00:43:15 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:43:15] S1: And the instrument tells you that what each man does next. Right? Dimon, by the accounts we have, has begun selling JPMC stock. Storonsky, by the accounts, went the other way. [00:43:25] S0: This is Project Shasta, and I'll say what the dossier reports and no more. In August, shareholders voted on amended articles. Per press reports, the ceiling on borrowing against Revolut shares rises from $50,000,000 to $2.50. And the 10% cap goes and so does the independent board veto. [00:43:46] S1: And we owe him the other side. Right? Revolut calls it administrative housekeeping. Another reading says it was an employee liquidity program, not a founder margin facility. So we don't know which is right. And and nobody has published the loan to value limits or the margin call triggers. Right? Open questions, not a story. [00:44:05] S0: But if the reporting is right, it's the rule running backwards. He won't let the bank lend more than a fifth of its deposits, but he'd borrow against his own company with the veto gone. [00:44:17] S1: Sure. Sure. Sure. If the report is right. So let's let's move on. [00:44:21] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Then there's the comparison I'd rather make, and it's about temperament, not about money, Zubin. If anyone in the story is the next Jamie Dimon, it's David Velez, A lender, prices default for a living, builds that fortress one country at a time. Storonsky isn't the next diamond. [00:44:43] S1: Next Elon?
00:44:43 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:44:43] S1: Next Elon? [00:44:45] S0: He's the next Elon. And and not because of the speed and the scale. Plenty of founders have those. Because of the transformation, Musk didn't build a cheaper car. He changed what a car company is. Storonsky isn't building a cheaper bank. He's trying to change what a bank is for. And he'll [00:45:05] S1: take that compliment, right? Like FTC's Patrick Jenkins wrote this month that Europe may finally be buying his pitch to be the closest thing the continent has to a Bezos or a Musk. [00:45:16] S0: Right? Then let's count the parallels because there are more than what people realize. [00:45:22] S1: Yeah. Like, first principles, Musk famously priced a rocket for its raw materials, not for what the industry charged. Storonsky was trained in Phystech to derive everything and memorize nothing. [00:45:35] S0: The culture. In 2019, after an investigation into the hours, he told his staff, Revolut is not a lifestyle business. In November 2022, Musk told Twitter staff they'd need to be extremely hardcore. Long hours, high intensity. [00:45:53] S1: Right. Same email three years apart. I guess different letterheads. [00:45:57] S0: Yeah. The org chart is flat, engineering led, as we talked about, and the founder inside every product decision. [00:46:05] S1: Yeah. The the side projects. Right? Musk has rockets, tunnels, brain implants. Swarovski has venture funds run by an algorithm and a stated interest in health tech.
00:46:05 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:46:05] S1: Yeah. The the side projects. Right? Musk has rockets, tunnels, brain implants. Swarovski has venture funds run by an algorithm and a stated interest in health tech. [00:46:16] S0: And then there's the pay. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a package worth up to $8,000,000,000,000 in 12 tranches, if Tesla reaches, of course, dollars 8,500,000,000,000 in market value. Revolut's board, as reported, has been modeling Storonsky's next package on Musk's and on Renee Haas at ARM. On top of the 40 at 200,000,000,000, a further award if Revolut holds 500. [00:46:46] S1: You know, and I'll defend it the way Tesla's board did. Right? A hurdle that high cost stakeholders, nothing unless it's cleared. And if it's cleared, then they're all four times richer. Right? It's the cheapest option a board can ride. [00:47:00] S0: Unless it changes how he drives. A 500,000,000,000 target rewards exactly the expansion we just spent ten minutes on. The package and the empire are essentially the same bet. [00:47:12] S1: And here's the parallel that almost is too neat. Right? In 1999, Musk tried to build exactly this. X.com, one app for all your money. And his co founders pushed him out while he was flying to his honeymoon, and the company became PayPal. Right? We've talked about this in PayPal episodes, but a bunch of other times as well. [00:47:31] S0: Yeah. So Musk tried to build the Everything Bank and got fired from it and went off to build cars and rockets. Storonsky is building the Everything Bank.
00:47:31 · Aman Narain, Zubin Vandrevala
[00:47:31] S0: Yeah. So Musk tried to build the Everything Bank and got fired from it and went off to build cars and rockets. Storonsky is building the Everything Bank. [00:47:41] S1: And I guess here's where the comparison breaks, right, which is the interesting bit. Must bet the companies on physics, rockets that might blow up on the pad. Storonsky refuses to bet his own credit. [00:47:54] S0: One takes the risk everyone can see, the other removes it, and both keep the risks that left them in place. [00:48:01] S1: He'd keep that line for the end. Now let's prosecute him. [00:48:06] S0: The case against in full. You defend. [00:48:09] S1: Alright. Alright. Alright. Gladly. He's easier to defend than you think and harder to defend than he thinks. [00:48:16] S0: Let's start with his own words. Storonsky had said Citigroup and the big banks grew by buying other banks and ended up with systems that don't talk to each other. And the irony is hard to miss because if one bank has been exposed for weak controls during breakneck expansion, it's been revolute. [00:48:35] S1: Yeah. And the defense stipulates the irony. Right? The systems that don't talk to each other is a city problem. Controls that can't be kept up is a revenue problem. Right? Different disease, and his is maybe curable.
00:48:35 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:48:35] S1: Yeah. And the defense stipulates the irony. Right? The systems that don't talk to each other is a city problem. Controls that can't be kept up is a revenue problem. Right? Different disease, and his is maybe curable. [00:48:50] S0: Count one, fines and frees. An anti money laundering fine last year from the Lithuanian regulator as we understand it. €11,500,000 from the Italian Competition Authority in April for misleading marketing of crypto and investment products. Two rungs of this ladder, and and one nobody saw. In July 2025, the ECB and the Bank of Lithuania confidentially barred new retail products across Europe until an independent review was done. Nobody outside knew for nearly a year. [00:49:24] S1: Aman, in those same six months, a full UK license, a French license, and this month, a conditional yes for American regulators. You don't get three yeses in six months from supervisors who think you're out of control. [00:49:38] S0: Yeah. You get the yeses with the highest capital ad on... The ECB said yes and then charged him for having said no in secret. [00:49:47] S1: That's a regulator saying, we're watching, not stop. And whether that freeze has been lifted, nobody has said publicly. I guess an open question. [00:49:55] S0: So let's go to card number two. And it's this month. Between eleventh and thirteenth of September, someone used a genuine Italian government email domain to send Revolut emergency data requests. The channel built for imminent threats so a compliance officer can answer the police in minutes. Nobody called Rome.
00:49:55 · Aman Narain, Zubin Vandrevala
[00:49:55] S0: So let's go to card number two. And it's this month. Between eleventh and thirteenth of September, someone used a genuine Italian government email domain to send Revolut emergency data requests. The channel built for imminent threats so a compliance officer can answer the police in minutes. Nobody called Rome. [00:50:16] S1: Out went full KYC files on about, what, six eighty to 700 wealthy and crypto clients. Passports, driver's license, bank statements, verified selfies, your own face holding your own password, and then telegrams, screenshots, $3,000,000 ransom demand, and a 10,000 Bitcoin claim nobody has verified. [00:50:40] S0: The ICO and CNIL opened inquiries on the fourteenth, and within days, he was giving interviews in Paris in the suit that we just described, describing a model with effectively zero risk. [00:50:53] S1: Which is the sentence I'll defend because it's been misread all week. Zero risk was always a credit claim. 6% lent out, 60% in cash. It was never an operational claim. And the software held. Someone followed a procedure from a real government address. That's the manual layer, the one he said he was automating. [00:51:17] S0: And he didn't cancel. [00:51:18] S1: Right. He didn't cancel. Right? He didn't send a spokesman. He walked up the stairs, passed the broken lift, and took questions. [00:51:25] S0: 700 people's faces on Telegram holding their own passports. A bank that took risks out of its balance sheet, its hiring, and its investing routed what was left through a compliance officer's inbox.