Sam Bankman-Fried & Censorship
Cryptocurrency & Blockchain
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, better known as SBF, seems to be persona non grata in the industry right now.
Views he recently shared on censorship went against core principles of decentralized finance (DeFi). The truth is that many organizations, perhaps the majority, in this space are centralized, pro-censorship entities.
They say the opposite because it’s the advantageous thing to do. From a strategic standpoint, what SBF did was cause an unforced error. He just published his honest thoughts, and those thoughts happened to be alarming. Maybe he had too much caffeine one day and couldn’t resist. Others play the game in a more reserved manner, say the right things, publish the right reports, push the right narratives.
I think this particular situation, though, is probably bigger than SBF revealing his true views and SBF FUD spiking as a result. FTX essentially bailed out the industry during this last downturn. Investments, acquisitions, loans, etc. How they had so much cash is a mystery and something I’ve been skeptical about publicly. My guess is that this will continue unraveling and bad news about FTX will keep piling up in the coming months.
Another obvious take, despite denials, is that Binance is simply taking this opportunity to kick a competitor while they’re down.
Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao went on to say:
“We will try to do so in a way that minimizes market impact. Due to market conditions and limited liquidity, we expect this will take a few months to complete.
Binance always encourages collaboration between industry players. Regarding any speculation as to whether this is a move against a competitor, it is not. Our industry is in its nascency and every time a project publicly fails it hurts every user and every platform.
We typically hold tokens for the long term. And we have held on to this token for this long. We stay transparent with our actions.”
Written by Joe McKeating
CEO, ATRIA
(atriapro.com) is a professional learning platform for organizations and individuals to gain the crypto/web3 foundational knowledge they need. The flagship “Foundations” program offers a thorough but accessible education in distributed computer networks, blockchain technology, consensus mechanisms, hash functions, mining, staking, cryptocurrency, smart contracts, non-fungible tokens and decentralized finance.
Sam Bankman-Fried & Censorship
