Dwarkesh Podcast

Brett Harrison - FTX US Former President & HFT Veteran Speaks Out

Mar 13, 2023

02:37:38

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The Advantages of Hacking for Liquidity in Markets

01:06

Intuition and Insight in Trading: A Manager's Perspective

00:51

The Importance of Culture in a Firm

00:59

SBF and the Confrontational Style of Management

00:59

Introduction

2min

Is the SF-500 a Good Place to Put Your Money?

2min

Jane's Read Versus Citadel

2min

Famous Hacks and Algorithms in Other Developments?

2min

Is It a Zero Sum Game?

2min

Is Nanosecond Level Latency Really Useful for Filing Your Stock?

2min

Is It a Waste of Resources?

3min

Are Your Circles of People in Finance Early to Recognize the Dangers of Covid?

2min

COVID - What Do You Do Now?

2min

10.

Is There Any Hope of a Single Market and Matching Engine for Interstellar Market?

3min

11.

What's Your Opinion of Periodic Batch Auction Systems?

2min

12.

How Do Adverse Selection in Trading and Hiring Differentiate?

3min

13.

Is the Starting Salary for an Intern in Rust Really Competitive?

2min

14.

Is There a Free Writer Problem With Internships?

2min

15.

Why Did You Pursue Finance Dev Instead of Trading?

3min

16.

How Conspicuous Is Their Spending and Lifestyle?

2min

17.

The Social Consequences of Younger Generations Getting Wealth

2min

18.

The Psychology of Being a Quant or a Developer in That Space

2min

19.

What Is the Social Value You're Creating?

2min

20.

How Did You Meet S. B. F. At J Street?

3min

21.

What Was Your Role at J. Street?

2min

22.

Jane Street - Sam Bankman Freed

2min

23.

Alameda and FTX and He's No Longer at Jane Street

2min

24.

FTX Collapse - Sam Beckman Free Guy

2min

25.

FTX - You Know I'm Considering Starting a Political Prediction Market

2min

26.

How Did FTX Do?

2min

27.

FTX US - What Was the Initial Offer?

2min

28.

FTX and Alameda - What's the Relationship?

3min

29.

How to Grow a Small Lean Team

3min

30.

FTX US Codebase

2min

31.

FTXUS Developers - What Was the Discipline?

3min

32.

Are There Decisions That Were Made in the Bahamas That Stick Out to You as Bad Decisions?

2min

33.

How Would He Respond to a Critique of FTX?

3min

34.

How Did Sam Create This Image?

3min

35.

What Was the Reaction of Other Employees at FTX to Sam's Absence?

4min

36.

FTX Was a Really Good Product Compared to Other Crypto Exchanges

4min

37.

How Much Does Coca-Cola Spend Per Year on Marketing?

2min

38.

How Did Sam's Acquisitions Affect the Company?

2min

39.

Did You Cross Paths With Caroline Ellison at Jane Street?

2min

40.

The Bahamas Offices in the Alameda Section of the Bahamas

2min

41.

What's the Red Flag? Is It a Liquidity Issue?

2min

42.

Are You Referring to the Sort of Management Mishaps and Bad Decision Making?

2min

43.

The Top Three Things I've Learned From Sam's Situation

3min

44.

How Did He Respond to This Letter?

3min

45.

Then He Said I Want You Gone on September 27 So Okay That's Fine With Me

2min

46.

Did the Idea of Forming Architect Have Already Formed and You Know I've Resigned I Don't Work at FTX Anymore and I Started to Think What I Should Do Next and I Was Like 'Why Do I Need Sam's Blessing to Do This

2min

47.

I Left FTX and I'm Starting to Work on My Own Company

3min

48.

Bankruptcy Hacking - What Happened to the Investors?

2min

49.

What's Your Understanding of the Solvency of FTX Us History?

2min

50.

The Management of FTX Us

3min

51.

Is There a Mental Health Issue?

4min

52.

Is There Someone Outside of the Inner Circle Who Should Have Been Able to See It Coming?

3min

53.

Are You Disclosing Your Yellow Flags?

2min

54.

What Should Someone Do When They See Bad Organizational Practices?

3min

55.

The Future of Cryptocurrency

3min

56.

Auto Liquidation Is Not New

3min

57.

I Don't Think the Point of Crypto Is Right With the Regulatory Arbitrage

2min

58.

What Did the Conventional Narrative About How It Goes Wrong?

2min

59.

Do You Think There Will Be an FTX Mafia?

2min

60.

The Goal of Architect Is to Provide a Single Unified Infrastructure for Cryptocurrency Trading

3min

61.

Crypto Markets

2min

62.

Cryptocurrency

3min

63.

The Future of Cryptocurrency Trading

2min

64.

FTX - What's the Connection Between Architecture and Architecture?

2min

65.

Is There a Future for Crypto?

2min

66.

FTX

2min

67.

Why Is It Good to Have More Crypto Trading?

2min

68.

Is There a Time When Stocks Will Be Traded on Change?

2min

69.

Should the Marginal Crypto Trader Stop Trading?

3min

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

Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

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Dwarkesh Podcast

Brett Harrison - FTX US Former President & HFT Veteran Speaks Out

The Advantages of Hacking for Liquidity in Markets

Intuition and Insight in Trading: A Manager's Perspective

The Importance of Culture in a Firm

SBF and the Confrontational Style of Management

Get the Snipdpodcast app

AI-poweredpodcast player

Discoverhighlights

Save anymoment

Share& Export

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Get the Snipd
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