The FTX Fiasco

The Web3 NFT community is still reeling from the recent FTX fiasco. The DeFi Edge summarized the money aspect of the fiasco in a tweet: $600m left FTXs wallet, FTX's telegram said it was a hack, the Site/App are infected, Blackhat theft at ~450m, and FTX rescued ~200m. There had only been a small window of a day or so, when those who had left money in the FTX exchange, was warned to withdraw. I felt the murmurs in our local telegram community chat. Many managed to take their crypto out of the exchange and into decentralised wallets. Still, $600m - not a small sum - is left in FTXs wallet.

The trust aspect of the fiasco is a little harder to grasp and fully understand. William MacAskill shared his thoughts on a tweet thread: "Based on publicly available information, it seems to me more likely than not that senior leadership at FTX used customer deposits to bail out Alameda, despite terms of service prohibiting this, and a (later deleted) tweet from Sam claiming customer deposits are never invested. If this is what happened, then I cannot in words convey how strongly I condemn what they did. I had put my trust in Sam, and if he lied and misused customer funds he betrayed me, just as he betrayed his customers, his employees, his investors, the communities he was a part of. For years, the EA community has emphasized the importance of integrity, honesty, and the respect of common-sense moral constraints. If customer funds were misused, then Sam did not listen; he must have thought he was above such considerations."

Two NFT brand businesses that continue to capture my attention with their communications and building are World of Women and Veefriends. Times are rough, integrity matters more than ever, and we must use both hearts and smarts for effective altruism in Web3.