The News about FTX bankruptcy was explosive in the crypto landscape, rivalling the scope and scale of Enron's downfall in the early 2000s. This watershed moment in the crypto market permanently shifted the status quo, changing how individuals and businesses perceive this industry.
While tragic, the FTX case study is highly informational and sheds light on several fundamental problems in the current crypto landscape.
From the lack of appropriate diligence processes and regulatory failures to a classic case of poor management, FTX is an excellent poster child for factors the crypto industry still has to get right. So, let's explore how this juggernaut company fell from the skies and what we can learn from it.
The Story Behind FTX's Unprecedented Collapse
FTX case study, while fascinating, is quite familiar in the grand scheme of financial fraud and high-profile collapses witnessed in the past. It all started with the meteoric rise of FTX's CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried (commonly referred to as SBF), who swiftly established his reputation as one of the biggest influencers in crypto. In 2017, SBF found one of the fastest-growing quantitative trading firms, Alameda Research. This venture proved very successful and cemented SBF's status as a saviour of crypto in light of the crypto winter 2017.
2018 was a strange year for blockchain. The recent collapse of crypto prices signalled that the entire industry had to pivot and start the maturation process. However, the market was still unsure how to avoid the catastrophic results of the first crypto winter. Thus, the crypto industry placed its bet on several individuals to lead the way.
Due to his tremendous track record and achievements, SBF was one of the chosen leaders to re-invigorate the crypto world. Thus, Sam created his very own trading platform in 2019, FTX. Growing with ridiculous speeds, FTX managed to become the fourth largest crypto trading platform only two years after its launch.
FTX collected considerable investments in Silicon Valley, thanks to SBF's flawless reputation and popularity in this period. Numerous celebrities and high-profile individuals started promoting the exchange as a hallmark of security and reliability. However, the first glimpses of concern started formulating when SBF maintained its majority share in both FTX and Alameda Research, two companies that inherently have a conflict of interest with their respective goals.
FTX Collapse And Money Laundering Allegations
Before November 2nd 2022, SBF and his two "unicorn" companies only received marginal criticism. However, on this crucial day, the first significant allegation came forward from Coindesk. According to Coindesk's private investigation, the balance sheet of SBF's crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, contained more than $ 14 Billion of FTT tokens, native tokens used to conduct transactions on the FTX exchange platform.
In financial terms, this revelation was massive. It implied that FTX's meteoric rise was unnatural, as SBF and his team simply purchased their native token using the Alameda Research capital. If proven correct, this activity was a textbook case of conflicts of interest and white-collar crime of manipulating asset prices on the open market. There were further allegations of money laundering conducted by SBF and his constituents.
Suddenly, the entire world realised that SBF may not be the designated crypto saviour he was coveted as leading up to 2022. Additional evidence and various leaks started pouring in, and the general public swiftly came to the conclusion that FTX and Alameda Research were tied together in a not-so-legitimate way.
The Beginning of The End For FTX
SBF and his team could not provide comprehensive evidence to disprove these allegations. Instead, they merely commented on the situation, claiming that Alameda's balance sheet included $10 billion worth of other assets. Now, it was all but impossible to ignore the signs, as FTX was about to join the ranks of failed crypto exchanges.
Investors and traders started withdrawing their funds from FTX, showing unprecedented volumes that went up to $4 Billion per single trading day. FTX's crypto reserves began to take a massive hit to the system as the company was forced to repay most of its existing deposits. Binance, one of FTX's competitors, announced its decision to bail out the exchange platform and become its majority owner but swiftly decided otherwise. This signalled further mistrust, as crypto experts believed that Binance discovered something severely wrong in the private financial data of FTX.
Finally, the curtains came up, and the entire world realised that FTX did not have the funds to cover even half of the cryptocurrency exchange's deposits, leading to a swift onslaught of criminal charges against SBF. In 2023, SBF was found guilty of several counts of white-collar crime, including fraud and conflict of interest. Now, FTX has firmly joined the ranks of crypto exchanges that failed and seized their existence.
Lessons to Learn From FTX And Its Downfall
So, the FTX case study is a simple one. It is a classic case of manipulating the public trust and hoping that the sheer hype will drive the growth of a single company. However, there are several important lessons to learn from this to improve the future of crypto. Let's explore.
A Textbook Case of Corporate Governance Failure
While there is a lot to be said about the faulty regulatory oversight and lack of the due diligence process, the main reason for FTX's collapse is the failure of governance inside the company. Since it is virtually impossible to eradicate the chance of white-collar crime completely, company founders must remain impartial and transparent. We have witnessed numerous individuals like SBF utilising their public persona to garner public support and unconditional trust. Many of them turned out to be fraudsters who hoped that they would never be caught.
In these instances, it is up to the company members and highly ranked officers to come forward and try to reclaim their integrity. While we can discuss the regulatory faults and other factors, the most extensive line of self-defence is the sense of responsibility displayed by fair-minded individuals. Like the whistleblowers of Enron and Madoff, most use cases of sizable corporate fraud are uncovered from within, and this trend must continue to establish a straightforward rule - Fraudulent activities and scammers are always exposed in the end!
While malicious individuals will always tend to commit white-collar crimes without moral dilemmas, their peers will always be responsible for coming forward and reporting the crimes. Today, the financial world has become cleaner due to this tendency, as CEOs know that even middle-ranked employees can swiftly break down their house of cards.
Regulations Have Become A Necessity in Crypto
On a more technical note, the FTX collapse signalled two significant deficiencies in the crypto landscape - the near-complete absence of investor diligence and fragile regulatory measures. In 2023, various regulatory bodies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), have turned the regulatory restrictions to eleven in the crypto field. These laws obligate crypto exchanges to become completely transparent and disclose vital financial data regularly.
Now, most crypto trading platforms have to prove they have sufficient reserves to accommodate all possible withdrawals from the platform. They also have to prove that they do not have any conflicts of interest related to any material sibling companies or partners. Finally, crypto exchanges must provide trustworthy financial information to concisely prove all of the above and without any exceptions. Due to the inherent anonymity and information shortage in the crypto landscape, regulators are going beyond these legislations to establish a safe environment for crypto users.
It still needs to be determined if the proposed regulations will sufficiently transform the current crypto landscape, but they are certainly a step in the right direction. However, the influx of new laws has created an entirely new problem for this industry - overregulation, which could limit the user's freedom in the long run.
The History is Repeating Itself With the Crypto Industry
While such a complete failure on all fronts might seem like a new phenomenon in finance, it is anything but. Companies like Enron and Madoff lead the way, among many other documented cases of complete governance failure and high-profile fraud.
However, the conventional world of finance has learned its lessons from these spectacular collapses. In Enron's case, the financial industry changed its approach to trusting and evaluating large-scale corporations as it became apparent that surface-level checks were insufficient.
FTX's impact on crypto could be similar to Enron's, forcing the entire market to realise the fundamental problems hamper its growth. The unfortunate aspect is that FTX was not all that different from Enron's inside fraud. Both collapses were caused by senior management believing the sheer industry growth would shield them from disclosing the troublesome inside information. Thus, history repeats itself once again.
Post factum, the only thing the crypto industry can do is revise corporate controls and overhaul its approach to evaluating new projects. Blind trust and empty hype are no longer viable in this field, as it has led the entire market to a massive crash that nearly killed it.
Final Thoughts
The FTX case study is quite simple in its nature but very complex with its numerous technicalities. From compromised systems integrity and bad management decision-making to poor regulations and blind trust, numerous factors contributed to one of the biggest collapses in young crypto history.
The only thing we can do now is to learn from the FTX events and try our best not to replicate them in the future. Every crypto investor should be mindful of who they support and why since this industry is still quite fragile and requires the brightest minds to take the market to the promised land.
