Davos crypto community condemns FTX and SBF

The crypto community at the WEF meeting in Davos, Switzerland, has sought to disassociate itself from FTX’s abrupt demise and its co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, currently charged with federal crimes in the United States.

The demise of FTX and SBF create distance at Davos

The World Economic Forum {WEF} annual conference is where some members of the digital business community have set up shop. They have quickly distanced themselves from FTX and SBF.

U.S. federal prosecutors filed eight criminal counts against Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, including wire and securities fraud. However, he entered a not-guilty plea after being extradited from the Bahamas to the United States.

Gary Wang, a co-founder of FTX, and Caroline Ellison, a former CEO of Alameda Research, pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges and consented to assist American prosecutors.

“FTX is now portrayed as a crypto issue. If you peel back enough onion layers, I believe the issue is fraud rather than crypto. And we shouldn’t act like it’s something different.”

Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple CEO.

Garlinghouse also explained Ripple’s exposure to the defunct crypto exchange. In an interview on Wednesday, he said that Ripple had leased FTX $10 million in XRP and used it on various things related to FTX.

Ripple’s native crypto is called XRP.

As per Garlinghouse, the business anticipates recovering those cash from American bankruptcy proceedings. The firm’s exposure to FTX, which accounted for 1% of “liquid assets,” wasn’t “significant,” he added.

Executives in the crypto industry acknowledged the reputational damage caused by the FTX collapse, but they asserted that it would draw greater attention to the well-run companies.

Ripple’s Garlinghouse compared SBF’s actions to those of Bernie Madoff, the perpetrator of the largest fraud in history that duped thousands of investors.

The global economy suffered across the board

Since May, there have been significant changes in the world of digital assets, with the value of the crypto market falling and some of the biggest crypto companies going out of business as investors shied away from riskier assets in response to rising interest rates.

Crypto market capitalization has decreased by $1.4 trillion, or a third of its worth, from its peak in late 2021. Some of the most well-known crypto enterprises are in financial difficulty or have already failed, notably the bankruptcy of the crypto exchange FTX.

In estimates of investor losses to hazardous assets in 2022, Garlinghouse said that it would be unjust to single out crypto because other asset classes have also suffered huge losses. For instance, top U.S. technology equities were also severely damaged in 2022.