Re:FTX’s Collapse Was a Crime, Not an Accident
by psychlops on Saturday December 03, 2022 @08:40AM
(#33843385)
Thanks for the response, I didn't realize Eth had this ability. I was taking issue with the statement of the "key innovation of crypto is that it's supposed to reduce the risk of lending" which I don't think you are agreeing with.
It's not clear to me that increased liquidity would solve their problem. I'm not against DeFi, but the spectacular failures are proving that it's not nearly ready for prime time.
Notably, FTX also offered the option of margin loans and options, though they were centralized. This turned out to be bad, not because it made things more difficult, but because they stole all the collateral.
Also note that the DeFi approach would likely have failed here, because the smart-contracts that determine the value of the collateral do a simple "units owned * current market price" computation. That doesn't account for price slippage. In practice the markets are quite illiquid, so selling some collateral will drop the price of that collateral quite quickly. DeFi currently has very little holistic risk management. When you have a lot of, say FTT, as collateral from counter-parties, that leaves you quite vulnerable. If FTT drops quickly, many people will get margin-calls. If they all default, then you get left with their FTT. If you try to sell that, it will crash the price even more.