FTX - A Failure of Crypto, or Fiat?
Binance recently announced that they will not be going forward with FTX's bailout - so the future of the company and its holders still hangs in the balance. (The FTT token has been removed from this site since, but last I checked it was down 95%+.) Is this the "end of crypto"?
Well, not quite - MATIC, ATOM, DOGE, ETH, LINK are still in up in the last 6 months, despite the recent drop, highlighting the fact that the fact that the appetite for taking bets on the crypto market is still there. Given that the recession woes are still there, many are likely still on the sidelines waiting for the market to bottom out before deciding to get back in. The downturn was expected, but it's also possible to make the argument that the industry is still doing better than expected.
Here's the tricky part: the FTX scandal is triggering for a lot of people in finance because FTX had their hand in basically everything: crypto, fiat, regulators, celebrities, political parties (SBF and his families have strong ties to the Democratic Party, as records show), the media, and the banking system - both old and new. Unlike previous scams/scandals (e.g. Mt. Gox), FTX had the buy-in of mainstream money and institutions (including regulators) which also calls into question the effectiveness of the institutional safeguards as well.
Who's fault is it? There's likely going to be a lot of finger-pointing in the upcoming months as the mess gets sorted out, but the question for investors right now is whether or not the market is going to see this scandal as a failure of the industry, or a failure of the regulatory framework that currently exists. So far, the results are still unclear.
The irony of the FTX scandal is that these were the sorts of problems that crypto set out to fix - had they used crypto for its intended purpose (on-chain governance, transparency in their financial records and dealings), it's very likely that these issues would have been caught way earlier before it became too late. Some will leave, some will stay, but the ideal outcome to come out of this scandal would be for the people themselves to demand higher standards in accounting and fiduciary duties.
Well, not quite - MATIC, ATOM, DOGE, ETH, LINK are still in up in the last 6 months, despite the recent drop, highlighting the fact that the fact that the appetite for taking bets on the crypto market is still there. Given that the recession woes are still there, many are likely still on the sidelines waiting for the market to bottom out before deciding to get back in. The downturn was expected, but it's also possible to make the argument that the industry is still doing better than expected.
Here's the tricky part: the FTX scandal is triggering for a lot of people in finance because FTX had their hand in basically everything: crypto, fiat, regulators, celebrities, political parties (SBF and his families have strong ties to the Democratic Party, as records show), the media, and the banking system - both old and new. Unlike previous scams/scandals (e.g. Mt. Gox), FTX had the buy-in of mainstream money and institutions (including regulators) which also calls into question the effectiveness of the institutional safeguards as well.
Who's fault is it? There's likely going to be a lot of finger-pointing in the upcoming months as the mess gets sorted out, but the question for investors right now is whether or not the market is going to see this scandal as a failure of the industry, or a failure of the regulatory framework that currently exists. So far, the results are still unclear.
The irony of the FTX scandal is that these were the sorts of problems that crypto set out to fix - had they used crypto for its intended purpose (on-chain governance, transparency in their financial records and dealings), it's very likely that these issues would have been caught way earlier before it became too late. Some will leave, some will stay, but the ideal outcome to come out of this scandal would be for the people themselves to demand higher standards in accounting and fiduciary duties.
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