From time to time, those of us who follow the blockchain world come across such fundamental events as the fall of Terra (LUNA), or the bankruptcy of Celsius, which at the time was one of the most popular centralized platforms for requesting crypto credits. After this, the soap opera of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried is no longer so surprising, although it is still sad.
Beyond narrating a chronicle of what happened, since it is enough to read on Twitter some thread or search for keywords such as “FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, Binance, CZ, Solana” to enjoy the news that have been published in the media, I think it is more fun to talk about how greed and the desire for capital (economic, social, cultural, symbolic) of certain characters affect in one way or another millions of people around the world.
For example, we can discuss how this hits the decentralization of the ecosystem. If CZ had bought FTX, the positions achieved in terms of level of crypto transactions would have been so large that one might wonder whether we are able to develop decentralization effectively.
What happens with the SBF figure is also interesting. How far is it from the story of Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos? A biomedicine project that ended in scam thanks to nice words together with copied speeches and non-existent capital.
Let’s hope that with this new catastrophe, the praise for messianic characters dedicated to “evangelize” people with “disruptive” ideas, with a dishonest storytelling that exceeds the limits of manipulation, will soon come to an end.
If we wanted to develop a decentralized body it should be acephalous, since no individual achieves such supreme liberation and that is why the figure of Satoshi Nakamoto is anonymous and will remain so. We should not hang on anyone, but we should hang on ideas capable of causing positive change.
What we do in the ecosystem is up to us. But the worst thing that could happen is to turn the development of Web3 into a reality show, transforming what happens into a hallway gossip. It doesn’t matter, though, because the decision is up to each one of us.
The importance we give to FTX, Binance and Solana is related to the decisions we have made in the past and will make in the future. Many words have been written to warn of the risks of leaving our cryptocurrencies on centralized platforms, so with events of this type, it is best to try to grow and learn. Apprehend the rules of the game. Anyway, the crypto market will continue to exist, regardless of the level of decentralization or centralization we see in 2023.