Sam Bankman-Fried was one of the most incredible success stories of the last bull market, and accrued an incredible fortune which at the peak was over $30 billion (on paper).
Yesterday, his net worth fell by over 95%, from $16 billion to less than $1 billion.
SBF’s approach with regulators
Although it is always sad to see so many people lose their money because a nefarious CEO decided to gamble with their funds, it is somewhat ironic that the largest lobbyist from the crypto space (SBF was the second largest donor to Joe Biden’s campaign), who was constantly preaching for more regulation and took an active hand in working with regulators, has now gone completely bust thanks to his own nefarious business practices.
Over the course of the last two weeks in particular, SBF was making the case that the world of crypto ought to have far more regulation in the DeFi space, with all DeFi front ends requiring KYC if they were to serve US customers.
curb your regulation pic.twitter.com/edrfb51ir1
— Art of bagholding (@artofbagholding) October 28, 2022
Sam’s approach to inviting further regulation into the crypto space caused a large degree of controversy, as many felt that he was conceding far too much, the regulations themselves were illogical and impractical, and that his ulterior motive was to cement FTX’s edge over the markets.
Binance might be able to help
Binance has entered into an agreement in which they may potentially now be acquiring FTX, although this is not yet completely certain and they reserve the rights at any time to back out of the deal.
There has been speculation that Binance won’t go through with the deal when they discover the true extent of FTX’s balance sheet, and the nature of their collaboration with SBF’s hedge fund Alameda – it is likely that if they don’t go through with the deal, there is far more downside to come in the bear market.
Yet another collapse in the bear market
The bear market has been relentless in crushing many of the largest and most exuberant figures of the bull market.
Alex Mashinsky, Do Kwon, and now Sam Bankman-Fried have all fallen prey to the relentless nature of the cryptocurrency industry, which ruthlessly punishes those with unsustainable business models and high degrees of leverage.
The lessons learned from yet another collapse like this ought to be that people should finally learn the importance of self custody, and to exercise a high degree of caution with altcoins, even if they have market caps in the billions.
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