We all heard about the meteoric rise of Sam Bankman-Fried the young multi billionere genius founder and owner of FTX. The last funding round of FTX was for 40 Billion(!!!!) USD evaluation.
If you are in the cryptosphere for long or just entered you all know the 3 major exchanges - Binance, FTX and Coinbase.
The crypto winter with or because rising fiat interest rates and slow economy is beating down the small players. These 3 whales are trying to swallow the small fish, but looks like in this game of chess, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao gave Bankman a knockout.
Bankman (man of bank - you cannot make this shit up) was trying to take advantage of the crisis by buying default companies.
Looks like Zhao had a stronger strategy. Zhao waited paitently and let FTX sallow as much as they could, in an interesting timing Zhao helped reveal liquidity risks of FTX and instead of running after small fish this whale swallowed another whale.
Time will tell if Binance dominance is here to stay. Catching FTX looks like a bargain but its well known that instead of catching a falling knife its better to pick it up from the floor.
In markets know one knows where the floor is but looks like Zhao could waited more and the evidence is Bankman thanking him for his help.
The big banks are entering the crypto markets. Regulation is catching up slowly but surely, and we can all hope Binance has what it takes to keep being an innovative player.
Banks are competition on one hand, but they sure know how to create kartels using regulation on their favour to coordinate prices and shoot down new competition. So lets wait and see. It sure is interesting.
