FTX

babypho

You can get 3%+ with a fdic HYSA right now. 2.5% yield is such a low amount for an unnecessary risk. You dont want to be the next FTX, Gemini, or one of those dead exchanges victim.

fan_of_hakiksexydays

>Everyone's bullish right now Yea, but all those bullish people have left crypto and gone to chips and AI stocks. Also, sentiment ratio is not every reliable. It's calculating positive vs negative mentions in online posts. Which is already subjective. But keep in mind, that in the past, when we got deeper in the bear market, sentiment ratio started to climb back. Mainly because a lot of people had left, and the only people still posting were bagholders. So even if the market continued to drop and, people continued to exit, the ratio wasn't getting lower. At least up until FTX and Luna tanked.

zesushv

UST/Luna, mtgox, and FTX are arguably the worst events to have happened in crypto... Many are still devastated.

Noels_Nose

lol remember when reddit partnered with FTX

BlindDriverActivist

Crypto died (for now). No hype, no speculation. The years of rugpulls, foundation dumping on certain projects, FTX, Terra, Binance market manipulation, bad monetary policy for risk assets at the time, Trump’s involvement, etc just made everyone collectively say screw this nonsense. Interest went in to perps, then to polymarket and this AI boom drew retail in another direction.

liquid_at

I was trading on FTX. do i need to say more?

fan_of_hakiksexydays

I mean there was also a lot more gold too back then, than what we see now. People put some good effort into analysis, we sometimes had some really creative posts, some funny stuff, some good debate, and thankfully some good in-depth warning about Luna and FTX which saved my ass lol. But we also had a lot of low effort crap. A ton of it. We got a lot of everything basically, because more people participated. But the nice thing about Moons, is anything that the community didn't think was working, they could propose and vote to fix it. And we did manage to start fixing a lot of things. But it took a long time, and we ran out of time too quickly.

Expert-Evening9303

Yeah but that's also why it survived when Celsius and FTX blew up.

zesushv

Sadly yes.... With the events that have been unfolding in recent weeks, FTX wasn't just a cex, it was a gathering of fraudsters with a common goal - **reap people off their hard earned money.**

True_Bodybuilder8095

**Looks like the FTX mess is still costing people big time.**

marvinrabbit

FTX stole everyone's money. And they linked funds in exchange accounts with funds in their company's related investment accounts so they could keep paying out investment accounts. Then all those bad investments started failing and suddenly there wasn't money left.

__Quarzer__

30% of my BTC are still on 6 different exchanges. Reason is easy. If I need fast money I dont have to be afraid of blocks. I bought the sats with my FIAT and let them there. If I need to sell some of them, they will return to the exact same bank account and all is fine and fast. Why 6 different? U heard of FTX? U never know. Diversity of exchanges and not assets. I'm 100% in BTC. 😄

FriendsMade_MeDoIt

I don’t think comparing it 1:1 to 2022 really works tbh. Back then everything was blowing up at once. Rate hikes, Luna, FTX, risk assets getting nuked. Right now BTC still feels way more macro headline-driven than structurally broken. Could we see 48k? Sure, if oil keeps ripping and markets go full risk-off. But every dip lately has been getting bought pretty aggressively too. Feels more like chop and fear than full capitulation. My friends keep calling every red week “the next 2022” and then BTC randomly bounces 10% lol.

GrokM14232

the Voyager saga is the tail risk of the 2022 cycle playing out through the court system. six months extension is not unusual for complex creditor claims. the interesting macro signal is whether retail crypto holders have updated their CEX custodial risk model after Voyager, FTX, Celsius, or whether the 2024-2025 run made people forget the lesson

Veganarchyst

We have moved into a different era BTC has been captured by the financial industrial complex in a way that wasn't imagined before It started with Celsius and FTX collapse Actually it started before with Stellar Lumens, though they all were connected and involved In fact it is the utilization of PAPER Bitcoin and the regular financial systems that are at the center of it And people are accepting that and buying into it They are buying the sh!tcoins that prop up the fake paper markets Bitcoin is still unique, it is still scarce and decentralized But if people still buy ETFs of Bitcoin and still leverage gains it using other systems that bet for or against it, then we aren't really talking about Bitcoin We are talking about Wall Street and typical highly leverage and centralizedd financial fiat system co-opting the Bitcoin structure, but falsely They are using the name and the idea, but not using the actual thing (just as FTX and Stellar Lumens and Celsius did) So just as stock markets have 2008 and 1930 style crashes, we will again have a bubble pop kind of crash that will wipe out these ponzi like systems built on fake paper Bitcoin, but it hasn't actually affected Bitcoin All other Bitcoin rips before ETFs were created were based on climbs from Bitcoin retail buys and sells, but since somewhere in the FTX debacle era that changed and we are in a different place now Retail is silent or dead. Stuck in a permanent Fear index, so not buying Now all purchases are backdoor behind the scenes over-the-counter, which makes it able to not actually buy Bitcoin but buy paper IOU Bitcoin and it doesn't affect the price or volume the same way It's 2008 derivative markets again - and that system popped, it blew up, and this will as well We MUST have our BTC in cold wallets, away from the ponzi paper systems When things fail and giant systems all sell wanting their fiat instead of BTC held in Michael Sayler style paper off market Coinbase (FTX style) wallets, many people will not get their Bitcoin or investments back If this can ever all be cleared out and actual small wallet, small individual buyers come back into the market, YES it could start ripping 10x 100x again But we have been stuck in a FEAR index without any retail buys since, well, maybe even since 2021-2 when Celsius and FTX collapsed the BTC system and retail hasn't actually recovery yet Will it? Can it? I am not sure anymore Too much Blackrock and Wall Street ponzi manipulation happening This has always ended in a bubble bursting before, so history says it should all get clearer out, but I'm not sure anymore, we are in something different now If you watch Simon Dixon, we are in a different kind of thing, a new financial order is being created All stablecoin driven in the EU and America and even the UAE, and it's all set up to drain everyone's fiat, but theou paper Bitcoin so a finance system where money can be switched off and it's all digital so you will "own nothing and be happy" via subscription systems (& CBDCs or stablecoin systems) They want everyone to own ETFs which are subscriptions, so us retail dump our hard wallet Bitcoin and take paper instead so they can grab all the actual BTC and then the new world financial order can be set up And the Bitcoin revolution, the alternative financial system will be captured and they will control it instead of the original retail early adopters (and you are one of them via 2013 buying) No one knows how it will work out, but it's all connected and it will implode / explode soon Just make sure when it does you have your BTC safe in coldwallet custody, NOT on an exchange Not sure how it comes back, not sure how retail gets from FEAR index back to GREED index again where Bitcoin can rip again 10x or 30x again, but Bitcoin is built to do it, but we are actually really in uncharted territory, a tired saying, but the entire financial destructive system is trying to take your Bitcoin and build THEIR system, the old fiat system, again using it Bitcoin was invented to NOT let that happen So don't sell yours and let them take it over I wish I knew how it will play out or how it will change back - I think we have to go through a much worse than 1930s style world collapse to see how the dust settles and see who survived and what the new financial world looks like In the meantime, support the Bitcoin network by using it, do small buying and selling with small mom and pop buyers and sellers using actual Bitcoin That's how it started and that's what it's for and that's the alternative financial system, that's how it survives - OUTSIDE the fiat system It isn't about "number go up" in the fiat / dollar designated system anymore - it's Bitcoin based valuation on its own to survive - it's 1984, it's a Brave New World - and we don't know yet what the other side dystopia or utopia looks like yet But original bitcoiners are who choose what it will look like, not Wall Street, not Blackrock Cold Wallet store, only buy sell and use with small mom and pop individual places that use Bitcoin No ETFs no Strategy no Coinbase no fiat backed ponzi systems (no sh!tcoins) Sounds impossible (maybe) But Bitcoin was built to be an alternative, so you have to live alternatively, outside the system, outside the regular way of thinking

Satochip

Great questions, let me break these down: **12 vs 24 vs 20 word seed phrases** 12 and 24 word phrases follow the BIP39 standard (the most widely used). 12 words = 128 bits of entropy, 24 words = 256 bits. Both are cryptographically overkill for any realistic brute-force attack. 20-word phrases aren't part of BIP39 — they come from different standards (like Electrum's newer format). Neither is "better" in practice; compatibility with your wallet matters more than word count. **"What's more secure than a seed phrase?"** The seed phrase IS the security layer, the real question is how you *store* it. Hardware wallets (cold wallets) keep your *private keys* on an offline chip, so your seed phrase never touches the internet. A dedicated backup device like [Seedkeeper ](https://seedkeeper.io)stores your seed phrase encrypted inside an EAL6+ secure chip rather than on paper, harder to lose, photograph, or destroy. **On your sovereignty argument** You're right. The tradeoff is responsibility vs. trust. Exchanges can freeze, get hacked, or go under (see: FTX). Self-custody means *you* are the bank. The "lost forever" fear is valid but manageable with proper backups, losing a cold wallet just means restoring from your seed phrase onto a new device. Good intro read: [https://satochip.io/seedphrase/](https://satochip.io/seedphrase/)

cooltone

Top class. Thanks for this. I've been using the floor model as my basic strategy for a few years now - using homegrown constants. It's good to see the Santostasi-Perrenod constants accurately listed here. From the Floor model strategy I have learnt that it is challenging to predict when the price hits the Floor. This is because at the point of committing short term volatility is dominant. It becomes easy to hesitate and miss the bottom. I prefer to position the floor slightly higher than the this model to counteract the hesitancy. It means that events like FTX are missed, which I did, but I believe hitting them is more luck than judgement.

FluidWater

I think he forgot about FTX 😞

LargeSnorlax

> also someone remind me why we needed a decade and multiple exchange collapses to get to “maybe CFTC and SEC should have defined boundaries” because that seems like something we couldve figured out in like 2017​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ So, like Canada, the US basically pretended they had no idea what Crypto was since 2009. It wasn't moving large amounts of money so it was just a nerd thing, something for people who were irrelevant. The bull run and subsequent run up of 2017 changed that. People realized that people were moving HUGE amounts of money, mostly through exchanges that were straight up fraudulent. 95% of Canada's volume in crypto was moving through one tiny exchange, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadriga_(company) When Quadriga went under, and the owner mysteriously disappeared, warning claxons finally began to ring up here. There is an entire market and subset of people moving HUGE tons of money through a bunch of platforms that are completely unregulated, unmonitored and unenforced. People are losing their life savings and no one cares. For the US, this wasn't a wake up call. No one cared about Canada, and a large amount of exchanges were "legitimate enough". Wheels were turning behind the scene though, people were looking into shady places like Binance and places that emulated Binance's practices. For the US, it took FTX to wake it up. FTX changed everything. The bull run of 2021 cemented that Crypto was now mainstream and *someone* had to look at it. Exchange closures, exchange regulations, massive high profile court cases and suddenly now it has to be looked at. Someone has to make some sort of regulation, it's a ""legitimate"" industry that needs some sort of rules, even if they're loose ones. The clarity act absolutely isn't perfect and is largely for surveillance but it's *something*. It's over a decade too late and way too far behind for the average person, but crypto has to have *some* rails, and it's good they're finally at least laying the groundwork for them to be placed *somewhere* rather than completely ignoring it and closing their eyes and ears to its existence.

Astronut38

Situations like FTX burned too many high profile people and brought about quite a few law suits. Now advertisers and PR types want nothing to do with promoting Exchanges, lest they be caught up in scandal like soo many celebs were with the likes of FTX.

longonbtc

The article is not about SBF or FTX. It's about Satoshi Nakamoto and Bitcoin. It simply listed SBF in a list of blockchain promoters but not even that section of the paper was about SBF. Literally none of it is about SBF. And the Wikipedia references are just showing the readers who the list of people are.

DogAttackVictim

Problems: Sam Bankman-Fried is mentioned in the PDF without any elaboration. The author did try to state that Sam Bankman-Fried was a celebrity, which...was true, but it was irresponsible for the author to not point out that FTX didn't publish where its reserves (which didn't quite exist; they didn't own enough Bitcoin and were reliant on their very useless token instead) were. The PDF is from 2022, but FTT/FTX's collapse didn't begin until Nov 2022. The article uses Wikipedia links in references. You can use Wikipedia just to mention where you got some information from and as the PDF goes, when you accessed it, but this is not the right way to write a paper. The person who wrote this is a real doctor in Ireland. They should know more than anyone that you shouldn't use Wikipedia as a source because to this day, there are edit wars on it. You can, however, use Wikipedia's sources. Not a problem: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxaG1q0DW74](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxaG1q0DW74)

RevolutionaryPie5223

Just use the top 10 sites. But even then still a small chance it fks up (See FTX). So always use a cold wallet.

0xZennite

decent points but you're framing this as a binary when there's a third option — DeFi with immutable smart contracts. no CEX counterparty risk, no seed phrase anxiety beyond normal wallet security. some protocols deploy contracts where ownership is renounced and the code literally cannot be modified. you hold in your own wallet, interact with a trustless contract, done. the real lesson from 2022 wasn't 'use a CEX' — it was 'understand what you're trusting.' celsius, voyager, FTX were all custodial platforms people trusted. the failure mode you're downplaying is the exact one that wiped out the most people. self-custody + audited immutable contracts > trusting any third party

BlazingPalm

You’ve got a point, but then again, FTX, Celsius, Voyager, etc seemed pretty legit at the time… You only have to be wrong once for devastation. Choose wisely, everyone.

toolfan89

Ledger sucks and i personally would never use one...theres alot better wallet options out there. but the advantages of using a hardware wallet is that you have full control over your bitcoin and if the exchange faces problems or goes down (FTX for example) you wouldnt be affected.

LiquidityCompass

Not your keys for an extra 0.10%? Hard pass. On 1 BTC at ~$82k, that’s around $82 a year. If risking self-custody for an extra $82/year feels acceptable given the risks, go for it… but after Celsius and FTX, I’d pass.

Ok-Astronaut4952

There was also a bear market in the stock market that had a huge effect, it was already happening before FTX. It wasn’t just FTX I agree for the most part but OP saying bye bye to the 70’s is just stupid haha. Interest rates are probably gonna be going up and inflation running so hot is definitely concerning. It’s not a good macro environment right now and BTC is still very much a risk asset

Peepzer

Won’t happen this time unless another fraudulent company goes bust. 2022’s second dip was FTX going bye-bye

SatoshiTrails

Main ones people overlook: \*\*Custody risk\*\* — lose your seed phrase, lose your bitcoin. No recovery option. \*\*Exchange risk\*\* — if it's on an exchange, you hold an IOU, not bitcoin. FTX proved this. \*\*Inheritance risk\*\* — if you die without a clear plan, your heirs likely can't access it. \*\*Operational risk\*\* — sending to the wrong address, signing a malicious transaction, getting phished. \*\*Regulatory risk\*\* — rules around reporting and taxation keep shifting. The price going to zero is one risk. Holding it badly and losing it anyway is a different, more preventable one.

csfrayer

I'm a pretty big crypto critic. I think my first comment was entirely objective analysis but wanted to flag that in good faith for this one which is subjective. Since you're asking for a broader opinion: In my work trying to get this bill rewritten before it passes, I have often said that the most effective anti-crypto lobbyist right now is POTUS. So yes, I think it will be worse. I also think that in the long run, as we have learned in other financial markets, regulations actually benefit the industry. The 'very strict and unsuitable' securities laws crypto is fighting right now were passed in 1933 and 1934. Since those rules were put in place, America has become the undisputed leader in global finance. Nobody else even comes close. And that's held true even as we've faced huge competition and lost global share in other industries. Strict regulation is pro-industry. I don't know how you'd come to any other conclusion. I think this bill as written will ultimately result in another FTX if not worse.

No-Masterpiece2246

OK kudos to you for remaining relatively clean. I think you'll agree you're the exception rather than the rule. Gary is back at MIT as an endowed chair, I hear he lectures about how crypto works, no thanks to him. I think the finance industry is in need of some serious reform too. It seems like SEC is mostly a paper tiger and/or an attack dog for opponents of big hedge funds and banks. In 2020-24, Crypto projects that were viable but required a US legal entity were killed in their sleep by fear of some big US government hammer. The arbitrary enforcement ensured that some of the brightest projects (ie Ethereum and Solana) wasted years and billions trying to "comply", and contorted themselves into knots for lawyers and pencil-pushers, all to adhere to laws that weren't even designed to apply to decentralized protocols. This US regulatory circus caused the rise of DeFi, which is now the locus of crypto fraud. USA had the unique distinction of being hostile to crypto innovation. We were on banlists with Sudan, North Korea, etc., just so crypto entrepreneurs and users wouldn't get threatening letters or worse. Legit companies like Binance set up straw man entities to adhere to silly rules that seemed to be invented on the spot. All of this was downright embarrassing to Silicon Valley. Yet somehow the most US-regulated crypto company in history, FTX, stole billions and cratered confidence and the entire crypto market. You must admit that's incredibly ironic. And we all know what happened, SBF and his insider family bought off the entire sitting administration. They didn't just steal crypto, they stole COVID relief money, and they laundered billions thru the Bahamas. Rumor has it half of the Ukraine Aid never made up Zelensky's ass and came back into the US via FTX. No serious investigations into fraudulent transactions at FTX by US Congressional reps was ever done. With the help of Caroline's dad's and Bankman's direct line to Gensler, SBF planned to monopolize crypto trading in the USA. Meanwhile Coinbase and Binance remained hamstrung in a toxic legal stew. After all of this nonsense, what is the best way to prevent crypto fraud? Education. I encourage you to expand your horizons and call out fraud inside the halls of Wall Street. I say that Saylor's MSTR is the biggest fraud in crypto, and Lutnick's Tether is a close second. And what is needed to make that fraud obsolete is to spread the word. Think of Trump's token, how much damage has it really done? People are smarter than they look. Finally, I hear that Credit Default Swaps are quietly being sold to offload toxic private lending and real estate debt. Never seen this movie since 2008. What can be done about it this time? Thanks.

RealoRc

How are big banks robbing you then, using the same questioning? All the new crypto legislations leaves out safeguards built in to protect the customers. The same safeguards, fdic insured, regulatory enforcement, etc. that are covered when you put money into a bank. They want massive crypto expansion while under Republican control, then when there's a few massive crashes.. we might talk about regulations if the Democrats are in control. You know how no one trusts Tether all these years but they manage to stay chugging along. If only a regulatory agency got to peek behind the secrecy.. or a whistleblower would leak something damaging. FTX & Alameda Research: Filed for bankruptcy in November 2022 after a surge in withdrawals. Voyager Digital: A crypto lender that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2022 after the collapse of Three Arrows Capital. Celsius Network: A crypto lending platform that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2022. BlockFi: A crypto lender that filed for bankruptcy following exposure to the FTX collapse. Three Arrows Capital (3AC): A crypto hedge fund that filed for bankruptcy after the collapse of TerraUSD/Luna in 2022. Mt. Gox: In 2014, the exchange handled over 70% of Bitcoin transactions before shutting down due to a massive hack

Suspicious-Holiday42

It happened because of FTX

110010010011

Worked well for FTX Arena.

fan_of_hakiksexydays

Remember when it was this bullish when we were at the bottom of the last bear markets, like after Luna/FTX, and even the months after when it was slowly climbing back? Yea me neither. We haven't even come close to hitting max pain yet.

Legitimate-Ad-6385

I was standing in a TSA line at the airport, nonstop refreshing my phone to keep up. I remember a guy posting on r/cc a couple months before, basically predicting exactly what was happening and getting clowned on. It was wild to see it play out with that post in mind. After Celsius went down, all my crypto was with blockfi. I withdrew shortly after that and managed to not lose anything. Then watching FTX collapse was the like the cherry on top of the whole shit storm

sidzzz__1007

Most of the sentiment shift comes from liquidity drying up post-2022, ETF-driven BTC/ETH focus, and trust damage from FTX/LUNA. Retail attention rotated away from mid-cap narratives, so only stronger networks stayed relevant. A few niche experiments like RasputinCoin ($RSPN) still try to build, but visibility is limited.

csfrayer

I'll address these one by one but first I want to say - I see on reddit all the time that "regulations are written in blood." That is no less true of financial regulation than it is of nuclear power production. These rules were created over two centuries of hard economic lessons that destroyed tens of millions of lives. Everyone financial participant, including crypto, casts them aside at all of our peril. With regard to the claims in your post - I tried to arrange this parallel to the order in which you raised them. Coinbase went public 3 days before Gensler was made Chair of the SEC. We did not review that S-1. The existing framework allowed and allows both for registered crypto investment contract securities and for offerings subject to registration exemptions. Both existed prior to our time at the agency while others registered while we were at the agency. The SEC does not make a list of every asset in the United States that is a security. The securities laws passed by Congress and the judiciary have created definitions that hew in what the SEC has authority over. The securities test is not a black line - it's an analysis of an entire set of facts. People argue about this characterization in court - and not just on crypto. On the face of it, it would be unreasonable to ask the SEC to review every one of the 10,000 crypto tokens that are trading, assess the facts and circumstances of every one of them and then come up with a list of those which are securities. Under our Howey analysis, there was no reason to treat crypto assets offered and sold as securities distinctly from any other offering. A huge amount of the SEC's enforcement work is identifying and prosecuting unregistered or fraudulent securities offerings. The agency does that by taking issuers to court because it's the issuer's job to analyze whether or not their offering is a security and register it with the SEC. Again, it is the job of the issuer to register and put itself on the list not of the SEC to try to hunt down everything in the US that might be a securities offering. In the case of a platform like Coinbase, in order to demonstrate SEC jurisdiction, you have to demonstrate that the platform is facilitating trading in at least one security. So we provided analysis of specific securities trading on the platform in order to meet that jurisdictional test. Again, there's no world in which the SEC has enough resources to perform that analysis on every single available token. We didn't make any of this up - it's how the securities laws have always worked. Crypto argues that the underlying technology means the economic analysis needs to be different. But it doesn't, any more than it needed to change when we digitized the market. The arbitrary and capricious ruling was not related to any enforcement action, but to the agency's denial of a 19b-4 rulemaking proposal. That case wasn't even related to the status of any crypto asset as a security but to meeting certain test under the 34 Act to list ETFs on a national securities exchange. That case was also decided on an economic analysis and while I disagree with the court's analysis, I agree that economic analysis was the right was to evaluate the law. To steel-man your argument, I'll assume you meant to bring up the Torres decision re Ripple. That decision did not use the phrase 'arbitrary and capricious.' Torres ruled that initial sales of Ripple were investment contracts, but secondary sales were not. This differed from several other SEC crypto cases that didn't make the secondary market distinction and was baffling to most securities law experts in the broader context. It essentially implied, for example, that Apple stock is a security when its sold in an IPO, but not when its shares are sold in secondary markets. Shortly after this case Jed Rakoff, a judge in Torres's own district, the Southern District of New York, made a sharply different ruling. He is considered to be the most knowledgeable securities law judge in the nation, and it's unusual for a judge in the same district to have criticized his colleague so openly. We did not have jurisdiction over FTX until late in 2022 when they offered non-derivatives products to US customers explicitly. (They were a futures exchange that traded a handful of other tokens that did not meet the Howey test). We did use the tools we had to start collecting data from FTX shortly after we took charge, and we received letters threatening investigations from crypto-friendly members of Congress for overreaching on our authorities. After FTX blew up, we received angry letters from the same members of Congress asking why we hadn't done something to regulate FTX. With regard to FTX and other fraudulent platforms that failed, it takes a long time to investigate a case and bring it to court. Even if we had been lucky enough to pick the exact right targets, there's no way we'd have had litigation ready for all of them within the year we took office and the day they failed. The 'legitimate' companies were not operating inside the rules - they claimed that those rules didn't apply to them. That's wholly different. I have no control over how history remembers me but I know that when I took that job I treated very market participant - crypto or not - on a level playing field. I'm proud of that and I'd like to think that someday history will vindicate our actions. I hope as few people as possible are hurt along the way.

CryptigoVespucci

Wanted to take the time to respond to this in full. Your SEC reviewed and approved Coinbase's S-1 in early 2021 knowing the model and let them go public. Two years later the same SEC came back and sued Coinbase for operating a model that you already approved as an "unregistered national securities exchange." But Coinbase couldn't have registered as a national securities exchange even if they wanted to. That category was designed for venues trading SEC-registered securities, and there's no framework for crypto assets to become registered securities in the first place. Even more headscratching: the SEC charged Coinbase for listing thirteen specific tokens as "unregistered securities" but refused to tell them or anyone else which crypto assets they considered securities, or how to determine it. So the agency's position was effectively: some of these things are securities, we won't tell you which, and we'll sue you for trading them. You guys were just making things up as you went along. At least GENIUS and Clarity are an attempt at making rules, rather than Gensler's failed approach of regulation by enforcement (which a Judge called arbitrary and capricious, as I'm sure you remember). In any case, history will show that Gensler's SEC missed the big frauds (FTX, Celsius, Voyager) while litigating against the legitimate companies trying to operate inside the rules.

slaybrownbeast

I have stopped reading raw texts and been feeding articles/investment thesis/opinions in my gpt plus writing evaluation thesis. this is the first piece / maybe second piece of texts that gpt deemed 'worth reading'. usually it will tell me 'skim only/ not worth reading' so good job. here is what gpt thinks, and what i read / learnt: # A. Verdict **Worth reading** Not because every claim is clean. It is worth reading because the author has the right **big mental model**: crypto did **not** become decentralized Uber, decentralized Facebook, or anti-government money for the masses. The real product-market fit is becoming **internet-native financial plumbing**, especially stablecoins, tokenization, settlement rails, and eventually agentic payments. # B. Why The writing is clear, self-aware, and unusually honest for crypto writing. It does not pretend the old cypherpunk dream won. It admits the original thesis failed, then identifies the stronger replacement thesis: crypto fuses with the old financial system instead of destroying it. The factual spine is mostly directionally right. The GENIUS Act was signed into law on July 18, 2025 and created a federal payment-stablecoin framework. Gary Gensler did step down on January 20, 2025. The SEC also officially dismissed its Coinbase enforcement action in February 2025. Trump and Melania did launch memecoins around inauguration, and the conflict-of-interest / speculative-casino angle is real. But the essay gets too promotional near the end. The stablecoin-volume argument is partly true but also dangerously easy to misuse. Bloomberg/Artemis reported roughly **$33T** in 2025 stablecoin transaction volume, but Visa’s adjusted methodology shows much lower “realer” volume, and McKinsey explicitly warns that most raw stablecoin activity is not real-world payments; it is trading, internal movement, and automated activity. Here is what it thinks your weaknesses are: # E. What is wrong or weak # 1. The volume claim is the biggest weak spot The essay says stablecoins settled $33T in 2025 and are already over $40T this year, on pace for $100T. The $33T number has support from Artemis/Bloomberg, but raw stablecoin volume is polluted by trading, bots, exchange movement, and internal transfers. Visa reports over **$51T** raw volume over the last 12 months but only **$10.2T adjusted** volume, which is a massive difference. So the author is directionally right that stablecoins have scale, but he is using the sexier number. # 2. “Memecoins proved rails could handle massive global volume” is weak logic That is like saying a casino fire drill proves a city’s transportation system is economically productive. It proves capacity and speculation, not durable utility. # 3. The political section is too one-sided The Biden/Gensler hostility claim has truth, but the essay compresses a complex regulatory fight into “they tried to kill crypto.” That is rhetoric, not analysis. It ignores the legitimate reason regulators were aggressive after FTX, Celsius, Voyager, Terra, and retail losses. # 4. NFTs get too much credit “NFTs built a foundation for internet-based property rights” is too generous. NFTs proved digital scarcity and speculation. Durable property-rights infrastructure is still underbuilt. # 5. The AI-agent future is plausible but under-argued The author jumps from stablecoins + AI to “millions of agents will soon transact.” Maybe. But the missing pieces are big: identity, authorization, fraud control, dispute resolution, liability, compliance, spending limits, and trusted agent custody. That is where your thesis is sharper than the essay. The investment question is not “stablecoins go up.” It is: **who owns the control points when autonomous software starts touching money?**

CryptigoVespucci

Agree - FTX was the craziest just because of big and mainstream crypto was at the time. Sam was onstage with Tom Brady, Bill Clinton. FTX on the heat stadium. DeFi summer was a different kind of insanity, but the average person was oblivious to it.

editandy

Great read, kind of a nostalgic walk down the memory lane making me realise how long I have been interested in the market (still no lambo). I also work in the space and think that stablecoins and agentic wallets could really be the biggest thesis going forward. I also like what's happening with RWA, 24h markets with today's word dynamics just make sense. I already see most crypto-aversive tradfi guys getting interested and looking for weekend liquidity. What would you consider the craziest times? My story started around defi summer and I'd say, until this day, FTX was the biggest shock to me.

CryptigoVespucci

That points to **The reckoning (2022)** Basically where leverage and toxic assets systemically infected a lot of the industry, ending with the collapse of FTX. Similar to 08 where subprime systemically infected a lot of institutions

Baeshun

I got 6 figs out of anchor/luna with minutes to spare. Sent the UST to FTX to keep it safe (sold for about $0.9 on the dollar). Got out of THAT with hours to spare. At that point I knew crypto was not a serious business 😆

2LostFlamingos

Why should he take any third party risks whatsoever? It makes zero sense. Even In your example, it’s a shit idea. Using your example, if bitcoin drops 40%, he’s liquidated and all his BTC is gone. Whereas if he just sold 20% of his bitcoin, he buys his car outright and has 80% of his bitcoin. Wanna figure taxes, ok fine, he still has 70% of his bitcoin. And yeah bitcoin has dropped more than 40% within the past 7 months. It’s not “comfortable” at all. And this is without the counterparty risks if you decide to use BlockFi, Celsius, FTX, or one of the others.

aramirez07

“Probabilistic without causality is casino” is just wrong. You don’t need a full causal story to have an edge. Medicine, weather prediction, insurance premiums, and credit risk (to name a few) all work on probabilities with imperfect causality. And you contradict yourself: you dismiss charts as “narratives,” then push your own single-cause narrative (“AI liquidity squeeze forced founders to sell BTC”) with zero proof, counterfactual, or measurements. That’s not science: it's storytelling. No one claims candles are magic. They’re the market’s data record. Patterns are about odds and risk management, not certainty. The FTX/SBF jab is pure deflection. If you have evidence, quantify it. If not, don’t call statistics “casino” while trying to push an unsubstantiated deterministic story. And the Latin quote is just pretentious jargon, and honestly a pretty laughable attempt to sound smart in place of evidence. Haha

fan_of_hakiksexydays

Saylor breaking away from "never selling" Bitcoin is something we probably should have guessed was eventually gonna come. Luckily, STRC on the other hand is something we can see a little bit better, and there's no points for guessing what's coming here when the $100 depegs too much and selling shares or having to raise the yield too high backfires, and people who thought this was like a bank product realize what they bought, and can't get their money. In the past, FTX, LUNA, Voyager, were things that were difficult to see at the time. You could definitely tell something was a bit off and didn't add up. But most people were still hopeful that these were major players, with big player money behind it, "too big to fail", etc... And even people who saw the potential issues of the depeg of LUNA, still said it was very unlikely to happen and there were ways to counter it if it did happen.

deezus_ldn

Why did it dump in May 2022? FTX?

Flowa-Powa

Coinbase is the next FTX

No_Artichoke_5670

Okay, then. Name ONE example with the same gravity of the FTX or Mt. Gox collapse. You keep trying to make the same argument with zero evidence.

No_Artichoke_5670

And what company would that be? There's a near zero chance of Coinbase or Binance collapsing. Coinbase is a US company that's heavily regulated. There's no chance they're stealing everyone's money to make frivolous market bets like FTX did.

No_Artichoke_5670

Last cycle only dropped that low because of the FTX crash. The same happened during the Mt. Gox collapse. There's nothing comparable this cycle/era.

2LostFlamingos

There is no staking of BTC. You’re lending your BTC to someone who will relend it to a short seller and pay you a small percentage of the collected fee. It is demonstrably unsafe. See BlockFi, FTX, Celsius, etc.

Fuzzyfoot12345

this cycle's lows are 4x higher than last cycles lows. 80k CAD compared to 20k CAD during the FTX debacle. If this means our next cycle's lows are 4x higher, I will be a happy camper.

fan_of_hakiksexydays

Normally I'd say that's very hopeful. But since STRC, those rallies are much more worrisome than positive. Because now MSTR is hanging over this like a shadow of FTX. Every time it rallies like this, it's more of a reminder that the black swan is growing into something that could become even worse and come back to haunt us down the line, in a bigger way than previously thought.

spid3rfly

They don't. Sitting in bitcoin isn't going to earn you any yield. If you want some kind of yield from bitcoin, look into stock ticker STRC(not bitcoin but a good product based on bitcoin-11%). If you're transferring or buying bitcoin on an exchange that is promising you yield for letting them hold it, I wouldn't trust it for a second. (See Celsius, FTX, Others) CashApp is probably the best all in one service, whether you want a bank, debit, access to buy stocks, access to buy bitcoin, a savings account that earns interest(fiat only)... you can do it all there.

cicoles

It’s like Mt Gox, FTX and everything in between never happened. lol.

FriendsMade_MeDoIt

Kinda feels like the vibe just matured tbh. Back then everyone I knew was hyped on “next ETH killer” type plays, and group chats were just nonstop altcoin shilling. Now those same people are way more cautious after getting burned on stuff like LUNA and FTX. I don’t think it’s just one thing, more like a combo of big blowups + people realizing a lot of projects didn’t deliver. So sentiment shifted toward “stick with what actually survived.” Even in my circle, the convo went from chasing random alts to mostly BTC/ETH and maybe a few picks people actually understand. The hype isn’t gone, it’s just way more selective now. Feels less like a free-for-all and more like people actually questioning things before piling in.

2LostFlamingos

There is no staking of bitcoin. What someone calls this is you lending them your bitcoin. They re-lend it to someone else who sells it short. The intermediary collects a fee for this, from which they give you a small percentage as your “staking reward.” No it is not safe. See Celsius, BlockFi, FTX, as a few examples.

Drumroll-PH

It’s basically the market maturing after getting burned. After things like FTX and Terra (LUNA) collapsed, people stopped trusting hype and started focusing on what actually survives. That’s why most attention shifted to Bitcoin and Ethereum, they proved they can last through cycles. The rest didn’t necessarily die, they just lost credibility and narrative.

NotSoSchrodinger

I don’t think people just got more negative. Feels more like the market got a lot harsher about what it’s willing to trust. LUNA and FTX didn’t just wipe out capital, they kind of killed that old reflex where people would give alt narratives loads of benefit of the doubt for way too long. Then this cycle had a much clearer institutional bid for BTC, and a bit for ETH, so capital didn’t really spread the same way it used to in older retail-heavy runs. So to me that’s the shift. Not “people stopped caring about ecosystems”, more that liquidity, survivability and actual demand matter a lot more now, and most alts don’t get trusted by default anymore.

cashflashmil

Yeah, the shift is real. A big part of it is that the market got much less forgiving after LUNA and FTX. Those blowups didn’t just destroy capital - they broke trust in a huge part of the old “ecosystem growth” narrative, and research on FTX’s collapse even points to Terra-Luna as the pivotal shock that worsened FTX’s liquidity fragility. The second change is structural. This cycle, a lot more capital is flowing into Bitcoin through ETFs and other institutional channels, which has changed how liquidity enters the market and made BTC much more resilient than in older retail-led cycles. That has hurt alt sentiment. Bitcoin dominance has been sitting around the high-50s, and the usual altcoin season indicators have stayed weak, which tells you capital is still concentrating in BTC rather than spreading across the market the way people got used to in earlier cycles. So I don’t think people suddenly stopped caring about ecosystems. It’s more that the market now cares a lot more about liquidity, survivability, and where real demand is coming from. BTC has an institutional bid. ETH still has relevance. BNB has a functioning exchange-driven ecosystem. A lot of other large caps now get treated as legacy narratives until they prove they still matter. That’s why the vibe feels harsher now. It’s not just cynicism - the market got burned, then matured, and now it’s a lot less willing to give altcoins the benefit of the doubt.

kitbiggz

The best days for crypto gains are probably over for most normal traders. All the wild swings, flash crashes and drama of the past are gone. Mainly because CZ, Sam and FTX and a lot of other wild cards got arrested. Crypto is under full control by the Wallstreet elites now.

Tebasaki

Does that mean he also sold his FTX too?

Middle-Musician-7245

There is always a risk when someone else is custoding the assets, we saw that on Celsius and some FTX and some others more, in this case check hodl hodl, this one i think uses multisg scrow, but pleade before, make your research . Usually the better conditions on lending , less advantage on custody, hodlhodl.com is not as great as ledn, but nobody is custoding

rayven1lk

I had the same reaction. I went in expecting a takedown of actual scams like FTX, Celsius Network, pump-and-dumps, fake yield products, influencer grifts, etc. There’s more than enough real material there. Instead, it felt like the conclusion was already decided first: all crypto = one BIG scam, and then everything got filtered through that lens. A few contradictions / selective points stood out: 1. Bringing up David Chaum as if his criticism means digital currency itself is nonsense. Chaum literally spent decades building digital cash systems before Bitcoin existed. If he calls Bitcoin primitive, that’s not the same as saying the whole concept is fraudulent. 2. Conflating scams built **on top of crypto rails** with the rails themselves. FTX was fraud. Celsius Network was reckless nonsense. By that logic, banking fraud would mean banks themselves are scams. 3. Acting like criminal usage is unique to crypto while ignoring cash, shell companies, laundering through traditional finance, etc. Bad actors use whatever works. 4. Calling the whole ecosystem worthless while barely acknowledging real existing use cases like stablecoin settlement, cross-border transfers, tokenization pilots, and programmable settlement experiments. You can debate scale or future relevance, but pretending zero utility exists is weak analysis. 5. Using experts selectively. If one technical critic says Bitcoin has flaws, that becomes gospel. But experts who see legitimate innovation get ignored. 6. Dismissing Bitcoin as nonsense while skipping the genuinely novel achievement of decentralized double-spend prevention without a central issuer. You can dislike it and still admit that mattered. I really wanted to like it because I’m all for scams being exposed. But calling the entire space a scam is ignorant at best, delusional at worst.

reggieLedoux26

He deliberately conflates the fraud of FTX with the utility of blockchain

courtesy_patroll

His points are shallow. He argued that Bitcoin's code can't be trusted because SBF "changed" the code on FTX. SBF didn't change any code he just diverted funds, and even if he did change code, it has no bearing on BTC.

sam-sung-sv

Correct. Both were released at a good time (FTX implosion, crime is legal now)

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Post is by: Bcom_Mod and the url/text [ ](https://goo.gl/GP6ppk)is: /r/bitcoin_com/comments/1swqrtr/blackrocks_bitcoin_etf_options_market_just/ This is the kind of milestone that reads like a typo, until you check through the numbers. IBIT options open interest on Nasdaq hit $27.61 billion last week, overtaking Deribit's $27 billion. This marks the first time a regulated US product has taken the top position from Deribit, which has operated since 2016 and has been the dominant venue for crypto options globally. Yes, that track record spans multiple bull markets, the 2021 peak, the FTX collapse, and everything else that's happened since. But closing that gap? Only took less than two years. Frame it this way to recognise the gravity of what this means: Deribit represents the platform where professional options traders, hedge funds, and market makers have priced Bitcoin optionality for most of its derivatives history. When analysts talk about implied volatility, skew, max pain, or put/call ratios, the data they're pulling is overwhelmingly Deribit data. It has been the authoritative source of how the market prices risk and expected movement in Bitcoin. That IBIT options have surpassed it says several things simultaneously: * Institutional capital entering throug the ETF wrapper is now large enough to generate a derivatives ecosystem of its own * This ecosystem is built inside of US regulation (on exchanges, with US market structure) * Its investor profile is significantly different (longer-term, more patient / less 'degen' buyer base) Most structurally important: as [IBIT options become the dominant venue, the pricing of Bitcoin risk increasingly happens on regulated infrastructure](https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-etf-inflows-turn-fully-positive-across-key-timeframes-led-by-blackrocks-ibit/). That has real implications for how Bitcoin fits into the broader risk framework of institutional portfolios, how it gets hedged by major asset managers, and arguably how it gets valued. If the venue where risk gets priced shifts from an offshore platform to a Nasdaq-listed product, the asset class has completed a very significant leg of its institutional integration. Deribit is a Coinbase subsidiary now. It isn't going anywhere. But the fact that IBIT, a product that didn't exist in 2024, just took the top position is a data point that tells you more about the velocity of institutional Bitcoin adoption than almost any other single number this year. The pace of this is not normal. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CryptoMarkets) if you have any questions or concerns.*

cooltone

I think everyone has their own theory. I came to the conclusion that the underlying power-law behaviour reveals itself when speculation dries up. From this I predicted ~20k$ would be the bottom. The price stabilised at ~20k$ for a few weeks and I bought. Then FTX tanked the price down to ~25k$. I was gutted, but expected the price to rally back to 20k$ and it did in a couple of weeks. Throughout this I had some BTC from the start of the cycle and watched it get trashed, but I was confident the power-law behaviour would bring it back and it did.

Romanizer

Personally, I see a accumulation phase between bear and bull market which started last week. In the last cycle that happened in August 2022, but was interrupted by the FTX Liquidation. But I agree that with breaking that level mentioned we are going back to full bull mode.

Muted_Adagio2780

FTX

Salamandrine88

The "audits mean nothing" hill is the correct one to die on. Mazars literally gave FTX a clean report 3 months before they imploded mate, absolute state. 8 years without pausing withdrawals > any PDF. Been on Mex and Deribit for derivatives, different flavour of boring but both pass the checklist.

Left_Entrepreneur918

Yeah after 7 years I deleted the apps, just DCA and once a month transfer to hardware wallet. Btc at almost 80k during a bear is insane to me. Now in 2022 I was watching and fretting every hour after FTX, I had made huge purchases all the way down from 50k to 40k to 30k, 20k and watching all that investment tank at 15k, that was stressful. But I held, and still hold

never_safe_for_life

When the tide gos out we see who’s naked. So why didn’t Tether collapse when FTX went down and contagion rekt everyone else in the space? Also the last time I heard this exact same song and dance. Answer: Tether is probably sufficiently collateralized. Do we have to trust them? Hell no. Are they secretly running a scam so vast it’s capable of bringing down the entire space? Also no.

Grunblau

It is manipulated, clearly… I just wish that CZ would stop liquidating longs and start clearing out the shorts. In the FTX trial, SBF’s cohorts acknowledged his directive to keep BTC under $60K.

Liskpro_com

Honestly, whether you're waiting for 2028 or not, the key question is: where are you holding that savings in the meantime? A few options people consider: \- **Fiat savings account;** easy, but inflation eats into it loke crazy. \- **Buying Bitcoin gradually now** (DCA): many would argue waiting for a "perfect moment" is just market timing, which rarely works out. My take: always buy. It's always the right moment. \- **Stablecoins**: crypto exposure without volatility, but counterparty risk exists If you do end up holding Bitcoin, whether now or in 2028, make sure it's in self-custody, not on an exchange. Exchanges can freeze, get hacked, or go under (see FTX a few years back). That's where a hardware wallet matters (Skip Ledger, take a look at Jade, Satochip...) If budget is a concern, Satochip is worth a look, it's a fully open-source card-based wallet at €25, works with Sparrow and BitcoinKeeper (mobile). Not your keys, not your coins. But honestly? The "wait until 2028" strategy has real opportunity cost risk. Lots of people said the same thing in 2020.

NeutralSpacerx

Been through Mt.Gox aftermath, Celsius, FTX and a couple of smaller ones you've probably forgotten about and your takeaway is the right one. CEO going on a live stream within hours instead of hiding behind a comms team was the part that stood out to me too, most execs in this industry pull a disappearing act for 48-72h while their lawyers in X lol write something that says nothing. Your last line is the real lesson though a decent outcome once doesn't mean you rely on it twice.

Internet_is_tough

Why write this whole post if you don't understand what you are writing? There is no forced liquidation. STRC is s preferred stock. It's not a loan. He doesn't owe back any principle. The dividend is engeneered to keep it at par at 100$, but it's not a bond. There is no legal obligation to pay a dividend. They can suspend it as any company can suspend any dividend. This will kill the product obviously, but there is no liquidations. Strategy is not FTX.

Happy-Control5922

DCA set on SOL after the FTX crash. Didn’t want to look at my account again. Ended up accumulating a few 100 at the bottom. Not exciting but was a nice surprise when I noticed it a few months later

Maleficent_Sound_919

Please stop… they don’t have revenue that comes anywhere close to what they are doing… Ofc you have to question things look how FTX and other stuff went Those where such “solid” businesses no one saw what was happening My question is the not selling part how is that possible…

Schwoanz

Probably no one here has heard about Yield App. They went bankrupt nearly 20 months after the FTX collapse due to… FTX. So in some cases you have to be careful, even when many months have passed after some incident. I don’t think Bybit is in trouble and I actually like the platform but you never know for sure in the crypto industry.

Crazywar17

I won’t argue. But I lost money on FTX, which is basically why I’m in such a good mood about this whole Bybit situation. Would it be fair to say I’ve evened the score and it’s now 1:1? lol

ownseagls

None. The time to get in was after FTX the next time to get in is if or when micro strategy collapses.

azdcaz

People conveniently forget all the bs that BTC has survived in the past. Mt Gox was insane. FTX, Celsius, Voyager, Terra Luna etc etc all collapsing at once was pretty serious. Yet here we are watching BTC being woven into the fabric of modern financial markets. Even if MSTR has to sell a portion (ppl seem to think they can only sell 100% of their bitcoin), Bitcoin will be ok over time.

fan_of_hakiksexydays

For those still hopeful that $60K might have been the bottom, I hate to bring this up, but we still have the Microstrategy specter looming over the market. Some people still believe it won't be a black swan event like FTX, or not have any impact at all. Go look at how STRC works. STRC shows that the Strategy's BTC gamble is showing cracks during this bear market, to the point that Strategy is getting really desperate and throwing one last do or die gambit. But STRC is also already showing cracks right from the start.

MrBtotheTC

there’s no reason for it to drop anymore there’s no catalyst for it. The only reason we drop last time is because of FTX.

DemandNew8116

Interesting. Steel man argument is that the second 2021 bull run was paper bitcoin, basically unstable raising of the price with very little volume (unlike 2021) caused by FTX and other shenaningans and that ended spectacularily

Romanizer

I am looking at a change of momentum (MACD crossover on the weekly). In August 2022, the price momentum changed from downwards to sideways. Without the FTX crash, it would have stayed in the $20k area until the bull run began. Also consider that ATH of last cycle was in March 2024, just before the halving.

Abject-Stretch-1187

Exactly. Without FTX, we wouldn’t have smelled 16k BTC. For it to go lower this time, bears will have to tell us exactly what would cause it to go lower other than “patterns” They have no legitimate reason but charts. 

Romanizer

The last cycle's bear market ended in August 2022. We only had a crash afterwards due to FTX collapse. Bear markets get shorter with every cycle.

Nomadictionnn

Solid post and genuinely wish more people did this due diligence before throwing money on random platforms. I've been around since the Mt. Gox days and lost a good chunk on QuadrigaCX back in 2019, so yeah, the "it won't happen to me" mindset is exactly how it happens. I'd add one more thing to your checklist though operational track record under stress. Plenty of exchanges look great on paper with all the licenses and PoR, but when the market actually goes crazy (May 2021 flash crash, Luna, FTX week) their engines freeze, withdrawals slow to a crawl, or positions get liquidated at weird prices. I only really trust platforms that have been through multiple cycles without losing customer funds or pulling shady moves during volatility. The ones that have been running clean for 10+ years in this industry you can count on one hand honestly. Licensing is necessary but not sufficient imo. FTX had licenses too.

-irx

In a world where people uses common sense and have some idea of market cycles. Remember FTX collapse? That was massive buy signal and market bottom.

Revolutionary-Cup78

All are extremely unlikely, but thet are very real. Completely unexpected vulnerability (bitmain as an example), successful quantum attack, a new fork controversy, and the most likely I'll mention: 1) Simply not reaching the expected returns. It could be that 60k was already the bottom and that the price in 3 years is way below your target. 2) you forget your wallet credentials, your wallet credentials get stolen, or if using a custodian, having this custodian become insolvent FTX style

originalrocket

It's Celsius, FTX, Luna, and the rest all over again.

missourifats

I had the luxury of getting into bitcoin just BEFORE this happened. I had stacked up a decent little pile, and was digesting podcasts. I kept hearing about cold storage, but seed phrases? Lose it and youre toast? I put it off. Then FTX died. And I knew just enough to know that the main stream narrative of "See! Crypto and Bitcoin is all bullshit!" was preying on people's ignorance. So I wasn't shaken as I wasn't exposed to FTX. But I very suddenly had an eye opening real time experience to reinforce this idea. Not your keys. Not your coins. I now have 3 wallets.

harvested

40K is silly, not gonna happen. Bit I think price dropped below power law band at FTX low didn't it?

Mammoth-Birthday-437

46 days of negative funding is nuts. last time this happened post-FTX the snap back was brutal though, like a coiled spring. shorts get comfortable, open interest builds up, then one catalyst and it all unwinds fast. doesnt mean it happens tomorrow but the setup looks similar to late 2022 before the rally started