It’s very interesting to me because when you put your money in a bank and it enters a bankruptcy proceeding, your account (which is in essence an unsecured loan

It’s very interesting to me because when you put your money in a bank and it enters a bankruptcy proceeding, your account (which is in essence an unsecured loan you made to the bank) disappears into the bankruptcy estate, to be shared by the various tiers of creditors in order of priority (to wit: you lose your money). Of course, the FDIC protects you. When you put things (e.g., stock) in a “custodial account” with a company like Charles Schwab or similar, if they enter BK then your property is separate from the bankruptcy estate and must be returned to you, in theory. FTX seems to have combined all the best features of all systems: because they had custody of the tokens, they were able to actually lose them; when they entered bankruptcy, the customer assets could not go to the secured creditors (to the extent that they were custodial, not debt) and they couldn’t go to the customer either (because “not your keys, not your crypto”). Cherry on top: no FDIC protection. The only winner is the criminal, who is free (for a while) to use customer funds to pay Tom Brady to be his friend. “Free from the banks,” indeed.