Some Hopium from the Bigshots

I have good news and bad news.

To be honest - I have a little bit of good news and quite a lot of bad news.

First the Bad News

It just keeps getting worse. Coinbase shares are down to $40, Genesis looks like it is also on the verge of bankruptcy and more than 50% of wallets that hold Bitcoin are now in loss.

Yes, it's a shitshow. The FTX contagion is well and truly spreading.

Then, there are commentators like Alex Becker making the (very valid) point that you can't call a bottom on the crypto market right now because of the broader macroeconomic environment. Things don't look good and if economic data and the general market conditions get worse, it'll drag crypto down further with it.

Now the Hopium

Brian Armstrong

Coinbase's CEO had lunch with the FT (the Financial Times) and explained why he was "just as bullish on crypto as ever". He said that FTX was just "one bad actor". He also hastened to add that an incident like that could not happen at Coinbase because they are US - listed and regulated.

He also makes the point that many people have been making - the fact that FTX was a centralised exchange. To avoid issues like this, he talks about more decentralised infrastructure being built so that customers don't have to trust third parties. He talks about some of Coinbase's features that are more decentralised ... but this still feels slightly hypocritical coming from the founder of one of the biggest centralised exchanges in the world.

Fred Wilson

Fred Wilson is a famous venture capitalist who is a big investor in crypto. He shared his long-term view around crypto. His main point was these scams, crashes and negative headlines have all been centred around the speculating/trading aspect of web3. While also this has gone on, the software innovation has been continuing.

Arthur Hayes

This is another CEO of a centralised exchange making the point about decentralisation - but Arthur Hayes puts it very nicely:

"centralised exchanges will always face these issues of mistrust on behalf of their customers. FTX was not the first high-profile exchange to fail and it won’t be the last. But throughout all this, blocks on the Bitcoin, Ethereum, and all other blockchains were still produced and verified. Decentralised money and finance have and will continue to survive and thrive in the face of the failures of centralised entities".