marketsClosed Jul 19, 2022
FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried at Bloomberg Crypto Summit
- ‘Herd behavior’ drove much of crypto rout, Bankman-Fried Says
- Recent downturn helped shake out weaker players, he says
- Stability in markets, not volatility, better for growth
- ‘Moderately bad’ deals acceptable to foster stability, he says
Thanks for tuning into the session. Here are some key takeaways from Sam Bankman-Fried’s interview with Matt Levine at the Bloomberg Crypto Summit:
- In bailing out crypto companies, Bankman-Fried said he wanted to make sure customers got their deposits back. “We need to be a good, constructive actor in this space,” he said about his efforts to avert a crypto contagion.
- Some companies Bankman-Fried talked about bailouts with didn’t know or couldn’t provide numbers on their own balance sheets, he said.
- On Three Arrows Capital, the crypto hedge fund that filed for bankruptcy, Bankman-Fried said “their trading was probably more like punting than arbitrage making.” It’s not that their positions were illiquid, they just lost their money, he said.
- While volatility can be good for exchanges in the short term, stability and a healthy ecosystem is what benefits the players in the long term, he said.
- FTX keeps its treasury in dollars, he said. It also doesn’t let its users’ accounts to go negative, exercising prudent risk management.
