This whole saga has done irreparable damage to crypto. It will take a lot of time for it to come out of this hole. When there is money involved, and that too this much, there will be conspiracy theories flying around and the regular retail investor will be tough to win back. It will be very interesting to see what happens from here on out. Crypto doesn’t have any uses to begin with, if it’s purely used as pump and dump schemes why bother?
All it takes is a business case: how will this business make money? Where will its cash flow come from? Where's the value-add? How easy is it to be out-competed? Who are the existing market players? How do they make money? What are you offering customers that will attract them to your business? What is the horizon for profitability?
You know, absolutely fundamental questions that have never been asked or answered of crypto. Questions that were "presumed answered" by made-up market capitalisations, and the flood of teenagers and young-adults into the schemes.
"This time" is never different. The route to making a sustainable profit never changes.
I don’t know what you’re suggesting here really but in general running an exchange seems like a reasonable looking business – you match someone who wants to buy with someone who wants to sell and collect a tiny fee – and FTX appeared to be well run and profitable. The risks would mostly be getting hacked, massively (unintentionally) screwing up the accounting or being outcompeted. I don’t think one could have easily predicted this from first principles and if you’d told me a year or 5 months ago that one of the big N exchanges would blow up before 2023, I wouldn’t have guessed FTX.
Not sure about that. I didn't even knew FTX existed. Alt coins the drama surrounding them are too high volume low impact. But I always thought of crypto as gambling with extra steps. I think that most people in crypto know the ropes by now.
I'm curious about when you thought it was anything else?
I don't think this will affect its reputation noticeably.
Which demographic is going to be turned off by this?
The regular public won't hear about this. the FIRE investor people basically seem to use a percentage as a lottery ticket. Wall Street I would hope already saw the consistent story.
Is it hard core blockchain people, who knew of all the other crashed parties, but thought surely that's all behind us for the big players, having grown up now? But then nothing seems to faze them.
Maybe the whales who don't actually care about blockchain, but were sold angel investor status? Yeah, possibly.
Regular public were shown multiple FTX TV adverts featuring A-list celebrities. The collapse of FTX is being featured on major news outlets. I'm pretty sure ordinary people will hear about it.
> The regular public won't hear about this.
From what I am reading, quite a few people had money in FTX so this may not be entirely true. The word will spread about people who lost it all in the FTX bankruptcy.
