Before FTX was facilitating in billions of dollars in trade volumes and its name was plastered on Miami Heat's stadium, it was a scrappy upstart venue "coming from behind," as founder Sam Bankman-Fried put it in a recent podcast with The Block. 

A key component of how the firm moved up the crypto exchange leader board was taking a more authentic approach to marketing and public relations, Bankman-Fried noted.

"Most of it sort of happens organically," the billionaire said of the firm's marketing efforts.

"There is this sort of thought in media and PR that I think a lot of people have. I don't know if they explicitly have it, but I think they at least implicitly have it: that inauthenticity is the correct decision. And the way that you do well at PR is you go up there and forget everything you know about yourself and you read some bullet point."

He went on:

"I think the advice that you'll often get from people is look don't say anything to reporters or something that sounds kind of like that. I basically think that advice is garbage."

While he admits that some of his tweets have been "dumb," he thinks that a more inauthentic approach can breed contempt among users. He noted Facebook as one example. 

"One thing we've seen with Facebook or Meta now is they have tried to keep their head down a lot," he said. "And I think inauthentic is almost like their brand strategy."