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TravelTechGuy | 3 years ago

Some more background: the companies were engaged in fighting over regulations, and on a personal basis between the 2 CEOs. It went down to really childish levels at some point.

But one thing is undeniable: SBF (FTX CEO) was trying to weaponize US regulation against his biggest rival CZ (Binance CEO). CZ retaliated by selling the FTT token, exposed the fact FTX was over-leveraged, and took over.

This is, as the kids on Twitter say, the embodiment of the old "F#$k around, find out".

Along the way every FTX client who couldn't withdraw, and every crypto user losing value got screwed - but why should these 2 characters care? The space just became more centralized, and whatever smidge of trust was left after the Celsius debacle has evaporated.

discuss

order

jonas21|3 years ago

For those not up to date on crypto people, SBF is Sam Bankman-Fried [1] and CZ is Changpeng Zhao [2]. I don't know why they insist on being called by their initials like they're some sort of ticker symbol.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-Fried

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changpeng_Zhao

SilasX|3 years ago

Because Bankman-Fried is a mouthful/typeful to say every time, and Changpeng is a big, non-western name, and Zhao too common by itself.

Source: me referring to one of them in conversation a lot with no incentive to kowtow to his preferred branding.

RC_ITR|3 years ago

You see the same thing with Middle East Leaders - MBS, MBZ, etc.

When the names are even semi-complex and the reach is global, people default to acronyms.

Analemma_|3 years ago

Because they think the people they're most similar to are respected old-school hackers (rms, jwz, etc.) instead of carnival hucksters like P. T. Barnum.

sneak|3 years ago

It’s common in many internet circles to refer to prominent people by their initials. Hackerdom has a long tradition of this: rms gls esr jwz et al. It also tends to happen in US federal politics for some reason (jfk rfk gwb fdr et al) but not to everyone.

dpflan|3 years ago

Maybe: Crypto is full of acronyms, token tickers are a great example and apropos here --> their names have been "tokenized"...?

HashBasher|3 years ago

The acronyms are very twitter friendly.

appleflaxen|3 years ago

And over-leveraged, for a brokerage, is a major problem. A brokerage is not a bank, and account-holders are not earning interest. Therefore if you are taking their funds and doing something else with them (a pre-requisite for insolvency, unless you are hacked) is a major red flag for illegality.