The bankruptcy of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX.com put an end to questions about its survival and opened a panoply of new ones, most urgently: how far will the influence of its collapse reach?
Overstating FTX’s heft in the cryptosphere is difficult. From blue-chip venture investors to celebrity endorsements, from Silicon Valley to Washington, from lenders to yield farmers and market makers, the three-year-old company cut a wide swath through online commerce.
Getting a handle on the repercussions of its demise is apt to take months.
“The big fear right now, that indeed seems to be materialising, is a contagion effect,” said Greg Magadini, director of derivatives at Amberdata, a blockchain data provider.
Painfully, the least sophisticated of FTX’s constituencies — people who put money on the exchange to trade or even just to save — may end up bearing the deepest wounds.
Bankruptcies like the one it filed on Friday in Delaware are notoriously slow-moving processes in which claims on a company's remains are judged against a host of stakeholders.
It’s likely a judge will decide what happens to the everyday traders who had money on the platform, according to Owen Lau, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co.
“We don’t have precedents,” said Mr Lau.
According to Mr Lau, a court could rule that retail customers could be treated like general unsecured creditors, meaning that their priority for getting money back would fall below creditors, most of whom are institutional players.
In that case, average folks who traded on the platform would, simply, lose their money.
Individual dabblers are taking a simultaneous bath in the crypto market itself, where shock waves from the filing have sent the price of coins reeling.
Market bellwether Bitcoin plunged about 20 per cent this week, bringing its decline from last year’s record high of almost $69,000 to around 75 per cent.
Ether, the second-largest token, and altcoins sunk alongside it.
FTX’s FTT token has tumbled roughly 85 per cent in the past week alone.
Beyond those lie what many fear to be a teeming underbelly of exposed institutions, great and small, who may have lent money to, traded with or otherwise linked their fortunes to the disgraced exchange.
Already the casualty list is growing: BlockFi, the troubled digital-asset lender that Mr Bankman-Fried’s company was partially bailing out, paused client withdrawals.
Genesis Trading reported that its derivatives business had about $175 million “in locked funds” on an FTX trading account.
Billionaire Michael Novogratz told CNBC that his company, Galaxy Digital Holdings, will likely not be able to recover its $77m exposure to FTX.
Meanwhile, FTX Ventures, the investment arm of the crypto exchange, has funnelled money into nearly 50 projects, according to PitchBook data.
Like so much else, it’s unclear what the impact will be for these companies, which include Helium, Aptos Labs, NEAR Protocol, and Mysten Labs.
“Portfolio companies might be OK, depending where they kept their assets,” Mr Magadini wrote.
“If portfolio companies kept some investments at FTX itself, those funds are likely going to be unusable going forward.”
Alameda Research, a crypto trading company that was also co-founded by Mr Bankman-Fried, offered a $485m loan to Voyager Digital that failed to save the crypto brokerage from bankruptcy.
FTX.US later won an auction for Voyager Digital’s assets.
Cricket World Cup League 2
UAE squad
Rahul Chopra (captain), Aayan Afzal Khan, Ali Naseer, Aryansh Sharma, Basil Hameed, Dhruv Parashar, Junaid Siddique, Muhammad Farooq, Muhammad Jawadullah, Muhammad Waseem, Omid Rahman, Rahul Bhatia, Tanish Suri, Vishnu Sukumaran, Vriitya Aravind
Fixtures
Friday, November 1 – Oman v UAE
Sunday, November 3 – UAE v Netherlands
Thursday, November 7 – UAE v Oman
Saturday, November 9 – Netherlands v UAE
What is blockchain?
Blockchain is a form of distributed ledger technology, a digital system in which data is recorded across multiple places at the same time. Unlike traditional databases, DLTs have no central administrator or centralised data storage. They are transparent because the data is visible and, because they are automatically replicated and impossible to be tampered with, they are secure.
The main difference between blockchain and other forms of DLT is the way data is stored as ‘blocks’ – new transactions are added to the existing ‘chain’ of past transactions, hence the name ‘blockchain’. It is impossible to delete or modify information on the chain due to the replication of blocks across various locations.
Blockchain is mostly associated with cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Due to the inability to tamper with transactions, advocates say this makes the currency more secure and safer than traditional systems. It is maintained by a network of people referred to as ‘miners’, who receive rewards for solving complex mathematical equations that enable transactions to go through.
However, one of the major problems that has come to light has been the presence of illicit material buried in the Bitcoin blockchain, linking it to the dark web.
Other blockchain platforms can offer things like smart contracts, which are automatically implemented when specific conditions from all interested parties are reached, cutting the time involved and the risk of mistakes. Another use could be storing medical records, as patients can be confident their information cannot be changed. The technology can also be used in supply chains, voting and has the potential to used for storing property records.
CHATGPT%20ENTERPRISE%20FEATURES
%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Enterprise-grade%20security%20and%20privacy%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Unlimited%20higher-speed%20GPT-4%20access%20with%20no%20caps%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Longer%20context%20windows%20for%20processing%20longer%20inputs%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Advanced%20data%20analysis%20capabilities%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Customisation%20options%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Shareable%20chat%20templates%20that%20companies%20can%20use%20to%20collaborate%20and%20build%20common%20workflows%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Analytics%20dashboard%20for%20usage%20insights%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%E2%80%A2%20Free%20credits%20to%20use%20OpenAI%20APIs%20to%20extend%20OpenAI%20into%20a%20fully-custom%20solution%20for%20enterprises%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
Muslim Council of Elders condemns terrorism on religious sites
The Muslim Council of Elders has strongly condemned the criminal attacks on religious sites in Britain.
It firmly rejected “acts of terrorism, which constitute a flagrant violation of the sanctity of houses of worship”.
“Attacking places of worship is a form of terrorism and extremism that threatens peace and stability within societies,” it said.
The council also warned against the rise of hate speech, racism, extremism and Islamophobia. It urged the international community to join efforts to promote tolerance and peaceful coexistence.
Company%20Profile
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Cargoz%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EDate%20started%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20January%202022%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Premlal%20Pullisserry%20and%20Lijo%20Antony%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Dubai%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ENumber%20of%20staff%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%2030%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestment%20stage%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Seed%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
MEDIEVIL%20(1998)
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDeveloper%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20SCE%20Studio%20Cambridge%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EPublisher%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Sony%20Computer%20Entertainment%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EConsole%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20PlayStation%2C%20PlayStation%204%20and%205%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%203.5%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
New Zealand squad
Tim Southee (capt), Trent Boult (games 4 and 5), Colin de Grandhomme, Lockie Ferguson (games 1-3), Martin Guptill, Scott Kuggeleijn, Daryl Mitchell, Colin Munro, Jimmy Neesham, Mitchell Santner, Tim Seifert, Ish Sodhi, Ross Taylor, Blair Tickner
