Bitcoin Forum

Does Sam Bankman-Fried's statement imply that the cryptospace not seen the bottom of this bear market? I am shaking my head because everyone who was going to capitulate appears to have capitulated already. There might not be more marginal sellers left in this market hehe.

In any case, the article mentioned that the strong giants are FTX, Binance, Kraken and Coinbase. For our safety, let us speculate which exchanges should be avoided by the community. It is very clear that Poloniex and Bittrex should be avoided. What are the others? Bybit, Deribit, Kucoin?

https://i.ibb.co/chDF3G7/ED4-CDEA3-61-D5-4-F01-9-CD5-23-EA4256-EB48.png
Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX, liquidator of the cryptospace

After throwing lifelines to troubled digital currency platforms BlockFi and Voyager Digital, Sam Bankman-Fried, the 30-year-old billionaire founder of FTX, warns that some crypto exchanges will soon fail.

“There are companies that are basically too far gone and it's not practical to backstop them for reasons like a substantial hole in the balance sheet, regulatory issues, or that there is not much of a business left to be saved,” says Bankman-Fried, who declined to name any specific crypto exchanges.

“There are some third-tier exchanges that are already secretly insolvent,” says Bankman-Fried.

Fried’s FTX, along with Coinbase, Kraken and Binance, are giants among digital asset exchanges.

Read in full https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/06/28/bankman-fried-some-crypto-exchanges-already-secretly-insolvent/?sh=4a2fe21a47f7

It's just me or anyone else also think, this guy only promoting his exchanges since he mention his exchanges first?

Weird how he include Coinbase wouldn't insolvent while they're already lay off 18% of their workers and suffer $430 million losses, it's possible if Coinbase would bankrupt in the near future if Bitcoin price continue to drop and they don't have good management to take care or continue their business.

Honestly I don't understand why many people are choose other exchanges (low volume, small, new etc) rather than the old and reputable one until now? Talking about the fees, it doesn't have so much different. Usually it's just a matter of top exchanges didn't list all shitcoins, AFAIK Hotbit and MEXC are full of shitcoins that the reason why many people to use this exchanges. But for other middle-top tier exchanges, I don't see any reason why other still use it.

I think in the end, the popular and big exchanges we've seen right now would bankrupt in the future, similar like Mt.Gox.

We didn't need some random guy whom we never heard of tell us one of the most obvious statements just because he has a lot of money!
Cryptocurrency exchanges have always been failing after some time regardless of their size. We've had small exchanges nobody heard of go under and we also had big exchanges that controlled 85% of the trading volume go under. Saying this is going to happen again is like saying the sun is going to come back up again.

Exchanges don't see things in terms of shitcoin/goodcoin, they only see it in terms of trading volume and if a coin gets a decent amount of volume or it can attract customers, they will add it. This has been the case with BSV, when it had high volume all these shitty exchanges (including the top ones) added it but when its volume dropped they all suddenly realized it is a shitcoin and started removing it while making a big show of it.

He didn't really tell us anything we don't already know but it was a good opportunity for promoting his company- any good business person would have done the same.  However, it would have been interesting for him to hint or mention which ones he felt are deficient/on the bubble.

Well if he did that, then it would've accelerated the downfall of those exchanges because investors would start short-selling them and dumping their shares. I think he still wants to save some exchanges, even if its by delaying their deaths by a few months.

At any rate, it's not too difficult to see which exchanges are becoming insolvent, without getting withdrawals blocked. You'd see that crypto is being traded on those exchanges many standard deviations away from the mean price across all the exchanges. Almost like it's being bought and sold for a premium.

I hope he is not right and that the problems are more of liquidity than solvency, which can be improved as Coinbase has done, reducing costs and adapting to the current market. It is that if by insolvency bankrupt just one of the mentioned exchanges we already know what is going to come: panic and the price of Bitcoin plummeting.

Three Arrows Capital  just defaulted, there is still pain to be inflicted
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/crypto-crash-three-arrow-capital-default-voyager-670-million-loan-2022-6

As for Sam, this guy has been turning in some kind of undertaker, every single time lately that there is something bad happening there is talk about liquidation, bankruptcy, or taking over assets his name is mentioned there, I have a bad feeling  about his own business, there were some shady doings behind the scenes with Terra and as more and more info appears seems like he was involved too.


And what do $430 million losses mean, that's what you will get if 10k BTC would slide from 60k to 20k for example, do you see it as a huge blow to a
company managing 30 billion in assets?. Coinbase holds far more coins for themselves than that, if I would be one that defaults it would be Micro, not Coinbase, plus Coinbase makes money out of every trade, they could make a profit even in a bear market, others can't do it. It was just overextending thinking the whole hype with metaverse, nft, etc will go on forever, it didn't so they are just cutting all those extra.

I think that now there is a war not for exchanges and dollars, but for the ownership of the majority of coins in large eco-system projects such as Ethereum, Atom, polkadot, etc. All projects cannot come off, and they will develop even if the price of bitcoin falls sharply.

companies where the owner only runs one operation are most at risk.
 in examples like coinbase. they have multiple subsidiaries doing different things. so they have something to lean against

coinbase is owned by DCG which extends its arms into many many businesses and so if one is failing he can just shift things from others to back it up..

businesses with no sister companies have no back up to lean against

of course if the DGC is not diversified enough and put all its eggs in one basket. then they all get affected. which is the bad management aspect you speak of.

but that said the "third tier" exchanges, meaning the smaller businesses with no large corporate coverage of sister companies, would be first to go

How bittrex continues to be alive I have no idea, but I figure they saved themselves a lot of money all these past years by delisting wallets from time to time and of course stealing all their customers funds.

BTW read now about Cypherpunk Holdings selling ALL their BTC and ETH. It was only ended up as a $5 million total but if more and more small companies liquidate, maybe we haven't seen the end of it yet?

There are companies that are gone too far? Well there is bitcoin that is gone too far and that’s not unstoppable for sure. So what if some bitcoin exchanges are at the edge of insolvency, the bitcoins would be transferred to other cold wallets or different exchanges and they would be secured over there. Nothing negative happens in bitcoin because in general either bitcoins ownership changes from one person to the other and the count remains same. If you talk about it in terms of fiat value then sure its gonna be up and down over the time but its secured by limited supply of bitcoin.  :)

It's normal that guys like him come out with their worse predictions for the bear market. Nobody pays that much attention when we're in bull market and Mike Novogratz comes up and says we're going to 200k, but people get worried when bears say we're going to 1k like they did in 2019. Funny thing is that people who make these predictions often consider themselves "objective traders" and then at 4k they come up with 1k which is 75% drop and that never even gets close to what they were predicting. Tone Vays I'm talking about you ;)

Another funny thing is that these exchanges were doing fine in 2020 when we dropped to 4k in March 2020 but suddenly they're in trouble at 20k? Who's going to believe that? If we were at 3k right now they'd probably all go bankrupt, but so would 99% of people who hold cryptocurrencies. It's not going to happen.

Maybe he is trying to gain new customers for his own exchange, FTX by saying this about other exchanges?
I don't understand why people are taking his comments so seriously. He is just playing with his competition, that's how business is done I guess.

Same thing am wondering! how come suddenly almost all exchange are struggling with funds when the situation imo is not as worse as in 2018 where btc was at 3k, and how come suddenly this guy has something negative to say? Or he is doing this on purpose to cause panic among panic sellers to further dump the price? i don't get what he is getting at. Another face of fud perhaps  :-\

It is not only you, because apart from the fact that most of these newly rich people need to present themselves to the public as much as possible, another important thing is also that Bankman and his colleague CZ really need to share their wisdom with us these days. The reason, of course, is that they are definitely not making money as before, trying to beat the competition and return optimism to the market.

After all, people should turn more to decentralized solutions like DEX and drive these narcissistic bankmens into history. They pose only risk and act like Bitcoin banks, and the bad news for me is that only a few of them keep millions of BTC in their possession by selling a story to their clients that their digital assets are safe. The more people realize "not your keys, not your coins", the more insolvency there will be on CEXs.

Not your keys not your coins. Don't trust any exchange that they are securing your coin 100% safely. Don't believe that they have good investment, risk management and safely style to use capital from crowdfunding or any source of income for their exchange.

Believe them, store your coin on their exchange, you don't own your coins and your capital.

In bull market, they are potential coins and now in bear market, they get a names they deserve, shitcoins.

Bear market is bad for people bought at top, in bull market last two years but it is good for people who still own cash and wait for good price. Bear market help us to see difference between good and bad market, really potential projects and shitcoin, low quality, weak projects.

Welcome to the corporate world. Most businesses run on razor-thin margins in good times, ill-prepared for even the slightest dips in fortunes or unexpected halt in revenue. Remember when industries ground to a halt during Covid and how quickly big business found themselves insolvent?

If some exchanges being at threat of insolvency is news, well, time to wake up and smell the coffee.


Doesn't seem ironic if his purpose is to spread fear among his rivals' users or to further flood the market with FUD and I'm sure it'll work to some degree among those influenced by him, all the better for us. I always say good to purge, flush, just drain it all out in the bear so the floor and foundation becomes clearer.

I think there needs to be more regulation in the crypto exchanges space. I mean Bitcoin is around for more than 13 years now and in the past few years the investmnet/trading activity has significantly increased. IMO there shoud be certain limits/minimum requirements that exchanges (especially the major ones which deal with massive volume) have to meet like a minimum reserve amount that should be kept at all times in current accounts to fulfil clients' needs.

Also I think these companies should be audited and at least part of the results to be published for the use of all stakeholders in the form of a monthly/quarterly/yearly report.

Some events have been coming to the media that are more wake up calls for people to start caring more about sovereignty. People should take their Bitcoin out of the exchanges and save it in a custody manner. We have quite a few examples of exchanges going really wrong. We need more education on how to hold custody of our Bitcoins! Keeping Bitcoins in exchanges is like giving your credit card pin to a stranger in the middle of the street (by analogy, it would be the exchange owners).

I frankly don't care what's happening with Bitcoin exchanges.  I shorted some shitcoins on Binance at the top of the bubble and still didn't close those positions, but other than that I don't store any money on centralized exchanges. And I also don't care what is happening with Bitcoin in short-term, I'm a long-term investor. Failures of centralized exchanges don't change Bitcoin fundamentals, and eventually the problem with exchanges will be solved - either people will move on to decentralized exchanges, or exchanges will become tightly regulated, or a mix of both.

Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX and market maker, venture cryptofund Alameda Research are presently the most liquid companies in the cryptospace. I reckon also CZ, Justin Sun and their companies. I speculate that by the end of this bear market the 3 of them might be already owning 75% of the cryptospace hehehe.

Also, it appears that we in bitcointalk are always late with the news. It is only now that much of the people in the forum have heard of Sam Bankman-Fried and consider him as someone who is only passing by hehehehe.

https://i.ibb.co/kMT3W89/A52-EDE7-F-8579-480-E-AB21-14-D94-BAB3567.jpg

FTX closes in on a deal to buy embattled crypto lender BlockFi for $25 million in a fire sale, source says

Crypto exchange FTX is close to finalizing a term sheet to buy BlockFi and a deal is expected to be signed by the end of this week, three sources familiar with the situation told CNBC.

It comes after FTX provided a $250 million emergency line of credit to BlockFi.

Jersey City, New Jersey-based BlockFi was last valued at $4.8 billion, according to PitchBook.

Source https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/30/ftx-closes-in-on-a-deal-to-buy-embattled-crypto-lender-blockfi-for-25-million-in-a-fire-sale.html

first of all guys what happen with poloniex and bittrex I try to google it but don't find anything are they scammed someone both of them is some of the old bitcoin exchange  :o :o

and second my opinion about current exchange is I don't know like we cant trust any of them after i see couple you guys said in the other hand Bybit and Kucoin are pretty new and yes the are like Chinese exchange Hotbit that list bunch of token

Because exchanges make money out of trades, not by hodling.
So it doesn't matter how much one coin is worth but how much people trade those coins, if you look at data (https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/price_volume/5y/USD?t=lb&vu=curr) you'll see that  3k doesn't imply 7 times lower volume than now or that volume by the start of the year wasn't two times bigger. Back in 2018 Bitfinex was trading 1.8 million coins and now is doing 200k.

When you have to increase expenditure, customer support costs, deal with more coins than ever and face more competition the price is not the main problem anymore. Plus many have started while taking losses, and many have spent millions on ads, for them it was supposed to increase their customer base to finally make a profit after a time, and all that changed.

I know that Sam has already been giving out help towards those exchanges that are losing out in the lending space. I view it like this. Two scenarios could play out because of the businesses that might go bankrupt or companies that go down, and Sam is the only one who could save them. Imagine this.

If Sam let his competitors down.
 - Most of the users in the exchanges he didn't help will lose trust in the whole cryptocurrency market. Then people affected by it would make it seem that people shouldn't invest in crypto, hence the loss of potential investors and interest in the market. So the whole cryptocurrency will go down, and the general public's view on cryptocurrencies will also go down.

Conclusion: Lose-Lose

If Sam helped his competitors
 - The whole cryptocurrency market can be saved and not destroyed in view and essence. Of course, the market will still go down but not to the point that it can dip so bad that people would lose interest and won't believe in cryptocurrencies anymore. When he helped BlockFi and Voyager, it had already proved that many companies needed to bail out, and he saved his competitors for the greater good. That's just how it is.

Conclusion: Lose in the short-term, Win in the long term.

---

That's just how I view it now when it comes to the cryptocurrency market, and it would be helpful if it's going to be everyone helping each other to make the world better and suitable for everyone.

---

References:
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/22/sam-bankman-fried-rescues-crypto-lenders-blockfi-voyager.html

This ain't even a question in my mind. I feel like there is a good amount of them that are insolvent for sure. They end up getting hacked, getting attacked, doing mistakes, losing money and in the end there are tons of money missing from the coffers that should be there.

So, what do they do? They act as if profit making ponzi schemes, which means that if nobody cash out all of the money, they could use all their profits to get back to being solvent, but if anything happens before that then they are caught and they need to come clean. This is why I use binance, because I know that they are too big to be insolvent, even if they ever lose something, they can get it back before anything happens.

When market bleed some die, some live. Its the companies who invested more in failed altcoins, without financial or technical prudency. Thus they have lost both their funds and market trust. Current fall is also due to hikes in intrest rates by central banks, leading to massive withdrawals. Another
factor is decreasing returns on miming and increasing mining costs, which have dampened the moods of miners, still the hodlers are buying during the fall. Most of the financial analyst see bitcoin as future currency and it is here and going to stay.

It is also said that it was Sam who liquidated everyone hehehe. It also appears that Sam has also pushed everyone in his way aside when he was on his way to become one of the kings of the cryptospace and share the throne with CZ. However, what is his real plan? Defeat CZ similar to what he did to Arthur Hayes?

News update.

Sam Bankman-Fried has declared that they have a few billion to help cryptocompanies that are struggling with their cashflow. This is very good news because when a big company begins helping small companies as a gateway to own them, this might be the first indicator that we are on the bottom of the bear market hehehehe.



Sam Bankman-Fried, head of one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, FTX, said he and his company still have a “few billion” on hand to shore up struggling firms that could further destabilize the digital asset industry, but that the worst of the liquidity crunch has likely passed.

Source https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/crypto-exchange-ftx-has-a-few-billion-to-support-industry-bankman-fried

hmm then they must be neck-and-neck with the blockstream/DCG guy
https://dcg.co/portfolio/

oh wait. DCG owns FTX.. so its sams neck up barry silberts ass..
seems FTX is pretending he owns all these companies and doesnt know where his head ends and his bosses ass begins

Yeah, I agree to ignore Poloniex and Bittrex, these 2 exchanges already had a lot of issues even though they are already here for a long time.
I prefer to support and use these new exchanges; Bybit or Kucoin. Bybit is also good which already lot of volumes which is almost the same level as FTX exchange.

Speaking of most exchanges, I believe most of them are very careful these, especially because of what happened to others like Celcius or Voyager. I really like Sam, he really know what he is doing.

@GreatArkansas. Poloniex might be an underestimated exchange and it might be as safe as the biggest exchanges to hold some coins there for trading. His excellency Justin Sun appears to have made billions since 2017 hehe. He has also declared that he might also participate with Sam and CZ in helping some cryptocompanies with their cashflow.

https://i.ibb.co/WHZPmR1/76-E7-F6-B0-443-A-494-D-9-B89-25-F0-C003-C60-E.jpg

We are friends with everyone and are always ready to serve.

Source https://mobile.twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1545369541269921792



It also appears that there is a new storyline for Sam Bankman-Fried in this article in Fortune magazine hehehe.



The crypto crash resembles the Panic of 1907, with Sam Bankman-Fried in the role of J.P. Morgan

Source https://fortune.com/2022/06/28/crypto-crash-sam-bankman-fried-ftx-panic-of-1907/

Myself I don't see these developments as worrying as others make them out to be.  Outside of Crypto, usually when a company announces layoffs to save money the stock will go up. Crypto, and companies, go through cycles, so it make sense to trim back expenses as the market conditions dictate.

I would be more worried about companies pretending everything is fine rather than taking measures to trim expenses when the market is in a downturn. I am sure many of those lost jobs were in areas of research and new services rather than the bread and butter positions that keep the company running. It only make sense now that we are entering a downturn, which means less customers, less trading, hence less fees for revenue, that a prudent company starts looking for ways to trim its expenses. It not like its a secret that Crypto is entering a bear market, so there are bound to be losses and pullbacks everywhere.

Why we need to avoid using those exchanges? Apart from laying off the workers? This is happening everywhere and its not due to the bear market its because of the artificial intelligence so the need of human resources are not much as in 2015 or earlier to run a company and in future we may see bigger companies with staffs numbers in single or double digits so we are at the evolution of artificial intelligence and machines replacing humans.

It's his business move, but I think it's a bigger shame (in the long term) to save such companies than to let them fail. If these companies are saved, they will become even bigger over time, and with regard to their business policies and greed, the next market crash will result in them dragging down much more of the clients' money than is the case now.

As for the bottom, I would like you to be right, but there are too many who are still calling for a new crash in the zone below $15k, and the situation on the world markets does not look good, with the prospect of even bigger drops in Q4, and a very bad start of the new year.

It's actually probably true. In any new financial arena there will be a flurry of companies who try to jump in and in order to compete in the highly lucrative world of crypto exchanges they will want to expand fast. What do they do to expand quickly? Borrow as much money as possible and hope that the business plan of charging fees into customers works out faster than the loans come up for redemption. With the fall in the price of Bitcoin and the ultra competitive nature of the market, there are going to be some companies that did not account for that drop - they will likely go out of business. Fortunately relatively few companies are listed with a big amount of shareholders so the impact of their collapse will be limited to the few owners and potentially customer account funds.

I saw a few days back there was a controversy around Kucoin for the very same thing, but the CEO clarified the FUD on Twitter pretty clearly. No matter how weird this news might sound but there are good chances of this being true. Because exchanges around the world have certain money into their cold storage apart from that their hot wallets details aren't really public, even if you find it there is no public data that how much in total are people holding on that exchange. Obviously, not everyone would come together to withdraw their money and Exchanges might be taking advantage of it by just keeping some money on the exchange and lending the rest for exorbitant interests. I am not sure if these are insolvent or not but surely they are using our money for their leverage.

Sam Bankman-Fried is beginning to act something similar to a central bank if he continues to bail out these cryptobanks and creates another organization to oversee their progress after his bail outs hehehe.

Sam has also again implied in this interview that from what he knows and what he has seen, the cryptospace bottom might have occurred already. He will not declare it as a 100% certainty, however hehe.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3iEMSNjS3r0

These statements are really offensive propaganda, most people think that this man is doing bad publicity to publicize his exchange, these statements will have a bad effect on Crypto in general because it may cause panic among some traders and prompt them to withdraw their assets from those exchanges that he described as insolvent, in the event of an accident. This will actually cause a problem, there is no doubt that many exchanges are in trouble due to the continuation of the bear market but this is not a problem, it has happened many times before and the exchanges have overcome the crisis every time and have continued to work until now.
In any case, in anticipation of the worst, it is better in this bear market that investors store their crypto assets in their wallets instead of keeping them on the exchanges because it is very risky.

This meme was shared by a respected whale and social media influencer. The logo on the left is Celsius, the logo on right is 3 Arrows Capital. The face in the middle is Sam Trabucco, the CEO of Alameda Research, a cryptoventure fund and market maker connected to FTX.

I am not quite certain what is being implied in this meme, however, Celsius, 3 Arrows are bankrupt and Alameda Research was discovered to have an unpaid loan with Voyager.

https://i.ibb.co/vkFT5PT/1264-D409-BA16-4424-8957-899-D5-A0-DD867.jpg

@Daltonik, @adaseb, @zasad@. Do you have your own speculations on this?

The first sign of something going terribly wrong is when you lose your temper and shout FUD

Quick reminder:
Mashinsky (Celsius)
Do Kwon
Voyager:

Should I go and quote every single one of those liars who were screaming FUD, who were debunking FUD only to lock user funds a few days later and fill for bankruptcy?

Get your coins now out of every centralized exchange, FUD or not there is no reason to risk all your funds by testing the words of some guy on Twitter.


Yeah, seems like he is approaching faster and faster the role of Morgan in 1907 the ft articles mentioned.
But, I doubt anyone no matter how large his pockets and his willingness to help will be able to do something about it, every single day we hear about another major stupidity done by those companies, another stupid loan, another stupid investment, no way you can keep bailing every single one.

@stompix. Yes I am also very skeptical on what Sam's real agenda might be. Everyone should know that he is one of the largest donators to the democratic party in America. I speculate that he would be one of the first people who politicians will consult with in creating laws in regulating the cryptospace. He will certainly use this to gain an advantage against his competitors.

News update.

Who is insolvent? Why is Sam Bankman-Fried asking for more funding? Is his exchange also insolvent? I am becoming very skeptical about the safety on trading in FTX. However, this fundraising might also be used by Sam to buy equity into other cryptocompanies that have problems in their cashflow.

The skeptical me is thinking FTX is also insolvent but the optimistic me speculates that Sam is taking leveraged bets on the cryptospace because the worst of this bear market is finished.

https://i.ibb.co/chDF3G7/ED4-CDEA3-61-D5-4-F01-9-CD5-23-EA4256-EB48.png

Bankman-Fried's Crypto Exchange FTX Is In Talks to Raise Funds After Buying Spree

Crypto exchange FTX, co-founded by billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, is in talks to raise fresh funding after carrying out a shopping spree during the recent digital-assets market rout.

FTX and its American entity FTX US are both fundraising, according to people familiar with the matter who aren’t authorized to discuss ongoing discussions. FTX is targeting a round at essentially the same valuation as its January fundraising, the people said. In January, FTX announced it raised $400 million at $32 billion valuation, while FTX US raised a separate $400 million at an $8 billion valuation.

A spokesperson for FTX declined to comment when asked about the talks.

Source https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bankman-frieds-crypto-exchange-ftx-133929689.html

It is possible that FTX is also facing difficulties right now because of the bearish market but I don't think it is insolvent. That seems an ungrounded fear. It is hard to find logic in the fact that the company of the man who is committing a billion to help other crypto companies survive this crypto winter is the one that is actually facing insolvency. That's ironic and illogical.

So it's still safe to trade with FTX in this context. But not in terms of 'not your keys not your coins' standard.

Every time I see that picture on a topic about insolvency I think of some guy laughing while carrying an axe behind his back.
In some context, that picture is really creepy.


Fundraising doesn't mean he is insolvent or he is out of money, maybe he wants to play it safe by risking less of his wealth and more of the investor's money or maybe he is just using his personal funds for other deals behind the scene.
Anyhow, that 32 billion evaluation is just crazy, a lot of vaporware there,  and also, just funny, who is editing those Wikipedia texts?

@stompix. He also has a picture eating a raw unsliced cucumber hehehehe. He is a vegan. I do not know how a vegan can become fat like him, however.

I reckon one of those charitable causes is donating money they earn to the Democratic party hehe. According to some articles, Sam was one of the largest donors to Biden's presidential bid and the Democratic party.