What the FTX is going on

If you’ve kept up with the crypto markets I’m sure you’ve seen the absolute anarchy that’s ensued. I don’t use the term anarchy lightly. I mean genuine madness. Today we’ll work through this and more importantly, the lessons learnt.

I will preface this by saying I take no joy in the billions of dollars lost and potentially millions of people losing their money. I will try to stay objective and like always try to learn from it.

What happened

People trusted their hard-earned money to the man above. FTX the second-largest crypto exchange went under in the space of a week. That’s right within a week they filed for bankruptcy.

I won’t try to explain the ins and outs of exactly what went down. I’ll point you in the direction of the man, the myth the legend Coffeezilla and the Plain Bagel (Down below). Their videos do an excellent job of giving you a good overview of what has happened.

Why this is bad

For anyone in the crypto space, this is a significant blow to the blockchain space being cemented into the fabric of society.

The broader lesson to be learnt from this could be a couple of things. Primarily I would say you should know exactly where your money is and how things would go if like FTX, things go belly up.

This is actually the topic of next month’s blog as I went deep into the rabbit hole of who had your money at what stage. I spoke to both Hatch and Sharesies on their individual procedures and processes.

Why this sucks

Aside from the obvious loss of money and savings, it really does put a damper on the entire crypto space in my view. I’ve had some very intriguing conversations with people who are close to the space.

Some think that more regulation is the way to go, however, would that not defeat the point of having a way to store money away from prying government fingers?

I think that it sucks because it casts a dark shadow on space and as a technologist, I am frustrated by the news. I think crypto has a spot in the world, not sure where but I think it could definitely solve a problem.

As it stands it is the wild west and there are some very nasty things happening behind closed doors.

Looking ahead

Listen. I am in the juiciest position to say I TOLD YOU SO! But I won’t. The main reason I won’t is that people losing a lot of money really saddens me. Especially because they believed in the company and their strategy.

I do think though that it might be time to take a look at how you invest. And yes I will at least for now fly the passive/defensive investor flag. Adding money to my index fund even though it is slow is the way to go I reckon.

I would ask the question, what were to happen if the company holding my money goes under?

Cool things

A bit of a shorter one this time around as I continue to write my book. For many writers, November is a month in which they put in a lot of effort to try and finish and in some cases write an entire book.

I am one of them, and so for the past two weeks, I’ve been working toward getting the first draft done! Very excited to get it all done now.

Videos explaining the FTX crash

Coffeezilla

The Plain Bagel