*CRYPTO EXCHANGE BINANCE TO BUY RIVAL FTX; TERMS UNDISCLOSED

Binance Announces Acquisition Of Distressed FTX After "Significant Liquidity Crunch"

Can someone ELI5 what has happened here?

FTX bet customer funds through the CEO’s hedge fund on an FTX token [1]. The token price fell when this was revealed [2].

The hedge fund, and thus FTX, had less money than they owed lenders and customers. FTX found a bail-out in Binance; otherwise everyone would have lost their money.

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/11/02/divisions-in-sa...

[2] https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/11/08/ftt-plummets-as-...

> otherwise everyone would have lost their money.

It's a bit early to speculate on this one.

> bit early to speculate on this

We’ve seen the balance sheet. The facts have been on the table for FTX as much as they are for Tether.

I can’t say when they will fail. But as soon as we saw the Alameda books and Alameda and FTX’s responses (the former, an irrelevant statement about other assets; the latter, a claim of solvency without proof), the endpoint was sealed. Insolvent, leveraged entities don’t pay out junior creditors absent a bail-out.

I think the parent was pointing out that this is just an intent to acquire and could fall through.

And looks like it did.

What it actually revealed that they embezzled customer funds? It's still speculation as far as I can tell (your sources say nothing about customer funds)

> still speculation

They've admitted to illiquidity transforming into insolvency. That doesn't happen if you aren't betting client assets.

It could be a hack or losing keys

To the best of my understanding,

- starting state had FTX as insolvent, but had enough money to cover the withdrawals of their token (FTT)

- Binance CEO announces that they're going to dump all of their FTT because they don't trust the stability of it

- now there's a bank run, and people are making enough withdrawals to expose that FTX is insolvent

- FTX pauses withdrawals (because they don't have the cash)

- Binance bails out FTX by purchasing it

The fact that SBF is re-tweeting stuff from the CEO of Alameda Research (his hedge fund) is also a bit confusing. It seems like the hedge fund mainly owns FTT and that is causing a doom loop - https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/11/02/divisions-in-sa... - https://nitter.nl/i/status/1589264375042707458

I don't understand it either to be clear. I know a little about crypto, a decent amount about finance but it does seem that the problem is not limited to FTX.

This might go down as an LTCM. Would be quite nice. Haven't had nerds setting fire to the financial system for a while.

Can someone explain why FTX created their own token in the first place? Was it just a way to raise money/distribute equity without dealing with stock market regulations?

Yes, it gives you a discount on trading and can be used to buy things from FTX, and it was originally a fundraising mechanism.

Why does anyone create their own token? Once you get people using it, then you can just "print more" and make yourself incredibly rich. Creating wealth out of nothing but people like your foobar token and they will convert other tokens to/from it. You can sell it to sell fake equity (without usual oversight) in a company too.

I would also love to see a simple explanation.

ELI5: they call themselves “exchanges”. they are more like banks. liquidity crunch means they don’t have money to pay back all the customers.

real bank - fdic protected for people. maybe fed govt bailout

ftx - bailed out by competitor Binance

Best I found - https://twitter.com/LynAldenContact/status/15900632571588116...:

Imagine McDonald's makes its own money, let's call them clown-bucks, keeps most of it, and sells some to the market.

McDonald's then uses their remaining clown-bucks as collateral for actual loans.

And then people remember clown-bucks aren't real.

And then Starbucks comes and market sells the clown-bucks they were holding, while reminding the market that clown-bucks aren't really a thing.

McDonald's balance sheet is trashed, with their clown-bucks wiped out.

Anyway, that's what happened in crypto-land this week.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhEKHDuVIAUfg7g?format=jpg&name=...

CZ - "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse."

FTX was *throwing* money at everything moving in the crypto space. Where the heck did all the money go? Did they just spend VC money as long as they could and ran out now? Or did all the money disappear through the Alameda pipe? I really hope that there will be an investigation into the whole thing. Liquidity crunch my a**.

It went to the Democratic National Committee and AI ethics organizations.

Stop the count. Refund the man his money.

Can you explain this comment, I don't see democrats as being bought in crypto? What would giving them money accomplish? Most politicians in both parties are very skeptical of all this crypto tulipmania. There are a very small number who seem to bought in. Republicans are in that group too.

SBF put $10 million this summer into an Oregon Democratic primary in an attempt to advance a candidate sympathetic to Effective Altruism, rationalism, and AI ethics to the US House (the candidate lost). SBF has in general been flashing a lot of cash over the past 2 years in order to become a major philanthropist in the EA space.

Thanks for explaining that, I hadn't hear that specific thing. So he was the one that made that bizarre donation. I'd heard about the candidate out of no-where, didn't know SBF was behind it or who he was before a few days ago - I thought it was another Peter Thiel candidate purchase.

You're asking the wrong question.

The right question is "where did all that money come from?"

Hint: their clients somehow can't withdraw their money...

Agreed. He offered Elon a billion dollars for Twitter stock just a few months ago.

SBF was the biggest donor to Biden's campaing, and now we know why.

I don't know much about any of this, but clicking around in twitter I came across this interesting thread from only 20 hours ago, about FTX and Binance being "at war" with each other [1].

[1] https://twitter.com/alex_valaitis/status/1589711035132694528

FTX agreed to buy Voyager Digital because Voyager was insolvent after Three Arrows Capital went bust.

Guess there's always a bigger fish...

> FTX agreed to buy Voyager

Wait, was that ever finalized?

This makes the FTX acquisitions of Celsius etc extremely suspicious. FTX themselves may have been at risk of going under when three arrows went under. Clearly there was some level of dishonesty about their exposure.

Anyone wanting to know more about what led to this whole fiasco, I would highly recommend this read: https://dirtybubblemedia.substack.com/p/is-alameda-research-...

That visualization of circular flows is gold. Thank you.

From the announcement, Binance is not definitively buying FTX. They've agreed to discuss acquisition and do due diligence. Which means finding out how deep a hole FTX is in before proceeding.

As a rule of thumb, about half of announced M&A deals don't happen.

FTX is a licensed money transmitter in many US states. In some states they need regulatory approval for an acquisition. Binance is headquartered in the Cayman Islands. Regulatory approval will not be easy to get. US bankruptcy courts will have a say, too. FTX acquired another bankrupt crypto company just two months ago, and the bankruptcy judge in that case may have something to say about it.

Bloomberg has a story.[1]

WSJ has a story.[2]

This is going to be a big mess.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-08/crypto-ex...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-news-today-11-...]

They are buying FTX - not FTX.US, I would imagine it is fine.

They have several corporate entities.

* "FTX Trading LTD is incorporated in Antigua and Barbuda, and headquartered in The Bahamas."

* West Realm Shire Services Inc. - incorporated in Delaware.

CNBC now says that Binance is only trying to buy the non-US operations of FTX.

FTX.US terms say "Title to cryptocurrency represented in your FTX.US Account shall at all times remain with you and shall not transfer to FTX.US." Are US customers having Bitcoin withdrawal problems? If they are, that's theft.

From what I've read FTX.US has no withdrawal issues (yet)

> FTX is a licensed money transmitter in many US states.

FTX.us, a separate entity not involved in the transaction, is a licensed money transmitter in the US. US persons are not allowed to use FTX.

> FTX does not onboard or provide services to corporate accounts of entities located in, established in, or a resident of the United States of America, Cuba, Crimea and Sevastopol, Luhansk People's Republic, Donetsk People's Republic, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, or North Korea. FTX also does not onboard corporate accounts located in or a resident of Antigua or Barbuda. FTX also does not onboard any users from Ontario, and FTX does not permit non-professional investors from Hong Kong purchasing certain products. [1]

[1] https://help.ftx.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042412652-Location...

Some elements of the crypto space may not need to be regulated, but centralized exchanges should be regulated as hard as banks and should regularly undergo liquidity stress tests. If FTX does turn out to be insolvent, execs should be getting more than a slap on the wrist

> should be regulated as hard as banks

Can you provide some general examples of types of regulations that you'd like to see?

All of this is looking fishy, at best.