Did Something Happen in Crypto This Week?

Jack SoloweyFrank Sinatracrooned, “You’re riding high in April, shot down in May.” When it comes to CEO of the FTX crypto exchange and would‐​be policy impresario Sam Bankman‐​Fried (“SBF”), it’s more like “You’rethrowing twitter shade on Saturday, looking for a bailout next Tuesday. ”In crypto, karma moves fast. And in Washington, a crisis —such as a prominent brand in a buzzy industry losingbillions—is thought to be a terrible thing to waste. Nonetheless, policymakers should not hastily patch perceived regulatory gaps in counterproductive ways, such as by scapegoatingcrypto technologies that mitigate by design some of the very risks plaguing FTX. Rather, the fate of FTX underscoresthe need for careful line drawing between what FTX is —a centralized crypto exchange, or a financial intermediary —and decentralized crypto exchanges that remove the need for such intermediaries.As of this writing,the story of the rise, run on, and halting rescue of international crypto exchange FTX (not to be confused with a separate U.S. entity, FTX ​.US) is still developing. According to SBF himself in a profanity ‐​laden twitter mea culpa, even he is “still fleshing out every detail.”But at a high level, here are some data points so far. In 2017, SBF founded trading firm Alameda Research. Hemade a mint of money arbitraging the difference in price of Bitcoin in the U.S. and that in Korea and Japan. In ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs