This sucks.

It’s a hard day in the crypto, web3, and yes, the tech world. Binance’s bid to rescue FTX has been retracted amidst reports that the company is facing a shortfall of $8 billion. It appears that FTX is about to hit bankruptcy.

This is awful news for those working on crypto and web3 projects. I fully acknowledge we are still in the hype phase of web3 where there will be a lot of grifters and scammers, but there are legitimate people and companies out there working on amazing projects that will undoubtedly be affected.

SBF was seen as the savior of the industry. He’s an incredibly brilliant dude who was goofy but relatable. He looked like your typical Silicon Valley coder. He has a great upbringing and a seemingly straight moral compass with ambitions in the world. He had an aura around him.

When Luna and Celsius blew up, I and pretty much everyone else didn’t think that there could be anyway that SBF and FTX could be next. He seemed to be doing all the right things including actually asking for more regulation. FTX was different than the rest…. or so we thought.

This one will be puzzling for some time. On the surface, it did not appear that FTX needed to put themselves in this position at all. SBF had just witnessed the debacle at Celsius and Luna… surely he had to realize that getting absolutely rekt was in the realm of possibility right? Was it ultimately greed and money that drove SBF to put FTX in a position they are in now or had this been happening all along?

Whatever the answers to the above, I do know one thing… this is going to have ripple effects across the entire tech ecosystem even beyond crypto and web3. Top tier VC firms just lost hundreds of millions each investing in FTX. That’s a lot of money that could have went to other builders.

This sucks for all of us right now. FTX blowing up was the last thing we all needed in a bear market.