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I think this should be a warning to anyone still invested in other crypto companies or exchanges. Everything seems like it's going well, until the music stops a

I think this should be a warning to anyone still invested in other crypto companies or exchanges. Everything seems like it's going well, until the music stops and the exchange is insolvent. FTX is not unique. A lot of crypto exchanges are doing just as much shady stuff. When you put your money with these companies, you're betting that "no really, this one is above board!" That's an extremely risky game to play when the crypto space operates with no transparency and no consumer protections.

aniforprez 4y ago
While I could say banks are equally guilty of doing shady stuff, the truth is banking is hundreds of years old and as such, has regulations and insurance behind it. Not regulating is how we get messes like the Housing Bubble in the 2000s in the US culminating in the crash in 2011. Crypto being a completely new space has no regulation and no checks and balances which leads to messes like this with companies playing around with their assets and unable to repay their customers when they collapse. I suppose the draw of crypto is inherently that it is a wild, freeform space free from government interference for some people I guess
- fred_is_fred 4y ago
  Unfortunaely the draw for many isn't that they want a libertarian dream society with no rules, but rather they think they can get rich quick. The "banks are bad" is part of the appeal also. I have a cousin who works in the food service industry (think something like managing a Chipotle) and has put all his liquid assets into crypto and still thinks they will "pay off so he can retire". As for banks - as soon as these crypto scams fail, everyone will find out just why the SEC and FDIC are there. They were not created just because some politician had an idea for more bureaucracy.
  - no_wizard 4y ago
    My "hot take" if you will: SEC and FDIC aren't usually, to the general public, negatively seen due to their mission. Its the fact they don't prevent criminal / unethical behaviors beforehand, and banks get away with alot before anyone intervenes. I actually don't think the average US citizen is "anti regulation" with this. I think - and I include myself in this - that we see agencies like the SEC (more so than the FDIC) don't act fast enough or often enough, and when they do, the fines are a slap on the wrist vs the profit made by the bad behavior. In a nutshell, they just aren't acting effectively, and thats why they get a bad wrap.
    - sooheon 4y ago
      Yeah, people like effective regulation, it's just regulatory capture is worse than no regulation.
    - tl 4y ago
      > Its the fact they don't prevent criminal / unethical behaviors beforehand, and banks get away with alot before anyone intervenes. A better example is the IRS with a double standard of overzealous enforcement against individuals and small business who cannot defend themselves and complete non-enforcement against higher tiers of wealthy. In the case of the SEC or FDIC, this has resulted in the near elimination of smaller fish aside from protective carveouts like the Durbin Exempt Interchange.
  - codyb 4y ago
    Unfortunately for your cousin, he's the bag holder that the people getting rich quick are going to take for a ride. As far as I can tell.
    - fred_is_fred 4y ago
      yes - he absolutely is. I'm not sure he knows that though.
- lkrubner 4y ago
  "US culminating in the crash in 2011" The official date given by NBER says that the recession began in December of 2007, which put the economy into a fragile state, which was intelligently managed for another 9 months, before circumstances went beyond anything that could be managed. Then the financial meltdown began in September of 2008.
  - eftychis 4y ago
    And to amend a bit, to give the whole perspective: And one of the triggers started when around 2005 the FED started raising interest rates. Which it had lowered more dramatically due to 9/11. https://www.bankrate.com/banking/federal-reserve/history-of-federal-funds-rate/ https://www.bankrate.com/banking/federal-reserve/history-of-... Let that sync in, is my 2c. (Extra:The FED interest rates takes 2 years to kick in to Adjustable Rate Mortgages which where the first to fall.)
    - somuchfordonor 4y ago
      > And one of the triggers started when around 2005 the FED started raising interest rates The fed did not cause the crypto crash. It didn't force people to gamble on cryptocurrencies. It didn't force them to not sell, at the top of the naked ponzi schemes they participated in.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      Interesting. Question, though, and coming back on topic: Did the rising interest rates trigger this (FXT)? There might be a path here, and it would not have the two-year delay of adjustable rate mortgages.
      - eftychis 4y ago
        Cause, no. Make it more likely, along with the world situation we are in and the supply dysrhythmia, yes. Recall FTX used a bunch of cash to save failing companies which would create systemic shock (ironic), acquire and invest lately, including in the Silicon Valley. My guess here: "1-2/3-4 Billion" is enough for liquidity, nobody is going to run on us, we are trusted, especially after us saving the world. There was "bad event rolls" in the system and when they came, nobody can/will/would give them that amount of money. I am sure in great times, they would also find liquidity/loans more easily -- which is what they are still trying to do. ("Everyone" is keeping cash to the chest, waiting to see what happens right now.)
- duvenaud 4y ago
  I mean, banking was already hundreds of years old in the 2000s. So recent bubbles and crashes in traditional markets seem like evidence that regulation, at least the kind that ends up being implemented, isn't doing much to prevent very bad outcomes.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    There are two kinds of risk that are fundamentally unavoidable in being a "bank" - that is, any institution that borrows short and lends long. One is liquidity as a result of that duration mismatch: you have enough money owed to you that you've lent out, but it's not due yet. The other is loan writeoffs: you've lent money that you cannot get back, often because it's secured against an asset whose value has fallen significantly. These can be reduced but not entirely eliminated by setting reserve requirements, LTV ratios, etc., which is what https://www.bis.org/bcbs/basel3.htm https://www.bis.org/bcbs/basel3.htm is all about. You can't really eliminate the duration mismatch without eliminating anything recognisable as a "bank", and it becomes much more expensive to get credit and to do basic financial operations.
    - duvenaud 4y ago
      Thanks for the explanation, but I'm not sure how it relates to my comment. It sounds like you're saying regulations help because they force banks to keep reserves. I think this helps in the short term, but in the long run creates incentives to deceptively package assets into AAA ratings (as in 2008), and that things like FDIC also just create incentives to get too big to fail. So I stand by my statement.
    - imtringued 4y ago
      The problem is that once rates hit zero people will just hoard cash like Keynes suggested with his liquidity trap. The only "funds" available are short term deposits. Nobody is buying certificates of deposits. When the bank issues a loan without a CD it has to create new liquid money, that is the only way. The answer is quite simple, just keep going down with interest rates even if they are negative. That is fully consistent with the loanable funds model.
- saurik 4y ago
  Centralized financial exchange markets are at least somewhat regulated and notably FTX.US is supposedly A-OK. Just because some stuff in crypto doesn't have regulations doesn't mean it is a free-for-all.
  - zen21 4y ago
    What does A-OK mean? No exposure at all?
    - idkyall 4y ago
      As I understand it, FTX outside the US offered many exotic financial products: e.g. 24/7 traded Tesla stock tokens[1], leverage, etc., which I don't believe US based crypto exchanges are allowed to offer(Coinbase stopped offering leverage in 2020, for example). The acquisition offer yesterday did not include FTX.us[2] This may mean that the US part of the exchange and the associated customer funds were not lent out, but we shall find out. [1]https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tesla-tokenized-stock-ftx/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tesla-tokenized-stock-f... [2]https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/08/binance-offers-to-buy-ftxs-non-us-operations-to-fix-liquidity-crunch.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/08/binance-offers-to-buy-ftxs-n...
    - zen21 4y ago
      I guess we now know that A-OK just means one day away from declaring bankruptcy.
  - LeafGuild 4y ago
    >Just because some stuff in crypto doesn't have regulations doesn't mean it is a free-for-all. It pretty much does. The free-for-all disregarding of laws (including laws against fraud) is the stated purpose of crypto. They've been pitching this as Fight Club For Finance since the very beginning. The exchanges with a legitimate appearance are just fronts to get you to the back room with all the unregulated tokens offering insane interest rates. If you didn't come for a scam-or-be-scammed fight to the death, there isn't any reason to use crypto. The crypto bros just missed the part where Fight Club falls apart if you tell everyone about it. Or maybe they got too excited and forgot about that rule.
- eftychis 4y ago
  a) They are similar products banks/certain financial institutions utilize right now, just with corporate debt -- oh what can go wrong in a recession, right? b) Bank runs happened in 2008 (U.S.), 2010-12 etc. A lot of crypto companies buy insurance similar to what the government says, but lacking regulation and the government behind you makes it as you said problematic. But: banks are years old and keep making the same mistakes and failures. Big banks (not your corner side community bank that acts as intermediate and its job is community welfare and good relations) haven't changed. I'd be surprised if we avoid another bank related incident, if we enter a recession.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    > your corner side community bank that acts as intermediate and its job is community welfare and good relations Spain used to have a lot of these, and the financial crisis blew almost all of them up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_bank_(Spain) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_bank_(Spain)
- ignoramous 4y ago
  > ...has regulations and insurance behind it. And billion dollar bailouts. With a few billions every decade or so, FTX probably survives such crises multiple times over.
antasvara 4y ago
In a lot of ways, crypto is just relearning the basic lessons of finance that banks and corporations learned decades ago. Things like "don't allow customers to use your company's assets as collateral" and "using a bunch of leverage on volatile crypto" are much less frequent in traditional finance, specifically due to regulation or the fact that these strategies have tried and failed before. This isn't to say that decentralized finance is exactly the same as traditional finance, because it isn't. But I think the lesson here is that when you're offering products similar to traditional finance, you should assume that many of the same rules/best practices of traditional finance should apply.
- binkHN 4y ago
  > ...crypto is just relearning the basic lessons of finance that banks and corporations learned decades ago. To my way of thinking, they’re not relearning anything—they’re specifically using lessons learned from history as a playbook to make, well, illicit gains.
- latchkey 4y ago
  Everyone keeps saying regulation is the key, however in todays thread about 'not getting rich trading options' [0], all I see is people talking about how they lost money or that the game is rigged by the biggest players... and that is in one of the most regulated and well known markets on the planet. I don't see how regulation fixes anything. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33547658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33547658
- ETH_start 4y ago
  >>This isn't to say that decentralized finance is exactly the same as traditional finance, because it isn't. This has nothing to do with decentralized finance. FTX was a traditional centralized financial institution catering to crypto. The leading DeFi apps have had no problems this cycle, and that's because they're fully on-chain, with every transaction validated atomically/in-real-time to ensure its business logic integrity. DeFi's transparency and accountability is what the best CeFi firms strive for. The big risk with DeFi is the possibility of a smart contract vulnerability, but this diminishes over time as these apps have their source code reviewed by more people and go through more real world battle-testing.
nickstinemates 4y ago
This is a common mantra - if it's not your keys it's not yours. Leaving your crypto in an exchange is a huge convenience but also a huge risk for exactly this reason. It's completely the opposite thinking where cash is more dangerous than leaving your money in a checking account for normal people.
SilverBirch 4y ago
I think one thing to think about is that I'm sure someone with integrity is running a crypto exchange and they genuinely are just running a crypto exchange that works. But those guys aren't creating exponential valuations. We can ground this all in real expectations- the CME group is worth 62Bn market cap, Deutche Borse is worth ~30Bn. Why, why, why would you think that a niche crypto exchange is worth more than the biggest European exchange? We know what the comparables are people!

aniforprez 4y ago

While I could say banks are equally guilty of doing shady stuff, the truth is banking is hundreds of years old and as such, has regulations and insurance behind it. Not regulating is how we get messes like the Housing Bubble in the 2000s in the US culminating in the crash in 2011. Crypto being a completely new space has no regulation and no checks and balances which leads to messes like this with companies playing around with their assets and unable to repay their customers when they collapse. I suppose the draw of crypto is inherently that it is a wild, freeform space free from government interference for some people I guess

fred_is_fred 4y ago
Unfortunaely the draw for many isn't that they want a libertarian dream society with no rules, but rather they think they can get rich quick. The "banks are bad" is part of the appeal also. I have a cousin who works in the food service industry (think something like managing a Chipotle) and has put all his liquid assets into crypto and still thinks they will "pay off so he can retire". As for banks - as soon as these crypto scams fail, everyone will find out just why the SEC and FDIC are there. They were not created just because some politician had an idea for more bureaucracy.
- no_wizard 4y ago
  My "hot take" if you will: SEC and FDIC aren't usually, to the general public, negatively seen due to their mission. Its the fact they don't prevent criminal / unethical behaviors beforehand, and banks get away with alot before anyone intervenes. I actually don't think the average US citizen is "anti regulation" with this. I think - and I include myself in this - that we see agencies like the SEC (more so than the FDIC) don't act fast enough or often enough, and when they do, the fines are a slap on the wrist vs the profit made by the bad behavior. In a nutshell, they just aren't acting effectively, and thats why they get a bad wrap.
  - sooheon 4y ago
    Yeah, people like effective regulation, it's just regulatory capture is worse than no regulation.
  - tl 4y ago
    > Its the fact they don't prevent criminal / unethical behaviors beforehand, and banks get away with alot before anyone intervenes. A better example is the IRS with a double standard of overzealous enforcement against individuals and small business who cannot defend themselves and complete non-enforcement against higher tiers of wealthy. In the case of the SEC or FDIC, this has resulted in the near elimination of smaller fish aside from protective carveouts like the Durbin Exempt Interchange.
- codyb 4y ago
  Unfortunately for your cousin, he's the bag holder that the people getting rich quick are going to take for a ride. As far as I can tell.
  - fred_is_fred 4y ago
    yes - he absolutely is. I'm not sure he knows that though.
lkrubner 4y ago
"US culminating in the crash in 2011" The official date given by NBER says that the recession began in December of 2007, which put the economy into a fragile state, which was intelligently managed for another 9 months, before circumstances went beyond anything that could be managed. Then the financial meltdown began in September of 2008.
- eftychis 4y ago
  And to amend a bit, to give the whole perspective: And one of the triggers started when around 2005 the FED started raising interest rates. Which it had lowered more dramatically due to 9/11. https://www.bankrate.com/banking/federal-reserve/history-of-federal-funds-rate/ https://www.bankrate.com/banking/federal-reserve/history-of-... Let that sync in, is my 2c. (Extra:The FED interest rates takes 2 years to kick in to Adjustable Rate Mortgages which where the first to fall.)
  - somuchfordonor 4y ago
    > And one of the triggers started when around 2005 the FED started raising interest rates The fed did not cause the crypto crash. It didn't force people to gamble on cryptocurrencies. It didn't force them to not sell, at the top of the naked ponzi schemes they participated in.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    Interesting. Question, though, and coming back on topic: Did the rising interest rates trigger this (FXT)? There might be a path here, and it would not have the two-year delay of adjustable rate mortgages.
    - eftychis 4y ago
      Cause, no. Make it more likely, along with the world situation we are in and the supply dysrhythmia, yes. Recall FTX used a bunch of cash to save failing companies which would create systemic shock (ironic), acquire and invest lately, including in the Silicon Valley. My guess here: "1-2/3-4 Billion" is enough for liquidity, nobody is going to run on us, we are trusted, especially after us saving the world. There was "bad event rolls" in the system and when they came, nobody can/will/would give them that amount of money. I am sure in great times, they would also find liquidity/loans more easily -- which is what they are still trying to do. ("Everyone" is keeping cash to the chest, waiting to see what happens right now.)
duvenaud 4y ago
I mean, banking was already hundreds of years old in the 2000s. So recent bubbles and crashes in traditional markets seem like evidence that regulation, at least the kind that ends up being implemented, isn't doing much to prevent very bad outcomes.
- pjc50 4y ago
  There are two kinds of risk that are fundamentally unavoidable in being a "bank" - that is, any institution that borrows short and lends long. One is liquidity as a result of that duration mismatch: you have enough money owed to you that you've lent out, but it's not due yet. The other is loan writeoffs: you've lent money that you cannot get back, often because it's secured against an asset whose value has fallen significantly. These can be reduced but not entirely eliminated by setting reserve requirements, LTV ratios, etc., which is what https://www.bis.org/bcbs/basel3.htm https://www.bis.org/bcbs/basel3.htm is all about. You can't really eliminate the duration mismatch without eliminating anything recognisable as a "bank", and it becomes much more expensive to get credit and to do basic financial operations.
  - duvenaud 4y ago
    Thanks for the explanation, but I'm not sure how it relates to my comment. It sounds like you're saying regulations help because they force banks to keep reserves. I think this helps in the short term, but in the long run creates incentives to deceptively package assets into AAA ratings (as in 2008), and that things like FDIC also just create incentives to get too big to fail. So I stand by my statement.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    The problem is that once rates hit zero people will just hoard cash like Keynes suggested with his liquidity trap. The only "funds" available are short term deposits. Nobody is buying certificates of deposits. When the bank issues a loan without a CD it has to create new liquid money, that is the only way. The answer is quite simple, just keep going down with interest rates even if they are negative. That is fully consistent with the loanable funds model.
saurik 4y ago
Centralized financial exchange markets are at least somewhat regulated and notably FTX.US is supposedly A-OK. Just because some stuff in crypto doesn't have regulations doesn't mean it is a free-for-all.
- zen21 4y ago
  What does A-OK mean? No exposure at all?
  - idkyall 4y ago
    As I understand it, FTX outside the US offered many exotic financial products: e.g. 24/7 traded Tesla stock tokens[1], leverage, etc., which I don't believe US based crypto exchanges are allowed to offer(Coinbase stopped offering leverage in 2020, for example). The acquisition offer yesterday did not include FTX.us[2] This may mean that the US part of the exchange and the associated customer funds were not lent out, but we shall find out. [1]https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tesla-tokenized-stock-ftx/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tesla-tokenized-stock-f... [2]https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/08/binance-offers-to-buy-ftxs-non-us-operations-to-fix-liquidity-crunch.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/08/binance-offers-to-buy-ftxs-n...
  - zen21 4y ago
    I guess we now know that A-OK just means one day away from declaring bankruptcy.
- LeafGuild 4y ago
  >Just because some stuff in crypto doesn't have regulations doesn't mean it is a free-for-all. It pretty much does. The free-for-all disregarding of laws (including laws against fraud) is the stated purpose of crypto. They've been pitching this as Fight Club For Finance since the very beginning. The exchanges with a legitimate appearance are just fronts to get you to the back room with all the unregulated tokens offering insane interest rates. If you didn't come for a scam-or-be-scammed fight to the death, there isn't any reason to use crypto. The crypto bros just missed the part where Fight Club falls apart if you tell everyone about it. Or maybe they got too excited and forgot about that rule.
eftychis 4y ago
a) They are similar products banks/certain financial institutions utilize right now, just with corporate debt -- oh what can go wrong in a recession, right? b) Bank runs happened in 2008 (U.S.), 2010-12 etc. A lot of crypto companies buy insurance similar to what the government says, but lacking regulation and the government behind you makes it as you said problematic. But: banks are years old and keep making the same mistakes and failures. Big banks (not your corner side community bank that acts as intermediate and its job is community welfare and good relations) haven't changed. I'd be surprised if we avoid another bank related incident, if we enter a recession.
- pjc50 4y ago
  > your corner side community bank that acts as intermediate and its job is community welfare and good relations Spain used to have a lot of these, and the financial crisis blew almost all of them up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_bank_(Spain) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_bank_(Spain)
ignoramous 4y ago
> ...has regulations and insurance behind it. And billion dollar bailouts. With a few billions every decade or so, FTX probably survives such crises multiple times over.

antasvara 4y ago

In a lot of ways, crypto is just relearning the basic lessons of finance that banks and corporations learned decades ago. Things like "don't allow customers to use your company's assets as collateral" and "using a bunch of leverage on volatile crypto" are much less frequent in traditional finance, specifically due to regulation or the fact that these strategies have tried and failed before. This isn't to say that decentralized finance is exactly the same as traditional finance, because it isn't. But I think the lesson here is that when you're offering products similar to traditional finance, you should assume that many of the same rules/best practices of traditional finance should apply.

binkHN 4y ago
> ...crypto is just relearning the basic lessons of finance that banks and corporations learned decades ago. To my way of thinking, they’re not relearning anything—they’re specifically using lessons learned from history as a playbook to make, well, illicit gains.
latchkey 4y ago
Everyone keeps saying regulation is the key, however in todays thread about 'not getting rich trading options' [0], all I see is people talking about how they lost money or that the game is rigged by the biggest players... and that is in one of the most regulated and well known markets on the planet. I don't see how regulation fixes anything. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33547658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33547658
ETH_start 4y ago
>>This isn't to say that decentralized finance is exactly the same as traditional finance, because it isn't. This has nothing to do with decentralized finance. FTX was a traditional centralized financial institution catering to crypto. The leading DeFi apps have had no problems this cycle, and that's because they're fully on-chain, with every transaction validated atomically/in-real-time to ensure its business logic integrity. DeFi's transparency and accountability is what the best CeFi firms strive for. The big risk with DeFi is the possibility of a smart contract vulnerability, but this diminishes over time as these apps have their source code reviewed by more people and go through more real world battle-testing.

nickstinemates 4y ago

This is a common mantra - if it's not your keys it's not yours. Leaving your crypto in an exchange is a huge convenience but also a huge risk for exactly this reason. It's completely the opposite thinking where cash is more dangerous than leaving your money in a checking account for normal people.

SilverBirch 4y ago

I think one thing to think about is that I'm sure someone with integrity is running a crypto exchange and they genuinely are just running a crypto exchange that works. But those guys aren't creating exponential valuations. We can ground this all in real expectations- the CME group is worth 62Bn market cap, Deutche Borse is worth ~30Bn. Why, why, why would you think that a niche crypto exchange is worth more than the biggest European exchange? We know what the comparables are people!