Cointime

Download App
iOS & Android

FTX Crisis Spurs and Sam Bankman-Fried Is Under Fire

Cointime Official

FTX is bust, and crypto is plummeting as contagion spreads.

After the announcement, he tweeted, “Sad day. Tried, but 😭”.

“The ongoing liquidity crunch, despite short term in nature, is harmful to the industry development and investors alike.”  Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, shared the same opinion, and said he is 'putting together solution' for FTX later today, but without sharing any details.

According to a report from Huobi Research, the impact of the FTX crisis may exceed the Luna and 3AC collapse. In July 2020, 3AC, the most prominent crypto hedge fund which managed about $10 billion in assets, headed to bankruptcy court and leave it unable to repay lenders.

On Wednesday, Galaxy Digital CEO Michael Novogratz said he is “angry” and “frustrated” about the latest situation around FTX, reported Blockworks. Galaxy Digital, the crypto-focused financial-services firm, said it has exposure of around $76.8 million of cash and digital assets tied to troubled crypto exchange FTX. “In some ways, this is the year where the bad news in crypto has just kept coming,” Novogratz said the crypto industry has done a bad job of self-regulating. “What’s painful about this is that Sam spent so much time in DC. It wasn’t that what he was saying was crazy. It’s just that if the messenger now looks like he ran his ship into an iceberg…it’s just going to anger the people he spent time with and slow this down some,” he added.   

Michael Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital

This is a historical moment. . . a bit of a ‘what the fuck’ moment,” Pascal Gauthier, CEO of crypto wallet firm Ledger, told Financial Times. “It shows that no one is too big to fail. FTX seemed untouchable,” he added. Before this week, FTX was the fourth-biggest exchange, processing billions of dollars in daily trading volumes.

Pascal Gauthier, CEO of Ledger

FTT, the token native to the crypto exchange FTX, traded at around $22 on Monday and sank below $5 Tuesday afternoon in New York. The sell-off wiped out more than $2 billion in value in the space of 24 hours. A senior executive at a Crypto trading firm said: “It’s almost like a company using their equity as collateral on a loan. And you would never do that because it is linked to your health as a business. It becomes worthless when you need the collateral to do its job.” (from Financial Times )

On social media, Sam Bankman-Fried is under fire.

Mike Winkelmann, aka the digital artist Beeple, who is famous for selling his NFT work “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” for $69 millon, tweeted “damn you @SBF_FTX”.

It’s criminal.” Crypto Influencer Ben Armstrong commented on FTX incident on Twitter and said, “I had zero sympathy for SBF & am going to enjoy sending him to prison”.  As for FTX investors, he feels sorry for them as chances are that they would never get their money back.

Memes about Biance Changpeng Zhao and Sam Bankman-Fried are getting viral on Twitter.

This meme frames Changpeng Zhao as the “professor,” warning that if we mess around with Binance, we will face the same consequences as FTX.

This meme, made from a screenshot of a Bloomberg headline, suggests that Sam Bankman-Fried has succeeded in giving his “fortune” away because he is handing FTX over to Binance.

Comments

All Comments

Recommended for you

  • Crypto-Friendly Bank Erebor Seeks $1.5B Funding with a16z Participation

    On August 11, Erebor Bank, a crypto-friendly bank co-founded by Oculus and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, is seeking $1.5 billion in funding, with a pre-money valuation target of $8 billion. This valuation is nearly double the $435 million valuation the company had when it completed a $350 million funding round in December 2025. Erebor has already received support from investment institutions such as 8VC and Haun Ventures, and the new funding round is expected to attract participation from Lux Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Human Capital, Valor Equity Partners, and SV Angel, among others. As AI infrastructure investment enters a phase of rapid expansion, Erebor is targeting the financing needs of AI companies. AI companies require substantial capital to purchase GPUs, build data centers, and secure energy supplies, while traditional financial institutions are gradually exploring financing models for AI infrastructure assets. However, whether Erebor can maintain rapid growth after the AI and crypto industry cycles cool down remains a key focus for the market. The funding round has not yet been finalized and is expected to be completed within the coming weeks.

  • Russia's Central Bank Adds Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT to Publicly Tradable Cryptocurrency List

    On August 11, the Central Bank of Russia included Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether (USDT) in the list of cryptocurrencies that can be publicly traded on domestic exchanges.

  • BTC Breaks Above $64,000

    Market data shows BTC has broken through $64,000 and is currently reported at $64,000.33, with a 24-hour decline of 1.53%. Market volatility is high, so please exercise caution and manage risks accordingly.

  • BTC Falls Below $64,000

    Market data shows BTC has fallen below $64,000, currently at $63,999.77, with a 24-hour decline of 1.89%. Market volatility is significant; please exercise risk control.

  • Vitalik Updates Ethereum Roadmap: Privacy, Post-Quantum Scaling, and Native Rollups Become New Priorities

    On August 10, Vitalik Buterin stated that he had compared the 2023 Ethereum roadmap with the current Strawmap. The overall direction still overlaps considerably, but some priorities and technical paths have been clearly adjusted, including raising the priority of quantum safety, downweighting VDF and some EVM improvements, and replacing old designs with solutions such as a unified binary tree, PBT, and new state types. He noted that the most notable change in the current Strawmap is the emergence of several new topics not included in the 2023 roadmap, reflecting a shift in Ethereum's R&D focus. These new priorities include: stronger native privacy support, aggressive scaling in a post-quantum context, specification streamlining for formal verification, Blob and Gas futures, native Rollups, and a more open design space for the future shape of the EVM. Vitalik also emphasized that Ethereum's scaling approach is shifting from 'expanding all activities comprehensively' to 'designing more scalable dedicated mechanisms for specific high-load scenarios,' and he regards STARK proofs and AI-accelerated formal verification as important foundations for the protocol's future. Overall, this update shows that the Ethereum roadmap is evolving toward quantum safety, privacy-first, censorship resistance, high performance, and simpler protocol design.

  • ETH Falls Below $1900

    Market数据显示,ETH has fallen below $1900, currently reported at $1899.19, with a 24-hour decline of 1.28%. The market is highly volatile. Please exercise risk control.

  • Microsoft Plans to Release Next-Gen MAIA 300 AI Chip in September

    On August 10, according to reports, Microsoft plans to release its next-generation MAIA 300 AI chip in September.

  • BitMine Adds 7,391 ETH and Buys Back 3 Million Shares Last Week

    As of August 9, Eastern Time, BitMine's total cryptocurrency + cash holdings + "Moonshot" initiative amounted to $11.6 billion. BitMine held 5,805,238 ETH (up 7,391 ETH from last week), representing 4.8% of the total Ethereum supply (120.7 million ETH). It also held 209 BTC, $180 million in Beast Industries shares, $69 million in Eightco Holdings (NASDAQ: ORBS) shares, and $104 million in unsecured cash. BitMine repurchased 3 million common shares last week, bringing the total common shares repurchased since early July to over 19 million. As of August 9, 2026, BitMine's total staked ETH was 5,067,309 (worth approximately $9.8 billion at $1,928 per ETH).

  • Strategy Sells 1,691 BTC in Past Week

    Regulatory filings show that Strategy sold 1,691 BTC over the past week, increasing its dollar reserves by $650 million.

  • Unitree Technology: Final Online Issuance Winning Rate 0.0181%

    On August 10, Unitree Technology (688836.SH) announced that the company's initial public offering of shares and the online issuance subscription status and winning rate on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board were disclosed. The issuing price was RMB 150.80 per share, with a total of 40,446,434 shares issued. After the activation of the clawback mechanism, the final online issuance was 9,707,000 shares, accounting for approximately 30.00% of the total shares issued after deducting the final strategic placement, and the final online issuance winning rate was 0.01809759%.