we'll see all right what else we got in the news that's most of it there's one other item oh the well I know you're you're out on this you think this isn't happening there's another guy that disappeared there is yeah and this was back apparently this happened last year I don't know why it's in the news now I'll tell you why it's in the news now big T because you're okay yeah yeah tell me so the headline that we see on the Daily Mail shout out the Daily Mail missing nuclear official becomes 10th person tied to dark pattern surrounding us secrets which is true there is a new hack amongst amongst news organizations out there and tabloid publications it's a new way to ensure clicks on a story it's called smart person dies there have been a lot of them makes you think did you see when he was last seen this guy was last seen walking away from the facility or walking away from his house in Albuquerque on foot August 28th 2025 carrying a handgun nothing but a gun yeah never came back never came I not to be morbid I feel like that is that happens from time to time it could but then that leads you to ask why right there every time somebody that is smart dies in America now there's going to be a headline being like another scientist died what's going what's going on with these guys have had connections to laboratories and defense contractors and interesting stuff nuclear stuff right this guy was a government contractor working for the Kansas City national security campus which I believe is an Albuquerque it's an Albuquerque yeah but yeah anytime somebody dies now it's going to be like a smart person we lost another nerd in times of coming listen enjoy enjoy what the government spoon feeding you I'm sure they always tell the truth right what is the government's I nothing's going on I've not been listen I'm nothing ever happens guy I get it for the most part what has the government spoon fed me on this one I well just that it's it's fine that's just random the killed themselves the government has not told me that anything's right the government has not addressed the ongoing epidemic of scientists dying correct yeah they're they're removing themselves the only people that have addressed the scientist dying have been like police departments you are investigated and then they tell you the result of their investigation you're taking the absence of evidence is evidence of absence absence you are taking the absence of evidence as evidence of a massive conspiracy no I don't I'm not saying I believe this I'm just saying it's it's odd but you know I'm saying it's like the Daily Mail the New York Post now anytime I read one the other day you have closed yourself off to the possibility that something is going on I have not I mean I think a lot of stuff's going on I I read an article or it was a it was a tweet the other day about another scientist that died so that I looked more into it and it was a guy that died like three years ago well we're just now catching on and then they just wrote a new story I can't kill them all at once Eric they wrote a new story as if it happened yesterday it's like wait this new because we're putting the pieces together right right we're going back and retroactively see like what did we miss the oh sorry Watergate happened three weeks ago we can't report on it sorry what's step two step one's killing fight don't know that's the thing I don't know yet they're getting too close to the truth yeah yeah yeah I know we're getting too close to the truth and so if you're a scientist like just watch your back please do scientists might be putting all this all this propaganda out there too because like what better way to make people respect the work that you're doing because a lot of people have been down on science recently but what better way to to make people have your back than to act like you're in a dangerous species now see I'm open to this possibility as well this could be big sigh it could be big sigh being a scientist is the most dangerous job in America do we have flags do we have either like you know the thin blue line the thin red line do we have any flags for scientists what should it be I think just glasses on the stars I was gonna say a beaker yeah beaker instead of stars 50 beakers yeah alright what else we got today I think that's all I had we got Ben McKenzie coming up we do have been good interview interesting fellow and his buddy his buddy Dave shout out Dave who's also in the movie with him Aaron you got anything you want to get oh I do have one more thing Aaron you're gonna be interested in this I think yesterday I learned about a thing in Australia that maybe the first thing that I've heard about in Australia that will not kill you it's actually something that sounds awesome it is a golf course that runs across the entire southern coast of Australia and it's a golf course that runs across the entire coast of Australia it's called the Nullabor links the what Nullabor links Nullabor Nullabor Nullabor links so it is a golf course that is I think it's like 1300 kilometers and 850 miles whichever way you want to you want to go with it but it's not like the entire course is that long it's just it's a highway that runs through the middle of nowhere going across the southern coast of Australia and it goes through the outback and it's a series of towns that are along this highway and each town has its own hole so like summer par 5's like 500 yards, summer par 3's 170 yards but it's 18 different towns it would take you 3 to 5 days to drive the entire length of the highway and you play one hole in each town that you stop through it's pretty cool just as like a destination to be visiting Australia it's a way to to break up the monotony of what could be just like a long road trip filled with nothing it's like yeah we have a golf we have one golf hole in each of these towns yeah it's pretty cool I'm not saying that I would like to go to Australia and then play the Nullabor links because that would be like a day and a half traveling down there and then you have to go to like the middle of nowhere maybe not that but I think the United States should do one of these across our great country that would be dope actually and so there's a couple different highways I thought about one would be Route 66 that's like the most famous old yeah if you did a highway of 18 golf holes across Route 66 that would be awesome the other one would be I-10 so if you go all the way from Jacksonville you go along the Gulf Coast go through New Orleans Baton Rouge Houston San Antonio El Paso I think that probably takes you through take you through Albuquerque Albuquerque Phoenix like you probably have a pretty sick ass 18 holes along that route right yeah it would be dope that you can do I-5 too all the way up to Coast all the way up to Coast of California all the way up to Washrew so with the old Route 66 I'm looking at it right now it starts right here in Chicago we could get to where you think if we built like the first hole in Chicago if that would start the movement and then maybe some I don't know maybe it looks like it might go through Springfield, Illinois St. Louis is right there you think there would be that would start the movement like be the change we want to see in the world that would be I think because golf is taken off now so that would be a dope little project for community building yeah I'm looking at it right now I think we could probably do this but how do we coordinate it I don't know it's tough it's a lot of driving people to agree on stuff it'd be a lot of driving but I feel like people would do it I just need to talk to somebody that's got land in Illinois along Route 66 and maybe we can get to work on this it's a low me like 300 yards right for a par 4 right I mean how much could it possibly cost to keep one golf hole in shape like year round it would have to be like communally uh the maintenance would be would be commuting to set up a mowing schedule yeah how much does a lawn like a golf course lawn mower cost that's really the main expense it's the watering I thought too watering yeah I think we would have to have people hit off mats right yeah it's really yeah because I'll keep on a T-Box would get it's too constant so you'd have to hit off the mats and then we just need to keep up the greens and in a fair way maybe have one bunker as well it would be dope I'm on board speaking of which I shot a 77 yesterday pretty impressive yeah man golf games sending up pretty impressive varying congrats handicap thanks brother handicap is now 6.6 okay we need to add a 10 to that at a what 6.7 oh I thought you were doing a 6.66 that would be a 100 yep that's true yeah I'm excited about the golf game man I have a game today actually and then next week I have the tournament again with the pro where's Alan I'm placing in that bitch this is a type pga national Florida nice yeah should be should be fine I've got the the handicap police on my ass on my bumper about your 110 well yeah some people have taken to looking at my publicly available handicap which is available online and completely ignoring the fact that at the start of this whole thing I was discussing how right now my handicap on the GHIN app is different from my handicap on 18 birdies which is actually which is actually below 18 on 18 birdies but I acknowledge 18 birdies handicap is not 100% legit I've just had to play a couple courses that have been outside the scoring season on the GHIN so I could only log them on the 18 birdies app so I was saying somewhere in between is probably a fair representation of what my handicap is I think the handicap is widely misunderstood I agree I think if people think you're a certain handicap then you're supposed to shoot like that over par every single time and that's not that's not what a handicap is it's it's like it's like an accumulative it's like a formula like accumulate like you're 20 rounds 20 rounds and in whatever that is like you're only supposed to shoot your handicap from my understanding you're only supposed to shoot your handicap like once every 20 rounds right and and and I think people like if you hear somebody's like a single digit or whatever it is you're supposed to shoot all at all no that's not that's not what I don't know that's like one out of 20 rounds but I have heard that like I think it's like 20% of the time yeah 20% of the time you would shoot what so if my handicap is 18 that means that 20% of the time I'm going to shoot a 90 and my my normal rounds are mostly going to be in the mid 90s which is where they are and then sometimes I'll play spyglass and I'll shoot a 113 and I'll have four double transfusions on the back nine and just kind of give up that sometimes that happens and that's that's the beauty of the handicap system I recently got introduced to transfusions hell of a drink very good drink never never drank before it was in the last tournament and the last day if you don't make the cut they put you in a scramble for money and had a transfusion I was like this is where it's at you heard of a water hazard that's the new one that's taken yeah the internet by it's vodka blue Gatorade a little bit a little bit of sprite that sounds fire actually water hazard alright I'm going to try that one out there's also one other bit of news today I don't know if I want to cover it or not allegations of two pilots meowing and barking at each other I just saw this since we've been recording at Reagan National Airport in Washington DC sometimes sometimes you just gotta like have some fun some of the pilots not supposed to joke around yeah that's correct actually they're not like what's the worst thing that could happen at Reagan Airport if a pilot's not paying attention was that weird though yeah they're crash wars or as Hank would say Reagan National Airport he thought that Ronald Reagan was Ronald Reagan it's okay whatever that means that he's learned that word by reading it which actually is a feather in his cap okay well that does it for macro dosing today well we have an interview yeah we have an interview coming up with Ben McKenzie everyone is lying to you for money is the name of his film and his friend Dave he's going to join us as well before we get to this interview it's brought to you by Stella Blue Coffee it's more than just great coffee it's coffee with a purpose I've got I drank it during the interview with Ben it's delicious I had the espresso sweet cream today and they've got a new initiative we brewed a rescue it's a nationwide campaign using proceeds from our new ready to drink cans just like this one to fund a thousand pet adoptions every year you crack open or every can you crack open helps a real pet find a real home it's that simple made with 100% clumping coffee each 11 ounce can delivers smooth drinkable energy it's got a boost of protein available in espresso cafe mocha espresso sweet cream built for mornings long days and everything in between drink Stella Blue fuel your day help save a pet's life you can follow our progress throughout the campaign by watching the adoption tracker right on our site grab yours at StellaBlueCoffee.com it's also available at Amazon and select retailers nationwide and now here is Ben McKenzie and Dave okay we welcome on a very special guest actually two very special guests of MacRodosing it's Ben McKenzie you might recognize him as the guy from Gotham and then his good friend Dave Dave's also in the movie that Ben just put out it's called everyone is lying to you for money it's about crypto it's about his journey through the crypto underbelly and I guess the overbelly like some mainstream stuff in there but they join MacRodosing to talk about the film and fellas it's good to see you guys good to be here good to be here thanks for that I tried to make it a point to not introduce you Ben as the guy from the OC dude you nailed it I mean until now until now yeah we'll delete this part but yeah so I watched the movie last night big tea scene as well I don't know if you had a chance to take a look at the screener for it but I really enjoyed it I thought it was I thought it was really well done well put together made a lot of sense it kind of echoed a lot of things that I've been feeling about the crypto space for the last what like 10 12 years I it's a really interesting topic because the more you learn about it it almost feels like the dumber you feel like it becomes so convoluted I think intentionally so in a lot of the crypto space but you present it in a way that's pretty easy to parse and understand you talk to some of the big players in the industry so I guess let's let's go to the big beginning and maybe you can explain to us to our audience why you decided to really investigate cryptocurrency and the people that are involved in it yeah well let's start it with Dave Dave came to me Dave you can jump in anytime you want buddy I'm gonna tell my version of the story and then I want you to tell your version okay all right all right there so 2020 the pandemic hits and Dave comes to me he's like you gotta buy Bitcoin dude and I was like what is it and I don't remember exactly what you said I'm pretty sure it was like I don't know okay all right fair then I'm like why are you putting your money into it it's like let's going up it was it was going up the celebrities are selling it but Dave and I have a history and Dave do you want to tell the story sure then let's say that Ben loves to say that I gave him the worst financial advice of his life all right that that's overblown you're right I a little overblown okay you took a tip a stock tip from a kid who was a struggling actor living in your basement essentially in my guest house in my basement I'm not tortured in your guest house in your guest house yeah so there was a stock I met a guy at a wedding it was called oxygen biotherapeutics don't say the name of the stock dude well okay sorry I'm not media trained guys I apologize but you know it's not like I presented a 10k I didn't do a balance sheet review you know none of that it was just hey this kid knew the CEO they said they were going to get some government contracts and it was going to blow up and so I said hey Ben if you want in now's the time to get in didn't come to fruition and Ben has never let me hear the end of it we lost money you lost money you lost money I didn't have money to lose I lost a little bit you put money into it yeah but not OC money okay okay all right all right but relative to your net worth my actually been more sure it was it was yeah percentage basis yes absolutely yeah so anyway my takeaway from this is that I love Dave I do love you he and I have been buddies since college we went to University of Virginia together but also I wasn't necessarily going to take financial advice from you Dave and so that's what's going on not financial advice but fair enough okay all right it's stocked in you could have talked to your business manager it's true my business manager was like what are you doing so anyway Dave came back to me in 2020 and was like you should buy bitcoin I have a degree in economics from UVA and I hadn't used it in show biz because nobody wants to hear about the dismal science over the craft service table but I was excited to or are fascinated by it you know I just couldn't like stop looking at it I also love true crime I'm a big like true crime guy I love what I call stupid crime where like the criminals are sort of obviously committing the crimes and like turning on each other sort of Coen brothers crime and crypto seemed to have a lot of that so I started looking into it ended up just decided I wanted to write a book weirdly I decided to write a book first instead of a movie reach out to a journalist pitched him on the idea we started reporting on it and I turned a camera on in the middle of writing this book and just documented all the crazy stuff that I saw okay is it have you had anybody come up to you and be like you know I like the book better than the movie no one has said that yet I'm sure I will get that you know book did pretty well it was a New York Times bestseller wasn't it Dave I don't remember oh okay anyway it was the book did great and then the movie is fun the movie is like much more I could really dork out on the books like a 300 page book about economics and stuff so I could really dork out there the movie is popular in entertainment it's sort of like a comedy about how stupid all this stuff is so I think it's pretty funny Dave is hilarious in it and my more famous wife is in it Marina Bakron from Sheriff Country and Deadpool and Gotham and other things and Jerry Butler did a cameo for me which was nice so yeah it's a fun movie I hope people like it they have been liking it I hope they continue to like it you had some really interesting interviews you got access to Sam Bankman Freed from FTX rocking the risk management shirt right now that's a great shirt I don't know how much you had to pay for that one on eBay or if that's like a one of one that you made yourself but that's a quality shirt but you got an interview with Sam Bankman Freed before he was convicted and went to prison all that stuff how did you get that interview it says in the movie that you just DM'd him why do you think he wanted to talk to you? yeah I couldn't figure that for the longest time because it wasn't like we were hiding the ball he agreed almost immediately with no preconditions to like a sit down interview on camera this guy who's supposed to be like a billionaire that never happens and Jacob Silverman wrote the book with me we were very obviously critical of the industry in our Twitter bio it said writing a book about crypto and fraud and so like why was he going to talk to us? I couldn't figure it out I only sort of now understand it as what my guess is I don't know what's in his head or was in his head but I studied up on the psychology of fraudsters and talked to this guy Dan Davis who wrote a great book called Lying for Money about how frauds work and how fraudsters think and one of the things that he pointed out is that fraudsters they're sort of like method actors they consider themselves legitimate businessmen they really and they often start out that way like Bernie Madoff legitimate businessmen until he started an investment firm and he started stealing people's money and Sam started off as like you know he was at Jane street this crypto or this Wall Street firm ostensibly this like genius billionaire guy I think in fact according to his public statements he still believes he's innocent he still says we weren't insolvent we just didn't have the money at the time which begs the question does he understand the word insolvency but he thinks he's innocent and so he was like happy to talk to me I don't think it went that well for him but I guess I'll let the audience be the judge yeah he seemed extremely nervous and that might just be how he operates on a day to day basis but he seemed like he was he just didn't he wasn't ready to answer any question he was like scared of the questions that were being asked so while I was watching I was like what was the reason that this guy had like did he think that this was going to be the PR hit for him to dig his like to start digging his way out of this hole that he's created for himself but so in addition to SPF you talked to a lot of people I had kind of a big picture question for you the name of the movie everyone's lying to you for money do you think that everything involved in the crypto space is ultimately fraudulent no there's also crime there's a lot of crime it's everything from money laundering tax evasion sanctions evasion child sexual abuse material you know we found out in the recent Epstein files that Jeffrey Epstein was a secret funder of bitcoin core development through the MIT media lab which is the group of programmers that maintain bitcoin's operating system this is 2015 so a long time ago before 90% of the guys who are into bitcoin now even knew it existed so you know I think we need to grapple with that and we need to ask a question of like is it worth it because there's a lot of criminal activity to give you a sense of the size a crypto company estimated last year that $154 billion of illicit activity criminal activity was financed facilitated by cryptocurrency that's $154 billion in one year alone and that's an estimate from a crypto company so I'm going to guess that's probably on the low end of the estimation it's a lot of crime so there's crime and then there's speculation betting the crypto is going to go up or down and that's what I would characterize as gambling in the film and I feel kind of stupid that I'd never really put this together you make the claim that a lot of crypto's increase in value has come from people that are invested in crypto then buying their own crypto at higher prices driving the price up I had always seen the speculative aspect being like people who are crypto evangelists as they call themselves wanting to generate a lot of interest out in the public that maybe have not heard of whatever coin they're trying to hawk and then just by pumping that up then they get out later a more traditional pump and dump but you make the claim that I think 90 to 95% of crypto value I'm not sure if you said crypto or bitcoin so maybe you can help me out on that one but 90 to 95% of that value increase has come from people that already own the coin buying their own coin to drive the price up at higher prices I made that claim or somebody else in the movie made that claim I don't remember making that claim are you talking about the guy Alex Moshinsky who said only 10% of the money in crypto is real are you talking about that? I'm not sure if you made the claim directly but in the movie there was like a 90% of the value has come from the speculation of people that are pumping their own money into it I don't remember saying that but in the movie I do interview this guy Alex Moshinsky who was running a firm called Celsius I'm drinking a Celsius in his honor not the same company he was running a crypto company and he's now in jail he was running a Ponzi scheme and Alex said to me that only 10% of the money in crypto is real that the rest is speculation so that was a claim by a guy who's now in jail for doing what he said other people are doing I'm kind of shocking that somebody that was like invested that much would say that if anything I think that makes the claim more believable that this guy is saying I agree, agreed, agreed and then I asked Sam Bagman Fried about that I was like Alex said 10% to 15% is real and he was like yeah that sounds about right and I was like look we all know that markets are not perfectly liquid the stock market is not perfectly liquid you couldn't sell Apple is worth collectively but you can't sell hundreds of billions of dollars in a single day so we know there is a certain amount of it's speculation it's leverage people borrowing money in order to invest it's just that crypto takes this to a whole other degree they were offering retail traders, regular guys on the biggest exchange they were offering them 125 to 1 leverage meaning like for every dollar you're gambling you're borrowing 125 which sounds awesome right when it's going up you're making so much money at least on the screen but it goes down you lose it just as fast and you're just like immediately liquidated there's no margin call and you know in my experience and in terms of like looking at the facts sure some guys are going to win at this game but most of them are going to lose it's like playing at an unregulated and licensed casino you know what I mean like you're going to win sometimes you lose because you take your chips to the teller to cash out into real money and the teller window is closed you know that happens to crypto all the time the exchange is shut down and you just can't get your money out right it also seems to me like this industry more so than almost any other has a big time I'm trying to think of the right word for it I've always called it like the hit by a bust risk so like if you got one person that's super important to their company and then if that person is just like going out for lunch and they get into a car accident then what happens to that company it seems like a lot of the major players in crypto and it has been for some time now they have that risk where it's like if the head of whatever project this is if something happens to them if they die or if they just like drop off the grid entirely the whole thing is fucked and every investor that's put money into it is ultimately going to be shit out of luck is that something that you've also noticed as you've been doing these interviews absolutely a lot of these companies are actually very small you know Sam's company was quite small it was just him and a bunch of other young 20 something year olds in the Bahamas and yeah to give you a sense of how like sloppily run these companies are I mean FTX was like lying I was like one of the largest crypto companies out there when I interviewed Sam in 2022 and yet we learned in the bank the legal proceedings against him and the bankruptcy proceedings that they were running their accounting software they were running their accounting on QuickBooks they didn't have professional shit that I would do you know what I mean or like some tiny small company would use no offense to QuickBooks but like they didn't I don't think they had an HR department I don't think that like they didn't it just wasn't a well run thing they had a trading firm called Alameda Research as well as the exchange FTX they were operating on the same floor in this building in the Bahamas and Sam's quote unquote ex-girlfriend was running the trading firm and Sam was running the exchange and it's like dude you know come on that's such an obvious conflict of interest that wouldn't be allowed in a regulated market yeah yeah big T what do you have yeah so Ben we have a number of crypto guys that work here and I was talking to one of them yesterday and I told him we were interviewing you and about the movie and everything and his uh he was like oh well I'm sure this guy knows more than every bank in the world or something and and his but his I would say he's very fanatical about crypto but I don't find that attitude the people you talk to in the movie and just people I encounter I think that's pretty common I think like everybody that is in on crypto it's like their main number one thing in their life I don't find there to be many casual crypto enthusiasts why do you think that is why do you think in order to be a crypto guy like you have to be so all in on it yeah I think there was a moment in 2021-2022 when the celebrities were hawking it and and and a lot of regular people didn't really know what it was but they saw ads for it constantly and they put money on it most of them lost that that money or lost a fractured significant percentage of that money and so a lot of those people have left but what's left is the hardcore group of guys who really really believe in it and often have a lot invested in it not just financially but psychologically and it to them it is you know I interviewed victims of the Celsius scam and I'm just trying to understand these guys and like relate to them and I do I talked to a guy who was working construction in Texas the state I grew up in and I asked him why I put money into Celsius he was like I just wanted to make a little extra money so I could spend more time with my daughter and I felt that when I lost the money like I felt like I let her down and like he's crying I'm crying you're crying everybody's crying I care about these guys I'm actually on their side they may not be able to see it that's okay but I then go at the end of the movie to ask all these same guys do you still believe in cryptocurrency even though you've lost all this money in Celsius every single one of them said yes like I didn't have to edit it it's all yes it's all like no I think the more they lose they more they have to believe and I'm sure a lot of the guys who believe in it have won because they bought it way early but if your argument is well it's not a Ponzi scheme because if you bought in early you would have done well that's a feature of a Ponzi scheme that's how Ponzi schemes work right that's how multi-level marketing scheme works it's a pyramid scheme the people at the top start if you get in early you're making money off all the people below you that's a pyramid so the most the largest number of people are at the bottom and those people lose so to your friends point like oh sorry well no I was just going to say that was going to be part of my next question which is like the crypto lovers tout all these use cases for it that never seemed to come to fruition and it just kind of exists as a commodity and it floats up and down it's been up at 100 bitcoin's been at 100 grand it's been at 25 whatever so whatever constitutes anyone being right or wrong about bitcoin as long as it just kind of exists as a stock more or less yeah I mean I don't you know I'm not trying to put like a moral judgment on it other than I would say the money that the retail public puts into this provides liquidity for the thing to be worth something which gives it value to criminals so that they can use it to commit crimes or to get paid for committing crimes so I do think people that invest in crypto should consider some of you know like you can't just hand wave away all the crime and say oh well you know there's a lot of crime in the regulated market and the dollars used for crime like yes I obviously but come on man like what are we talking about because it's hard to use crypto for good you can it's a tool so like I heard about a woman Afghanistan she can't get making banking under the Taliban she's a woman so she's paying her employees she's running a business she's paying them in crypto like cool great that's good we like that right um but then if you're gonna take that you have to accept all the bad stuff too if you're being intellectually honest about the whole thing um so I just have found in my experience that most people are gonna most people lose money and um some people lose everything and it's far more useful for crime than it is for you know doing good Aaron what do you got do you find I mean you kind of answer this but like because what I always viewed it as I was this is a I would say anti-crypto but we never bought it like we was always skeptical about it from its inception I just don't find any currency that is so flimsy that can go up and down that could be useful in an everyday market to the average you know worker but what I did find interesting was the technology behind it right and I don't know enough about that technology to know if it's good or bad but the encryption to me I feel like there is some kind of utility in that in the future I don't know if that is uh you know usable in our markets but I mean do you guys find any kind of like yeah I could say yeah I would like to I'd like to talk about the technology because I think people the advocates will talk about blockchain you know and and 90% of the people actually a lot of the guys who sell it who are selling it don't understand in my opinion but like definitely people in the regular public don't understand what blockchain is so blockchain is just a uh it's a ledger just a way of recording transactions and what's neat about it is you're obscuring your identity when you're when you're transacting so it's a pseudonymous ledger not anonymous but pseudonymous you don't know you know which wallets they call them wallets these accounts are interacting on the blockchain so cool that's kind of interesting um but blockchain you'll notice is not used by really any businesses outside of the crypto industry it's very hard to find businesses use blockchain and the reason is it sucks it's a bad it's bad tech it's been around for 35 years it goes back to 1991 uh Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta working at Bell Labs building off the work of cryptographers like David Chom who I interviewed for the book and you know it's kind of a neat thing but to give you a sense of the limitations of blockchain bitcoin can only process five to seven transactions a second visa can do 24 000 bitcoin cannot scale as a payments method because of the tech because of the way this thing called a consensus algorithm works inside of bitcoin you can build systems on top of bitcoin to make the thing go faster but then you're violating the purity of the blockchain right or the purity of bitcoin so even Sam Bankman freed when I interviewed him admitted that bitcoin was never going to work as a global payment system so the tech what so blockchain is building off a thing that is actually useful which is public key encryption public key encryption allows you to buy stuff online and not have your credit card information hacked it's obscuring the identity of like who you're sending you know your money to that's running through a bank right but it's not a pseudonymous ledger like inside you get a bill from your credit card company saying what you bought and on the other side you know the merchant has a similar record of the transaction so public key encryption is vital to our modern economy but public key encryption has been around since the 1970s and is used in everything there are so many things and blockchain really isn't so the tech story to me I'm sorry it's bullshit in my opinion sorry I don't know if I can encourage you fuck shit you can say whatever yeah awesome sweet oh man this is going to change everything I'm finally I can talk about my favorite cryptocurrency cum rocket oh yeah there was a cum model we were almost investors years ago remember what we did an episode on crypto years and years ago and we found the rocket and we tried to invest but like the website to buy it was super convoluted and I don't think we ended up doing it but dude you should have gone in it was squirting to the moon it was yeah it was up there now it's at zero now oh yeah yeah did not so here's another question that I have it's probably pretty easy to answer but I just want to get your take on it is if the technology isn't all that unique isn't all that usable what prompted the boom yeah like what was it that made everybody go crazy for this shit because it's like a story as old as time it's a get rich quick scheme I mean at least by the time it entered the public in 2021 when Dave and I were talking it was like all the celebrities were selling it you know it was the most famous people on earth telling you you should buy this stuff it was Matt Damon saying what are you a pussy by crypto you know like it was really right fortune favors the brave you know like you don't you want to be like Marco Polo or you remember that commercial with all this NDO stuff like don't you want to be like an astronaut go gamble on some crypto and the ads were everywhere you know that was that Super Bowl they had all the crypto ads everywhere so I think it was really that story you know Ari and I think that's like I think that's the essence of it you know is is you too can get rich quick for free and they just changed the terms around and kind of cloaked it in the story of technology that nobody could really define because like you know these guys are not cryptographers right they're like regular guys putting money into something hoping to make money off of it good great awesome I don't have any problem with that I'm just trying to make sure investors are protected you know that like the truth gets out and and these things are treated what I think they should be treated as securities as investments and the industry does not want that they really don't want that because securities law is predicated on disclosure you need to know who you're giving your money to and what they're doing with the money and crypto really doesn't want that so I'm just trying to you know advocate for how I see it with the where is this my last question because it's one of those lines where are we at legislatively with regulating this we're in a bad place last year from my position as a skeptic anyway last year the the House and Senate passed and Trump signed into law a thing called the genius act which if you know anything about this congress and it's called the genius act you know it has to be stupid and it's it's a bill that allows corporate among other things allows corporations to issue their own money in the form of stable coins these cryptocurrencies and so we're talking about literal corporate money like it'll probably roll out later this year next year meta has been wanting to do this forever so it's like you know you might have to go to meta if you're on meta's platform you're trying to like buy something you might have to convert your money into meta bucks and you know this is very clear that the corporations would benefit from this right because they get to collect interest on all that money that they're holding of yours but how do the how do the the customers how does the public benefit I don't think they do it all so that bill already passed that's really bad and I think that kind of highlights what we're talking about with crypto like if the money doesn't come from the government I know we all have our bone to pick with the government I get it I have I have some myself but like if the money doesn't come from the government where's it come from the crypto companies don't like to talk about the crypto organizations don't like to talk about this but the answer is corporations you know it's world liberty financial when it comes to Trump but it's also Bitcoin the majority of Bitcoin that are mined today are mined by multi-billion dollar corporations many of which are publicly traded so if corporate money seems like a good idea to you then okay but it's not doesn't sound a good idea to me and I don't think it sounds like a good idea to the regular public so why did all these politicians vote for by the way a lot of Democrats voted for it too 100 Democrats it wasn't just the Republicans well the crypto lobby has hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on infecting and affecting our political process and they've been targeting senators and congresspeople who speak out against the industry I mean they spent I testified at the Senate banking committee in 2022 they spent 40 million dollars trying to defeat and succeeded defeating Sherrod Brown who was the chairman of that committee in Ohio and they boosted this guy Bernie Moreno who's a pro-crypto guy so they have an enormous amount of money to spend and I think a lot of the Democrats are afraid of them and or beholden to them with your interview with SBF and talking about FTX in particular the business that they had with the separation between the hedge fund on the Alameda research and then FTX the exchange if they hadn't had one line of code that allowed SBF to extract deposits and then kick them over to the investment arm if that wasn't there did they have a solvent business did they have anything that would have been profitable if they hadn't committed that fraud no and in fact the reason they had to steal the money was that they were bad at trading it's really ironic like I assume they were making money hand over fist I didn't know what they were doing but if you own a trading firm and an exchange like surely you're able to like make money on this thing right I mean you're trading on insider knowledge shouldn't you be able to crush it and instead I mean I sat at the trial when Sam was charged with these crimes in southern district of New York instead what we saw in court records is they were losing money even at a booming market so we were definitely when the market started crashing in 2022 Alameda was and that's why they needed to borrow borrow their customers assets on the on the exchange so it's kind of interesting too because that's actually a common trait in fraudsters is like it doesn't start off they don't always start off trying to steal the money like it often starts off they make a mistake you know like you read about some guy on some obscure desk right like he's trading like tie convertible bonds and he just like over bets in the wrong way and he loses a little money and then he doesn't want to admit it to his boss so he bets bigger and loses more and then like this thing spirals out of control and all of a sudden he's arrested for you know gambling away 10 billion dollars on a desk that wasn't supposed to handle a fraction of it so sometimes the fraud happens just because like the you make a mistake and then you you you won't admit it you know and the lie just gets bigger and bigger and bigger would it be fair to say that this ultimately every crypto company ultimately boils down to which ones are best at marketing themselves is it just a big marketing shell game where it's like an attention economy and if you can get the most attention on whatever it is your product is or whatever your coin is whatever your exchange is that is the ultimate goal to see who can drive as many eyes and then from that as many wallets to your product as possible it has nothing to do with the actual product behind what your marketing yeah I would say that's a pretty fair statement I mean the Bitcoin advocates will say one of the sayings in crypto is like Bitcoin has no marketing department you know because we don't know who Satoshi Nakamoto was and so it's like this decentralized currency right but as I talk about in the movie because you're not really investing in a thing that has any like correlation to any real world asset it's just lines of computer code stored on blockchains like what are you investing in I would say you're investing in the story of Bitcoin that like Bitcoin is worth something and you're investing in the belief of other people that it's worth something and so it's not that Bitcoin has no marketing department it's that Bitcoin is only marketing like all crypto is really just convincing you to give your real money over in exchange for this thing they're calling a currency that isn't really a currency and you might win and you might lose but that's why they spend so much money on marketing that's why they sell crypto.com arena FTX arena before they went Kablooey and you know and that's why they spend money on politicians is to rig the game so they can have different rules for themselves they don't have to be treated like banks or whatever Big K what else you got well this is a hard pivot I don't know if we want to save it for the end but you played flag football with Drew Brees growing up yeah yeah yeah how was he was he awesome? he was awesome I remember we went to the same middle school and and we were like we knew he was a good athlete but I remember the first day we went to the park to throw the ball around and the two was just like his dad I think played I think his dad was a QB at Baylor but Drew was just a phenomenal athlete and by the way great guy, really really good dude and not the tallest guy in the world like 6'1 oh no shorter well you're 5'10 exactly there's a joke in the movie about that I'm 5'8, 5'9 on a good day he's listed at 6'0 so he's 5'10 yeah Drew Brees I've heard 5'10 is a fair height for him that sounds about right, Drew and I played the same middle school team and then he went to Westlake which is a powerhouse school in Austin and I went to Austin High and they just beat the living crap out of us every year it was a lot of fun I did have another question about the movie you went to a lot of these Bitcoin conventions and crypto conventions did you just want to blow your head off at those things it feels like that's the most annoying place on earth to be it's pretty annoying you end up drinking a lot you drink a lot but everyone's drinking a lot so it's kind of like a trade show all these dudes it is almost exclusively dudes there's hot girls trying to sell you passing out free drinks or whatever that are buying and selling are mainly dudes and yeah everyone just gets really drunk yeah it was fun though I mean look again I know it sounds like I'm hating on all the people that are investing in it I'm really not I think we have to laugh at the things that are actually funny because otherwise we're not really being honest about it but I am actually trying to protect them but I also refuse to tolerate the bullshit and so if someone's going to like you know try to shame me from talking about it or whatever Dave knows this I can't let it go I can't let anything you haven't changed since college you've always been a guy who explains inflation at parties so I'm not surprised that's a pretty cool guy to have as a party yeah sometimes I think one of the funniest things that came out of this whole thing which is not it's not the same as bitcoin but it's kind of under the same umbrella which is the NFT the monkey picture shit was in real time I was fucking making fun of people about this shit I was like this is the dumbest shit I've ever seen in my life and I still can't, there's several millions of dollars for a fucking monkey picture dog I was laughing I think there was an 88 minutes poster for an NFT that went pretty high right then alright guys that's a deep cut that I did with the legendary Al Pacino that's a great movie I'm not going to defend the movie movie is fine whatever and you're doing a deep cut against me as an NFT Dave I didn't issue that 88 minutes NFT we don't know that NFTs are amazing so NFTs are the digital ownership of the thing how can you create scarcity out of something that you could just right click and save the digital image right I see you there he's like yeah the answer is you can't they're saying like oh it's an NFT so it's a record on the blockchain so really an NFT is like a receipt like oh I own this a receipt for a link to a JPEG alright man if you want to spend millions on that go for it in the econ when these things happen there's a term for it cool theory basically the price of a speculative asset rises so far beyond any real world value that it has the price is really determined by greater fools you're buying it hoping to sell it to a greater fool than yourself this game can go on for a very long time but ultimately someone at the end of it is left the biggest idiot holding the bag so there's a lot of that there's also a lot of money laundering in crypto and there's a lot of money laundering the art world so there may have been a lot of that that was like inflating the prices at the time I remember the Jimmy Fallon show when Paris Hilton went on there to unveil her ape that conversation should go down we should put that in the Library of Congress for the stupidest conversation to ever happen on television it's like watching now your brain will melt out of your ear when you listen to Jimmy Fallon just like go completely he just fell in love with Paris Hilton's so do you guys know the story behind that? the story behind that they're being sued right now because the allegation is again it's an allegation that the celebs were given the NFTs they didn't pay for them they were giving them and they were hawking them on TV not disclosing that they were given the thing I mean guys that's just so wrong that's so wrong the other funny thing about that apparently they gave the audience NFTs they were like hey and everyone gets not one of their NFTs that was valuable quote unquote valuable like some crappy NFT and I just laugh my ass off thinking about some middle aged couple that have traveled from Ohio to New York to see the Tonight Show the famous Tonight Show and they go and they're watching Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon hawk these ridiculousness and they get a JPEG or link to a JPEG as their parting gift I think that's really funny wasn't the argument for those that they were on a blockchain wasn't that part of it they're like you own this because nobody can access the whatever the code yeah and then you would just like some guy would be talking about that hyping it up on Twitter whatever and you would just like right click and save the same thing and then post it and they would lose their minds they would lose their minds you know nah you can't do that you know it's like well I can't dude I just did like you gonna sue me anyway it's a it's a pretty stupid world there was a story that came out last week about the creator of Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto the New York Times claims that they've tracked down the actual person behind this have you had a chance to read that and what do you think about it I've read it the guy is Adam Back is his name I don't think that it proves that he's Satoshi because there's no smoking gun that I see no incontrovertible evidence there's a lot of like I guess you call it circumstantial evidence that might lead you to him and he certainly is a good candidate for it he was the first person that Satoshi emailed you know Satoshi is this like made up person like it's not a there's not a real Satoshi Nakamoto behind this somebody just called created a pseudonym online and released this have you seen the Last Dragon? nah you haven't seen the Last Dragon Bruce Lee? yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah sure Bruce Lee was the master who's the master take me to the master there's just some fortune cookie machine same vibe the funny thing about this guy the guy that they think the Times is saying is Satoshi is this guy Adam Back he's a British cryptographer I've never met Adam I've never interviewed him but one thing I know about Adam is that he hates me he he has referred to me as a crisis actor which is funny because I am an actor and it is a crisis he's almost so close to getting him but it's interesting he hates me I can't imagine why he would hate me another fun fact about Adam Back is that in the EPSI files we found out that his company Blockstream received an investment from Jeffrey Epsi so you know only the best people in crypto well there were a lot of people who thought EPSI might be Satoshi Nakamoto right? at some point that doesn't the dates don't work for that in terms of the emails it appears that Epstein I did a whole piece on this for a video I did for an organization called More Perfect Union so people can watch that online if they want it's like 3 minutes long it appears that Epstein found out about crypto around 2011 something like that through a guy named Brock Pierce who's a hilarious character a former child actor from the mighty ducks who is now a crypto entrepreneur um so if he found out about in 2011 then he couldn't have been Satoshi because the Bitcoin white paper came out in 2008 but what is clear is that that Epstein was into this at a very early stage the crypto market in 2015 was really really small and he came in to like fund the system and keep it going through the MIT Media Lab secretly you know because he was already a registered sex offender so they didn't want to promote that that's fair that's very fair have you made anybody let me ask it this way your advice because you are not a financial advisor your advice seems to just be be careful and you're kind of spreading the word about how everybody should should think twice should do due diligence be aware of the risks and the historical downside to investing in a lot of these coins and technology but ultimately that's not going to work on like a grand scale to protect people right like I think you're doing a good job you're raising awareness but massive picture it can't be one guy being like hey you should be careful that's going to that's going to be the thing that makes a difference so I feel like it does have to come eventually from the government from government regulations what do you think what would your solution be to if you were to write a law how would the government be able to protect its own citizens from potential fraud when it comes to crypto protecting them from fraud I think is actually pretty straightforward if I was king for a day I would just classify all of the speculative crypto currencies I include bitcoin, ethereum and all of them and classify them as securities and then they have to follow securities laws they have to do disclosures quarterly reports things like that and people will have the information to judge for themselves whether they want to invest or not I am not saying outlaw crypto because I don't think that would work if you outlawed it I think it would just go back to where it was before and just be this underground thing so that's one half of the equation the other half of the equation is these things called stable coins do you guys know they are like they are cryptos that are pegged one to one with real currencies like the US dollar so their price never changes or at least supposedly so it's sort of like a black market dollar it's a dollar that doesn't have to go to the banking system and it is used for an enormous amount of crime that 154 billion that I cited earlier like most of that is stable coins because criminals like it because they don't have to deal with the volatility of bitcoin or the other cryptocurrencies they can just send something that's value remains constant anywhere in the world and avoid the banks and so it's used for things I mean it's used right now the straight up moves the tankers that are going through at least some of them are paying the radians their fee in crypto because the Iranians are shut out of the banking system so for the stable coins they are claiming to be worth a dollar but they are not backed by the full faith and credit of the US government I think this stuff is really dangerous and I think we should consider if it's calling itself a dollar and it's not a dollar isn't that a counterfeit dollar I do not think the stable coin thing scares me more than the speculative stuff because if that gets into our banking system and we mix the fake money with the real money we could have like another a subprime crisis and we could have a recession you know imagine a recession scenario where the market corrects and crypto crashes again but this time it's tied into our banking system through the stable coins that could be like a recipe for disaster that was going to be another question that I had so I'm not, I don't own crypto I actually think that might not be accurate I think I might still own some doge that I bought in 2020 when I didn't know what it was and do not have any idea like how much I have in it but it's not a lot I don't have any real savings or real money tied into it like what is the danger to those of us that don't take risks investing in this type of this type of speculation what are the risks to us if bad things were to happen in the crypto industry yeah good question well first of all good on you and I don't offer people financial advice but if pressed all I say is as you said before just don't gamble with money you can't afford to lose just be careful right just just assume imagine a scenario where whatever money you put in you lose it are you okay does that affect your day other than are you a little bit sad is it a change your life and if it does my suggestion my humble suggestion is don't take that risk in terms of what could happen to the rest of us even those of us that aren't really into crypto if a scenario like the one I described plays out where like there's a recession and the market corrects and crypto crashes and it's all tied into the banking system basically it could create another sub-run crisis where we have to bail all these guys out again which is hilarious because crypto was set up ostensibly in a reaction to the sub-run crisis so they would have effectively recreated the same scenario and that would really infuriate me and it would just be wrong so that's I think the real danger at this point if you own an index bond like a broad index bond you actually do have some exposure to crypto already because there's all these crypto companies that are publicly traded and so you have a tiny bit of exposure now but the systemic risk is like if it all goes kablooey and we bail them out Dave do you have any questions for us do I have any questions for you guys open up the floor no I mean I mean you have a question I could tell I don't have a question football I was asleep half the time no I mean Aryan big fan PFT big fan just happy to be here not really sure why I'm here but glad to be here Dave I'm a big fan of yours I'm a big fan of Dave's I'm a Dave guy thanks man I thought Dave stole every scene that he was in in the film I appreciate that he did and he does he's fantastic in the movie I can say he's the director at risk of repeating myself earlier when I don't think I was being recorded I have to get this one in I do think he got the title wrong I think it should have been Ben won't shut the fuck up about his econ degree and we'll just leave it at that I think yeah I think Ben as a UVA grad he just did this movie so that he could show his diploma off yeah I mean he's kind of like the crossfit guy who definitely lets you know he does crossfit yeah yeah Ben I so I lived in Charlottesville for about two years and then I lived in Austin Texas for about 10 years as well so we've had we've had a little bit across over there what is your what's your go-to queso in Austin it's been I haven't lived in Austin for a long time so I'm probably way out of the loop I mean we would go to places like Matzo Rancho and stuff like that was a classic you know I don't know that it's like the hippest place in the world don't fince to Matzo yeah I don't know what's your jam I mean Matzo Rancho is a good answer I like MagMudd Magnolia Cafe you get the MagMudd with the black refried beans that's mixed into it that's better yours is better than mine Kirby Lane queso is a staple as well Kirby Lane is fantastic I love Kirby Lane make your way up to Tyson's Tacos if you haven't been there yet just off airport Boulevard get the crispy duck taco I I like to tell people that I invented it but ultimately I was like they're one of their first customers and they said if you eat 20 tacos we'll name a taco after you and so I ate 20 tacos in about five days and I was like you should do like a peaking duck style taco and then they put like a week later they had a crispy duck taco on the menu and it's fried that sounds fantastic did you get credit I know it was one of those things where like something beautiful came into this world that I had a small part in playing and I feel like it's I'm just happy that it's there I don't need the credit for it except for right now when I'm talking about it publicly on a podcast I'm demanding credit for it but besides that I don't need any credit for it and I'm like you I just really need the credit like a lot you know what I mean I just definitely need the credit all the time I'm just kidding nah that's a good call what's your what's your barbecue jam down there I mean it's a very basic answer I do love the Salt Lick Salt Lick it's hit or miss I've been there a couple times where it hasn't been up to par but the new one maybe one of my new favorite restaurants in the entire country it's going to be is it Leroy and Lewis in South Congress and it is it's just so good it's like a fast casual place I think they have a Michelin star they have a Michelin star and one of our guys here at Barstool went down and like worked with them for a couple days just like learning the barbecue trade but it is it's it's probably the best barbecue in the country in my opinion right now so go check it out Dan that is that that is where you it is appropriate to use the word delicious FYI you don't like to do this he was on John Stuart or something the other day and what did you say like all this all these guys that are Trump's buddies getting getting theirs it's just delicious and it's like delicious dude what I can't I can't have nice things I can't enjoy you can if you were a scarf go to Leroy and Lewis and you won't regret it it's it's the absolute best I'm actually going to Austin next week for the movie so I'll check it out thanks for the recommendation yeah yeah it's you're in for a treat I wish I could go there like right now for lunch except I probably need a nap afterwards we have any other questions for the fellas this is really cool thank you guys for joining us I did enjoy the movie I think you did a good job again like kind of putting into words a lot of the things that I've been feeling for the last like in my gut for the last eight or nine years or ten years or however long it's been that I've been like casually observing the crypto space yeah so yeah I appreciate good job thank you thank you we're going up to Boston we'll be in Boston on I think it's Friday that because I know you guys are a Boston area right are you guys we're in Chicago so we have one office that's in New York and then I'm sorry I'm thinking of the original Barstow I was going to invite Dave because you know he's from Boston but unfortunately the show is sold out all four hundred it's a bomber I can't invite my good buddy yeah I'm sorry the movies is too popular but otherwise I would I'll catch it on YouTube pirate it yeah down downloaded illegally anyway guys yeah this has been awesome thank you for having us on I'm super fun yeah appreciate it thanks guys always on the go and for those who care Stella blue is more than just great coffee it's about giving back I named the brand after my rescue dog Stella who inspired our mission to help more dogs find their forever homes every purchase supports animal rescue organizations so when you drink Stella blue you're not just fueling your day you're saving a dog's life try the new cans today taste the difference and make a difference all new Stella blue coffee can lattes now available at Stella blue coffee dot com or subscribe on Amazon for 10% off all right that was Ben and Dave thank you guys for listening to Mac Redocing and we will see you guys next week love you guys goodbye