Shownotes Transcript
Welcome to the verge cast the flagship podcast of A N T steering provisions. I made a friend, David piers, and I am currently getting ready to travel at six forty seven P. M.
On monday. I have a flight tuesday morning. Were recording all of this a little bit early as a result, going to as this go. And what that means is i'm about to spend five or so hours on a plane.
So i'm doing, of course, what you always have to do, which is bring forty five different devices to whose on the plane I have an ipad, I have a switch, I have my laptop, I have my phone, I have another ipad that i'm just now realizing I don't need to bring. I have a kindle to mention my kindle. All of that is full of content.
I'm downloading stuff. I'm charging everything. I have supermarkets wonder to play on the plane, which is the only thing i'm going to do for the whole flight.
And I know that already. And yet i'm doing all of this other work I have have charged on my gadgets. I have to make sure I have all of the cables that I need, which is a lot easier than used to be.
But there's always still one stray lightning cable or micro USB thing I have to bring. It's just a lot. And IT turns out that whenever I travel half stuff in my bag is gadgets, and the other half is just like one pair of genes, no matter how long i'm traveling for.
Listen, this is not the life anyone should live, but it's the one i've signed up for. So here we go. Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up for you today.
We are going to talk almost entirely about trials because like we've been talking about on the show all fall, we're in the midst of a couple of really interesting, really important, potentially really consequential things happening in court around the tech industry today. We're going to talk about two in particular, epic v. Google, the latest anti trust trial against google, not to be confused with the other anti trust trial that's happening against google.
And then we're going to talk about S P F. The trial of sam bangin free is finally over. He was convicted. And we're going going to talk about how we got there and what that means going forward. All that is coming up in just a sec.
But first, I have to find the charger for my kindle because I have two kindles with two different charges. And i'm just going to bring what everyone is this is dead. There's just like one on this is the verge cast i'll wearing back support for the show comes from the crucible moments, a podcast from scope capital.
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Welcome back. I have like sixty five different things plugged in right now, two different devices. How are doing software updates? And I think i'm downloading like half of netflix to my ipad.
I am ready for this flight here. All right, let's get into the trials. The first one I want to talk about today is epic v. Google, which is a trial fundamentally about the future of APP stores.
Epic says basically that google charging a thirty percent commission on in APP purchases is anti competitive, and IT wants to blow up the APP store model altogether. Google says, you know, no thanks to all of that. If this is ringing dja woo bells in your brain, there is a good reason for that.
In twenty twenty one, epic went to trial against apple, alleging pretty much the exact same stuff. This trial has a lot in common with that one, but also some important differences. And there's a decent chance that we're going to get a different kind of outcome here.
The trial is already a couple of days old. As you're hearing this, we're covering IT really closely shown how stars in the court room and the virtually mechanical Kelly is here. And now to help me figure out what to make of all of IT.
Hi, mia. hi. I don't know where to start with a trial. I was going back and trying to figure out where do we need to start to catch people up on what is going on between epic and google. And I feel like to some extending answers.
We have to go all the way back to the beginning of epic verses. Everybody, right, which is like twenty, twenty mid piao mic everybodys out of their mind, life is pure chaos. And the epic just sort of decides to pull the record and pick a giant fight with the two big companies intact, all ones. Can you just give us like the sixty second back story kind of starting there? And what happened between these companies?
sure. So what happened in two and twenty, like you're describing is epic games. The fortnight's maker decided that they were going to just say screw you to google and apple in their apps stores.
That was like the official planned, by the way. That was not that really realizing. And like that is what they were attempting to do.
IT totally was in sweet. I mean, that is so like tim sweet like to do anyways. And so he said, screw you. We are going to allow people to make in APP purchases in our game without IT going through the APP stores and being subject to this like fifteen the percent tax. And immediately google and apple pulled fortnight from their web stores. And so as result, epic games sued them for that um alleging that they hold these monopolies in the ap store markets and that these you know thirty percent taxes are unlawful and should be chAllenge. And so were three years from that and the google one is just going to trial right now.
Yeah been it's been a long three years. So and then in between we had epic verses apple, which is I think, not exactly the same thing as the trial we're about to have. And we should talk about the differences.
But in a lot of ways, the bones of the trial are very similar. One side is the ap store and one side is epic. Trying to say the ap store is illegal.
And I would say epic didn't completely lose the apple trial. IT won the sort of anti steering provision, which says you can now link to other ways to make payments. But in general, its fight against ABS orm monopoly pretty much came up short. So if I am epic, why on earth do I keep picking this fight after more less losing at the first time?
Well, to look at tim swing, I think he really does like to take these people off. He's kind of a hard headed CEO. I don't think he's worried about losing face in these adults. Be honest with you. And so for them, these like taxes that these episodes put on software requires them to raise what what they'll say is that requires them to raise Prices for consumers.
And IT makes whatever IT is, v box or whatever, more expensive, unfortunate IT IT makes you more expensive for you to, I don't know, get tinder gold or whatever they are calling in all dates and all that kind of stuff. So they continue to push this because they don't want to give any of these profits, any of this money to apple or google. They're just Operating an APP store in their opinion, and IT should be, you know, free for people to access and use as an open marketplace.
What's your sense of what's is different about this case? Sort of at a very high level, the two sides of the fight, like we are saying, are more or less the same thing. Is there anything different about google as an opponent, as apple as opponent a couple years ago?
sure. So I mean, looking at the play store is so huge. Yeah, as much as we talk about you know iphones being like the elite, whatever device to be using more people use android like IT really is just everywhere.
And so I think that lends s itself more to epix argument here. And then also, we already had the ruling in the antithetical provision in appeals right now with having to be able to link out. So another decision similar similar to that would really offer some more precedent and whatever appeal comes from the apple case as well.
Yeah, the place or thing is so interesting to me because I think if i'm remembering back, apple basically try to make a security argument about I O S that like if you allow people side load apps on their phone, bad things will happen. People will install now where all kinds of awful things will happen to your phone.
And essentially users and developers cannot be trusted to do things outside of the extra and IT seems like google is making a similar case in this case, which is sort of funny because the play store is like notoriously kind of a disaster. But also, google is like the different because like you can kind of get around the play store, like you can sort of sid load apps on android. The samsung store exists, which seems like a really weird sort of ranch in this trial. So even at the platform level, that just seems to me that the case against google is stronger because the place store, like you said, is so big and so important on this platform, but also is so much sort of messy her and easier to get around than like the unbelievably take fist that apple has on the APP store. Does that feel different to you going this?
Oh yeah. I mean, because it's it's easier. You can just download another APP store or you use like the same sunlight store or be able to is so much easier.
People talk about customers za having more control of your devices. Google has let you do that for a very long time on android. And so people do, of course, have more options to be interesting to see how that .
plays out to. I think one of the things we learned from the apple case is so much of this is about the fight we end up having, which is part of the thing I think this is is going to be so interesting about this case is like every time you and I talk, I feel like we end up talking about market definitions. Because all anybody ever wants to talk about in these cases is market definitions because the market you define is so important.
And IT was some like IT was the last time there were questions about like is that mobile apps is IT games and we are talking about the market was like mobile digital transactions or something goofy. And in this case, he feels like were Better to just really to gate all the same stuff, right? Like what what is that that we're actually fighting about here. And I wonder if I am epic, if i've learned anything from that first fight that is gonna make them do a Better job in this case yeah.
And I mean, when you talk about continuing to pick this fight last week matched up calm and you know other plaintives on this case dropped out seeing me, you know, settling with apple. It's interesting on tim sweating. And epic games is continuing to pursue this, especially with whatever settlements you know google is trying to make behind closed doors. right?
Yeah, what do you make of the match thing? They were the other company that has been really loud in this fight, if you like to spend. Epic, spotify and match have been the three companies sort of most aggressively fighting these episode up. And match and particular seems to have just kind of given up the fight. What do you make of that?
Yeah, I think this case, like your thing, is going to be a bit more chAllenging for these companies to take on. And i'm sure you know whatever agree they were able to get from google on this was enough to satisfy know their concerns with this and kind of know links to the question of what is epic games, what is their opening argument going to look like this week? What is that that they know continuing to push to continue to fight for that they probably couldn't have gotten neer in a settlement, and it's probably that chAllenging them in oly.
Do you believe him? Sw, when he makes this sort of grand pronounced? I mean, I think one way to look at this is just two very greedy companies fighting over money, right? Like big company wants to keep its money.
Other big company wants to take some who wins like the oculus razor version of this argument is that but the flip side of this is that tim sweeny has said resolutely and for years at this point, that this is bigger than epic, this is bigger than money. This is about like principles and software development and who gets to win in society. And Normally I would find that to be nonsense, but at this point, tim, when I seems maybe more likely than most to not be full of IT, when he says that I don't know.
what do you think yeah, it's hard to read into the hearts and minds yeah like this. But if I was him, sweeney, and I brought this case, these cases three years ago, even if I didn't buy in in the first place, I definitely had convinced ed myself by now I have internalized these arguments in a way that I literally cannot give them up after being so loud, so like, at the forefront of this issue for so long. Yeah, that is fair. And I think at some .
point you've said IT enough times that you just can't have to keep saying IT like at some point if he just testifies and he's like, look, I just want to keep our thirty percent. I I want more money for my shareholders like the whole court room is just going to start booing at him and he can he can do that now yeah.
the thing about this case that I found really interesting back when I was first announced, and we have that big leg. Apple one thousand and eighty four eb games thing is that for the past now, how many years I ve been waiting for the tech policy arguments ever having an antitrust content moderation or whatever to have? It's like neutrality moment.
Like it's twenty fifteen that neutrality twenty seventeen at neutrality moment. And when I saw that video and I thought about you know how big fortnight was and think about the player based on the people behind IT, I really I really was like, okay, if it's onna happen, you know in any case in a ty trust is gna happen right now. And I didn't necessarily happen.
I was waiting to see because, you know, if you remember, like the old neutrality step, like google s website, you know, reddit website, what's plastic this stuff? And just to have like, I mean, epic games, you know, in fortnight, the biggest game, you know, that so many yg people are playing, I was really hoping that we are going to see that. And IT just IT never grew to that size. IT makes me think about, you know, what would happen like if we actually did have a bunch of leg Young kids and teenagers and Young people like wild up over abstract markets and like how different this would look right now. But yeah, I am always i'm always looking for that kind of emergence of, like this says, like, I don't know, like a public protest movement yeah I mean.
it's really just because I think the thing in recent times that has gotten the closest to that was the the like would be tiktok ban in terms of like real sort of grass roots rage among Young people that the closest one I ve seen is a lot of people fighting about the tiktok and and for creators and for free expression and all this up.
But the interesting is really interesting to me, because IT feels like this right now should be the moment you have the U. S. Verses, google and to trust trial ongoing like as we speak right now, you have epic versus google, another anti trust trial starting right now.
You have this suit filed against amazon. That is increasingly, the more we learn that at the weirder and schedule and more problematic and all consuming IT seems this should be the moment where anti trust becomes this like big mainstream, everybody y's talking about the issue. I certainly see that like in the world, like the people I talk to are not interested in antitrust legislation at this moment. But also, I don't even necessarily get the sense that there is a ton of energy like among politicians in in washington right now about this what is going on here?
yeah. So when I think i'm going back to twenty and twenty and twenty and twenty and the heat of that election cycle when we were in the heat of the democratic primary and we had a lizabeth morn and whoever putting out these giant anti trust packages saying that big tech leads to be broken up, obvious sudden we have people who are taking the thoughts of like leana con in timo and mainstreaming IT in a way that was getting people really, really excited.
And as legislation got introduced and as I continue to move in congress, I think there was one bill that got passed and I was just like a merger filing fee thing. And so IT wasn't major progress. And then a lot of the conversations around this is spent, okay, well, we will wait and see what the courts do you know to see what legislation is necessary for this.
You know, you would think that people would be paying maybe a bit more closer attention to this and maybe talking about IT a bit more, but IT seems like people are just kind of getting ready to see what happens and what steps that they should take. I know i've been trying to check in and there's like bills like the open apps market act and that would open up the marketplaces. This was something that came out of, you know, all of these APP store suits.
And there is that piece of legislation I didn't really go anywhere. I've heard some stuff about them reworking that and then reintroducing and at some point in time, but again, maybe they are waiting to see what happens in the google case. It's really unclear to me right now.
Yeah, I just seem like there was this underlying argument for a while. Lena, on a particular, was ready to lose some of these anti trust fights in order to make broader longer term legislative changes. That is like you need a different kind of precedent in a different kind of case.
If we're going to start to make congress make laws in order to win these fights of the ftc can't win based on like hundred year old law that had nothing to attest companies. And so far, IT doesn't seem to have happened. I understand that it's a long game, and I feel like one thing you've drilled into my head on the show over and over is that there's just only so much time and energy in congress to do things.
And getting anything tech to be the most important thing at the moment in order for people to actually get something done takes a lot of work. Click was thinking about this over this weekend because I was daily saving time. And there was there was that the sunshine protection act every year? Yeah like and as far as I can tell, no one is against this is just like no one cares enough to bring that up in congress and do something about IT, even though they would be a national hero and they should do something.
This feels in a certain way that kind of the same thing. More and more people, I think, in politics and the government agree that something should be done and that changes cy to be made. But even right now, there's so much more heat on like A I regulation that IT just feels like yet again, we've bumped what do we do about big tech down the pecking order of tech issues. And I just IT feels like as long as IT is never the most interesting thing, which if it's not right now, I don't know how it's ever gonna, it's hard to see what happens there in the immediately future.
Yeah and I do think that there might be a turning point. I was listening to this funny enough AI hearing in the house a couple weeks ago and in the republicans and democrats were both talking about, well, okay, A I regulation, we need dad. But how do we even start thinking about that without a nation wide federal privacy framework? Some lawmakers are reconsidering.
Ly, okay, maybe we need to go back to basics. Things are getting too complicated. We have too many issues.
Why not we attack something that will have maybe the best outcome for consumers and for americans by a going back and looking at in america, you know, a federal data privacy law w and then maybe going back and like rethinking and to trust more holistically instead of doing this, you know, these bills that just attack little pieces of this and rather than just going after A I like truck in all these A I summits, they've been targeting different things. So there's been like innovation ones and work, you know, labor and workforce ones. And I just that almost feels like it's making the issue like too complicated at the same time.
Like you're trying to teach lawmakers you know about A I and then you're just completely in inditing them with this information and like how do you make sense of that in turn? You know legislation into that and like decide exactly what to focus on. Of course, when IT comes to A I regulation, then IT seems like OpenAI and all the companies are a bit more concerned with congress going after election focus stuff and like political ads maybe, but at some point, and I think we're starting to see IT now, picking these little fights is not going to be enough. They're going to have to decide to like come back, lay the foundation and then maybe think about those things later.
I totally agree that, but IT does seem like there is a certain element of the perfect being, the enemy of the good in all of that where he feels like with so many of these conversations, I think data privacy probably chief among them. We've had this debate over and over and IT just seems like we land in this place for it's like, well, if you can't solve the whole problem, we don't have anything.
And so we've gotten to this point where the only solution is just like we have to relate the american constitution to explicitly ly reference apple and google and I were not that I can happen and so nothing happens. And I just feels like at some point, one of the things I have thought over the last couple of years is that maybe some of these anti trust fights might be a thing where you can actually pick one chunk of what's going on and do something about IT. And part of me, like the one reasons i've been so interested in this U.
S. Versus google search default thing is like that. That is a finite sized thing that you could regulate, right? And I think, like events, the venture captain said this three years ago, and I think he's right that it's like we don't regulate cars.
We regulate every single thing inside of a car, and that's how we regulate cars. His case was that how we should regulate privacy and the internet. We shouldn't regulate the internet. We should regulate all of the things that happened peaced by peace because regulating the internet or technology is impossible and it's too big.
And I think with all the anti trust stuff, and I think the epic apple thing is a good example, because anti steering is another tiny sort of finite piece that you can break off and make decisions about that has real meaningful change for the industry. And I guess the question is that, can you build up a bunch of those over time? Or are we eventually gonna need this sort of one big, giant sweeping, something that just like blows everything up, and then we see what happens, which tends to be like every twenty five years. IT seems like we get one of those from the government.
Well, also, when IT comes to enforcement, I think people have been waiting for that to like, I think that's why we're waiting on legislation that we are waiting on a lot of things. The problem with enforcement is that our enforcement don't have that many resources.
Are there like windows and ninety eight computers trying .
to figure this out exactly? So that's one problem. And then even if they do go ahead and win a case that is one company, you know, look at, I like to think about all the stuff facebook had to agree to you.
After cambridge analytical, there were some A I stuff in there. I remember correctly, ly in all this kinds stuff in the scene agreement with the ftc. The same thing with twitter, twitter with the security and safety practices.
The reason why the ftc is investigating elon mask twitter right now is because of this twenty eleven consent with degree. With the agency you know about these things and IT gives them the leverage in the authority to go ahead and reinvestigate. But of course, you know it's these specific agreements with specific companies, and it's a lot harder right to do something new or like to continue and like investigate everyone.
You have to kind of target the people who you feel are the worst actors and then fix things there. But you know it's it's one company. It's it's may be setting a standard and like a precedent for how other companies connect, but they're not going to be you breaking the law of the expertly later. Yeah.
that's very fair. One of things that think is different about a lot of these fights and epic versus google is that this is a jury trial, which strikes me is very different from a lot of the stuff that we've seen, which is not essentially government arguing one side and the company arguing another side and a judge having to decide who's right. Like that's a that's a thing.
We've come to understand that there have been a lot of those. This is just gonna like a dozen random people off the street who are deciding what's going on here. Is is that potentially as different of thing is that seems like IT might be to me in terms of how .
this case might go? Yeah I mean, like you're saying and he trust trials are typically bench trials like IT is the judge making the decision. And I can't remember really anything else in recent history where we've seen this with people being forced to recognize like congress can even make sense of like old anti trust laws and how we should apply to tech technology companies right now and how I have issues with that.
Sometimes to think having feed that you know these attorneys make the proper case and um these folks can make the right decision. But again, like your average person is not stupid either. I think what epic really wants here is to not get into the weeds on the numbers, and you know, the sheer size and all of these, you know, very like granular arguments we can have.
And they probably want to see you the grander arment, the bigger arment, how these at markets should Operate and what these, you know, taxes and fees and all these things mean, and how, you know, the average person like me, I knew the average consumer wants to interact with these you know, platforms, staying in day out. I think that lands itself Better to this. I think it's like a ten percent yeah jury but that will start hearing these arguments on monday.
IT seems to me and this is based on nothing but just the gut feeling that i'm having, that the fact that is a jury trial would stand to benefit epic a lot more than IT would stand to benefit google because I feel like if i'm the prosecutor, all I have to do now is tell a convincing story basically about David angle rate, about a gigantic tech company that is preventing not just me, but i'm fighting on behalf of every small developer everywhere who is having to essentially give a portion of our earnings to the king like that is borderline on american.
That's how we have to do this. And I feel like, again, I think you're right, we're going to get away from a lot of the technicities and like being in the court from for U S. V, google IT is all about technicalities. Like all they talk about is deal structure and revenue sharing and the like tiny little mechanical economic details of how this that works.
I would assume, and it's totally possible, I have been wrong, that this is up being a much less technical trial because what they have to do, like you are saying, as essentially tell a story to a jury, that is going to have to then apply IT one hundred year old president that articulate isn't making a sense in the current context. And I assume whatever way this goes, that is going to be absolutely right for appeal. And everything is going to get weird, even more so than most of these cases because of a jury trial. But IT just seems like we're going to get much more feelings and sort of grand story telling as opposed to like a parade of expert witnesses telling you how contracts work, right?
I mean, IT makes the most sense, but I was epic tourney right now. That would be my my approach is focus more on story telling them like overwhelming people with these ridiculous you know numbers and economic data and everything.
Yeah, it's gonna be really interesting to see. I'm sort of sad we're not going to get as much access to this one as we did epic v apple, which you could like because I was covered IT was ironically more publicly available this one we we're back to motion close down, but on holders can be the court rooms. We're going to see a bunch.
What are you looking for in in this one? Like is there is are we looking to see if epic can get another version of kind of the small wind sit in apple? Is this going to be a much bigger winner loose? Like how would you sort handicap the ots here?
Yeah, I D want to first hear the arguments, unlike you were bringing up earlier about the same sung store, the ability to load apps and stuff on outside of the place store and curious house those arguments are made what we hear from the judge, you know the you know the mind reading of the jury on that of reporters in the room and I think that will really color um what we can expect because if we're right here and we're talking about you know something that is focus more on story telling that you know this like granular evidence. I think that is where we are going to get the best idea of what you know this end result will look like.
right? Strong house is going to be in the court room, so will grab him on the show at some point in the next. I think this will be five weeks. Is the plan for this one?
Yeah, it's supposed to end right .
before Christmas. Okay, well, god help us all for the next five exit. We will check back in and keep IT up on the site. Chongqing, covering in for us. Mechano, thank you.
Yeah, no problem.
Are you going to take a break? And then we will be back to talk sand bank and freed. We are back.
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Hi, we're back. Last week, after a truly wild trial that lasted more than a month and the saga in general that lasted almost exactly to the day a year, f, tx. Founder sam bin kin freed was found guilty on seven counts, which included wired fraud, conspiracy to commit wired fraud and conspiracy y to commit money launder ing.
The short version of a really long story is that S B F was accused and convicted of using F T X is customer deposits to shore up his crypt al trading firm called alameda research. Throughout the whole trial, his former colleagues testified that F T X falsified numbers, alamito special privileges, including to lose billions of dollars, and that he lied to the public and users about where their money was. Prosecutors said F T X was a fraud from the start, and a jury agreed, in a certain sense, the S, P, F story is now over, or at least almost over, given that he said ced in march.
And the virtuous liza's has watched IT all go down. He was in the court room for the entire trial, watching the whole thing unravel. So I brought her in to see what he saw. How IT felt in what happens next is, hello.
hi, David is going.
You survived. I'm so proud of you. I made IT. How do you? How is your like headspace? After what, six weeks of sitting in the court room.
H man, well, i'm very ready to do something else fair, but I was intense. I mean, I was like, no, I wasn't just sitting in the court room. I was also standing outside the court room at the three hours of the morning, many mornings.
yeah. So I am excited to have a life again because this was like sort of anesthetic experience for about a month. Yeah.
I do actually want to talk about the sort of spectacle of this because I remember one of things we talked about, I think, on the show before I started was how much kind of outside interest there was gonna be like IT was obviously going to be very high profile trial.
But the question of like, are there going to be crypto fan boys outside the courtroom every morning? Or like are they're going to be were like the elisia with homes cause players that the there no trial, we're going to get some of that. The only bit of story that I heard was that we literally had to hire a lion sitter for you at one point because the lion for the same bits of testimony, was so early that IT was like, untenable for you to be there early enough to get in line. So like, was IT like that, the whole trial.
how crazy did I get? So the same testimony was the peak, especially the same cross. And the way that line city thing worked was like I got in line on sunday night for monday. Like I got in line at, like, I don't know, eleven forty five on sunday.
lord.
because I knew there was going to be a lot of interest, and I was, to be clear, like forth, wow. yeah. So the first person who gotten there, I gotten there on ten, three and the day. And then I was like, so tired I felt drunk and I still had the story right. And, uh, I remember going in to, like nobodies up yet. Like we're going into the building at seven thirty, the editors haven't log done and I was just texting and like I can't do this tuesday, like tuesday, you know going i'm going to write and then I I don't have enough time to like have dinner and sleep .
because you would literally have to walk out of the courtroom, file your story and then walk back to the court.
That's right. So that's how we had enough with a line center on tuesday, I got like six hours of sleep, and I was leg the best six hours of sleep i've ever had in my life was so rewarding. IT felt amazing.
It's very good. So I wasn't like that the whole time. That was just the the same bit.
Oh yeah, I mean, like, you know, Caroline ellison was the other sort of big draw and that was like that was a much more reasonable for, I am time to get more. There was just there a lot of people there. IT was especially for the same testimony.
There are a lot of people who were, you know, they worked in tech or they worked in finance. So they like had an interesting cyp to a lot of reporters, obviously. So there was just there was A A pretty big draw from the general public and there were like a couple of people who were in town from london or from ireland who had stopped by the trial. And so that was like pretty remarkable to me.
like action .
yeah so there was that absolutely. There was a certain amount of like spectacle. There weren't any cost players like they were the homework rial. We didn't see like you know the art students who were setting up like theron's themes, like gift shops or anything like that, but there was some very, very intense interest from a lot of people who had been following this.
That's just not so. And i'm i'm particularly current. We've vivacity we know how the trial ended, uh, which we're going na get to in a minute. But i'm i'm super curious about the vives in the court room, which I feel like because one of the things you wrote a lot about was you spend a lot of time watching one person's testimony while watching somebody else just sort of be in the court room. That's right. And especially as some and Caroline for a chunk of IT and sams parents feel like kind of europe characters for obvious reasons throughout the whole trial. And I really cares how the kind of vives shifted from the beginning of the trial to the end of the trial, just as like a person in the room, in the court room.
So this is why I wanted to be in the courtroom, is that there are things that play really differently in the court room, and they do, even in the overflow rooms, are in the transcript on twitter. And I was really struck by that throughout this trial. You know, we had moments of levity that like people didn't think we're funny outside of the court room of, for instance.
So like the best example was when sam was testifying and his lawyer is successfully objected to a question and a sam responded anyway that he thought, you know, in puzzling money was not protecting customer assets and his lawyers going to like, say, we've been here for a couple weeks, you know you don't have to answer that I was like, yeah but I I felt like I was important. And that was like a big laugh line in the court room. And the way that IT seemed to play elsewhere was that he was getting solved, which like IT was like a little bit of this thing.
But I was IT was playful, you know. So there were these that I I that's part of the reason why I was getting up at those kind of of the same in hours as I wanted to really sort of describe what was happening in the room because the text only version of that doesn't give you how people are feeling. And part of that was that I wanted to keep eye on the jury.
And by the end of the prosecution case, the jury was really fed up with sam bigband free. And this is before he took the stand. I want to be great, like you have Caroline testifying to know the sort of arc of her, her time, aleem, and ending with this all hands meeting, where he essentially confesses to her staff what happened.
And then immediately afterwards, we have Christian drapped getting up on the stand. He's a former employee. He's got the recording of her, you know, doing IT and the jury was really rapped for that. I know that I played a little differently again for other people who like was like, oh, she's like giggling, you know.
But the jury was absolutely locked in, you know, this was something that they took very seriously in part of the reason he had been called was to talk about the way that he was speaking on the tape um he he noted that he has a habit of gigging ing nervously like when there times of tension SHE SHE tends to laugh uncomfortable ly and like so that was part of the reason I think that he was giving the that testimony was to say like she's not laughing like out of joy. Anything like this is a very uncomfortable moment for her. As that tape was playing, I was watching members of the jury, like, shaking their heads, like, no, like, I saw them shake their heads again at the sort of towsy under the prosecution case.
Where can son, who is one of the F, T, X lawyers, was testifying that some begin free to come to him and talked about wanting to find excuse to give Apollo the private equity group. He was trying to raise money from an explanation, legally, for how all of this money had gone missing, and can sound like ran through three explanations that was like one of them. None of them do IT like at any quit 不会。 And this is a sort of a recurrent theme.
Yeah, you know, we immediately saw sam bignon fried in a december interview with George steff phonoplex running through one of these explanations and saying, oh, was the margin lending program, which cannot had been very clear, like IT was so much more money than was in the margin lending program. There is no good explanation for this. And again, during this video clip, you could see members of the jury like, shaking their heads, like, no, like this, this, this is ridiculous.
So there is sort of you know, the sense of almost the absurdity by the end of the prosecution case, because every day I would come in and and then there would be like a new crime. And like at one point, I remember turning to another reporter, like when we were standing in line and be like, look, I knew he was guilty, but I didn't know he was like guilty. Guilty is like guilty ear that I thought the prosecution easily could have trusted their case after the second week.
And we had two more weeks. So I IT was a lot of evidence that was really like an an overwhelming amount of evidence. And you know, by the end we had a pretty good idea of what had happened.
And then I guess the idea behind saying testifying is sort of something that you get in these White color cases where intent really matters. You may remember that I was with homes testified in her own trial too. And who can speak to the intent Better than the person who is is there?
And the defense, just to that defense in that case, basically is either I didn't know or I didn't mean to essentially IT right. A kind of boils down to, like, did you do this on purpose or not? And if you can convincingly say you didn't do IT on purpose. You might get away with IT.
That's right. Good intentions are a complete defense, but it's not illegal to be an idiot, which is lucky for me. The lying is the illegal part.
It's not that he lost all this money is that he lied to people. That's the fraud piece of IT. So if he had believed what he was saying, if he hadn't known that he was untrue, that would be a complete defense.
That would be enough. The problem with putting your defendant on the stand in that way as you open the to cross examination, and that can be really narrow. And that was really nearly like that was i've seen a lot of cross examinations, and that was probably the best, I think i've ever seen. W Daniel section, who was the SHE, clearly knew just backwards and forwards everything sam beg man food had ever said in public, just like all indexed in her brain.
which is a lot, by the way, that man has talked .
in public so much so yeah, so that we had like a long section of her saying, did you say this and him being like, I don't recall and then her playing IT and then her saying, did you say this and him saying, I don't recall and her playing IT, you know, I was like, a couple hours. This, and I really establish him, is like a unreliable narration, particularly because he wasn't saying something like I don't remember saying that specifically, but that sounds like something I would have said. I was just like, I don't recall, I don't recall, I don't recall. And like after a certain point again, you see like the jury starting to make like prolong ged eye contact with each other like you know, when behaving on the subway and you make eye contact with a stranger like you see the ship like IT was very that so that was not create and not what you are.
It's not well. And I also think like that specific thing is part of the shift. I think that you covered in a lot of your stories is like at the beginning in the trial, sam thought, and a big part of his whole stick had been, that you can get an awful ly long way with this kind of mubby hared slates, spacey, genius, weird w and that that affectation.
Ironically, the guy N I, i've been covering the space along time. Like there's no Better way to be a billionaire than to have that specific deal. People will just throw money at you if you seem like you don't care how you dress the way you look like or whatever. But then at some point over the course of that trial, that went from being like his greatest asset, or at least what he thought was his asset, to like the thing that destroyed him in a lot of ways.
So I want to pull a button on that. It's not people that will give you a lot of money. It's specifically VC give you a lot of money.
That's a very good distinction.
yes. VS have a like a specific model of what they think a genius looks like, and he played very much into that. The problem is, if you are marketing yourself as a genius, if you're saying you're brilliant, if you you know are putting yourself forth as like someone who is really, really smart, you have a harder time showing yourself to be stupid.
Like I mean, that's like part of what's going on here, right? He doesn't have a CFO at this company even though it's a financial company, and that's like very important. He doesn't have any risk management, which you're running a future exchange risk is what you do, yes. And trying to to hold those two things there in your mind that the sky is genius and that there is no risk management, there is no CFO there, no, no adults in the room that starts to look damming, that starts to look like you do something on purpose. That starts to you don't want risk management because you think race management wanna prove of what you did.
And so that's sort of, I think, one of the specific ways where this back fired, like I think that there could have been a lot more understanding if he had been an ordinary person ironically you know where it's like, oh yeah ordinary ordinary people like misplace things like time to dumb stuff but you know, if you're presenting yourself is like this genius and he was, you know he was leaning very heavily unlike having gone to M. I T having worked je stream, which is a pretty exclusive firm on wall street, having been this like start up founder, having done this incredible like arbitrage trade to get his money. Like if your whole story is that you're brilliant and then eight billion dollars goes missing, people are not going to think you lost .
IT and then a bunch of people get up, understand and testify how you did IT.
In fact, you did not lose IT.
That's right. yeah. And I think so much of what IT seems that he thought and I I am curious like I generally am not interested in trying to like cycle as people in his position, but like my guy, just like got up on the stand for three days and did IT.
So we're going to do IT to you got the sense he felt like through this whole process, he could sort of smart guy his way out of everything. And like I can not to keep coming back to the theory of thing, but I think it's like there was this sense of if we can just get away with that long enough, will eventually get we were going and everything that we find and need to be worth IT. And like that's not even to bringing in all of the effective vulture ism, i'm going to save the world stuff which like i'm just i'm done with that like I don't think I don't care anymore that he was infected about this.
I'm no longer interested in that fact about him, but I do think he thought he could just like smart guy his way through these troubles. And he was so smart that everything was going to be fine and that IT just doesn't work. And I think even in this trial, you get the sense that he thought he could just get up there and smart guy his way through IT, and that he would win in the end. And that was so spectacularly the wrong call in this trial. IT seems.
I mean, watching his parents daring the cross .
examination was sad.
and they they left for the end of IT. And I don't blame them because I was IT was really nasty. IT was obvious what was happening. IT was obvious what the outcome was going to be. And I wouldn't to watch that happened to my child either, but I felt like throughout the course of the trial there was like a delusion, almost on at least sams part, maybe the part of his parents as well, that, you know, everything was going to be OK because sam was a really good guy, and he never would have done anything wrong. And that was, as far as I could tell, the entire defense was, like, I am talked about how he didn't drink when he was in college, and he, you know, like to play board games. And he was very wholesome and like, you know, uh, he was he's a good boy and I think there was an understanding the bank man fried has of himself and that his parents have of him that ran pretty much headlong into the rest of the world in the way the rest of the world understood him to be working. And certainly, by the time of the closing statements, I think everybody understood what was going to happen.
I was just to ask that, like, at what point did the whole room sort of realized? Oh, he's gonna be convicted. Was IT closing arguments. I kind of like reading your story. I feel like you might have happened before that.
IT definitely happened before that for me. O, K, I think that happened before that for several members of the jury. They weren't out very long. They're out for four and a half hours.
It's not a long time. No, that's long enough. Have a coffee, look around the room and be like we good and then go back in like that's not that's not a group of people who had a lot to talk about for four hours.
I mean, send in for like a couple of questions. They have some questions around the investor money, things of that something then, but that was fast. You know, something like this, a complicated trial like this.
I actually wasn't expecting a verdict until the next week. I was expecting a verdict the following like monday or tuesday, and we just went right through and that was IT. Pm, like that we had a verdict.
But the reason I I come back to the the closing statements was that I was really struck by sam, who had turned towards the jury. And so I could see the side of his face and he looked like he either had been crying or was about to cry. You know, his nose was red. He he looked devastated, basically.
And so I think that's why I think you knew there was a very emotional moment from him of his attorney reading this closing statement and him just looking terrified and perhaps crying you know and his parents throughout seem really horrified by the testimony um at times you know I could see his mother with her, her head in her hands IT was rough. And you know one of the sort of occurring themes throughout my coat like coverage, just I just couldn't figure out why we were there. Like I don't know, you wouldn't just plead like that's the part that's wild to me, right?
Like okay, maybe you're not going to a deal, but if you pleaded guilty and you throw yourself on the mercy of the judge and you say, very, very sorry, I heard a lot of people, uh, I did wrong, I want to be punished. Maybe you get a shorter sentence that way. And even if you don't, you haven't dragged everybody you love through the spectacle of a trial because if you think about IT, like the scale of destruction here is unusual.
I mean, there's um obviously all of these customers who've lost money and many of you maybe don't want to go public about how much money they've lost because they feel silly about IT. But like those people, you know, they deserve our sympathy. I think the investors who've lost money， the lenders who lost money like one of them lock five ended up going bankrupt.
T and IT wasn't this wasn't the only thing that pushed them in the bankruptcy, but I sure didn't help, you know. And then on top of sort of all of that, like destruction, you know, a lot of the F, T, X employees kept their money on the exchange. So there are the people who are also wrapped up in the span krutz y like they they had no idea, most of them, that anything was going.
Ong, that you think about adamites didius testimony. And like there was this horrible sort of moment towards the end of IT where one of the text messages he had read that was read aloud, he was telling them he loved him. He would stand by him.
He would try to like, fix F, X. And then he found out what had actually happened, and he immediately quit. Wow, I want you to think about this.
This is like one of sam's best friends from college. They were like frag boys together. They shared.
They were roommates in college. They were roommates in the is like, this is like one of his closest friends. I want you to just hold that in your mind for a minute. Think about your closest friends and how pissed off they would have to beat you, how betrayed they would have to feel to testify against you at trial.
Yeah and there was so much of that. I mean, I think the extent to which and then you wrote about there's one went IT like I think you call IT like summer camps syndrome that is just a group of friends who all essentially turned all at once on them at the end of this, I think you are IT is sort of unusual that everybody told the exact same story, which I think in the end made IT really easy in a lot of ways. It's like the prosecutor story was so simple and so straight forward and so CoOperated by so many people and then same story was like the same story, but he just said he didn't know about any of IT, right?
He he clearly .
deserved to be convicted because all the evidence said, but the IT IT also just seemed like he was the the weight of the evidence against him was so sort of uniquely pointed and strong in that sense.
Well, even assuming they are hadn't been testify from his conspirators, he has cocontract atr all of more like, yeah, we worked together. We're same on this, just looking at where the money went and who benefit from that money. Sam, benefit more than anyone.
You know, these were investments that he wanted to make his parents got at home in the bahamas. And that was traced back to, after investor money, he got a bunch of Robin hood shares and a personally owned vehicle. Like just looking at, you know, who benefits? Like not even thinking about like the blow by blow of how that happened.
It's kind of open and shot. And so to me, you know, there were all of these moments where I could be like, why are we here? Like, literally, why are we here? You know, like, plead guilty and spare, you know, your family and friends this humiliation, and maybe they will come visit you in jail.
So speaking of the rivals of all of this, I feel like i've seen two narratives over the last few days start to come out. One is that silicon valley, as IT does, will just move on. The VC class is not going to do the self introspection that everybody always wants them to do in moments like this.
They didn't do what they're not going to do IT. Now you just move on to the next thing. They're all pouring money into A I stuff. And then on the flip side, there is this sense that this is kind of a broader crypto reckoning. One of things we talked to at at the ginning of the trial is how much crypto to industry dirt was gonna come out of this one where the other about how can of unwatched unmanaged a lot of this space is. I have a hard time figuring out kind of what the macro legacy of this trial is going to be a deal of sense, even just a few days out.
I think I do. And part of IT is because there were crypt to industry people who are coming to the trial. And so during gary wong testimony about the fake insurance fund, because hope like this was just like russian nesting dolls in crime.
But there there was a range number generator that they had. That was their insurance. Then there was no insurance fun. The alamein was paying stuff out.
One of the people who I was talking to, who was a cypher to investor was like, oh, finance has an insurance fund. I wonder if that's real, too. Some things that are different, right? Like, for instance, there are exchanges where you know which ones are the armed a bus wallets.
You can watch them. You can sort of see on chain what's going on. But there are are going to be, I think, larger questions of whose telling the truth because sam said all the right things in terms of wanning regulation, in terms of trying to be safe and trustworthy customers.
And there is going to be because the scale of the fraud was so enormous. I think there is going to be a question for regulators, for customers, for everyone. The next time someone says something like, oh yeah, we want regulation, like is that true? Sam said that.
Is that real? And so I think that that sort of going to be one of the lingering things from this trial, more so than anything else, is this this question of, like how trust wordy is the crypto industry. And you know, this is an industry that is like very, I think, proudly full of pirates.
These are people who have been Operating in sort of legal grey areas, many of whom were excited about that. That was like part of the joy almost of industry for a long time. And now it's cutting the other way where it's like, okay, but like, do you want to give you your money to so I I think that that's that's certainly going to be a long term ramification.
I was for the VC. I don't know. I would like to say that I think that might be different. And part of the reason I might say that is that interest rates been going up, and that means that there's less money slashing into VC than they are used to be.
And there was a whole period where they had so much money, they had to figure out how to invest IT somehow. And so like you had mattress companies that were suddenly tech companies because they were selling stuff online, right? You had we work which to add a new mans credit.
Like that was not a fraud. He told everybody that he was planning to benefit as formally before we were like that and found in anyway. So there was a period where, like the baLance of power had really shifted. The founders, there was a real sense of formal in the investing community. Then you can sort of pressure them into doing deals without due diligence.
And so I think as the money is receding, which he has been, and as the valuations are getting cut and as like the tide is kind of going out, I think that as well as the sort of profound embarrassments of these major fraud trials may contribute to more careful evaluation. Do I think that that's a guarantee? No, I don't.
You know, I certainly you've heard a lot of wild VC talk about like how I was with homes wasn't really a product of silicon valley. They did really do anything wrong and fx is a standalone fraud. And like you know, I think there's a lot of denial, but I certainly think that among the people who are using V, C as an investment vehicle, know what are those are family offices, retirement funds and downs, whatever, if they provide enough pressure will change things. And so the question is sort of you know who's upstream from the vcs and how much pressure are they putting on, especially now that we are out of this low interest ate environment and there are less risky places for you to make money.
I might only worry about that outcome would be that we've been through this in smaller ways a bunch of times now, right? Like, I think if you're still ecliptic u believer your tolerance for chaos and risk and fraud is so high at this point that I wonder what would possibly turn you off if you're a person who like honestly beliefs that cyp dos the future of everything, what on earth is left to convince you this one's a pretty big one? And I think what IT might do to your point is IT might instill worry in a lot of people like to concentrate circles out from the beevers, the begins to people who were, like setting up coin base account two years ago, right, who were like, what's this? I'm not like a diamond hands crypto maniac, but i'm just like a person who wants to invest my money. And I think you're definitely right that those people are going to remember F, T, X in a in a pretty real and pretty damming way of the crypto industry.
Yeah I think the true believer S S I mean, the true believer s are the true believer s they're still going to be there. This internet subculture that I think we're going to continue to see for a long time. You know they're already talking .
about the next cycle.
crypto winter, right? So I don't know that cyp to gone forever. I certainly don't think that's true.
And I think provo of a bitcoin etf, which is something that the cypher to community has really been keeping in an iron that might potentially be a help to them like that might be something that gets institutional investors involved, you know, your black rocks and so on. Is that a guarantee? I don't know.
Again, we're in a different investing environment now whether there are easier ways, less risky ways to make money because part of what really fuel to the last boom was that VS were able to cash out much more quickly in cyp dou than they were in a lot of other investments. And so that gave them a pretty quick return and they gave them an incentive to work with a lot of crypto companies. And I think that's less true now. So I don't see, mind, weird internet subcultures.
I do. There are people. Yeah, yeah.
I love the crypt. True believer s there are a lot of fun to hang out with. I don't necessarily agree with them, but they're a great time. And these people, they're not stupid. They are not they're smart buffle and they don't like the current .
financial system total. We have to go and you have to go on vacation. But thank you for coming on.
You did truly ridiculous work or the last week. So thank you for all of that and for coming on the show. And I have a feeling we're going to be doing this again. What is that in march when sentencing happens?
March is when sentencing happens.
We are not done with this story. But things this right. Thank you, David. All right, we got to seek one more break and then into the online. Soal results still you, but with fewer lines. Botox cosmetic ada vinum tax N A is a prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe front lines, crowed and forehead lines split Better, and adults effects of botox cosmetics may spread hours two weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms alert your doctor right away is difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness may be a sign of a lifetime in condition patients with these conditions before injection highest risk don't see botox cos medic if you have a skin infection, side effects may include allergic reactions, injection site being and eyebrow and an eye drooping and I lid swelling allergic reactions can include rh wells symptoms, your doctor about medical history conditions including A S or lugar's disease ministry, a gravis or lAmbert syndrome and medications including botley toxins as these may increase the risk areas side effects for force if ty information visit botox Cosmos eight zero three zero zero .
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All right, we're back. Let's get to the verge cast hot line. As always, the number is eight, six, six, verge one one call and ask us all of your weird deep is darkest secrets and questions about technology.
I don't know how to ask us a secret, but you can do IT if you want to. This week we have a question about sports. So Richard lawyers here to help me answer how.
Richard, how is love to talk to sports?
We don't get to do at that often. So when it's just us, we get to talk about sports, this is going to be a six long segment. It's going to great, right? Let me just play the question, which I think is very fun one.
And they are hey, David, this is jeff from most triana. I actually listened to your friday episode where you're talking about the whole deal with disney comcast. And i'm wondering you mention that you think disney wants to sell E S P M.
And i'm curious if you think that this y would potentially not sell S P N, instead look for a strategic partnership like apple to run E S P N with stem, or do the E S P N, whatever, get some two apple altogether? Thanks so much. The show bed.
Okay, I love this question because A S S P N, which are very much enjoy talking about, but b IT brings up, I think, I think you and I have talked to a bunch about, which is why E S P N is kind of a harbinger of the whole streaming universe. We talked to a disney, and who do last week, disney is gonna required to pay somewhere north of eight and half billion dollars to buy. The rest of that's very expensive.
Disney is not a company that is full of cash right now. But i'm current hearing this question. What if disney doesn't sell E, S, P, could set a apple, could IT partner with apple. What do you .
think apple is the always all they could buy IT for every question you ever have.
They just have all .
the money because they have all of the money. Every bit of money that there is belongs to apple. Cook is just sitting on IT probe in A K like small, I will.
They buy. The answers is almost always no. And I think for E, S, P, and the answers probably no.
You can never rule IT out, but is an interesting question. Okay, so like what is disney going to do? But I don't think they have an answer. That's why we get these weird rumors about they want a partner with different sports leagues and maybe because I don't know how that works with the sports leagues owning part of the broadcaster that they sell broadcast to.
That seems strange and I don't know where the money comes from, but apple buying them is just one of those things where, yes, they could technically happen. And guess that would open up all of these things with apple tp that they would love to do. And I would give them something that everyone needs to have, but they don't actually do those things.
It's just, is this girl y not the way that, that Operates for disney. IT would narrows the availability of V S P N. If IT were suddenly somehow exclusive. Even if they could deal sale to cable Operators, IT would be weird. And I think that what we've seen like we saw with their their deal with, I think cable vision, they kind of worked IT out so that you have streaming and you have cable and that's IT. Seems like that's something they're going at least for the future because the other thing that we know now is exactly how profitable business is, and that answers that is a lot IT makes a ton of money so profitable.
I think that's the thing that actually gets lost in a lot of this because disney has made fairly clear that IT would like to find some more money for asp n, which people make out to be because E S P N is not a good business. That's not true. E S P N is such an unbelievably good business. They just started breaking out how much money pm makes because IT is so much money that like disney is trying .
to make the point. And that's now, that's now after everyone is cut the cord, after everyone you know to subscribe the table.
making absolute billions. It's true that if you cast out far enough, you can see where S P, N get harder because the the right deals that E S P N is fighting for are getting more, more expensive. The number of cable subscribers who are essentially paying for E S P N twice are going down.
So like you cast out another wet ten, fifteen years in E S, P N, is maybe a less good business right now, is still an unbelievably great business. I am with you. I don't think I would be apple because like I was seeing a lot about the the deal that apple made to the M L S.
And the deal that apple didn't make to get sunday ticket and IT seems like what apple is all about, and this makes sense given what apple is, is control, right? Apple wants a thing you can do itself. So the idea of having a thing that is fundamentally about making a million different partnership ships of a million different people or being like a minority owner in a thing IT doesn't actually control all of IT was very unhappy to me.
But like amazon, I can absolutely imagine making roughly that exact deal where amazon is like we're going to put all the sports on prime. You can subscribe s pm through prime. You get S P N.
If you as prime subscriber, we're going to make prime a dollars amount more expensive. There is a cable difference right there. Like I can totally imagine a world in which that happens.
I don't think IT would be apple. I agree with you. I think apple is much more likely to like buy a sport league that IT is to buy E S P N yeah .
something where they actually can control. And I think the the number one most important word for what apple likes is control. And the other part of E S P N is their deals with the different leagues means that apple would have no control because all of these arrangements have are old and have been made in different ways and have a lot of companies, zed, and all the leagues have different things.
Like people talk about, apple will buy a formula one, right? It's one the things that people say, but I think is unlikely. Formula one broadcast itself. IT does all of IT do its own broadcast and sense in around the world. Apple doesn't really want to deal with the formula one telling IT what to do.
And I think it's as you go on the line, that's just really what you run into and that's what what makes you less and less and less likely. But just like a company like aza, what if microsoft is like? You know what? We should combine esp and game best. Let's do IT sp n game pass being bundle done the weird .
way to spend twenty thousand months s they've ve ever encountered. I love IT. The reason I used to think E S P N is so interesting is because IT is right smack in the middle of this thing, where what E S P N wants is to be everywhere, right? Because the crazy part about this is E S P N isn't going na get the rate seals that IT wants if IT doesn't have the distribution that you get through cable.
This is why cbs and fox keep getting deals because they are everywhere, like no one but old people watch cbs anymore. But cbs keeps getting football als, because it's free over the air television that absolutely everybody can get, which means you can charge more for ads, which means you get more reach like everybody wins. So E, S, P N needs that.
But IT also needs to figure out what a streaming only world looks like because it's coming. But if P, N, in ten years that world comes in, the S, P, N is every great deals. E, S, P, N is dead anyway. So it's caught in in this transition that we're in. Nobody has a harder time of navigating even if IT continues to just throw off billions of billions of dollars for disney.
Yeah being in the lead means making a decision about changing something is so much more difficult.
totally. So OK. great. Before we go twelve months from now, you have to answer the disney still on S. P. N.
Yes, majority say.
that's good. That's good. I think i'm with you. I think if if if I put the number at like five years, I think i'd have a hard time answering the question.
I think twelve months, it's just too bigger thing to change in that period of time. And I think people really understand how messy sports deals are, just like the paperwork involved in selling S. P. N. Will, I think, just like blow people's minds.
And I think the money that IT brings in simply makes a lot of things that disney wants to do a lot easier. IT is something that we know now, that we always suspected. But we know now, like all those moral movies, like S, P N pay for those you welcome in.
like a very real way. E, S, P N paid for all of that stuff. And now the question is going to be, can disney find another way to pay for all that stuff without the S. P.
N? And is this going to alf to? And all of that is so unknown, which is why it's very weird to be busy right now because it's it's dealing in like a thousand concurrent hypotheticals that none of which are true.
Like right now, disease fine. Wall street doesn't think so because they're terrified about like some future streaming universe that doesn't actually exist yet. But like right now as a business is he .
is doing great.
bringing in ons of money. It's just host in so many ways IT doesn't yet understand, makes very complicated.
What that future looks like is something that if if you have an answer, i'm sure but I G will take your call .
yeah hit up bob IT disney that com. I am sure it'll take you. Richard.
Thank you. Always appreciate. right? That's IT for the verge guests today.
Thanks to everybody was on the show. And thank you as always for listen. There's lots more from everything we talked about. All of this zs S, P, F cover is amazing. You should go back and read at all.
Everything shown is doing from the courtroom for epic v google has been great so far, will put the links in the shower notes, but also keep on on the website. There's all kinds of stuff. So going down.
And as always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings or curiosity is about the jury in these trials, let us, nel, you always lize vers vert com, or keep calling the hot line eight, six vers. before. I love hearing from you.
IT is one of my favorite things we get to do on the verge cast. This show is produced by injury o and liam James. The verge cast is verge production and part of the vox media high cast network.
Me, I alex nine will be back on friday to talk about everything happening at OpenAI. The new macbook, the PS five slim in a little bunch more. We'll see you then rocking roll.
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