SBF Profile picture
24 May, 10 tweets, 2 min read
1) What sort of leveraged played a part in the crash?
2) NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. TRADE RESPONSIBLY.
3) The obvious answer is "100x".

But I don't think it's the correct one.
4) See: with 100x leverage,:

a) you can only put on tiny positions
b) you get liquidated almost immediately

so if what you observe is "BTC goes down 1% and $1m got liquidated", that might be 100x leverage positions.
5) But that wasn't the fact pattern; instead, BTC went down 40%, and $20B got liquidated.

So anyone who was 2.5x or more leveraged was at risk, and they added up to $20B.

This was mostly users with 3x-20x leverage who contributed.
6) What can you do about this?

Well, there's a limit to how much it makes sense to do. Crypto was bullish on crypto, so it got long crypto.

But one thing you can do is make sure your margin requirements are reasonable.
7) If you let people put on 20x leveraged positions for $100m each, that'll add up FAST. Those are very likely to get liquidated, and for large size.

FTX always has small liquidates relative to the field; even on the biggest days we don't usually get above ~$300m.
8) Partially, this is because we don't encourage massive risk taking.

But partially it's because of our margin system.
9) (a) We scale up margin requirements for bigger positions; help.ftx.com/hc/en-us/artic….

(b) we cross-collateralize everything. This means that all of your assets can be used as collateral, and can help prevent liquidations.
10) At some point, if you allow leverage, users might get liquidated, and you can't stop that.

But you can at least do what you can to give them room, so that they don't start immediately snowballing.

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More from @SBF_Alameda

23 May
1) Ok, so something which I think is relevant:

1) Over the last week, ~$20B of longs have been liq'd
2) Right now, OI ~ $20B

coingecko.com/en/exchanges/d…
2) So that means....

I think (?) that means we have to be nearing the end of the futures liquidations.

A lot of the remaining OI is very unlikely to be liq'd.

But, there are other types of liquidations.
3) Spot margin trading, for instance.

FTX has ~$1b of OI on ftx.com/spot-margin/le…, but that number has been more stable.

Bitfinex has another ~$2B.

So there could be *some* more liqs, but not a ton.
Read 7 tweets
20 May
1) Ok, so how much CO2 does BTC actually create? How much of a worry is it?

2) NOT... advice, really. Just math.
3) Ok, so. Let's say you spend $X on BTC/ETH blockchain fees (or any PoW currency).

Those $X are going to miners in a bidding war for block slots.

In an efficient market, as long as it's profitable to run a BTC/ETH mining rig, more people will open them up.
Read 8 tweets
14 May
1) How fickle we all can be
2) For years, we were entertained by @elonmusk.

"Here is a meme", he said, "in which I like bitcoin".

"Yes", we replied, "this one sparks joy".
3) He did not pretend to have loyalty or deference to BTC. Or for that matter, to anything, really.

That is fine, we all thought. Deference to the system as it happens to exist is the innovation killer.
Read 19 tweets
13 May
1) So on energy usage of BTC:

The profile will change long-term. Right now the main driver is from block rewards.

But as block rewards exponentially decay, those will become less relevant.

Long-term, there are really two core drivers.
2) First, transaction fees.

There's limited block space, and transactions will basically be bidding in auctions for those.

That means that greater demand for BTC transfers --> higher tx fees --> breakeven point with more miners --> more energy used.
3) So long-term energy used by BTC will scale with total demand for BTC transfers.

The other thing it scales with is security.

If anyone accumulates 51% hashrate they can attack the network.

So for BTC to be secure, it has to be prohibitively expensive to get 51% hashrate.
Read 8 tweets
4 May
1) For the first time, FTX is spending nontrivial amounts of money on branding. Why?
2) Well, first, why haven't we?

Because our core userbase doesn't really care.

Our core userbase has been, basically, you all who are reading this tweet.

And if you're reading this tweet, you already know way more about FTX than our brand will convey.
3) But there are a lot of other people in the world--people who haven't heard of most crypto exchanges.

And they've been bombarded for years with ads for a few high profile retail applications.

And those people are increasingly getting into crypto.
Read 6 tweets
3 May
1) A while ago I wrote up some thoughts on VCs:



Here are some updates:
2) One really refreshing change over the last decade has been the transition to "founder-friendly" VCs.

What does this mean, and why did it happen?
3) What it means, roughly, is VCs seeing themselves as helping and supporting the companies, not running them; and terms/etc. starting to reflect that.
Read 14 tweets

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