One year ago today, all hell broke lose.
"Cryptocurrencies Melt Down in a ‘Perfect Storm’ of Fear and Panic" wrote the NYTimes,
"$1 Trillion Crypto Meltdown—Huge Crash Wipes Out The Price Of Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, XRP, Cardano, Solana, Terra’s Luna And Avalanche" was the headline at Forbes.
Bitcoin would lose a total of 12% of its value on this day, and that looked good compare to Ethereum, XRP, BNB, Cardano, Solana, all which lost between 20%-30% in the same time period.
For us, people with a sizeable portion of their net worth inside the crashing market, the popular 'swap to a stablecoin until it's over' move was followed by praying the stable coin you chose actually was stable.
Even if you managed to minimize your own losses, it was impossible to be part of any of the main online crypto communities, from the Bitcointalk message boards, to Crypto-Twitter, and several popular crypto subreddits were filled with despair.
3 Months Later FTX's Collapse Would Overshadow This Period Forever. But on This Date, No One in Crypto Was Receiving More Praise than Sam Bankman-Fried...
Sam was about to save the entire industry.
Over the days ahead companies that were heavily invested in Luna and UST were struggling, or flat out collapsing. This is where Sam would step in offering hundreds of millions to companies from his pile of spare spendable cash (which today appears to have been his user's cash, that he was spending without permission).
In one interview he talks about meeting inside FTX where they determined he could spend up to $1 billion basically bailing out crypto companies if they had long term potential, and of course he would now own piece of them all.
If You Want a Truly Surreal Experience - Read This Article from NYTimes, Published This Week One Year Ago...
There's so many parts of this article that cringe-inducing to read today that it was hard to choose a couple examples, but I think these will give you an idea of just how far Sam took his fantasy of being a high-profile successful genius, and how good he was at convincing others to believe it as well.
A little over a week before this, Sam and FTX held their first of what was supposed to be an annual conference in the Bahamas, the reporter writes "Everywhere he went, crypto entrepreneurs offered handshakes and fist bumps, patting him on the back as they pitched projects or presented him with branded swag".
I did warn you this would be cringe-inducing.
Another interesting part is where Sam's seemingly reveals that even his... unique style and sometimes awkward behavior was a calculated move, according to the article "Before one of his first TV appearances, Andy Croghan, a colleague at Alameda and FTX, urged him to clean up his look. “I was like, ‘Sam, you’ve got to cut your hair, dude — it looks ridiculous,’” Mr. Croghan said. “And he said, ‘I honestly think it’s negative for me to cut my hair. I think it’s important for people to think I look crazy."
But the gem of the article (well, if you're looking for the strangest parts) has to be this next story which begins in the FTX offices "A few colleagues were cracking crypto-themed sex jokes in the office" I'm not kidding, that was printed by the NYTimes, I really wish they included an example. Anyway, these naughty jokesters got Sam's attention and threw his genius mind into overdrive - then it came to him - FTX needs their own condoms.
Now that may sound crazy at first but there's a good reason - marketing. The article says that "Sam whirled around in his chair. He wondered, was there expected value (EV) in distributing condoms with jokes on them at an upcoming conference?" Sam decided - obviously yes.
So what would Sam print on them? Ironically, a statement that FTX would survive the exact situation that ended up destroying it.
The condom wrapper reads “Never breaks” in large letters and underneath “even during large liquidations.”
Today you find people selling them on EBay as collectors items.
Good times.
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Author: Justin Derbek
New York News Desk
