"When you start a company, there are enormous  amounts of shit that looks like that.   Things that are dumb or annoying or broken or  unfair, or not how the world should work. But   that’s how the worl..."

"When you start a company, there are enormous  amounts of shit that looks like that.   Things that are dumb or annoying or broken or  unfair, or not how the world should work. But   that’s how the worl..."

"Thanks for having me. Alright, first question. Does the consecutive  success of FTX and Alameda suggest to you   that the world has all kinds of low-hanging  opportunities? Or was that a property   of..."

"Thanks for having me. Alright, first question. Does the consecutive  success of FTX and Alameda suggest to you   that the world has all kinds of low-hanging  opportunities? Or was that a property   of..."

"I don't think it was literally the best  possible advice because this was in 2012.   Starting a crypto exchange then would  have been…. I think it was definitely   helpful advice. Relative to not havi..."

"I don't think it was literally the best  possible advice because this was in 2012.   Starting a crypto exchange then would  have been…. I think it was definitely   helpful advice. Relative to not havi..."

"The other thing is that when  you think about advising people,   I think people will often try and reference  career advice that others got. “What   were some of these outward-facing factors  of succe..."

"personal. When we talk with people about  their careers, personal considerations and   the advice of people close to them weigh very  heavily on the decisions they end up making. I didn't realize that..."

"something about the movement that drives away  people who took could take leadership roles? Oh, I think it's just the world in general. Even  if you ignore altruistic projects and just look   at profi..."

"I didn't realize that the personal considerations   were as important in your  case as the advice you got. Oh, I don’t think in my case. But, it is  true with many people that I talked to. Speaking of..."

"Most startups and especially very early-stage  startups should not be trying to maximize the   chances of having at least a little bit  of success. But that means you have to be   okay with the person..."

"quite frequently for them is the right  person or team to take the lead on it.   In general, starting something is brutal.  It's brutal being a founder, and it requires   a somewhat specific but exten..."

"Most startups and especially very early-stage  startups should not be trying to maximize the   chances of having at least a little bit  of success. But that means you have to be   okay with the person..."

"what I mean by that is, I'm sure one way that you  can calculate the expected value of an action is,   “Here's what's going to happen. Here are the two  outcomes, and here are the probabilities of the..."

"what I mean by that is, I'm sure one way that you  can calculate the expected value of an action is,   “Here's what's going to happen. Here are the two  outcomes, and here are the probabilities of the..."

"But does it make you think there  are diminishing or possibly negative   marginal returns from one donor giving to  a candidate? Because of the negative PR? At some point, I think that's probably true..."

"Let's talk about Future Fund. As you know,   there are already many existing Effective  Altruist organizations that do donations.   What is the reason you thought there was more  value in creating a n..."

"But does it make you think there  are diminishing or possibly negative   marginal returns from one donor giving to  a candidate? Because of the negative PR? At some point, I think that's probably true..."

"other thing is that it helps with a large number  of smaller grants. When you think about what an   organization giving away $100 million in a year  is thinking about, “if we divided that up into   $2..."

"Let's talk about Future Fund. As you know,   there are already many existing Effective  Altruist organizations that do donations.   What is the reason you thought there was more  value in creating a n..."

"Distributing it and letting them act  semi-autonomously can help with that. The   other thing is that it helps with a large number  of smaller grants. When you think about what an   organization givin..."

"It also biases it less towards people  who we happen to know, which is good. We don't want to just like  overfund everyone we know   and underfund everyone that we don’t. That's one  initiative that I..."

"re-grantor program gives us a way to do that.  Instead, we have 10, 50, or 100 re-grantors,   who are going out and finding a lot  of those opportunities close to them,   they can then identify those ..."

"I do think it's more complicated now.  It's not cleanly things just multiplying   with each other. There are lots of cases  where you see multiplicative behavior,   but there are cases where you don't..."

"What’s the most likely reason that Future  Fund fails to live up to your expectations? We get a little lame. We give to a lot of  decent things. But all the cooler or more   innovative things that we ..."

"on making the (application) process smooth  and clean. There are pros and cons to this.   But it drops the activation energy necessary  for someone to decide to apply for a grant   and fill out all of..."

"When you look at a proposal and think  this project could be promising,   but this is not the right person to lead it,  what is the trait that's most often missing? Super interesting. I am going to ig..."

"But that's a way to be able to have more trusted  analyses for more scaled-up numbers of grants. Correlation between different causes A long time ago, you wrote a blog post about how  EA causes are mu..."

"on saving each of their lives. Suppose there’s  some new drug that we could release to combat   a neglected disease. This question is asking, “are  they correlated?” “Are these two drugs correlated   ..."

"that is a good trade to buy one share of Apple  stock on NASDAQ, there's a button to do that. If you as a random citizen want to buy one share  of Apple stock directly on an exchange, it'll   cost you..."

"Hopefully, we'll avoid that.  But, it's always a risk. Should I think of your charitable giving, as  a yearly contribution of a billion dollars? Or   should I think of it as a $30 billion  hedge again..."

"core traits. The other thing is asking if  they’re excited about this idea? Will they   actually put their heart and soul into it?  Or are they going to be not really into it   and half-ass? Those are..."

"you should use the latter. That's going to get  the better pitching on average, and just as many   innings out of them—and baseball has since then  moved very far in that direction. The average   numb..."

"but this is not the right person to lead it,  what is the trait that's most often missing? Super interesting. I am going to ignore the  obvious answer which is that the guy is not   very good and look..."

"cost you tens of millions of dollars a year to get  set up. You have to get a physical colo(cation) in   Secaucus, New Jersey, have market data agreements  with these companies, think about the sip an..."

"In general, concentrated work is pretty  valuable. If you keep breaking up your work,   you're never going to do as great of  work as if you truly dove into something. You've talked about how you weig..."

"You can ask people like, “Hey, here's a  high-level customer experience or customer goal.   How would you architect a system to create that?”   That’s one thing that we look for. An eagerness  to lear..."

"for a founder and for an early team at a company  (but not important for everything in life)   is willing to do a ton of grunt work if  it’s important for the company right then. Viewing it not as “lo..."

"My sense is that it’s part of a larger  phenomenon. One piece of this is that   they didn't have a lot of market structure  experts. They did not have the talent in-house   to think really deeply abou..."

"you should use the latter. That's going to get  the better pitching on average, and just as many   innings out of them—and baseball has since then  moved very far in that direction. The average   numb..."

"of how much oversight and mentorship  they’re going to need then. How do you assess that short of hiring them  for a month and then seeing how they did? It's tough, I don't think we're perfect  at it...."

"point where I sent them these proposals.  Where did they go internally? Who knows.   The Vice President of Exchange Risk Operations  (but not the real one—the fake one operating under   some departmen..."

"to take it very seriously. Ignoring those  factors, there's something much bigger at   play there. Many of these exchanges had hired  a lot of people and they got in very large.   You might think they..."

"Are you replacing that risk with  another risk? If there's one exchange   that has the most liquidity om futures and  there’s one exchange where you're posting   all your collateral (across all your p..."

"I don't want to state with extreme confidence  exactly what will or won't happen. Stablecoins   becoming an important settlement mechanism is  pretty likely. Blockchains in general becoming   a settle..."

"I don't think we're going to have a single  exchange winning. Among other things, there are   going to be different decisions made by different  exchanges—which will be better or worse for   particula..."

"Are you replacing that risk with  another risk? If there's one exchange   that has the most liquidity om futures and  there’s one exchange where you're posting   all your collateral (across all your p..."

"should work. People should be allowed to choose  the option that makes the most sense for them. What are the biggest differences in  culture between Jane Street and FTX? FTX has much more of a culture..."

"I don't think we're going to have a single  exchange winning. Among other things, there are   going to be different decisions made by different  exchanges—which will be better or worse for   particula..."

"How has living in the Bahamas   impacted your opinion about the  possibility of successful charter cities? It's a good question. It's the first time  and it’s updated positively. We've built out   a l..."

"is—which means that there are lots of things like  PR that are much more central to what we're doing. Conflict of interest between broker and exchange Now in crypto, you're combining the exchange and ..."

"taking a giant, empty plot of land, and  creating a city in it. That's way harder. How has having a RAM-skewed mind influence  the culture of FTX and its growth? On the upside, we've been pretty good ..."

"to build out a full city—and we haven’t built  out a full city yet. We built out some specific   pieces of infrastructure that we needed and we've  gotten a ton of support from the country. They've   ..."

"and remember the big picture. What are the  most important things for us to be focusing on? you"