FTX collapse should provide momentum to regulate crypto
By 
Aaron Nicodemus2022-11-15T21:02:00
The collapse and bankruptcy of digital asset exchange FTX offers stark lessons into why rules that apply to traditional investments—overseen by government regulation—ought to apply to digital investments as well.
As recently as Nov. 6, FTX, founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried, was one of the world’s largest digital asset exchanges, with $16 billion in assets under its control. By Nov. 11, the company filed for bankruptcy following a week in which investors and customers demanded to cash out their investments and sell their FTX tokens (FTT), all at once.
Even for the cryptocurrency industry, which has become accustomed to wild swings in value, the speed of FTX’s fall was stunning. What happened?
Related articles
-
News BriefSilvergate Bank to pay $63M to Fed, California over BSA/AML deficiencies
Crypto-friendly Silvergate Bank will pay a total of $63 million penalties to California and the Federal Reserve Board to settle charges that its anti-money laundering program failed to properly monitor more than $1 trillion worth of customer transactions.
-
News BriefCFTC commissioner urges crypto gatekeepers ‘step up and call for compliance’
Christy Goldsmith Romero of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission called out gatekeepers—lawyers, accountants, auditors, compliance professionals, and others—for failing customers in the unregulated cryptocurrency market.
-
News BriefSEC charges Genesis, Gemini for failing to register crypto lending product
The Securities and Exchange Commission accused two cryptocurrency firms, Genesis Global Capital and Gemini Trust Company, with selling a crypto lending product to investors as an unregistered security.
More from Opinion
-
OpinionBeyond the Binder: Policy governance in practice
Most compliance professionals have faced it: a regulator or client requests a policy, and several slightly different “final” versions appear. The issue often stems from reactive, siloed work without a unified governance framework.
-
OpinionWhat compliance can learn from a 95 percent AI pilot failure rate
Compliance professionals have long known that systems fail when governance does. An MIT study’s finding that 95 percent of enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) pilots fail underscores how essential compliance-grade discipline is to the success of emerging technologies.
-
OpinionRisk-Based AML only works if the C-suite agrees what ‘risk’ means
Banks emphasize risk-based compliance in their AML programs, citing it to regulators and embedding it in policy, yet many institutions still handle risk very differently in practice.