Bomani Jones, Emmy-winning sports journalist and HBO host Game theorystopped by to chat with Seth Meyers on Wednesday night, where they had a wide-ranging conversation that eventually got to the unusual — and for many, unfortunate — relationship between cryptocurrency and sports.
It’s a topic Jones has covered before, including in a March 2022 episode Game theory — months before FTX went down — and it was a segment that stuck with Meyers. “Obviously very early on you said, ‘Hey, this doesn’t really smell right.’ The whole world of crypto and how quickly sports want to partner with it,” said the late-night host.
Jones admitted that his suspicions were first raised nearly 10 years ago by Silk Road, the infamous online marketplace where anyone with an internet connection and access to bitcoin could buy anything from a fake ID to vast amounts of cocaine, heroin, opioids or whatever. among other illegal drugs you might like. It caught Jones’ attention for several different reasons, including that “real drug dealers don’t sell drugs on the web. So you knew they weren’t real drug dealers.”
But the fact that Bitcoin was the website’s only currency was what really confused Jones, because, “Why would I exchange my money for money that not money?”
Yet the brash crypto kingpins behind many of these volatile digital currencies have looked to professional athletes — and the fans who watch them religiously — as their target market. In 2021, Tom Brady and then-wife Gisele Bündchen became the king and queen of FTX as brand ambassadors (alongside Larry David, of all people) — the three were later sued by FTX users. But in Jones’ mind, all you had to do was look at the difference between the way traditional investment firms presented themselves and the way crypto gurus did it:
You see an ad for Merrill Lynch or for Charles Schwab or for any other jerk that comes up there and trades, and they always tell you, ‘Guard your future.’ It is always very peaceful and quiet.
These crypto ads were like, ‘Fortune favors the brave!’ Why do I have to be brave about my money? My whole life boils down to not being brave about my money. The whole reason you’re taking your money to someone to invest is because you’re not brave. That’s because you’re afraid of a zillion different factors. And the only people who tried to be brave with their money went bankrupt.
You can watch the entire conversation above, starting at 4:30.