This is the story of FTX, the most preferred exchange after Binance and its founder Sam Bankman, the godfather of crypto and their valuation, from $32 Billion to zero in a matter of weeks. 👇
Sam Bankman-Fried, a bright student who graduated from MIT with major in Physics and minor in Maths started his career in a trading firm - that didn't go well.
In 2018 he actually made a blow by making $25Million in a single day with arbitrage trading.
April 2019, FTX was launched and Sam started to dream of conquering the world. CZ (CEO of Binance) and Sam had a quality friendship that lead to Binance investing in FTX in the hope of a fruitful partnership.
Who knew that this newbie is going to hit Binance's door someday!?
In the world of crypto, you can keep lying and keep others' mouths shut until regulators hold your neck. This is actually what happened with FTX.
In the real world, you can't go public to start IPO unless you've that financial stability while in Crypto, you're public from day 1.
In 2021, FTX raised freaking $900M from Sequoia at a valuation of a shocking $18 Billion.
In a question about what else your exchange can do, Sam answered that you can buy bananas on our platform.
Well, that's not a joke.
In 2021-22 when multiple firms were getting bankrupt, Sam appeared as the godfather of crypto.
He saved Robinhood by buying a 7.6% stake, saved Voyager Digital and BlockFi from drowning, sponsored F1 teams, fundraised $5.2M for Biden, helped Elon Musk of $5M to buy Twitter.....
This is where it started to raise concerns : 0 to $32Billion in less than 3 years.
CEO of Alameda Research quit; a month later FTX president stepped down adding more confusion to the rabbit hole.
Regulators started probing FTX if they actually had the cash they claim to have.
Alameda Research's balance sheet got leaked showing that their net equity is actually the valuation of FTT tokens they hold.
Probing on FTX found out that instead of cash reserve, they're showing FTT tokens in their balance sheet.
👉 PANIC MODE ON for the crypto market 📉
Panic selling lead to a crash of the crypto market as well as FTT's price as they didn't have enough cash to offer.
6 Nov, CZ tweeted to sell their FTT holding
It leads to a total panic sellout of FTT and one of the biggest crashes of this year.
FTX didn't have enough cash if everyone wanted to withdraw at the same time, and the reason why they had to block withdrawing - led to more and more PANIC.
Meanwhile, CZ tweeted that FTX seeking for help and Binance will resolve this significant liquidity crunch to protect users.
After checking their balance sheet, CZ found out that the condition FTX is dealing with is severe and the future is hopeless. CZ took back his offer.
And that's how a $32 Billion dollar company crunched to zero in a matter of weeks.
Sam, once the godfather, is now a SCAM-STAR.
That's a wrap!
If you enjoyed this thread:
1. Follow me @notionhead for more of these 2. RT the tweet below to share this thread with your audience
25 jaw-dropping AI tools that are illegal to know:
1. Poised
Poised is the AI-powered communication coach that helps you speak with confidence and clarity.
It simulates public speaking situations and used GPT-3 to analyze your results, providing feedback for improvements. poised.com
2. Murf
AI voice generator that creates human-like voices from text that you can use for podcasts, videos, presentations or anything you want.
It's mindblowing, give it a try. murf.ai
The proven strategies for building an online audience for established Entrepreneurs and Business Professionals:
Building an online audience is not just crucial but a driving factor for growth, whether it's offline or online, real estate or tax consultancy, corporation or banking, or anything.
All you want is to have the influence, not just in your business but on a larger scale, socially.
1. Optimize your profile on Twitter and LinkedIn, or even Instagram such that it reflects your personality and influence in the space.
You can't have time for multiple platforms, so better focus on one where you think your audience belongs.
Getting the blue tick is not that far.
I spent weeks using 10+ different LINK-IN-BIO tools to choose the best one so that you don't have to.
Here it goes, my best 5 picks -
(3 mins)
1. @Linktree_
it's the most popular, hence the most used and lacking the most features.
You should pick Linktree only if you can afford to upgrade to their premium plans as the FREE one doesn't even have analytics; it sucks.
👉 I would rate 2/5
⏩ linktr.ee
@Linktree_ 2. @mezinkapp
I found this tool on the Play Store and I was shocked to see that it's giving almost everything for free.
But I felt that the properties are not organized and it gets confusing sometimes.
👉 I would rate 3/5 mez.ink
I started this Twitter account on 12th Nov, exactly 7 days ago with 0 tweets and 0 followers.
It's been a week and I gained a whopping 66.5k impressions, 4.5k profile visits and 86 fresh organic followers
Here are 7 insights I learned in the last 7 days that will 10X your Growth
1. Eye catchy profile -
Earlier I used a cover image I created in @Canva (attached) and that was actually eye-catchy as per the colours I chose.
Right now, I'm using a dynamic cover from @blackmagic_so (attached) that shows my recent followers as well.
2. Provide Quality Content
I created 5 threads, each having quality content to target separate niches.
No one will follow you unless you provide something they actually need.
When any client places an order or asks you about something about the project, first greet them, then reply politely with a satisfying answer.
Try to convince him that you're the one he needs this is exactly the kind of project you love to do.
TIP 2
While creating the offer, you must explain in brief why it charges that much with respect to how much work is needed and how much effort you’re going to put into it.
Don't negotiate to much as it will degrade your value.