Even during the recent carnage of the crypto industry, the chief executive of the FTX crypto exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried has been shopping for good bargains.
As a matter of fact, he has asserted that they still have the cash to spend, should they discover a good opportunity.
The difference
This may appear as strange because other crypto giants have suffered massive losses this year and some of them have even ended up filing for bankruptcy.
The primary competitor of the FTX exchange, Coinbase, saw its shares shed 70% of their value this year and it has had to let go of one-fifth of its staff due to a reduction in crypto prices.
In contrast, FTX has turned out to be a lifeline for the industry.
According to its 30-year old CEO, this is because they have kept its overheads low, has ample cash stashed, has avoided lending, and can move quickly as it is a private company.
Bankman-Fried said that it was essential for the crypto industry to get through this difficult time in one piece.
He said that real pain and blowouts would not do any good to anyone and added that it wasn’t good for the customers, or for regulation.
Crypto crash
Billions of dollars had been wiped out in the crypto market crash during the weeks when the Terra ecosystem imploded and took down the UST stablecoin, its sister token LUNA, and resulted in the bankruptcy of Three Arrows Capital (3AC), the crypto hedge fund.
The next domino that fell was lending companies that were exposed to the hedge fund. A deal was signed by the FTX exchange in July with BlockFi.
This gives the crypto exchange the option of buying the lender after offering it a line of credit of about $250 million.
Likewise, the company also offered Voyager Digital $500 million, which also declared bankruptcy later, and was also looking to acquire Bithumb, a crypto exchange in South Korea.
The year has seen the world’s first and largest crypto, Bitcoin, lose almost 70% of its value.
Not immune
Bankman-Fried said that even though his crypto exchange was also suffering because of the decline in the crypto market, they had managed to offset the pain with growth in market share.
The CEO said that they were not immune from the effects, but they had put in a lot of effort to expand and grow the previous year.
Plus, he said that their platform was less retail, which was better because it tends to be dependent on market sentiment.
As far as FTX is concerned, its trading volume comes from investors who trade ‘$100,000 a day’. He said that the group of users is high volume and very engaged and sophisticated.
He stated that it includes day traders, family offices, and small quant trading companies. Therefore, their demographic is not that price sensitive, allowing it to hold up during a crypto bear market.
Not only is it enjoying success where professional traders are concerned, but it is also grabbing the attention of the retail audience in the US.
