The Tucker Carlson Show
Sam Bankman-Fried on Life in Prison With Diddy, and How Democrats Stole His Money and Betrayed Him
Thu, 06 Mar 2025
Sam Bankman-Fried is doing 25 years behind bars, and is now sharing a cell block with Diddy. He joins us from prison for an update on his new life. (00:00) What Has Prison Been Like? (02:28) Was SBF Ever on Adderall? (04:42) SBF Meeting Diddy in Prison (07:00) How Prison Has Changed SBF’s Perspective (16:24) The Future of Crypto Under Donald Trump (22:57) Does SBF Have Any Money Left? Paid partnerships with: iTrust Capital: Get $100 funding bonus at https://www.iTrustCapital.com/Tucker PureTalk: Switch your cell phone service to a company you can be PROUD to do business with at https://PureTalk.com/Tucker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What has prison been like for Sam Bankman-Fried?
So where are you? Yeah, well, I'm in MDC, Brooklyn, in a little side room. How long have you been there? I've been in prison for about, oh boy, what's it been now? It's been about two years. So what's it like? It's, I mean, it's sort of dystopian. You know, the fortunate thing, the place I'm in, I'm not in sort of I'm not in physical danger.
And frankly, a lot of the staff, they're trying to be helpful. They're trying to do what they can, given the constraints. You know, no one wants to be in prison.
And you can imagine what happens when you take sort of 40 people, you know, all of them have been at least charged with crimes and lock them in a single room for years on end and throw out the key, which is the most trivial things become all that people have left to care about.
Yes. Have you had any problems?
Not of the sort of acute kind, like I haven't had, you know, I haven't been attacked or anything like that. I've had a lot of logistical problems. And, you know, the biggest, frankly, was when I was on trial, trying to get access to legal work was nearly impossible. I would, you know, on a typical trial day, they'd wake me up at 4 a.m.
I'd spend five hours in various buses, vans, and holding cells until my trial started in the morning, then trial straight through to 5 p.m., another four hours in holding cells and vans, you know, and get back at 9 p.m. way after any access to legal work was cut off for the day. So that was the biggest problem.
So what do you do all day when you're not on trial?
Well, it's a really good question because there's not a whole lot to do in person. I read books. I've started reading novels again. I play some chess. And I work on my legal case to the extent I can. There's appeal. There are other things. I do what work I can from in here on that. But the lack of other meaningful things to spend my time on is one of the most –
kind of soul-crushing things about prison.
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Chapter 2: Was Sam Bankman-Fried ever on Adderall?
You know, I've had a lot of time to reflect on how to communicate. And in retrospect, you know, I think I was not effective at communicating, especially when the crisis first hit and, you know, in the months thereafter. I made a mistake I often make. I get swept up in details and forget to meet the bigger picture.
You seem like you were just flying high on Adderall every time I saw you on TV. You don't seem that way now. Were you?
No, I wasn't. But I was... my mind was racing because there were, you know, a billion things to keep track of. You know, we sort of typically I'd have, and back when I was running FTX, you know, I'd go on to have an interview, but, you know, while on the interview, there'd be two issues I'd have to resolve with the company. So I'd have sort of one eye on Slack open, responding to messages.
And I knew that I had something else I had to do right after the interview that I hadn't had time to prepare for yet that I was sort of preparing for in the back of my mind.
So maybe like the digital world is bad for us. Is that, I mean, like what's your view of that? You've been taken away from your phone. So that's kind of big.
Yeah, oh, it is. I... I prefer having the digital world. You know, at the end of the day, like, it's, but I will say that when I say that it's less from a perspective of, like, enjoyment or, you know, pleasure or leisure, and it's more from a perspective of productivity and ability to have impact in the world.
You know, from that perspective, it's so hard to do anything when you don't have the digital world.
So, like, have you made friends there? Are you hanging with Diddy? I think he's in there with you.
He is. He is. And it's, I don't know, you know, he's been kind. I've made some friends. It's a weird environment. You know, it's sort of a combination of a few other high-profile cases and a lot of, you know, ex-gangsters or sort of, you know, alleged ex-gangsters. Yes.
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Chapter 3: How did Sam Bankman-Fried meet Diddy in prison?
I... you know, obviously I've, I've only seen one, one piece of him, which is, you know, did he in prison and, you know, he's been kind to people in the unit. He's been kind to me. It's also, it's, it's a position no one wants to be in, you know, obviously he doesn't, I don't, as you said, it's, it's kind of a soul crushing place for the world in general. And yeah,
You know, what we see are just the people that that are around us on the inside rather than. Yeah, we are on the outside.
Oh, I'm sure. And I mean, you're two of the most famous prisoners in the world in the same unit. What what are the other what are you like? What are the armed robbers think?
Well, it's a really interesting question. And if. Of course, some of them, I think, are thinking like, wow, this is sort of a big opportunity, like, you know, to meet people they wouldn't otherwise get to meet, which is It shocked me the first time I heard that. It makes sense from their perspective, but boys, I know not how I think about prison. Sorry. Sorry to laugh.
No, that's such a good... I bet it's not how you think about it. No. It's not. And laughing is all you can do sometimes. There's no better alternative. They're good at chess. That's one thing I learned. Former armed robbers who... don't speak English, and, you know, probably didn't graduate middle school. A surprising number of them are, like, fairly good at chess.
Like, you know, not, I'm not saying they're grandmasters, but, like, you know, I lose games to them all the time. I was not expecting that.
Wow. So how is it, that's so interesting. How has that changed your views?
Well, you know, I would say it's, Part of a larger whole, which, you know, it's one of the most sort of profound things that I've come to learn over my life, but still something I don't fully understand, which is obviously, you know, what we call intelligence or IQ or whatever. It matters. It's important. Working hard matters. It's important.
But there are other things, things that we don't have good words for. I still haven't found the right words for. But things that can make someone an unbelievably impressive and successful and productive person that seem to kind of outshine what I or others would expect of them. And obviously not everyone. Everyone's in different places. you know, something we saw a lot at FTX.
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Chapter 4: How has prison changed Sam Bankman-Fried's perspective?
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Chapter 5: What does the future hold for crypto under Donald Trump?
Well, basically, no. The company that I used to own, maybe I still do own. I don't know. It's in bankruptcy. Had nothing intervened today, it would have about $15 billion of liabilities and about $93 billion of assets. So the answer should be, in theory, yes, that
You know, there was enough money to pay everyone back in kind at the time or today with, you know, plenty of interest left over and tens of billions left for investors. But that's not how things worked out. And instead, it all got boiled up in a bankruptcy where I... The assets were dissipated incredibly quickly by those controlling it. They were siphoned off, tens of billions of dollars worth.
And it's been a colossal disaster. And, I mean, not solving that problem is by far the biggest regret of my life.
So you knew everybody else in the crypto business. You're one of the most famous people in the business before the charges, before all of this happened. Being as honest as you can, do you think you were the biggest criminal in the crypto business?
I don't think I was a criminal. So certainly the answer to that is no. I mean, I think the DOJ thinks that I may have been, but I don't share their viewpoint.
Well, yeah, you're in jail. They definitely, that's their claim anyway. Yeah. But I wonder, and I'm not, you know, I've certainly criticized your business and other businesses like it in the past. And again, I'm not even getting into the details of your case because it's like Byzantine. But I'm just wondering, like, do you think there's a lot of shady behavior in the crypto business?
You know, being honest.
Yeah. Ten years ago, the answer was clearly yes, or at least yes relative to the scale of the industry. Right. You look in the mid-2014 to 2017 sort of era, and the industry is a lot smaller than it was today. And a lot of the transactions I saw, or at least a higher fraction of them, were, well... Different people use different words for it, but Silk Road, you know, as an example, right?
People purchasing narcotics online was a common use of crypto back 10 years ago or so. Obviously, there are always going to be criminals in any industry, but over time...
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Chapter 6: Does Sam Bankman-Fried have any money left after FTX's bankruptcy?
Wow. Could you handle that?
Sorry, what I said was wrong. I misspoke. If you add my prison sentence, my age, the late 50s, if you include all of the possible decreases, it might be the late 40s. But the raw answer is, I mean, it's 32 when I was convicted, and I got a 25-year sentence, so that's 57.
So having done two out of the 25 so far, do you think you could – could you make it?
It's a good question. I'm not sure. I mean, the – the hardest thing is just not having something meaningful to be doing in here. Um, and you know, and you can look at their studies. I have no idea how good they are, but they show, you know, you age at roughly three times the normal rate in prison.
So, you know, you had three times 25 to my 32 years, um, when I was convicted and, uh, you know, that gets you an answer of maybe, um,
So, I mean, it strikes me there's a kind of weird – it's – I mean, you went maybe more than anyone I've ever talked to from one world to a completely different world. So you were in the world of digital money. Now you're in a world with no money. Oh, yeah. What's the medium of exchange in prison?
You know, it's whatever people have and muffins, like these old – So like little plastic wrapped, you go to like a gas station and like on the counter, there might be like a plastic bowl with little individually wrapped plastic muffins that have been sitting there for a week at room temperature. You know, imagine one of those. That's like standard.
Is that a packet of ramen soup or a kind of disgusting looking little foil package of fish in oil at room temperature?
Ooh. Yeah. You went you went from crypto to the muffin economy. Yeah, that's right. How would you how would you compare them? Obviously, it's harder to move muffins internationally, but I don't think there is a currency anytime soon globally.
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