Wall Street Journal (December 12)
“Investors spent most of 2023 fretting about inflation and interest rates. Now they are snapping up everything from stocks and bonds to crypto and even gold.” Does the “simultaneous surge across assets” signal “the arrival of a lasting bull market” or is it “just a fleeting sugar high at the end of the Federal Reserve’s tightening cycle?” Opinions are divided.
Tags: 2023, Bonds, Bull market, Crypto, Cycle, Fed, Fleeting, Fretting, Gold, Inflation, Interest rates, Investors, Stocks, Surge, Tightening
Bloomberg (December 1)
“For all the bullish milestones notched by November’s big market surge, recent history offers Wall Street a lesson in caution. Time and time again, speculation breaks out that the Federal Reserve is poised to ease monetary policy soon enough — spurring even cautious investors to erupt in a spasm of cross-asset buying. Stocks jump, bond yields fall, and a dash ensues among equity speculators into shady corners encompassing everything from meme fliers to crypto and profitless tech.”
Tags: Bonds, Bullish, Caution, Cautious, Cross-asset buying, Crypto, Fed, Investors, Market surge, Monetary policy, November, Speculation, Stocks, Tech, Wall Street, Yields
Forbes (March 5)
“The bitcoin price had rocketed by 50% since the beginning of 2023 but stalled out and crashed back, wiping away $100 billion… and reviving fears other crypto companies could follow FTX into bankruptcy.” Silvergate appears likely to be the next to tumble. The crypto bank “is teetering on the verge of collapse—with one short-seller predicting the bank will implode this week.”
Tags: $100 billion, 2023, Bank, Bankruptcy, Bitcoin, Collapse, Crashed, Crypto, Fears, FTX, Price, Short-seller, Silvergate, Stalled, Teetering, Tumble
Financial Times (December 7)
“Not only does Bankman-Fried appear to be lacking in shame; he seems almost contemptuous towards those who feel complex moral emotions.” Feeling embarrassed is not sufficient “when we are talking about as much as $8bn having gone missing, as many as 1mn creditors having lost their money, and a collapsed $32bn crypto empire being investigated by criminal prosecutors for alleged fraud on a vast scale (which Bankman-Fried denies).”
Tags: $8bn, Bankman-Fried, Collapsed, Complex, Contemptuous, Creditors, Criminal prosecutors, Crypto, Embarrassed, Feeling, Investigated, Lacking, Missing, Moral emotions, Shame, Sufficient
Bloomberg (December 2)
“If Sam Bankman-Fried isn’t lying, crypto is in trouble.” If “systematic incompetence” was the reason behind FTX’s implosion, “it’s perhaps more damaging to the industry’s ambitions than if its problems were caused by premeditating Madoff-like criminals who could be brought to justice.”
Tags: Ambitions, Criminals, Crypto, Damaging, FTX, Implosion, Incompetence, Lying, Madoff, Premeditating, Reason, SBF, Trouble
The Economist (November 17)
“Nobody in crypto has slept in days.” Despair has filled the crypto universe since ftx, a Bahamas-based crypto exchange and crown jewel in the empire of Sam Bankman-Fried, its once-feted founder, filed for bankruptcy on November 11th…. He was supposed to be crypto’s future. Instead, he may have robbed the industry of one.”
Tags: Bahamas, Bankman-Fried, Bankruptcy, Crypto, Despair, Exchange, Founder, FTX, Future, Industry
Financial Times (November 11)
The bankruptcy of “Sam Bankman-Fried’s business empire includes billions of dollars of illiquid venture capital investments… including exposure to Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boring Company.” The giant sprawl of his “venture capital portfolio will add to the complexity of the insolvency proceedings, which itself includes more than 130 companies controlled by Bankman-Fried. FTX’s collapse is among the most dramatic failures in the crypto industry not just this year, but since the creation of bitcoin more than a decade ago.”
Tags: Bankman-Fried, Bankruptcy, Bitcoin more, Business empire, Complexity, Crypto, Exposure, Failure, FTX, Illiquid, Insolvency, Investments, Musk, SpaceX, Sprawl, VC
Forbes (June 28)
“The question on everybody’s mind in the crypto world is whether we’ve reached the market bottom. Nearly $2 trillion in crypto market value has evaporated since November…. But the fallout is far from complete.” With over “600 crypto exchanges around the world operating in a largely unregulated frontier,” there are others that are already insolvent. Many promised unreasonably high yields, which “worked fine when crypto was going nowhere but up. It looks disastrous now.”
Tags: Bottom, Crypto, Crypto exchanges, Fallout, Insolvent, Market, Promised, Unregulated, Value, Yields
CNN (May 26)
“It’s easy to watch crypto’s day to day volatility, as well as fringe projects like Terra and Luna enter a “death spiral,” and dismiss the blockchain technology and philosophy underpinning them. But the crypto faithful say that despite its problems, crypto isn’t going away.”
Tags: Blockchain technology, Crypto, Death spiral, Dismiss, Faithful, Fringe, Luna, Philosophy, Problems, Terra, Volatility
New York Times (September 9)
“The crypto revolution is bringing financial services to the unbanked, but not without risks.” The crypto “market is expanding quickly — in all sorts of directions,” giving rise to new “Shadow Banks.” Crypto customers “can earn much higher interest rates than at traditional banks, and they can borrow money, using crypto as collateral, often with no credit checks,” but the potential dangers include hacks, fraud, and the lack of FDIC protection for deposits.
Tags: Borrow, Collateral, Credit checks, Crypto, Financial services, Fraud, Hacks, Interest rates, Revolution, Risks, Shadow banks, Unbanked
