Passive Investing and Market Dynamics

I flew out to Chicago to interview Brett Harrison, who is the former President of FTX US President and founder of Architect.

In his first longform interview since the fall of FTX, he speak in great detail about his entire tenure there and about SBF’s dysfunctional leadership. He talks about how the inner circle of Gary Wang, Nishad Singh, and SBF mismanaged the company, controlled the codebase, got distracted by media, and even threatened him for his letter of resignation.

In what was my favorite part of the interview, we also discuss his insights about the financial system from his decades of experience in the world's largest HFT firms.

And we talk about Brett's new startup, Architect, as well as the general state of crypto post-FTX.

Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.

Timestamps

(0:00:00) - Passive investing & HFT hacks

(0:08:30) - Is Finance Zero-Sum?

(0:18:38) - Interstellar Markets & Periodic Auctions

(0:23:10) - Hiring & Programming at Jane Street

(0:32:09) - Quant Culture

(0:42:10) - FTX - Meeting Sam, Joining FTX US

(0:58:20) - FTX - Accomplishments, Beginnings of Trouble

(1:08:11) - FTX - SBF's Dysfunctional Leadership

(1:26:53) - FTX - Alameda

(1:33:50) - FTX - Leaving FTX, SBF"s Threats

(1:45:45) - FTX - Collapse

(1:53:10) - FTX - Lessons

(2:04:34) - FTX - Regulators, & FTX Mafia

(2:15:42) - Architect.xyz

(2:30:10) - Institutional Interest & Uses of Crypto