He started Binance in 2017 in Shanghai - but the Chinese government banned crypto exchanges the same year. Zhao is a China-born Canadian citizen who emigrated to Vancouver aged 12 and graduated with a degree in computer science from McGill University in Montreal. According to Bloomberg’s billionaire index, the FTX blowup torpedoed SBF’s net worth by 94%, from $16 billion to below $1 billion. He counted the likes of Softbank Vision Fund, Singapore wealth fund Temasek and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan as investors. Formerly a trader at Jane Street, until just a few weeks ago the curly-haired 30-year-old was everywhere in the crypto industry - backing flailing projects including BlockFi, Voyager Digital and Celsius. Who runs them? They’ve also been led by two of the most visible and charismatic people in the crypto world: Binance by Changpeng Zhao (or CZ, as he is known), and FTX by Sam Bankman-Fried (or SBF). In fact, it spent much of this year bailing out other crypto firms, and was generally regarded by investors as a responsible, grown-up firm that didn’t engage in risky, speculative trading or gamble with customers’ funds. FTX is also regarded (or was, until this week) as one of crypto’s “blue chip” companies - the kind of stable, well-capitalized businesses that survived even when the rest of the crypto market was in free fall. FTX is also better-known than Binance in the United States, partly because it has spent millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads, naming rights for sports stadiums (the Miami Heat play at FTX Arena) and throwing fancy conferences where celebrities such as Bill Clinton and Tom Brady show up," reported the New York Times. It had a valuation of $32 billion as of its last fundraising round. FTX, which has its headquarters in the Bahamas, is run by Sam Bankman-Fried, a 30-year-old American billionaire and major Democratic donor. "Binance’s operations are somewhat murky - it has no official headquarters, and it has tangled with authorities and regulators in many countries where it operates - but it has been extremely successful, and currently controls roughly half of the cryptocurrency exchange market. Binance is the biggest crypto exchange by volume by a long way - and FTX is in the top five. What are Binance and FTX? They’re two of the biggest crypto exchanges, which are marketplaces where investors buy, sell and store tokens. According to New York Times, it is already being referred to as the industry’s “Lehman moment” - a reference to the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, which set off a global financial panic and made it clear to laypeople just how much trouble Wall Street was in. While crypto might seem like a niche corner of finance, the saga between two of its top players has upended the crypto ecosystem and is likely to have far-reaching repercussions. Venture capital firm Sequoia Capital said it will completely write off its more than $210 million investment in FTX, as the cryptocurrency exchange is at risk of bankruptcy. FTT, the native token of FTX, has lost 90% of its value in less than 72 hours.
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