Ep. 537 Crypto Story Lines: From 1 v 1 with SBF to the White House

May 18, 2023 #CRYPTO101

In this episode of Crypto 101 we talk to Tiffany Fong who is one of our favorite influencers in the crypto space. We appreciate her as she never pretends to know or study charts but she is an expert in navigating the space. The highlight of this interview is learning how she got one of the first 1 on 1 interviews with Sam Bankman Fried during the FTX collapse. Part of being an expert in a space is understanding and knowing who are thought leaders from both a technical and social outlook so enjoy getting to know Tiffany!

— TRANSCRIPT —

SPEAKERS

Aaron Malone, Bryce Paul, Tiffany Fong

Bryce Paul 00:09

All right, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the crypto 101 podcast. I’m your host Bryce as always joined by the notorious P IZ. Mr. Aaron Malone pizza mind Malone. We’re having a lot of fun here. just catching up with a with a friend, a new friend actually, Tiffany Fong who is just an absolute queen, an angel of a girl, we were able to meet her in consensus in person. And she is a crypto bag holder and creditor just like us, so no, Tiffany, welcome. Welcome to the podcast. How you doing?

Tiffany Fong 00:46

Thank you. What a nice entry. So

Bryce Paul 00:49

Aaron Malone, how are you doing, man? Life’s good by you.

Aaron Malone 00:53

life’s great over here. Just hanging out in North Texas. It was great to all all of us to be together in Austin. Just last week, is a great time we met Tiffany a real life girl in the crypto space. Yeah. Just a catfish on Twitter. But the real though rare. Yeah.

Bryce Paul 01:10

No, we I first heard of you, Tiffany, when you kind of like kind of burst onto the scene loudly with some some leaked messages between you and Sam bank, Ben freed. And then I was like, Whoa, like, what’s going on? What’s like, Who is this woman? How did she get this conversation? Is she just a reporter? And so I always thought you were a reporter. And then I started to realize as I learn more about you, that you’re you’re not like a journalist or you know, you’re more of an influencer. So I want to actually, you know, bring you on the show and hear from you. You know, what you’ve been up to in the crypto space, how you found yourself in the position you’re in. And you know a little bit about the Tiffany Fong story.

Tiffany Fong 01:51

I mean, I think a lot of people think I’m a federal agent, just I’ve heard that too. Oh, well, I get that probably the most. So I mean, because it was very quick, like the I don’t know, everything did happen very quickly. Like I only started posting on Twitter, and only started my YouTube channel after selfies is collapsed. So that was like, in June, July, July last year. So I mean, I haven’t been even really using Twitter or YouTube that long. So it was a quick, I guess, rise. It’s not like I have like a massive, massive following. But it things grew very quickly. So I feel like that’s why people come up with a bunch of like, weird theories about the fact that I’m like a federal agent or whatever.

Bryce Paul 02:29

Yeah. And I would say the picture of you and Joe Biden didn’t help that.

Tiffany Fong 02:34

Yes. Okay. That’s what it is. See, to me, I think nothing of that. Because I wasn’t invited by Biden. And it wasn’t like some cool invite, like someone who watches me on YouTube, just slid into my email, and was like, hey, invite to the White House. And I was like, this is a scam. This is got to be fake. But it turned out to be someone who I think works in the Secret Service, and they wanted me to be there plus one. So like that, I always forget that that even happened. Like I wasn’t like some cool invite to the White House or anything like Joe Biden. That’s pretty

Bryce Paul 03:05

cool. Invite to the White House a plus one for the Secret Service. It was quite actually, I was able to go on a tour of the White House as well. It was pretty cool. My buddy was like an intern. And you know, it was like open house or whatever. And I got a little tour. It was pretty cool. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so So you you’re a creditor at Celsius as well. Like I know you you posted a picture you got like $100,000 Last there and so I think

Tiffany Fong 03:35

those are like the correct price is back. So it feels like more like when I put that money in it was it was over 200k I think at the peak it was like over a quarter mil but when I like when I did put the money and it was during the bull market. So it feels like I lost a lot more right now. It’s like I think it’s sitting at like 119k or something like that. So I mean so substantial amount. So I was

Bryce Paul 03:58

what would you say that’s kind of what’s driving you to be a provocateur in the space like calling out Alex machine ski calling out Sam bank Ben free doing all that is? Is that like the the objective?

Tiffany Fong 04:09

I mean? Yes, I mean, I started posting just because I was pissed about losing the money. I didn’t really start off with the objective of like, needing to take down big companies or anything like that. I was just posting because I was pissed off that I lost a bunch of my savings. And it snowballed into me just posting continual updates on the bankruptcy because I was looking them up personally, because I had lost money. And then employees inside the company started leaking me a bunch of information, so it turned into more, and I’ve enjoyed it and I and I’ve had some personal Spats with like, mostly Christina Schinsky Alex has just mostly apparently asked about me a few times to employees and blocked me he hasn’t like really personally come after me. But Christina Schinsky personally comes after me so it turned into more of like a personal vendetta. I don’t know if you saw that like Celsius recently spent a $72,000 attempting to allegedly litigate me which didn’t amount to anything I didn’t, I didn’t receive any cease and desist, or I didn’t get served or anything. But it’s now become sort of a personal vendetta with me, I mean, Celsius. And since they took a lot of my money, and then I got those interviews with Sam Bateman fried pretty early, early on into me posting, like I only started posting in July, and I first started, I first communicated with Sam in September, and then I got the interviews in November. So that escalated quickly.

Aaron Malone 05:34

What’s your impression of Sam Baker Winfrey? Does he this evil mastermind behind everything? Or do you think he was maybe played by some evil masterminds that were just in his ear, telling him you know, everything’s gonna be fine, just do this, you don’t have anything to worry about.

Bryce Paul 05:49

Or I’ll also propose maybe a third option, because I think this is kind of what Sam himself as a spouse, and he’s just like, this shit kind of got too big, too fast. I got caught up in the hype, there was a lot of money being passed around, we were the most cutting edge like, it was just, you know, I think, you know, negligent in a sense, because he said he should have been running his risk models a hell of a lot more. Like, right? Do you buy that? You know, kind of what’s your take

Tiffany Fong 06:16

on buy into any of those? Like, I don’t think he’s, like completely innocent and really had zero clue what was happening. Like, I don’t, I don’t buy that. I’m always reluctant with what I say about it. Because I don’t want people to think I’m like, just naive and completely buy into it. But I don’t see him as like an evil mastermind villain. Like, I don’t think that he planned and just started FTX just to steal a bunch of customers money. And that was the plan from the start. Like, I don’t think that that completely evil narrative is accurate. I do think that he, I do think he actually does believe in the Effective Altruism thing, despite the fact that that Vox article came out, like, I’ve spoken to Sam about that stuff a lot. And he’s shown me like some of his writings from like, 2012 and 2011, where he was talking like he was writing about wanting to donate money and how to best decide what charities to donate to like, I do think that he did believe in that stuff. But I also don’t believe that maybe, yeah, like to the point where I’m like, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was sort of, if he’s sort of a end justifies the means sort of person like that wouldn’t really shocked me. So I feel like he was likely more aware of potential risk to customer assets than he’s stated in some interviews where he’s sort of just said, like, oh, I had no idea what was happening until like, November, I don’t know, like, during the collapse, basically. So I think he was more aware than he’s led on in like, maybe the New York Times interview or something like that. But yeah, I don’t I don’t see him as like an evil mastermind. It’s like somewhere somewhere in the middle. So it’s not like a clear cut answer. There are a lot of heresy theories about people like pulling the strings in the background. I mean, I’ve talked to Sam a lot. Nothing like that has ever surfaced in our conversations. And I think that at this point, now that he’s facing so many charges, he’d likely be kind of open to point fingers at this point. I mean, it’d be smart of him to point fingers if there was someone above him really pulling the strings. And he’s never, you know, talked about something like that, really. So I don’t know if I fully buy into that narrative. I feel like there’s a lot of conspiracy theories about that. But um, yeah, somewhere somewhere in between. It’s hard. It’s hard. Because if I don’t just completely disparage him and say that he’s evil, I will get a lot of shit. But yeah, I think his intentions

Aaron Malone 08:36

were truth, and you’re the closest person to him, you know, we want the real answer. And likely, you know, it’s a complicated story. So I think so appreciate your take on it. And, you know, one of the reasons we wanted you to come on here is because of your honesty, that’s one of the things you know, we see on your Twitter, you’re very open and honest about who you are and who you’re not. And while the Twitter’s make trying to make you out to be this amazing wonder woman who’s the new crimefighter for crypto, you know, you’re very honest, I was like, hey, like, I just kind of walked into these opportunities, and I’m doing the best I can, but I’m not some amazing expert where you should follow my every word. And I’m just trying to figure it out. Just like everyone else got screwed over like

Tiffany Fong 09:20

plopped onto my lap. I wasn’t like a Yeah, it wasn’t like some some big journalists before this. So like, you know, the fact that I’m talking to like, I don’t know, I’m in the middle of the SPF FTX collapse is like a huge story. And I’m pretty new to all of this. So it’s sometimes feels a little bit out of my depth. But I will say that like on a personal level, I feel like I personally dislike the mission skis more than I dislike Sam. Like, I feel like, obviously, I’m over bias there because I lost money to Celsius and I did not lose any money to sex, but also just on a personal level. I mean, Chrissy and Alex have just been so brazen after the collapse like I don’t know if you saw recently there’s you know galavanting around NF T NYC as if nothing happened, Chrissy made on bankrupt yourself shirts, like as if she’s just rubbing it in the face of creditors whose life they’ve ruined. Like, I will say that like, although Sam’s ended up, you know, ruining more lives and the money lost is obviously a lot greater than what happened with Celsius. I am like, you did apologize and has kind of shrunken back into a hole and is it? I don’t know. I don’t want to defend him or anything. But on a personal level, I just find the machine cease to be more evil and sinister. And also I lost money to help us and I didn’t lose money. FTX

Bryce Paul 10:41

Yeah, no, I feel you. It’s like, if I buy a coin, and that one goes down, I’m like that coin sucks, you know. So I get it, you know, we have we have our biases. And as long as you’re open and admitting your biases, you know, they were both really bad situations, and both probably had, you know, some level of compromised morality and probably did some things that they regret, I’m sure. I mean, I think that they probably have to live with it every day. Yes. What do you say, I didn’t catch that you don’t think the word they don’t

Tiffany Fong 11:11

I don’t endorse or support?

Bryce Paul 11:15

Yeah, you know, I feel you and, and obviously, like, you know, it’s a crazy, like, ongoing situation. And, you know, as, as the depositions happen, and the trial happens, like, we’re just gonna get so much more insight. And so, you know, I guess we could, you know, kind of move on, because you’re, you’re far more than just the conversations you’ve had in the public sphere with, you know, Alex and SPF, you know, you have a really big brand, you know, people follow you, they look to you for the latest, you’ve got a lot of credibility. And, you know, I guess, like, my question is, like, you know, what, do you think of the crypto space right now, where we’re at, right, like, we’re kind of in the middle of a bear market, maybe a transition to a bull market, but like, what do you see what’s your, what’s your read on the crypto market? You don’t need to think like in terms of prices, but what’s the sentiment? How are people kind of, you know, thinking about crypto today, and, you know, are the, are the institutions really here or are we just, you know, all just sucking our own farts basically, like, you know, what’s what’s actually going on?

Tiffany Fong 12:21

I mean, I feel like right now, I’m kind of in shock. And like, just all the meme coins that are pumping right now. Like it to me is just like, illogical. I don’t personally by any mean coins, I’m not holier. Yeah. So I mean, that’s not something I personally really play around with. Maybe I should though, you know, I’ve never like gotten some like fat bag, like on a meme coin. Like, I’ve never really fucked around with us. But there’s a lot of that right now, like a lot of hype and craze at the moment. Yeah, like,

Bryce Paul 12:51

I think sometimes like that could actually be, that could be sometimes it may even be indicative of a market that is a little bit, you know, far gone, right? Like when that kind of when you start to see the shittiest of the shit start to actually move hard. You know, there’s a case to be made like, alright, like bitcoins pumped, Aetherium is pumped, everything’s pumped. And like now, this is the last blow off top and like, that could actually mark potentially a move downwards. And we also saw the Ethereum foundation selling 15,000 Aetherium, this weekend, which, you know, was about $30 million in US dollar like, so, there could be a case that, you know, Pepe coin mark at the top, what do you think, Aaron Malone?

Aaron Malone 13:32

I think that’s a great take on it. And I completely agree, all my positions are currently short right now and doing quite well. But there’s the old saying, you know, from the stock industry, you know, selling may go away, right, and when we go enjoy your summer, there’s going to be super low liquidity, there’s not a lot of and that tells us market makers are out of the picture right now. So this is an accumulation FaceTime, probably throughout the entire summer. So and that’s okay, there’s no bad markets, there’s just a time to buy and there’s a time to sell. And the key to being successful is knowing which is which, and it’s certainly not the time to be buying a bunch of crazy coins that were just minted last week by anonymous developers. That’s for sure.

Bryce Paul 14:18

Yeah, that’s that’s gonna be a tough buy. But I’m always in the camp like you know, if people ask like, Oh, should I be buying you know, Bitcoin now, I tell people kind of like dollar to dollar cost average your way in like, first get yourself convinced that this is gonna be a big piece of the future. You know, first you know, get yourself bought into Aetherium and like or Bitcoin or crypto at the base level, and then start like getting more fancy with the different coins and stuff and just start slow.

Aaron Malone 14:48

People are always looking for something to get rich quick, and I think you can still get rich a lot quicker than anywhere else here in crypto. But over the slow summer is a great time to do some research into Finding what’s going to be pumping hardest in the next year or two from a fundamental standpoint. And one of the things that I use to figure out where the puck is going, is this amazing Twitter account called Proof of GitHub. And basically, it tracks developer activity across just about any chain that’s posted to GitHub. And you can see where the building is actually occurring, daily basis, as well as a good site. And that’s kind of where I see, you know, skating to where the puck is going a little bit ahead of it may pay off really well in the long term. But that long term, you know, if it was in stocks, or real estate is gonna take decades in crypto, it’s a matter of months to a few years, that’s still relatively really, really quick. Yeah.

Bryce Paul 15:42

And you You mean, Tiffany, do you kind of see something similar unfolding, like I see where these banks are failing, and every and like, which, like Sam and like Celsius, and all this kind of stuff, that was like the first dominoes to fall, and now, the banks are, you know, they had loans extended that they were, we’re realizing they’re bad loans. And, you know, there’s a big, you know, kind of explosion right now in the traditional banking world. But I think that’s actually bullish for crypto. Do you kind of see that and what are your thoughts around that? I mean, I would think it’s bullish

Tiffany Fong 16:13

for crypto Bitcoin, like, I don’t know, I don’t really talk about specific projects, but I would think that theoretically, it should be bullish for crypto, although we’re not really like we’re certainly not seeing a $1 million Bitcoin.

Bryce Paul 16:25

Yeah, not quite yet.

Tiffany Fong 16:27

I think what bitcoins at like 27 pages I mean, there was a there were those issues ordinals and everything recently, I haven’t looked into that too closely. I’ve just like hopped into a couple of Twitter spaces but

Bryce Paul 16:39

ya know, there’s definitely been some congestion on the Bitcoin network by Nance halting their withdrawals and I think that’s really what flooded the market and markets sold off because people were like, Oh, by Nance is the next to go. And, you know, I don’t know. What do you think do you think by Nance is a weak link?

Tiffany Fong 16:57

I don’t personally like know, too much like inside information on by Nance. I have even asked Sam though, and I’ve been like, do you think finance is insolvent. And even Sam has been like, I’d be really surprised if they were insolvent. And he probably has the most incentive to like want to fund by. So I mean, based on that alone, I’m like, I don’t like assume that they’re about to collapse. But obviously, a lot of people on Twitter have stronger theories on that than I do. I’m kind of like I generally try not to have like really strong stances on things if I don’t actually know how I feel about most of crypto like I’m here for a good time. If someone’s to give me some more scoops happy to happy to follow through happy to talk to more criminals, alleged criminals. But yeah, I try. I do try to stay away from like, I don’t I don’t talk about specific coins. I mean, especially in this like meme coin like craze right now. I’m getting a lot of like people wanting to pay me to talk about their, like meme coin projects and stuff like that. And like, I stay out of that shit. Like, I’m not. I don’t play with that stuff. So yeah, I don’t Yeah, I don’t talk about really specific projects. But I mean, I do think that the big feeling should be bullish for crypto. But is that really going to make us feel like a pump to like, insane?

Bryce Paul 18:11

I don’t know. Yeah. And I guess I just like the banking crisis thing. I guess it just kind of galvanizes in the mind of America that like, these systems are built on debt, and they can fail. And you know, if it can happen here in America, then it can happen in any other developing world or any other country, right? Because we had the most sound and safe banking system and like, and then people realize, oh, wait, Bitcoin was invented in the heart of the darkness of the last financial crisis for this very reason. It’s a fully transparent, you know, math based system where you don’t have any counterparty risk, like you don’t have that sort of, you know, debt based issuance. It’s, it’s all you know, it’s all asset backed. And I think that when people look at that, and it’s like, it’s kind of its own its own world. And people say, Okay, well, that’s probably a good hedge against some of this craziness that’s going on. So I think from that standpoint, like, it’s been priced in slowly, as people are waking up to that, like, I know, like my dad, and like his, you know, Boomer friends, like, you know, who hated on Bitcoin for for many years, slowly, over time, they start to come around, and there’s definitely a lot of people in the traditional system who are like, pissed about all this stuff going on with these regional banks, and how Oh, didn’t we fix this in 2008? How could it ever happen again, and here we are, it’s like the same thing like irresponsible loans, bad risk taking no transparency. And so it’s like, we’re here like, cryptos here, like we’ve got, we got a system that’s working, and you know, kind of, like, you know, with with some band aids on it sometimes with scalability issues and stuff like that. But, you know, we’re here and we’re open for business. And so I think that slowly but surely, it’s going to be, it’s going to be it’s going to be, you know, more and more, you know, more diversification for people’s people, people’s finances and stuff in Bitcoin and crypto. But I want to also get your your thoughts, just like on media coverage in crypto. How do you kind of think about the media’s portrayal of crypto Do you think that they gave give us a fair shake? Or do you think that there’s like, you know, some some kind of more deeper level conspiracy going on that, you know, Operation choke? Point 2.0. And, you know, everybody wants to see crypto die and all that stuff.

Tiffany Fong 20:28

I feel like like the collapse is of like Celsius and then FTX like the like previously, most trusted exchange, probably gave everyone incentive to just be able to now shit on crypto and say that it’s all a scam.

Bryce Paul 20:40

Yeah, we basically gave them plenty of ammo to shoot us with pretty much

Tiffany Fong 20:45

pretty much like not great. But I don’t know, I honestly don’t follow. I don’t like, read a lot of the coverage. Honestly, I feel like I use Twitter more than I like reading traditional media coverage. And then obviously, like, try to like, check and verify what’s true. And what’s false, because Twitter is obviously not all completely accurate. But I feel like I generally just check Twitter more than I do check. Like, I don’t know, more traditional outlets anyway. So I don’t know, I don’t have like a, an extreme take on it. What do you think?

Aaron Malone 21:15

I think the media is, you know, it’s kind of a wing of the whole government, really, that’s pretty well known in a lot of circles. There’s all kinds of, you know, memes and GIFs. And videos going around of, like, dozens of media anchors, saying the exact same thing verbatim about how they’re not bias. And, you know, they have all kinds of fair and honest coverage. And it’s just reading off the exact same script. So all of our news comes from a very, very centralized source, and whatever their agenda is, then gets blasted out. So media is not a source of truth. It’s distribution of information. And I think we just have to remember, that’s what media is, its distribution. It’s not a source. The real source is what’s happening, you know, within our culture here. And when we ask developers, you know, what we do we need to improve on in the crypto community, they’re usually talking about user experience, but from a non developer point of view, I want to ask your opinion, you know, what can we improve on culture wise? You know, do we need to have better education? Or, you know, Are we welcoming and inclusive enough for women to enter this space and be comfortable? Like, where do you sit on what we can really just improve on as a community?

Tiffany Fong 22:30

I mean, definitely better education. I mean, no one’s learning about any of this stuff in school naturally. So I feel like you need to, like, take the initiative to like, go out and seek the information, although it is generally available. I mean, there’s tons of videos and blogs, and like, there’s, I mean, there are resources available if someone’s interested in learning about crypto. So I mean, I don’t think there’s necessarily a barrier to men entering the space, I guess, maybe generally, women tend to skew. I don’t know less in the financial world. I don’t know if that’s a sexist thing. I don’t know. Maybe there’s, I don’t know. But like, as a girl, I don’t feel that there have been any barriers to like learning about crypto, if I want to, you just have to seek out the information yourself and go online and try it. I learned about yourself.

Bryce Paul 23:15

Yeah, I think you’ve done a really good job of like, kind of like you’re describing just putting yourself out there and taking life by the reins, and just saying, like, hey, I’m interested in this, I’m gonna go, I’m gonna talk to that person, I’m gonna go to that conference. And like, you know, I watched you interact on social media, and you know, you’ve built quite a, you know, awesome following. And it seems like you’ve got real connections with these people. And these are like real relationships. It’s not just like to profile pictures. And so I’m curious, like, how do you? How’d you kind of build your virtual slash real like network in crypto? Were you just hustling going to conferences every week? Were you doing Twitter spaces every day? What What was your strategy to kind of get to where you are?

Tiffany Fong 23:55

I mean, I honestly had no strategy whatsoever going into like I didn’t, I didn’t think anyone was going to care what I was gonna say at all, I was mostly just annoyed. And personally, in my real life, I don’t have a lot of friends in the crypto space. And when I when Celsius went down, none of my girlfriends knew what the hell that was. No one cared like that. I lost three bitcoins and 11 ether, like, what they don’t care. So I just wanted somewhere to vent. And so I started posting about it. And I mean, it got more traction and more eyes than I ever thought it would. And I would also say that I don’t think that being a girl has hurt me there that hurt very few girls in the space. So I like obviously, there’s some men who want to just like follow a girl talking about this. I don’t know. So I wouldn’t say that. Like being a female has hurt me in that regard. But yeah, I didn’t have any strategy. Really. I actually like my first conference I attended was eath Denver. So I mean, I’ve only been to a couple conferences like eath Denver consensus, hopped over to like NFT NYC for a bit. So I haven’t been to that many conferences either. So I wouldn’t even say that. That’s I’ve met the most people. But I’ve been surprised by some of the like the cool like important people that have followed me on like Twitter, like during all of this, so I guess just with my random posts, and like, honestly, just a lot of shit posting. And then obviously, like when I ended up getting those scoops about Celsius, and Sam, I guess that brought some eyes to my page as well. But yeah, there was

Aaron Malone 25:27

I was gonna ask, What do you want to do in this space? I mean, you have blue skies ahead of you. You’re one of the few people that has a trusted brand built, which is really, really rare in this space. I mean, you could you could do whatever you want with it, whether it’s marketing, or media, or just simply doing your own thing and continuing to do research pieces, try and clean up more scams and bad actors out of this space, or whatever, you know, what are some of the things you want to do?

Tiffany Fong 25:55

I’ve honestly, like not been strategic at all, I got like these random Celsius leaks. And then that led to sampaikan free follow me and then I ended up with the SAM stuff. I mean, I’m not actively like trying to seek out being some like insane investigative journalists or anything like that. Anyone would like to reach out to me and like, you

Aaron Malone 26:12

know, this is one of these things that kind of seems like fate, where it’s sort of just dropping these little breadcrumbs leading you into what will most likely be something a lot greater than you ever imagined. But can you see any more breadcrumbs being dropped in front of you that you can share with us and where this might lead into a career or maybe even a mission?

Tiffany Fong 26:32

I mean, I found it all enjoyable and fun. Like I’m having fun with it. Also, I mean, I feel like that’s probably why some people like my posts, because I’m like, there are some, like serious stories that have popped into my lap. And I’d like chick posted about a lot of them. And like, I’m just enjoying myself. If it ever stops being fun, then I don’t like care to do it. I’m not in it for like money specific. Although obviously, like, if there is a like, I’m like, if like ledger or someone you know, trusted wants to sponsor me, I’m down. Not gonna do any like shit coin sponsors or anything like that. So yeah, I mean, like, it’d be cool. If I made some money on it. I’m mostly just gonna carry on with it, as long as I’m enjoying it and having fun. Yeah, so I’m like, I’m really not taking it too seriously. I’m not being that strategic about it. But that’s what’s like, led me to where I am. And I think that’s why some people like me, like some people are like, you seem like you’re just like being yourself and being authentic. And I’m like, that’s exactly what I’m doing. Like, I’m not like trying to cultivate a specific brand or anything, pretty much just say anything.

Bryce Paul 27:30

You’re very authentic. And you never come across as if there’s ulterior motives, right? It’s just like, what you see is what you get. And I think people are naturally drawn to that.

Tiffany Fong 27:43

I think that’s true. And it’s just like, I feel like I could be maybe smarter about it. And like, I don’t know, some people give me tips on growing your social media and like, what things you should do and best practices. And I’m just like, I don’t want to do that. I’m just like, I’d rather just do anything that feels natural and authentic and whatever, like anything I would do naturally or say naturally. But I think that’s what’s helped me grow, like not being ultra strategic. So do I have like a game plan or anything? Not particularly, but just fun, loving meeting all the people that’s why I’ve been loving the conferences I do just like meeting people. And like, that’s, that’s honestly been like, favorite thing that’s come out of this. I just like making good new friends. And like some of the people I talk to you on a daily basis are people I’ve met throughout all these collapses and just meeting people through Twitter and stuff. So I guess if I have an end game, like, my favorite thing about this has been like the cool people I’ve met and become friends with but yeah, career wise, I’m not sure where it goes. I mean, it is tough to beat the FTX collapse. Like I don’t know if there’s a bigger, I was gonna say bigger skin bigger,

Bryce Paul 28:46

literally.

Tiffany Fong 28:49

Like, unless someone at like first republic bank, if any bankers want to start chatting with me, we can top it. But uh, yeah, I haven’t like actively been seeking anyone out or anything out. But I’m happy to chat with people. I like talking with.

Aaron Malone 29:04

Let’s talk about some of the good people in this space that you’ve met give us some shout outs to people that have impacted you in a positive way since you joined.

Tiffany Fong 29:11

I feel like I have like a couple of like best best friends that I talk to on a daily basis. My friend Aaron Malone Bennett is someone who like closely follows the Celsius collapse. And he posts videos on that. So him and I have been in touch from like the very start of me posting. He’s like one of my best friends. I talked to him on the phone like probably every single day. And I’d say Billy Marcus is like my like, I talk to him nonstop. All day long. I love Billy. Billy is one of

Bryce Paul 29:39

the inventors of Dogecoin. Yes, yes. Yeah,

Tiffany Fong 29:44

he’s like Billy, I’m 2k on Twitter. He also like has a subs. I’m like plugging I’m plugging my friends things

Bryce Paul 29:48

dropped dropped the handles in the chat.

Tiffany Fong 29:51

Like, I don’t want to be sponsored by anybody. I’m not being paid for this. I just love Billy he’s an angel. Yeah, he’s a substack and he’s fucking awesome. We just did a Twitter space the other day, maybe we’ll do another one to get together soon. Just for fun, like there’s no sponsor or anything like that. We just did a sillies Twitter space where we were getting shitty advice to people and random people came on our Twitter space and like, yeah, so Billy’s awesome. He’s hilarious. So those are, I think my two best best friends. I’ve also met like some other like, I guess YouTube people in the space like I like the altcoin daily brothers. were good friends with them. And like, I’ve I’ve met Bitcoin, who’s a controversial figure. But we used to have some Twitter beefs. And now we’re like, on Okay, terms, I don’t talk to him that frequently. But I’ve just enjoyed meeting people in the space. But I’d say Billy and Aaron Malone are my besties from the space but. And it’s awesome to like, have people that are like such an important part of your life now, because of all this.

Aaron Malone 30:55

Yeah, we spent so much time talking about the dangers of crypto and things. But it’s also really important to highlight where the good things are out so people can follow them, and make more friendships that have really high caliber. So thank you for sharing that.

Bryce Paul 31:09

Yeah. And kind of along those same lines, you know, like, I guess, what apps or exchanges do you trust? Like, you know, I’ve always been like a fan of Coinbase. I think Kraken generally does things, right. And, you know, you know, when you talk to a lot of people, you could feel comfortable kind of saying those sort of things. Do you have any sort of apps or companies that you would vouch for? I guess,

Tiffany Fong 31:37

I’ve always been like a longtime Coinbase user? Yeah, I would have the exchanges, I would say that I probably, like would assume that they’re like the safest bet. I’m not sponsored by Coinbase. I would take Coinbase sponsorship? Absolutely. Yeah. Like I like I trust Coinbase with the exchange that I use. Other than that, like I tried to keep most of my crypto in like cold storage ledger. But I think I’d have like, a couple 100 bucks sitting on like finance and Kraken. And I don’t think that they’re in impending doom. I wouldn’t actively tell people to go leave a bunch of their crypto on like any centralized exchange at this point. But Coinbase would probably be my number one. Do you agree? Yeah. Coinbase.

Bryce Paul 32:19

Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And it is kind of like, you know, troubling to see Brian taking such a bearish posture on America. But you know, he doesn’t have any, his hands are tied, he doesn’t have anything else you can do. I see him, you know, he’s in Dubai, he’s going to London and he’s Bermuda. Like I think, you know, he’s publicly flirting with a lot of these other jurisdictions to put the frickin pressure on our regulators to say, Get your act together. And we’re, you know, we’re the, you know, a great company, we got all this X, Y, and Z, sec approved us and now they’re showing us Can’t you see, like, they’re very clearly they’re gonna stick their foot in their mouth publicly, like, we got this, and you guys are dropping the ball if you’re not going to like, give us the clear playbook. And it’s great for American innovation. It’s great for equity holders. So we’ll see. But I’m really hoping Coinbase can figure it out. And regulators configured out to give Americans

Aaron Malone 33:16

Yeah, seriously.

Tiffany Fong 33:18

I love it. Even TIFF. Derek and I will say even Sam like really hates Gary Keller, too. He went on like a rant about a couple of years ago, he’s

Bryce Paul 33:30

been making things pretty tough. On the industry, that’s for damn sure. But hopefully there’s a there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

Aaron Malone 33:38

I hope so. So we can sit so we can just send to the next world.

Tiffany Fong 33:44

I need I need a bull run.

Bryce Paul 33:46

We need a bull run. And I’m going to be here you’re gonna be here. And we hope you we could have you back on or we’ll do a Twitter spaces or do something. Because this is a ton of fun. And it was great to get to know you as more than just the person on the screen. But to get a little bit your personality.

Tiffany Fong 34:01

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. This is fun. Yes.

Bryce Paul 34:05

This was great. Well, everybody who’s watching at home. I hope you guys enjoyed. Hope you guys go follow Tiffany. What’s your Twitter tagging,

Tiffany Fong 34:14

along with one underscore? There’s a lot of fake Tiffany fog count. So it’s Tiffany Vaughn was one underscore and I’m paying for the blue checkmark so that people don’t get confused. It’s annoying, but I’m like, there are a lot of fake accounts. So yeah, that and then I have a YouTube channel that’s just particularly fun.

Bryce Paul 34:32

Perfect. All right. Well, guys, I hope you enjoyed and we’ll catch you guys Same time, same place next week with some more amazing guests. Take care

Ep. 537 Crypto Story Lines: From 1 v 1 with SBF to the White House

Your Journey To Freedom Through Cryptocurrencies Starts Here