WEEKEND EDITION- FTX Founder Arrested and Charged, Don’t Expect a Good Raise Next Year, Gen Z Miscommunication at Work

This is a compilation of some of the most compelling stories of the week.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explore the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday.
That's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,

(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. Sam Bankman Freed, the disgrace founder and former
CEO of crypto company f t X, has been arrested
in the Bahamas and charged by federal officials with eight
counts of fraud, conspiracy, campaign finance law violations, and money laundering.
He's been accused of funneling customer money into his hedge

(00:49):
fund to make investments and loans to himself. There's been
about eight billion dollars in client funds that have gone missing,
and the difficulty there is that there was no adequate
record keeping. For more on what's to know about the
ft X fallout, will speak to Dan Primack, business editor
at Axios. So you know f t X was in exchange.
There's kind of two ft X is. There was FTX Global,

(01:10):
which was this company that was based originally in Hong
Kong and then in the Bahamas, which is kind of
what everyone in the world could use the trade crypto,
and then a lot of crypto derivatives and these other
kind of more exotic instruments. And then there was called
ft X u S which was specific for US investors
and they were at least presented as separate companies. And
then there was a third company called Alameda Trading, which
was basically a crypto hedge fund. Now Sam Bankman Freed

(01:33):
owned all three of these. Two of them had some
outside investors, but he owned all three of these. And
the basic argument is that he kept putting his finger
in different pots to help out other parts of this business.
And and most specifically, when the hedge fund was starting
to have problems and was starting to face a whole
he took customer funds from ft X Global, which he
was not supposed to do. It was against in terms

(01:54):
of service. It was also something he told his investors
he didn't do. And he took those customer funds and
he used it to fill the whole kind of like
what Bernie Madoff did back years ago. He assumed that
the crypto hedge fund would start doing better, it would
start making profits, and so he could take that money
and put it back in and no one would notice
that the crypto hedge fund kept losing money and Sam
couldn't keep digging, and eventually the whole thing collapsed on

(02:16):
So now some of the latest things that had happened. Obviously,
federal prosecutors charged him with this stuff, but he was
just arrested in the Bahamas, as you mentioned, to the
companies based out of there, so they arrested him out there.
He was also just going to testify on Capitol Hill,
although not in person but remotely. So this is kind
of a curious timing of this arrest and all that,

(02:39):
when lawmakers were eagerly getting ready to start grilling him
on a lot of his stuff. It is what we've
learned today from the US Attorney for the District New York,
who's the ones who filed the criminal charges. They're also
are civil charges from the CFTC and from the SEC.
What we learned from him was that they authorized the
charges last Wednesday, the indictment was returned from the grand
jury last Friday, and it was a matter of time

(03:00):
kind of waiting for the Bahamas police to arrest. So, yeah,
the timing does look weird. It's you know, he gets
arrested the night before he's supposed to testify. However, he
could have been arrested on Saturday or Sunday or even
on Friday night, so there were several days, you know,
as for why they wouldn't want him to testifire, why
they would arrest them ahead of time that there's several reasons.
They are potential reasons they didn't enumerate. They could have

(03:21):
thought there was an exigent issue. For example, maybe he's
going to leave the Bahamas, where we have an extradition treaty.
Maybe they thought money was being moved. It's also possible
they didn't want to testify in front of Congress, that
they want to be able to ask their questions without
having you know, the jury pool maybe further deluded by
all the media coverage that there would have been with
his presence today. What do we make about the role

(03:41):
that the SEC plays in all of this and their
chair Gary Gensler. There's been a lot of buzz about
him too. You know, I know for a time said
he know he had the tools to regulate cryptocurrency and
some of these companies and everything. But then this happens
with f t X. What do we make of his
role in this? Yeah, it's been a bad day for
Gary Gensler. Again, the SEC does file charges, so you

(04:02):
have this twenty eight page civil complaints against them. Bankman
freed from the SEC. But you know, Gary Gensler was
not a witness at this hearing today that Bankman Free
was supposed to be at, but he might as well
have been. It was almost like he was being kind
of a question in absentia because a lot of folks
on both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans, say,
the SEC and Gary Gensler keep telling us they have

(04:23):
all the tools they need to regulate cryptocurrencies. So either
they're wrong because FTX collapsed or they fell asleep on
the job. One of those two things must be correct.
And the argument here is often well, FTX Global, which
is the company that really collapsed here, was based on
the Bahamas that outside the jurisdiction of of U S regulators.
But then the responses, but you didn't notice that the

(04:44):
US entity, which was based in the US was essentially
part of the same organization. You guys didn't notice it.
And when the company goes bankrupt and they bring in
this restructuring expert, somebody named John Ray, who worked on
end Ron years ago. It took John Ray just a
couple of days to figure out what was opening here.
Dear sec, where were you for the last several years?
And more on John Ray because he was testifying on

(05:06):
all this. You know, so there's billions of dollars and
client funds that went missing. I think they've been able
to track down. I think maybe they said a billion
of that, but yeah, there's still so much more going
on there. And you know John Ray saying, as you mentioned,
it took him, it was very quick that he was
able to identify how unprepared these people were that were
running FTX. And he's even said that they were using

(05:28):
quick books, you know, something that they used for small
businesses to manage that stuff, that they were using this
to run a multibillion dollar company. And he says, you
just can't do that, No, you don't do that. And look,
this is an unususual company. This is a company that
raised over two billion dollars in venture capital from some
of the top venture capital firms in the world, including

(05:49):
Sequoia Capital, who is best known for, you know, back
years ago backing Apple and what recently companies like Google.
They raised all this money, but they never had an
independent board of directors or a board of directors. Really,
they didn't have a CFO. This was really a company
that was run by a few dozen people, and lots
of people fell down on the job, and there was
not really an organization. No. I met with Sam Bankman

(06:11):
Freed in October two one, shortly after the company relocated
as the Bahamas, and admittedly he was trying to move
the company there, and not everyone was there physically, but
it was basically a room with maybe seven or eight desks,
a bunch of monitors Bloomberg terminals or whatever sitting there.
But it was very small. And when you speak to
investors in f t X, one of the things they
will say to you is one of the appealing parts

(06:33):
was how much it seemed they were able to do
with so a little Well, well, it'll be interesting to
see how quickly things move on. Sam Bankman Freed himself
as far as the company f t X John Ray said,
it's going to take a long time to unravel. Months
just they even track down some more of that money
if they can, So it's going to take a long
time to unravel the entirety of all of this. Dan Primac,

(06:54):
business editor at Axios, thank you very much for joining us.
Thanks for having me for a while now. Employees have
been able to call all the shots in the tight
labor market that we have. They could job hop and
get higher wages too, But now the balance of power
shifting back to the employer, and workers with high hopes
for raises in the coming year may be disappointed. Companies

(07:18):
are adjusting budgets for salaries and it doesn't look like
it's keeping up with inflation or expectations. For more on
what to know, we'll speak to Matt Boyle, senior reporter
at Bloomberg News. It's not just the sort of the
layoffs that you've seen in the news, and of course
companies sort of, you know, figuring out what what is
our budget going to be next year is a lot
of uncertainty. There's a certainly a recession on the horizon.

(07:39):
We're not sure when it will hit or how long
it will last. But The thing, of course in the
in the backdrop as well, is extraordinarily high inflation, of know,
at a percent, and that's what's really, unfortunately driving a
lot of this situation, this disconnect between what employees are
looking for in a pay raise and what employers are
willing to handover um. And you know, even if companies

(08:02):
were not looking towards tougher times and maybe battening down
the hatches a bit um, there still would be this
pretty wide chasm between what employees are looking for, and
that's around you know, six, around six five and a
half percent what they were expecting in terms of a
raise for next year, and the more modest three or
four four and a half percent that employers are looking

(08:23):
to pay them. So some of that stems from the
fact that people just you know, see the inflation number,
or they see that the price of bread or you know,
a restaurant meal is going up and they think that, well,
you know, my pay is going to go up in
in equal measure. And that's unfortunately not how salaries are determined.
Salaries are determined by the supply of labor, not the
sort of you know, the price of a basket of goods,
but compounding at all. As you know, you have people

(08:44):
now going on social media and TikTok saying, you know,
I'm underpaid, or I need to get an eight percent raise,
or I'm leaving, and some of them still can. I mean,
that's the thing. If you are, you know, not satisfied
with what your employer is bringing you in terms of
the pay raise. We are still, you know, in a
fairly robust job market, and if you have the skills,
you can take those skills down the street and probably
get a raise that you know, it could be ten

(09:05):
fifteen even at some rival company. But for people you
know who are sticking with their employers, and that's more
than these days. As the quits rate has declined, people's
confidence in their ability to get a new job is
kind of ebbing a little bit. So when people sit
down with their boss or the head of HR, you know,
they're probably going to see a number that they're not
totally satisfied with, and what they do from there on

(09:28):
is so sort of going to say a lot about
the labor market. You hit the point right there. When
we're seeing eight percent inflation, it's tough for any company
to provide eight and nine and ten percent raises, you know,
year over year, especially as we're bringing on more and
more employees all that stuff. So, yeah, these companies are
budgeting for something a lot lower. You mentioned them, three
point five maybe four point five percent. And while throughout

(09:51):
the pandemic everybody kind of got a little spoiled right
where you can job hop all you wanted make that
pay increase, you can still do that, right, but getting
job is a little harder, at least getting those more
highly coveted jobs. And even in remote work, right, one
of these things that we saw, one of these big
perks was remote work. A lot of companies are even
doing away with that, and they're putting a like a

(10:12):
monetary value on that, on being able to work from home.
They're saying it equals, you know, as much as a
five to ten pay increase exactly. And I don't want
to say, I mean it's not. I don't thinking remote
work is not going away. I mean, again, you see
these headlines of companies that are saying, well, you know,
we want more people back to the office. But for
by and large, those companies are just saying we want
you back to the office, and more often, you know,

(10:34):
let's say three days a week rather than one. So
it's not like, you know, remote work is disappearing tomorrow.
It's not. It's it's firmly embedded in the workplace environment
right now for at least for the people who can
do it, you know, the white collar workers who can
do it. But yes, it's been you mentioned that great
research from Nicholas Bloom at Stanford University who's pulled thousands
upon thousands of workers since the pandemics started and found

(10:57):
that across industry, the ability to work from home, not
every day, you know, not fully remote and not being
some digital nomad and going off to Tahiti to work
for the rest of your life, but just the ability
to have some flexibility work from home a couple of
days a week. That is tantamount to a five to
ten percent pay increase for for a lot of people.
So that is something that companies can and should be

(11:18):
discussing with employers. Rather than just saying get your butt
back to the office. More often it's you know, what
can we do if we're not able to give you
the rays that you're you think you deserve or that
you're happy with, could we do things on the margins
whether it's remote work, enhancing benefits. Equity of course, is
part of the compensation package at a lot of places,
So it's what companies called the total reward. I know

(11:38):
that sounds jo agony, but it basically means everything when
you put it all together, the salary, the bonus that benefits,
you know, even the workplace experience and and the sort
of the culture. What does that mean for people? What
is it worth for people? Yeah, and it's a pretty
fascinating to see how we look at work, how we
look at employment changes over the years, right during the
pandemic or coming out of the pen make at least,

(12:01):
you know, the employees had all the power right that
the job hopping we talked about the great resignation, just
leaving your jobs. Now some of that power is going
back to the employers. But you know, there's still a
tight labor market where they need a lot of employees.
So it's just an interesting look at how the balance
is kind of shifting back a little bit. Exactly. Everyone

(12:22):
kind of has reason to dig in their heels a
little bit. You know, employees will say, good luck replacing
me in this job market, and employers will say, you know,
we've got a little bit of leverage back and there's
no way we're giving you, you know, seven or eight percent,
so you know, here's four percent, like it or lump it.
So yeah, when these conversations started occurring into januaries, when
we really see the peak sort of season, things really

(12:44):
step on the gas a bit in terms of conversations
you performance reviews and then those salary discussions. You know,
it's certainly going to get it's gonna get interesting. But
just another sort of really interesting facet about how this
sort of you know, the tectonic plates below us in
terms of the work of the world of work are
are shifting under us and changing almost every day as
we speak. So it's really it's a really interesting time.

(13:06):
And in a few months we'll see, you know, who
ended up on top, you know where that balance lies,
you know, is it a lot more equal? You know,
we'll we'll keep an out for all of it. Matt Boyle,
Senior reporter at Bloomberg News, Thank you very much for
joining us. Thanks for having As we see more of
gen Z enter the workplace and communications increasingly happening online

(13:27):
and in text formats, something is getting lost in translation.
Older colleagues are having a hard time keeping up with
gen Z's use of emojis, slang, and even punctuation. For
more on how workplace language is changing with younger employees,
will speak to Danielle, a brill tech at work writer
for The Washington Post. This was a lot of fun
to explore, really talking to folks about what's happening in

(13:49):
the workplace. And let me make it clear, we have
regularly had various generations enter the workplace, and as each
generation comes in, they do bring their own style of communicating,
their own slang, their own quirks or whatever it may
be that the workplace then have to kind of figure
out what it means the older workers that are already there.

(14:10):
The unique thing about gen Z is they have spent
the most time with digital devices. So many of them
grew up, you know, using iPads, texting their friends. Their
communication wasn't through letters, it was through text messaging. They
didn't pass notes, they texted each other. And that changes
a lot of their habits and how they read into things,
how they perceive punctuation, how they use visual cues like emojis,

(14:35):
and how they apply different means to things. So um
in a lot of ways, a lot of the way
that they speak in the workplace has been sort of
molded by their experience growing up, which was heavily digital, definitely,
and then the same goes for the older generations as well.
One of the experts you spoke to, you know, a
lot of it comes from the different starting points with

(14:56):
what we have. So older generations adapted a lot of
their email writing, their text communications from letter writing, and
the younger generation never did that letter writing, that old
school letter writing day. To your point, right, they've been
on these digital platforms since birth, really, so when it
comes to that misscommunication with punctuation, I think that figures

(15:17):
a lot there. And then obviously emoji is a much
newer thing. There's a lot of miscommunication that happens on
that front too. Yeah, I think it's really interesting to
think about because a lot of the older generations just
see punctuation as a necessary element to any kind of text,
whether it's written or an email or even sometimes text
messaging depending on the age of the person. The younger generation,

(15:40):
you know, they separate their thoughts through separate messages, so
the need for a period goes away. So if you're
actively including a period in your text message or in
your text communication over splack or whatever it may be,
it may seem a little harsh, like I mean this
period uh sort of an emphasis. And when it comes
to emojis, a lot of older workers, we found out,

(16:03):
both through the folks we talked to in gen Z
and through our experts, tend to read emojis in a
very literal sense. When you want to express happiness, you
use a smiley face. Sadness you use a sad face.
Crying there's a crying emoji, whereas gen Z uses it
very ironically and with a lot more nuance. They've had
a lot more time using these things. So instead of

(16:25):
for laughing you, instead of putting the laughing emoji that
we would all expect, maybe the older generations would expect,
gen Z might use a skull, and that's like dead
of laughter. It's it's sort of maybe a little bit
of a more snarky way to say, I'm laughing at you,
this is so funny, I died of laughter. So they're
a little less literal, a little more nuanced. But in
that sense, some of these miscommunications can happen if older

(16:48):
generations are getting a skull all of a sudden as
a reaction from something they wrote. And they're saying, I
have no idea what this generations, the colleague is telling me.
And the poor smiley face, right, you just squant and
be nice and and maybe, like you said, to your
point of the the older generation using it, but the
gen Z to zumers, right, they're gonna say that might
be passive, aggressive or cold. I think someone said in

(17:09):
the regular smiley face emoji, the eyes look dead, you know,
so I mean for somebody coming into it. I mean,
you know, you wouldn't know that off the bat unless
that was the way it's been used for some time
as the younger generation has been one of the interesting
ones that I use to your point of how a
gen Z person might just you know, put a short message,
send it, send another message to kind of separate the thoughts.

(17:32):
I do use the ellipses a lot, you know, and
but but for them, it's almost a moment of dread.
It feels like, right, it's like I don't know what's
coming next, or this dramatic pause doesn't need to happen,
But I'm just using it to separate those thoughts. And
we actually heard about that from our experts who are saying, Yeah,
a lot of older generations use it for pacing, but

(17:53):
they might be thinking as they're writing, they're using an olypsis,
and the younger generation does see it as a very
like rereadful, anxiety inducing. Are you done? What does that mean?
Is it's horrible? Am I doing something awful that I
upset somebody? So yeah, even just the elypses can be
interpreted differently depending on how old you are. But I

(18:15):
love topics like this, conversations like this because, as you
mentioned at the very beginning, as new workers come into
the workplace younger generations, the language, the way we speak
to each other always changes. And to that, and there's
even some companies that are dedicating new chat boxes, new
new ways to kind of decipher some of that language
so that everybody can kind of catch up, or the

(18:36):
younger workers are switching it off when they're talking to
older colleagues. Yeah, we saw actually with a couple of
our sources. In one case, there was a company that
actually created a slack channel dedicated to these kind of
questions so that if something came up, they didn't have
to ask the person directly, they could go to the
slack channel and say hey, I saw a younger worker

(18:57):
you this. I don't know what it means. They said
this phrase. Can somebody informed me and everybody can just
chime in it. Oh yeah, this means that. So there's
that many questions that this company felt like we need
to actually create a space where people to feel comfortable
asking those questions and answering them without any kind of embarrassment. Danielle,
a brill tech at work writer for The Washington Post,

(19:19):
thank you very much for joining us. Absolutely, thank you
so much. Don't forget to join us on social media
at Daily Dive Pod on Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast
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and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Follow
us on I Heart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get
your podcast. I'm Oscar Rameiras and this is the Daily

(19:42):
Dive Weekend edition.