Chapter 37House of Representatives
“It has been more productive interacting with regulators than I had expected that it would be,”
—SBF, FTX Podcast, November 2021.
From the vantage point of December 2022, SBF’s failed as an advocate for winning crypto a better regulatory climate. But that simple statement doesn't capture it.
It's like saying that Star Wars fans have had mixed feelings about films made after the original trilogy. Or that Alan Greenspan's legacy was complicated by the events of 2008. Or that the political class miscalculated on the candidacy of Donald Trump. True on the face, but there's not really a way to express the depth in mere words.
Following FTX's collapse, SBF was fond of repeating the phrase “I fucked up,” which would be tantamount to Grigori Rasputin going on TikTok to admit he could have done a better job of considering the best interests of the people around him or Robert Oppenheimer granting that his work had had some unforeseen consequences.
We can only guess at how far‐reaching the distrust SBF has sown will go, but to understand the depths of this astounding policymaking blunder, we have to go to the heart of why FTX argued its exchanges should be treated differently than other players in the derivatives market.
SBF and his team said FTX was uniquely trustworthy because of the risk engine that its developers had built.
FTX argued that the best way to handle the crypto market was actually to bring everything under one roof. That way, it can ...
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