FTX | My exposure and thoughts

*Many information regarding this event has not been verified and most of the information are known through twitter. SBF has not officially explained the whole situation although he mentioned that he screwed up and that Alamada will be winding up. So forgive me if information is wrong, do let me know and I will correct it accordingly.

It’s been a crazy year for cryptocurrency, I don’t even know how Bitcoin is still 5 digits and ETH is 4 digits currently. I think there will be a lot more volatility as more dominos effect come as we see how big the effects of the downfall of FTX and Alameda is. It is really difficult to tell the whole story as there are many factors and versions but I am sure many have shared what really happened so for example Chain Debrief and Seedly.

What now?

SBF did explained on leaked messages that he is trying to raise some money however we don’t what is really going to happen now going forward. The dominos effect is huge as everyone wonders where all the money is at? FTX is huge being the 2nd/3rd largest exchange in the world for cryptocurrency. FTX going down means that customer deposits are gone and even investors money where Temasek is also in as well as Tom Brady. But the collapse of Alameda is also frightening as the exposure is not fully visible. So far, BlockFi seems affected and VC firm, Sequoia Capital is marking FTX investments as 0.

Alameda is a quantitative cryptocurrency trading firm SBF founded and it has been speculated that FTX transferred customer’s deposits to Alameda for them to trade. There are really not much evidence coming out right now as no information have been mentioned by SBF although he had an apology twitter thread that he screwed up.

Lost some funds but managed to transfer out majority

From the LUNA crash, 3AC and Hodlnaut experience, I had transferred about 80% of my BTC and ETH to my cold wallet as trust is becoming tough in crypto. For my exposure to FTX, I lost an amount of Solana staked on FTX and about $50 USD. When twitter first speculated or had some tweets about CZ wanting to sell FTT, on 7 November 2022, I quickly transferred my remaining ETH and BTC out of FTX into my cold wallet. No way was I gonna risk it, although I did not think that FTX would collapse or be unable to adhere the 1:1 withdrawals, after all, SBF/FTX baited out many companies that suffered from the LUNA and 3AC implications and all along we have been reading on how he had billions of dollars. So definitely, FTX would not collapse so easily right? Well, it only just took a day for all to crumble as customers start withdrawing out and they were unable to match the withdrawals.

It is definitely painful when you hear of people who had substantial amount in FTX and are now unable to withdraw. It’s like they survive the majority of 2022 just to be crushed by FTX which is no foreign name to those in crypto. FTX was thought to be “too big to fail” in a way before this happened. Was it greed that caused this? I mean he was already loaded and there are just so many things that needs to be explained, lots of why. I did watch the Bankless podcast that SBF did with Erik Voorhee before this whole thing happened, it was a fierce discussion regarding regulation and I had to side more with Erik Voorhee especially so when we saw the tweets SBF made after the podcast. But things escalated and well, here we are.

Getting out of crypto?

2022 has been a mind-blowing year for cryptocurrency and the world. I really feel like I aged many years in terms of experiencing the ups and downs of cryptocurrency just in 2022. I did consider taking a break from crypto after the LUNA crash but to be honest, it’s tough when you see the builders and innovations. Especially when we saw the Ethereum merge that happened in August.

It took a long time for the merge and it finally happened. Amazing effort by everyone involved. Even now, it dampens your mood when someone who was supposed to be an advocate or had achieve substantial power and wealth from cryptocurrency suddenly does something weird and sabotages other retail investors. You would question on whether is it worth staying on.

I would say scrolling though twitter and catching up on crypto news has become a daily routine and quitting this will make my life less interesting? But for now, I prefer the boring investments, VOO, QQQ, BTC and ETH. That’s all and I won’t be chasing after any crazy gains. Switching onto Gemini to execute my buys. Hope everyone is doing well and let’s get over this, Christmas is coming right up!