Fred Schebesta is the self-described crypto king of Australia and in this video we highlight the problems with a recent documentary taking a look at his career.
My other videos mentioned in this video:
FTX’s Misadventures in Australia
Debunking Fred’s TikTok
Tour of Fred’s Crypto Castle
Resources mentioned in this video:
- Founder (2023) IMDB Page
- Coverage of Alameda Research buying HiveEx
- Coverage of Finder Earn lawsuit
- Fred Schebesta’s corporate entities
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Transcript:
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:26:10
Bennett Tomlin
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to my personal channel. Unfortunately, today we are once again talking about Fred Schebesta, the self-styled cryptocurrency king of Australia. For those who haven't kept up with my series of videos on Fred over in Crypto Critic's Corner, let's talk a little bit about why Fred is important. Fred Schebesta and Frank Restuccia here started a cryptocurrency over-the-counter trading desk called HiveEx.
00:00:26:13 - 00:00:42:05
Bennett Tomlin
This desk was not very important, very large or really something we need to know about until Fred Schebesta decided that he wanted it to be more than a simple cryptocurrency trading desk. In order to achieve this ambitious dream.
00:00:42:05 - 00:01:25:02
Bennett Tomlin
Fred Schebesta went out and purchased a minority stake in Goldfields Money. A local Australian bank, and after that, however, started advertising its ability to get other cryptocurrency companies banked. After this, Fred Schebesta ended up selling HiveEx to Alameda Research for 300,000 AUD. At the time that was about 200,000 American dollars. Alameda Research and Sam Bankman-Fried immediately set about using this entity to bank FTX even more important for his bankruptcy listed Goldfields money as one of the banks that served as a counterparty for FTX.
00:01:25:04 - 00:01:41:17
Bennett Tomlin
So the reason Fred Shabazz is important is because he sold his cryptocurrency over the counter trading desk to Sam Bankman-Fried. So Sam Bankman-Fried could use that desk to bank FTX, a criminal enterprise.
00:01:41:17 - 00:01:54:00
Bennett Tomlin
Besides that, Fred Schebesta is also the founder of Finder. Finder is a product that compares different financial products, credit card rewards, fees, bank accounts, things like that.
00:01:54:02 - 00:02:19:13
Bennett Tomlin
But they also had a separate product called Finder Earn shortly before Australian Security Regulator sued them for their finder earn product, claiming it was illegal and not licensed appropriately. Fred Schebesta stepped down as CEO of Finder. So to summarize, Fred Schebesta sold his cryptocurrency trading desk. He is currently renting out his crypto castle. We watched the tour of over in Crypto Critic's Corner.
00:02:19:15 - 00:02:46:09
Bennett Tomlin
He stepped down as CEO of Finder and the Finder Earn cryptocurrency product offered by Finder is being sued by Australian regulators. So why are we talking about Fred today? Well, because there's a new docu series, of course, called Founder Founder, the documentary series purports to show how different Australian entrepreneurs have founded these lasting businesses and tells their story.
00:02:46:09 - 00:03:07:05
Bennett Tomlin
In episode three, founder talks about our friend Fred Schebesta and his business finder. We're going to highlight a few of the things they get right. A few of the things they get wrong, and a few of the things they seem to not discuss at all. So without further ado, founder about Fred and Finder
00:03:08:25 - 00:03:37:16
Fred Schebesta
When I start something, I want to be the winner. I like to compete and win. I don't like losing. I think I really like to be fundamentally like every single thing in life. I would be like, how am I going to actually engage and compete when people have already done so much is changed the game, change the rules, throw the dice again, shuffle the cards
00:03:37:16 - 00:03:39:29
Bennett Tomlin
changed the rules.
00:03:39:29 - 00:04:08:17
Bennett Tomlin
Feels like it matters when you're being sued for not following the rules, but also I'm like 95% sure certain that where he's looking out for him right there is from his crypto castle. It has this part where it looks out onto the bay outside the Sydney harbor, and there's one point even in one of his TikToks which I also did a review of in Crypto Critics Corner, where he decides to hit golf balls into the harbor, which I feel like can't be a good thing.
00:04:08:17 - 00:04:11:28
Bennett Tomlin
But he claims they're biodegradable so
00:04:11:28 - 00:04:22:09
Fred Schebesta
we can play. I always admire people who win, not the same way that everyone else appears.
00:04:33:17 - 00:04:42:09
Fred Schebesta
Imagine a network that is always around you, always on, and you can talk to anyone anywhere around the world at any point in time.
00:04:42:11 - 00:04:47:14
Speaker 3
They're more informed than ever before. We've got more at our fingertips, more to consume.
00:04:47:17 - 00:04:51:00
Fred Schebesta
It's like the fabric of society connected together.
00:04:51:03 - 00:04:56:13
Speaker 4
The team at Find Action today, you say it's their goal to simply make sure you find what you're looking for.
00:04:56:14 - 00:05:10:15
Fred Schebesta
We're a comparison. The service, our goal, our belief is to better all the world's decisions credit cards, mortgages, insurances, VPNs, spaceflight. There are seven different ways to go to space by the way. I don't know if you're going to come back, but that's that's extra.
00:05:10:17 - 00:05:11:29
Speaker 5
Now, you were just telling me the company is.
00:05:11:29 - 00:05:15:01
Speaker 4
Ten years old. You started with a no funding.
00:05:15:01 - 00:05:23:05
Fred Schebesta
This is where we do our work. I guess I'm a bit of a hustler. We're just hustling out here. So, Fred, congratulations on winning the Entrepreneur of the Year.
00:05:23:08 - 00:05:26:04
Speaker 1
Blockchain Entrepreneur of the Year. To be clear.
00:05:26:06 - 00:05:49:07
Fred Schebesta
We've got this common vision of how the world could be different. You've got a whole second world. Essentially. It's like an endless shelf of creation. We're trying to be the next tech unicorn of Australia. Birds want to fly sharks. You know how to swim. I'm a creator. I want to create something great.
00:05:49:10 - 00:05:54:08
Fred Schebesta
Be the next tech unicorn of Australia. Birds want to fly.
00:05:54:08 - 00:06:17:16
Bennett Tomlin
so I'm pretty sure that that cash position screenshot there showing is from back when founder earn was a thing. And I think finder now doesn't include that kind of visual in their app. I think the documentarians here are showing features which regulators have forced finder to remove from their application.
00:06:17:18 - 00:06:19:19
Bennett Tomlin
In this screengrab.
00:06:19:19 - 00:06:23:25
Fred Schebesta
swim. I'm a creator. I want to create something great.
00:06:24:15 - 00:06:26:11
Bennett Tomlin
Let me make sure
00:06:26:11 - 00:06:39:00
Bennett Tomlin
one more time
00:06:39:00 - 00:06:46:18
Bennett Tomlin
see down there where it says cash. I think that first little bit of an orange there is the bitcoin logo.
00:06:46:18 - 00:06:49:05
Fred Schebesta
want to create something great.
00:06:49:07 - 00:07:02:17
Speaker 1
Not positive, but I think that's features they've had to remove from their application. Like they've removed all their crypto treating, the crypto lending, all of it.
00:07:02:19 - 00:07:23:25
Fred Schebesta
Creativity is massive for me. Creating things to me doesn't have to be like just design. It could be like coding something or, you know, building something. You know, you're going to have to physically actually do the coding and do the designing. You could be part of it, but bringing it all together to make this creation come to life.
00:07:23:27 - 00:07:28:21
Fred Schebesta
That's that's creativity to me.
00:07:28:21 - 00:07:50:13
Bennett Tomlin
So Finder wallet was the cryptocurrency part finder dot com is the website finder group of companies is the finder group finder US U.S. Finder app and then finder earn was the lending part we were talking about before and they even have it as a senior demand note offering.
00:07:50:13 - 00:08:10:28
Bennett Tomlin
But they were trying to claim that it wasn't a debenture in their argument to the Australian securities regulators. This document right here that they're showing in this document tree might be evidence in an active securities lawsuit against Finder, and it's just casually displayed here. They're literally describing it as a senior demand note offering for their finder earn product.
00:08:11:05 - 00:08:16:11
Bennett Tomlin
This is a wild thing to include in this documentary with no context about the current lawsuit.
00:08:16:29 - 00:08:25:29
Fred Schebesta
So and I had an online marketing company in the 2000s called Freestyle Media, and we were making websites for some pretty big clients.
00:08:26:01 - 00:08:30:15
Speaker 1
They were shitty SEO hackers and they actually described the shady SEO hacking coming
00:08:30:15 - 00:08:35:02
Bennett Tomlin
up and we'll talk about how that worked and why it eventually failed.
00:08:35:02 - 00:08:48:17
Fred Schebesta
I was always on Frank's case about new ideas. He's like, You know, Fred, we've got to do client work. And I was like, And I realized during Christmas, clients didn't want very much work. They went on holidays.
00:08:48:19 - 00:08:53:04
Fred Schebesta
I was like, Whoa, what are going to do with these people? Then I realized it's an opportunity.
00:08:53:04 - 00:09:02:24
Fred Schebesta
we sat down in a room together and we came up with like 40 ideas and I put them all up on the internet and I was like, Yes, we are doing this.
00:09:02:26 - 00:09:12:08
Fred Schebesta
The Mother’s day site site didn't work because it was Mother's Day to do. I don't know how you make money. Pogo was big back then, and so that's it. All right.
00:09:12:10 - 00:09:30:07
Speaker 1
Poker. I didn't know Fred had ties to online gambling. Let's see if he gives any more details on that. That might be a future video, because there's a lot of gamblers who show up in my cryptocurrency work.
00:09:30:09 - 00:09:30:14
Fred Schebesta
Mind
00:09:30:14 - 00:09:53:09
Speaker 1
This segment involves them describing their websites that didn't work and the credit card comparison, one that did it then launches into a description of Fred Schebesta’s back story, which were mostly going to skip until we get to the part where he describes the moment in college when he decided his path needs to change.
00:09:53:09 - 00:10:07:21
Fred Schebesta
The first site I sent to my friend was had a picture of him and I wrote him a message and he was like, Whoa, you just built the Internet, you know, like, is that even possible? I was like, Yeah, it's possible. I just I just worked it out.
00:10:07:23 - 00:10:29:09
Fred Schebesta
It was a night before an exam for actuarial studies, and I had to study for the exam. I brought my book over to his house. I bought a computer. If you're the school's dynamic website, and it was like, Wow, look at this thing. And he said, What about your exam? And I said, I don't think I want to do that.
00:10:29:09 - 00:10:48:18
Bennett Tomlin
So I guess it doesn't surprise me that much that Fred Schebesta is not an actuary. You know what? Considering the rest of his career, the lawsuits finder earn the fee free trading, the partnership with Alameda Research, the work that I think for failing to earn in the fee free trading with Binance.
00:10:48:20 - 00:10:52:26
Bennett Tomlin
You know what? Not being an actuary fits with that.
00:10:52:26 - 00:11:09:12
Fred Schebesta
I filled in my attendance and I just left. I was willing to put it all on the line and I had no idea where I was going either. I was just going into the void of I'll figure it out. I can always have
00:11:09:12 - 00:11:22:11
Speaker 1
This segment describes how hard starting Finder was, how little money they had, how they were, their shoes with holes in them, all of that kind of stuff. And we're going to skip most of it until he starts talking about cooking.
00:11:22:11 - 00:11:34:19
Fred Schebesta
Well, this was the only meal that Frank and I knew how to cook. This is the only meal I know because this is the only thing that we survived on in the beginning when we started the company.
00:11:34:22 - 00:11:55:23
Speaker 1
Well, yeah, but you've had years since then, Fred, where you could have learned to cook a second meal. There's directions that tell you specifically how to make almost any food you want detailed instructions online that you can very easily get access to. And so a second meal would have been a worthwhile thing to learn.
00:11:55:23 - 00:12:03:26
Fred Schebesta
Probably that's the only reason I know how to cook this. Give me some feedback on that Porsche.
00:12:03:28 - 00:12:10:24
Speaker 5
Yeah, it deserved a 9.56 out of ten.
00:12:10:26 - 00:12:12:06
Fred Schebesta
Back in the day.
00:12:12:08 - 00:12:15:11
Speaker 1
At least. You get pretty good at making his noodles and meat sauce.
00:12:15:12 - 00:12:36:10
Fred Schebesta
No one you find was. And so the way that we originated our topic was via Google. Google at the time wasn't the most sophisticated engine that you see today. There were ways to frankly manipulate the algorithm. And just because, you know, I don't know, it was something to do, I was like, how good my SEO I actually go to what am I world class?
00:12:36:10 - 00:12:59:06
Fred Schebesta
Am I average? Am I able to compete and win? And I just went down this rabbit hole. I just kept on pursuing this idea of figuring out Google. And I went further and further down the rabbit hole and everything I did made a little bit of a difference. And then one day I popped up on the first page and was like, here we go.
00:12:59:08 - 00:13:04:03
Fred Schebesta
I just sort this thing out back.
00:13:04:05 - 00:13:27:22
Speaker 1
So Google's algorithm at this time, I believe, was still page rank, and it was one of the more rudimentary versions of it. And so what PageRank looked at when it was trying to figure out how good your site was was who linked to your site. So if you had a lot of really good, high quality high traffic websites linking to you, that meant your site was likely good and was going to be ranked higher.
00:13:27:24 - 00:13:58:06
Speaker 1
This effect was compounded for certain terms. So if all these high quality websites were linking back to your website and they were all using the same kind of terms, credit cards, finance fees, whatever, you're Google is going to start thinking that your website specifically must be really high quality and those terms, Fred, in just a moment here, is going to explain what steps he took to get links from high quality organizations with terms that he wanted.
00:13:58:12 - 00:14:00:14
Speaker 1
And I want you to decide whether or not
00:14:00:14 - 00:14:04:23
Bennett Tomlin
this was duplicitous in any way.
00:14:04:23 - 00:14:17:05
Fred Schebesta
I used to call up, you know, the student unions. I said, Hey, man, how's it going? Yeah, I just want to buy an ad on your website. I just want you to write the word credit card. That's it. Just in text. He's like, Where would you like? I'm just.
00:14:17:06 - 00:14:22:10
Fred Schebesta
Anyway, you're on the front page. Great. I'll pay you five grand right now.
00:14:22:12 - 00:14:56:07
Speaker 1
There we go. So that's how he got these links. He would target the student unions probably because he thought they might be student led and therefore have a different process than the rest of the universities. But they would still be hosted and generally the same core domain, the same core infrastructure and sort of Google would look like those institutions themselves linking back to Finder and not just linking back to Finder but linking back to Finder often on their front page with terms about credit cards, which you would expect would make Finder start to rank well for credit cards.
00:14:56:10 - 00:15:03:19
Speaker 1
Unless of course Google were to catch on that they were doing something like this too. In effect manipulate the results.
00:15:03:19 - 00:15:26:02
Fred Schebesta
From your bank account literally. I transferred the money link goes live next few days. Bank number one in Google. And I was like, That is where it's at. It wasn't just us, of course. It was like the doc out of nowhere. You just go and buy linked from authority websites and point them back to your website and and used to get rankings off the back of that.
00:15:26:04 - 00:15:44:18
Speaker 1
There's still some people who try to do this. It doesn't really work and be very cautious in terms of who you hire, who you trust for SEO now, because there's a lot of cranks who are using outdated techniques like this, which long term will end up punishing your website, even if you briefly see the front page or something like that.
00:15:44:20 - 00:15:45:16
Speaker 1
So be very
00:15:45:16 - 00:15:50:02
Bennett Tomlin
cautious in how you build for and optimize for SEO at this point.
00:15:50:09 - 00:16:04:29
Fred Schebesta
I remember I was in the north of England, it was cold and I got to call my phone at 3:00 in the morning. I was like, that's kind of unusual. And we walked out to our car. It was Jeremy saying, Man, I think we got penalized by Google.
00:16:05:11 - 00:16:28:23
Speaker 1
Yeah, Google looked at your behavior and decided, is this or is this not a good faith participant in this ecosystem? And now I. Bennett am wondering if Google making this decision is why the domain changed from credit card finder dot com you to finder dot com you let's find out
00:16:28:23 - 00:16:42:21
Fred Schebesta
I found the angle but I broke the rules and went down like to page 20. Like I saw the top of the mountain and I stood on it for a second and then I got smack down.
00:16:42:23 - 00:17:07:29
Speaker 1
If you broke the rules to get to the top of the mountain, isn't that a little bit like taking a helicopter? 95% of the way to the peak of Everest and then going, I summited Everest. I stood on the top of that mountain, and then these damn people who care about these silly little rules said, I broke the new helicopter rules in mountain climbing and like I thought I had found an innovative angle.
00:17:08:00 - 00:17:08:17
Speaker 1
But it turns
00:17:08:17 - 00:17:10:08
Bennett Tomlin
out that's just cheating.
00:17:10:13 - 00:17:13:19
Bennett Tomlin
How was I supposed to know I'm a disruptor?
00:17:13:19 - 00:17:17:10
Fred Schebesta
There was a time there where we thought, this is this could be the end of the company.
00:17:17:17 - 00:17:34:25
Fred Schebesta
It was that dire back then. We went back to basics. We started to become more whitehat. We have to go back inside all those websites, please, that link to us. And then we went back to Google and said, Look, we don't have any of these links anymore. Please consider our website and so on. Merits.
00:17:35:12 - 00:17:40:22
Speaker 1
man. Hey, I know we paid you five grand just to link to us, but can you, can you stop doing
00:17:40:22 - 00:17:42:24
Bennett Tomlin
doing that? We got in trouble.
00:17:51:11 - 00:18:00:15
Fred Schebesta
I realize as well, like pushing the limits can actually potentially, you know, kill the whole thing.
00:18:00:18 - 00:18:03:22
Speaker 1
See finder earn.
00:18:03:25 - 00:18:09:29
Fred Schebesta
And I always think back to that time of I pushed it too far.
00:18:10:01 - 00:18:27:11
Speaker 1
Remember, he had to step down as CEO. And his company is currently being sued by security regulators for offering an illegal product. So far, neither of those facts have been mentioned in this documentary, which was released in 2023, which is after both of those things happened.
00:18:27:11 - 00:18:51:13
Speaker 1
This next segment, instead of being about the lawsuit, is about how Fred finally learned how to build a mature, responsible, sustainable business. And then there's a whole section where he starts building a gaming PC. And during that section, well, he talks about his need for understanding. And that is something I think shows us a lot about Fred.
00:18:52:04 - 00:19:06:13
Fred Schebesta
I know how the assembly code works and how the processor and how it interprets that and the end and all gates and the HTML and JavaScript, everything that leads to it. I need to understand the full stack in order to create something great.
00:19:06:15 - 00:19:35:18
Speaker 1
I don't believe him. I think he probably knows he learned some type of assembly for some type of chipset back when he was in college. I do not believe he knows how a modern x64 or like risk five arm type chipset is rendering a complete dex website in terms of the assembly on the chip, frankly, I don't know if anyone on earth understands that completely.
00:19:35:25 - 00:19:47:13
Speaker 1
Like you have so many levels. Abstract with so many of those pieces trying to optimize it for like disparate chipsets, that truly understanding that full process is effectively impossible.
00:19:47:14 - 00:19:52:14
Fred Schebesta
No, with this outrageous idea, can the base handle it?
00:19:52:14 - 00:20:07:27
Speaker 1
This whole section is Fred talking about, you know, how he's an innovator, He's got all this energy and it's everyone else talking about how Fred is a disruptor and he's got all this energy and he brings the spark in, you know, all those types of things people say about founders.
00:20:07:27 - 00:20:23:11
Fred Schebesta
We're about to meet with Fred, who's got this 50 kilometer challenge. Fred, what was your technique on day one? get to the 10th lap. Okay.
00:20:23:14 - 00:20:31:21
Speaker 4
He's so stubborn. When he sets himself a goal, he is going to achieve it. He's level of persistence.
00:20:31:23 - 00:20:52:06
Speaker 1
I'm increasingly frustrated with this documentary we are talking about, Fred running six miles a day for five days. Unless he's running 50 kilometers each day for the five days, which is much more impressive. But we're not talking about him stepping down as CEO and being sued yet. And that feels important to me.
00:20:52:10 - 00:20:54:23
Speaker 4
Almost to a level of ridiculousness.
00:20:54:25 - 00:20:56:28
Fred Schebesta
It's pretty out that.
00:20:57:01 - 00:21:01:09
Speaker 4
I can't keep up with Fred. I don't think anyone can keep up with Fred.
00:21:01:11 - 00:21:19:22
Speaker 1
So best of Ventures, you would think would be a Fred owned company, but it's actually owned by Finder and is the entity through which he sells his Go Live marketing course, which he spends a lot of time advertising and his ticktock the entire like corporate structure of the find group of companies is wild and I will link an article
00:21:19:22 - 00:21:23:11
Bennett Tomlin
in the description that tries to piece it apart. But man, it's a mess.
00:21:23:11 - 00:21:39:26
Fred Schebesta
Advise me to step in the footsteps of other people. And I realized that I prefer to step in the steps and no one's been because sometimes I think beaten paths are forbidden. Men.
00:21:40:06 - 00:22:10:20
Speaker 1
my. I don't know exactly what I want to say here. I just paused it because I had a moment of listening to Fred say, My partner suggested I do this to make it easier, but I instead decided to do the opposite, even though it's harder because I think it proves I'm a trailblazer. There is something there. There's a metaphor for something about how Fred is.
00:22:10:22 - 00:22:18:11
Fred Schebesta
Is a new product, and I'm basically looking at how much money people have put into it.
00:22:18:14 - 00:22:29:14
Speaker 1
I think that's finder earn. I think we're seeing screenshots for finder earn right there and someone put in a huge amount on one day there and like that, something he showing some screenshots there.
00:22:29:16 - 00:22:34:01
Fred Schebesta
So it's just gone over 3.57 million.
00:22:34:03 - 00:22:37:04
Speaker 1
Yep, that's fine to earn like.
00:22:37:07 - 00:22:42:20
Fred Schebesta
It's a lot of money.
00:22:42:22 - 00:22:55:25
Speaker 1
Okay so those include him writing about find earn and calling it a senior demand noted whatever he called it must show him showing screenshots to find earn. But are we going to hear about the lawsuit? Apparently not.
00:22:55:25 - 00:23:04:27
Fred Schebesta
Then people 4% on their money is a pretty big bet.
00:23:04:29 - 00:23:06:20
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's definitely finder earn.
00:23:06:22 - 00:23:14:11
Fred Schebesta
Yeah. I'm thinking about like how to how to make it grow more.
00:23:14:13 - 00:23:34:02
Speaker 1
One of the ways that he came up with the try to get to grow more is he went to the Australian Parliament and argued that they should ensure deposits used for cryptocurrency lending in Australia. Yes, that is a literal thing, he argued in front of Parliament.
00:23:34:27 - 00:23:51:25
Fred Schebesta
Foster Always what find it looks like today and what it's done in the past. Like it's obviously there to save people money by comparing services. And that's what we started doing. And now what we're trying to also do is help people invest their money. Why do you say.
00:23:52:02 - 00:23:52:23
Speaker 1
Here we do.
00:23:52:25 - 00:24:10:28
Fred Schebesta
Want to invest it, hopefully, and then from those investments you build your wealth, then what do you do with that? Then you go and live your life. At the end of the day, I think about the single mum with two kids who's trying to earn a bit of extra money and, you know, buy that bike for her son.
00:24:11:01 - 00:24:25:06
Fred Schebesta
How do you deal with that? You know, I need to save money and I'm not going to go and spend all the time and research all the deals and stuff. I want to like get it done. And I could just go to find out, you know, we've done the work for you. It's tongue in cheek saying.
00:24:25:09 - 00:24:44:08
Speaker 1
Yep, earn balance. There we go. It is finder earn. So they're talking about this got end product. They're going to talk about the fact that he's getting fucking sued by regulators who claim that this is an illegal product. He had no right to be offering. Is that a thing that's important? Is the fact that they got sued for this likely what contributed to him stepping away from this company?
00:24:44:14 - 00:24:49:21
Speaker 1
Is that going to be mentioned in this documentary about this founder? Because if it is and I'm
00:24:49:21 - 00:24:51:01
Bennett Tomlin
I'm going to blow my hat,
00:24:51:01 - 00:25:07:04
Fred Schebesta
money grows pretty addicting. Fine that has enormous potential to help people live a better life. That's fundamentally if you think about all the people in the world and their ability to get access to the right information to make.
00:25:07:06 - 00:25:10:01
Speaker 1
There is Bitcoin. I see Bitcoin.
00:25:10:04 - 00:25:29:18
Fred Schebesta
It's somewhat limited in many parts of the world. And when I think about the emerging world that really speaks to me as well, because I know that in those markets that don't have necessarily all the access to the tools, the information that they should, now we're running two businesses inside the one.
00:25:29:20 - 00:25:32:22
Unknown
To get double.
00:25:32:24 - 00:25:59:24
Speaker 1
Well, you're running zero businesses now, Fred. You've had to leave your businesses well and sell them to criminals, I guess pre criminals. They weren't criminals then, but they weren't yet convicted. So maybe you didn't know about the many, many crimes they were doing. Maybe. Well, you write down that very organic idea you just had during the interview with the documentarians, Fred.
00:26:10:13 - 00:26:12:29
Fred Schebesta
Hopefully they'll forgive me.
00:26:13:02 - 00:26:32:20
Speaker 5
Well, it makes him glue his eyes to his phone. I'm like, Daddy, are you going to unpack the dishwasher today? no joke. 2 hours later, Daddy. Just work, please. And I'm like, okay.
00:26:59:10 - 00:27:04:07
Fred Schebesta
Yeah. So this is, I guess, an epiphany I had.
00:27:04:09 - 00:27:39:08
Fred Schebesta
And the thing about it is that it's it's taken a long time to sort of evolve that. And this really changed me and really affected me in a massive way. So I'll arrange my story. I invented a comparison business and drove it into the ground until I started to hire right people. I've learned to inspire and find great people and bring great ideas to life all around the world.
00:27:39:10 - 00:27:44:09
Fred Schebesta
That's that's like that's my new story. That's. That's who I think I am.
00:27:44:11 - 00:28:09:21
Speaker 1
And since then, you've as CEO and your company is being sued by Australian securities regulators, Plus you sold you over the counter trading desk to Sam Bankman-fried to bank it criminal enterprise feels like getting close to a conclusion. Are they going to mention it?
00:28:10:08 - 00:28:25:12
Fred Schebesta
I think like it's really interesting, like how there's, like atoms, industrialization and there's like digital industrialization. I'm like a digital industrialist.
00:28:25:14 - 00:28:48:17
Speaker 1
To be clear, what this digital industrialist creates is SEO spam, credit card comparisons over the counter cryptocurrency trades and he rents his house. That is the sum total of his production. The famed digital industrialist.
00:28:48:25 - 00:28:50:11
Fred Schebesta
Indeed,
00:28:52:12 - 00:29:06:20
Speaker 1
Okay, we get the after text. Are they going to talk about it here? Here we go. Some between Time to Fred stepped down as CEO is Finder CEO finder. They had mentioned the lawsuit. Nope.
00:29:06:20 - 00:29:18:23
Speaker 1
they did that entire documentary and did not once did not once mention that Binder earned, which they featured heavily in that documentary, was being sued by regulators.
00:29:19:00 - 00:29:53:06
Speaker 1
They did not once mention Hive ex mentioned hive spend mentioned Goldfields money mentions and Bankman-fried mentioned Alameda Research and again this was released in 2023. Every single one of those things was known when this documentary was released. It feels insulting to me as a viewer to have you show me Fridge best discussing Finder earn and not mention that Australian regulators are suing him for finder earn.
00:29:53:12 - 00:30:17:14
Speaker 1
If that's not duplicitous, I don't know what is. If that doesn't give you additional context on who Fred is, is a founder, then I don't know what does all this really demonstrate? It is that you can fill 43 minutes with mostly B-roll if you really put your mind to it and that leaving out key details makes it easier to tell a positive story.
00:30:17:17 - 00:30:39:14
Speaker 1
If you want, go check my other videos, which are linked in the description about Fred, you best. But this documentary fundamentally missed so many points as to miss represent Fred, and that made me deeply frustrated. I, however, very much appreciate you all for joining me here as we get through this disaster.
