For many, it’s often a painful lesson learned too late.

In an age where financial autonomy is within reach, the irony is that most people still choose convenience over security.

They trust centralized exchanges, slick mobile wallets, and third-party custodians, ignoring the fundamental truth: cryptocurrency was never meant to be held by someone else. It was meant to be owned – by you.

Yet, self-custody is daunting  and financial freedom comes at a price. There’s no customer support if you lose your seed phrase.

No bank to reverse a transaction. No safety net. Just cold, immutable cryptographic certainty. And so, the paradox unfolds: people adopt crypto for its promise of decentralization but fear the very responsibility that comes with it.

The good news? You don’t need to be a hacker, a cypherpunk, or a tinfoil-hat-wearing security guru to secure your crypto. You just need to understand the risks and take the right precautions.

The House Always Wins – Unless You Leave the Casino

Centralized exchanges (CEXs) operate like traditional banks, holding your crypto under the guise of “convenience.”

They promise seamless trading, easy withdrawals, and institutional-grade security. But history has shown, time and again, that even the biggest names are not immune to catastrophic failure.

FTX, Mt. Gox, Celsius, QuadrigaCX – the graveyard of fallen exchanges is littered with billions in lost customer funds. Just recently, Bybit suffered a $1.5 billion heist, the largest in history.

The attackers? The infamous Lazarus Group from North Korea, using sophisticated phishing techniques to exploit a single point of failure.

And therein lies the problem: centralization is a security risk. Even the most well-funded exchange is just a juicy target for hackers, government seizures, or internal fraud.

Keeping your wealth on an exchange is like leaving your cash at a casino. Sure, you can play for a while, maybe even cash out when you need to – but if the house burns down, you’re walking away empty-handed.

The Truth About Self-Custody

The alternative is self-custody – holding your own keys, managing your own security, and truly owning your wealth. But it comes with its own risks.

If you take nothing else from this article, remember these three things:

• Protect your private keys from hackers, malware, phishing attacks, and physical theft.
• Store backups securely so you don’t lose access to your own funds.
• Make sure your assets can be passed down in case something happens to you.

Sounds simple? It isn’t. Security is a balancing act. The tighter you lock things down, the harder it becomes to access your own assets. The looser you keep them, the more vulnerable you are.

So, what’s the right approach?

Building Your Crypto Fort Knox

Your crypto security strategy depends on two key factors: how much you hold and how often you access it. Daily users need convenience, while long-term holders require robust protection.

For everyday spending, hot wallets like Exodus, Edge Wallet, or Trust Wallet offer quick access but come with risks. Enhance security by using GrapheneOS on Android or an iPhone in airplane mode, and avoid public Wi-Fi to prevent cyber threats.

For long-term storage, hardware wallets such as Ledger, Trezor, or KeepKey keep private keys offline, making them highly secure.

Multisig wallets like Casa or Unchained Capital add an extra approval layer, while cold storage on an air-gapped computer running Tails OS offers ultimate isolation from online attacks.

For generational wealth, go beyond basic security. Metal seed backups engraved on steel plates prevent fire, water, and physical damage. Distribute backups across multiple locations (never online) to ensure redundancy.

Finally, inheritance planning – using a dead man’s switch or trusted legal arrangements – ensures your assets remain accessible to heirs.

By aligning security with your needs, you strike the ideal balance between convenience and protection, securing your crypto for the long haul.

The Psychological Barrier

The biggest challenge isn’t the technical setup – it’s the fear. People worry about losing their seed phrase, forgetting passwords, or getting hacked.

They underestimate their ability to learn and overestimate their ability to trust corporations.

Self-custody forces you to take responsibility for your own wealth. And responsibility is uncomfortable.

But in an era where financial surveillance is tightening, where banks can freeze your accounts on a whim, where governments are actively working to undermine crypto – it’s the only true path to financial sovereignty.

*Heath Muchena, founder of Proudly Associated and author of Tokenized Trillions and Blockchain Applied.

A spokesperson disclosed to Bloomberg that the development was already being discussed privately before the SVB’s closure, hence, not the reason for this. It was also revealed that the fintech might choose to go ahead or not.

In response to this, Chipper Cash told Bloomberg that the news is false.

“It’s been fairly common practice for us to receive various M&A proposals from different parties, which we evaluate to varying degrees. That being said, we have never sought to be acquired.”

Considering that the unicorn raised $150 million in a Series C extension round in 2021, valuing it at over $2 billion, this news left a lot of us wondering. Minds shifted to the fact that the startup might have been affected by SVB’s closure for the same reason that FTX was affected – withdrawal crunch.

Emphasizing the closure of SVB having little or no effect on the fintech, Ham Serunjogi, Chipper Cash CEO said: “Given the scale and complexity of our global operations, Chipper Cash maintains multiple banking relationships across the world – including multiple within the United States. As such, we had a very limited amount of money (only about $1M) held in our SVB account at the time the bank was taken over by the California regulator. We have already received confirmation from the FDIC that we can expect about half the funds back by Monday, March 13th 2023. Furthermore, there was absolutely no impact on our customer operations around the world.”

Speaking further, he said: “From a financial perspective, it doesn’t really change anything. SVB made their investment in Chipper in 2021 and we received those funds as soon as that round closed. What is happening now doesn’t change that. Additionally, SVB wasn’t the only investor in that round – we had several other new and existing investors participate in the $100m round – and SVB owns a very small part of Chipper ~2%. Chipper is very fortunate to have a very broad and supportive investor base that has supported us from our earliest days and continues to do so today.”

Chipper Cash enables users send and receive money across Africa seamlessly, with free transfers and affordable cross-border rates.

Having garnered over 5 million users since inception in 2018, Chipper Cash affirms to have issued 300,000+ visa cards and has a total process volume per quarter of more than $1.5 billion.

The uncertainty in the tech and startup landscape which started in 2022, seems to be ushering in some form of difficulties in various sectors.

“It is imperative that you attend our hearing on the 13th, and we are willing to schedule continued hearings if there is more information to be shared later,” Representative Maxine Waters, the committee chair, wrote on Twitter.

On Sunday, Bankman-Fried tweeted that he would testify before the committee after he finished “learning and reviewing” the events that led to the spectacular collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange.

In the tweet Bankman-Fried said he was unsure if that would happen before Dec. 13.

But in her reply on Monday, Waters wrote on Twitter: “Based on your role as CEO and your media interviews over the past few weeks, it’s clear to us that the information you have thus far is sufficient for testimony.”

.@SBF_FTX, we appreciate that you've been candid in your discussions about what happened at #FTX. Your willingness to talk to the public will help the company's customers, investors, and others. To that end, we would welcome your participation in our hearing on the 13th.

— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) December 2, 2022

Rep. Waters, and the House Committee on Financial Services:

Once I have finished learning and reviewing what happened, I would feel like it was my duty to appear before the committee and explain.

I'm not sure that will happen by the 13th. But when it does, I will testify. https://t.co/c0P8yKlyQt

— SBF (@SBF_FTX) December 4, 2022

Bankman-Fried rejected any suggestion of fraud in a series of interviews last week after his company’s collapse stunned investors and left creditors facing losses totaling billions of dollars.

FTX filed for bankruptcy in November after a week in which a possible merger with rival crypto exchange Binance failed.

The partnership is intended to introduce more GameStop customers to FTX’s community and its marketplaces for digital assets.

In addition to collaborating with FTX on new ecommerce and online marketing initiatives, GameStop will begin carrying FTX gift cards in select stores.

During the term of the partnership, GameStop will be FTX’s preferred retail partner in the United States.

The deal unites GameStop, one of the key players in the meme-stock craze of a year and a half ago, with one of the leading crypto exchanges in the world.

The two companies will promote e-commerce and marketing initiatives, while certain GameStop retail stores will carry FTX gift cards, according to a statement Wednesday. GameStop is also being given the label of FTX’s “preferred” retail partner in the U.S.

Deal terms weren’t disclosed.

Benefiting from a solid foundation and a dedicated leadership team, Bitget, the leading global derivatives exchange, has continued to record tremendous growth and generate strong and recurring cash flow despite uncertain market conditions.

In a recent research report issued in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Foresight Ventures, titled “What Does the Future Hold for Crypto Exchanges”, unveils substantial development trends in crypto trading markets, its role on enabling the Web3 economy and shares insights on how to navigate the crypto space during a bear market.

It was also noted that Bitget’s derivatives trading volume has exceeded that of FTX, ranking third globally.

Moreover, as quoted in the report, since its global expansion in 2021, Bitget has since grown rapidly, and captured 10% of the total global derivatives volume, predominantly due to the popularity of its flagship social trading products, most notably the One-Click Copy Trade product.

Since its launch in May 2020, Bitget’s flagship product, One-Click Copy Trade, has broken the mould of trading patterns in the crypto market, bridging the gap between traders from all corners of the world, in addition to elite traders and their fans.

Thus, a social trading pattern has been forged into Bitget’s core, where followers and traders can interact without boundaries and carve their own interconnected path to financial freedom.

To date, Bitget’s One-Click Copy Trade has amassed over 55,000 professional traders, with approximately 1.1 million followers. As noted in the report, derivative markets are dominated by offshore exchanges with Bitget as one of the leading players in Korea due to its popular one-click copy trading feature among traders in the region.

Most recently, Bitget also announced the launch of the US$200 million Bitget Protection Fund, as part of its continued efforts in prioritising security, ensuring its users’ assets are safeguarded. The Bitget Protection Fund was created with the goal to provide unparalleled security and to ensure a secure and safe trading experience for users around the world. The fund will ultimately act as a safeguard for Bitget users and the Bitget trading platform, while also helping to usher in a new era of safety and protection in the crypto space as a whole.

Gracy Chen, the Managing Director of Bitget, said, “We are extremely proud of how far Bitget has come. To be able to surpass some of the leading market players is a testament to the dedicated contribution of the Bitget family.  In the beginning of 2021, we had a small team of 150, and have since achieved a threefold increase in mid 2022. To cater to a burgeoning growth, we recently announced the acceleration of our hiring plan. As we continued to expand our product and service offerings, we also took the effort to ensure our users had a safe and secure trading experience. We look forward to reaching many more milestones in the years to come, with the support of our trusted traders and partners across the globe.”

This year, he bailed out a troubled digital-currency lender and tried to stabilize another. He acquired crypto exchanges in Canada and Japan.

He appeared in magazine ads opposite supermodel Gisele Bündchen in a bid to keep mainstream investors enthusiastic about crypto despite the downturn.

That kind of speed is routine for Mr. Bankman-Fried, a 30-year-old billionaire with a mop of curly hair who sleeps a few hours a night and toys with a fidget spinner during interviews. Last year, when regulatory scrutiny of crypto led Mr. Bankman-Fried to move FTX’s headquarters from Hong Kong to the Bahamas, dozens of employees relocated to the island nation within about a month.

Mr. Bankman-Fried says his ultimate goal is to bring crypto to the masses. He wants to make FTX a household name and use the technology behind bitcoin to reinvent traditional finance, including the stock market and ordinary consumer payments.

He has a lot of work to do. More than a decade after bitcoin’s birth, proponents still struggle to explain the value of digital currencies to a broad audience. Bitcoin has fallen nearly 70% from its November peak and the crash has erased $2 trillion of value from the crypto market, hurting millions of investors.

Not all of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s moves have paid off. An investment in Japan has proved rocky for FTX. And the trading firm he owns alongside FTX, Alameda Research, took losses when it tried to prop up troubled crypto lender Voyager Digital Ltd. Alameda lent Voyager $75 million and increased its stake in the company to 9.5%—only for Voyager to file for bankruptcy less than two weeks later.

“We want to do what we can to stem contagion, and sometimes that’s going to mean that we try to help out in cases where it’s not enough,” Mr. Bankman-Fried said. “If that never happened, I’d feel that we were being way too conservative.”

Like other crypto exchanges, FTX’s core business is to facilitate the buying and selling of digital currencies, and it takes a small cut of transactions. The firm has grown into a juggernaut since it was founded three years ago. With only about 300 employees, FTX is the world’s third-biggest crypto exchange by volume, doing $9.4 billion worth of trades on an average day, according to data provider CoinGecko.

The firm made net income of $388 million on $1.02 billion of revenue last year, according to a person familiar with the matter. It has stayed profitable in 2022 even as crypto prices slumped, Mr. Bankman-Fried said. FTX was valued at $32 billion during its last funding round in January.

Now, with bitcoin hovering around $21,000—roughly in line with its level in late 2020, before last year’s big bull market—Mr. Bankman-Fried says the worst is over.

“Anything could happen, obviously, but as far as I know, we’ve seen most of the contagion already flushed out of the system,” he said.

Expanding an empire

The plea for help from the CEO of BlockFi Inc., a digital-currency lender, came on a Saturday evening in June. Mr. Bankman-Fried saw the message around 11 p.m. after playing padel, a tennis-like sport, with colleagues.

He jumped into his Toyota Corolla with fellow FTX executive Ramnik Arora, turned on the air conditioning and returned the call.

BlockFi was essentially a crypto bank, taking deposits and lending them to borrowers that use the funds for trading purposes. In return, depositors earned interest on their digital money—usually at much higher rates than traditional banks offered on dollar deposits.

BlockFi and other crypto lenders did brisk business until May, when the swift collapse of two cryptocurrencies called TerraUSD and Luna sent shock waves through the market and blew up hedge fund Three Arrows Capital Ltd., one of the biggest borrowers in crypto.

Fears of a 2008-style financial contagion spread. On June 12, a popular crypto lender called Celsius Network LLC suspended withdrawals. Other lenders, including BlockFi and Voyager, were threatened with the crypto equivalent of a run on the bank.

The crash set off rounds of calls into FTX’s headquarters in the Bahamas. Around 15 crypto firms sought money from FTX during a two-week stretch in June, including “miners” who run computer algorithms to generate bitcoin, as well as Celsius itself, Mr. Arora recalled.

Celsius, which has since filed for bankruptcy, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

FTX concluded that Celsius was beyond saving, FTX executives said, but that BlockFi was healthier. Following a Sunday morning Zoom meeting with BlockFi’s leadership on June 19, the day after the initial call from his car, Mr. Bankman-Fried decided to push for a deal.

By throwing BlockFi a lifeline, Mr. Bankman-Fried also seized the opportunity to expand his empire.

In the final deal unveiled on July 1, FTX agreed to loan BlockFi $400 million with an option to buy the firm for up to $240 million. That price is a steal compared with the $4.75 billion valuation that BlockFi reached in July 2021, according to PitchBook data.

“It’s certainly not the outcome that we were expecting last summer,” BlockFi CEO Zac Prince said, but he called the FTX deal a win for the company and its clients. Unlike other offers BlockFi received, which could have forced BlockFi’s retail customers to lose part of their deposits, the FTX transaction was designed to keep depositors whole.

BlockFi says it has more than 650,000 funded accounts. If FTX ends up buying BlockFi, it will expand into the lending market, adding the crypto version of a big bank to Mr. Bankman-Fried’s portfolio.

Mr. Bankman-Fried says he wants to turn FTX into a sort of financial supermarket, offering everything from lending to stock trading to payments.

“The idea generating this is, ‘What do you actually want to do with your money, as the typical consumer? What are the things that are actually valuable for your day-to-day life?’ ” he said.

Sam Bankman-Fried owns FTX, a major crypto exchange, and Alameda Research, a trading firm.

During the recent downturn, he attempted to bail out two crypto lenders, BlockFi and Voyager, by loaning them money from FTX and Alameda, respectively.

FTX also acquired two crypto exchanges—Liquid and Bitvo—expanding into Japan and Canada, respectively.

FTX has invested in non-crypto companies too, such as U.S. stock exchange operator IEX, as it expands into other markets.

Mr. Bankman-Fried has also invested personally in Robinhood Markets and a media startup, Semafor.

Source: Anthony Kwan for WSJ (photo)

Mr. Bankman-Fried is a longtime vegan. He majored in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked for quantitative-trading giant Jane Street Capital for three years before diving into crypto. He is the son of two professors at Stanford Law School.

Bloomberg recently estimated his net worth at $11.9 billion, down from nearly $26 billion last year before the crypto crash.

He is an adherent of effective altruism, a philosophical movement that says individuals should maximize their positive impact on society by making substantial money and giving it away. His favored causes include pandemic prevention and preventing artificial intelligence from harming humanity.

People close to him express surprise at how naturally Mr. Bankman-Fried became a public figure. He has become a regular in Washington, testifying before Congress, promoting FTX’s agenda and lobbying for the crypto industry.

“He has had to transition from talking to a purely crypto audience to dealing with lawmakers, journalists and the public,” said Chris McCann, a partner at Race Capital, an early investor in FTX. “In 2019 he didn’t have a lot of those skill sets. He was much more of a shy, quirky, geeky person.”

Mr. Bankman-Fried’s first headquarters was a rented house in Berkeley, Calif., where he started Alameda Research in 2017—outfitted with desks and computers bought on Amazon. He later moved Alameda to Hong Kong, where crypto regulation was lighter than in the U.S.

Alameda sought to capture profits from the bitcoin market, where a mishmash of exchanges enabled arbitrage opportunities—the ability to buy a coin in one location and sell it elsewhere for more. One early strategy involved buying bitcoin in the U.S. and then selling it in Japan, where it commanded a premium.

He launched FTX in 2019, betting that his team could build a better exchange than the incumbents. Last year, amid mounting scrutiny of crypto by global regulators, Mr. Bankman-Fried decided to move FTX’s headquarters to the Bahamas, where the government had established a crypto-friendly regulatory regime.

Today FTX is based in an office park ringed by palm trees and dominated by a sun-baked parking lot. Mr. Bankman-Fried lives in a nearby luxury apartment complex. Although he has a reputation for living frugally—he has long lived with housemates and often sleeps on a beanbag at work—real-estate records show a unit of FTX paid $30 million for a five-bedroom penthouse there.

Mr. Bankman-Fried said he’s one of 10 FTX colleagues who share the apartment. “Obviously, it would be a ridiculous place for me to be living alone,” he said.

‘Salvage our business’

FTX expanded earlier this year by acquiring Japanese crypto exchange Liquid, which was hit by a $97 million hack in August 2021.

Shortly after the hack, Seth Melamed, then a Liquid executive, was getting on a plane to Tokyo. Liquid faced insolvency, customers were angry, and Mr. Melamed worried that Japanese police might arrest him at the airport. He wrote to Mr. Bankman-Fried on the Telegram messaging app.

His note read: “Fully understand this unusual, but if FTX would consider investing or acquiring Liquid it would salvage our business and benefit the crypto community more broadly.”

The plane had no Wi-Fi. When it landed, he was relieved to find no police waiting for him and a response from Mr. Bankman-Fried: “happy to take a look!”

A few days later, FTX agreed to loan Liquid $120 million, keeping it afloat and setting the stage for the takeover.

It wasn’t an entirely smooth acquisition. FTX ended up losing thousands of Japanese customers who were already using FTX and refused to move over to the local unit regulated by Japan’s Financial Services Agency, a person familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Melamed, now chief operating officer of FTX Japan, said, “We are confident we can return to previous levels of activity by Japanese users at FTX before the end of this year and surpass this by 2023.”

In June, FTX agreed to buy Canadian crypto exchange Bitvo Inc. FTX has also amassed licenses to provide financial services in Australia, Dubai and the European Union as part of an international push.

FTX’s ambitions extend to traditional markets. After buying a registered U.S. brokerage firm last year, it recently allowed American customers to trade stocks on its app alongside bitcoin. In May, Mr. Bankman-Fried spent $648 million of his personal fortune to buy a 7.6% stake in

Robinhood Markets Inc.,

maker of the popular trading app. He revealed his purchase after Robinhood stock plunged nearly 80% from its initial public offering; the shares have edged slightly higher since then.

Mr. Bankman-Fried is the majority owner of both FTX and Alameda, an arrangement that has drawn criticism from crypto skeptics as well as some digital-currency traders. In traditional markets such as stocks and futures, exchanges are required to be neutral platforms that don’t benefit one trader over another. Regulators discourage them from being intertwined with trading firms, considering it a conflict of interest. No such restrictions exist in crypto.

Mr. Bankman-Fried said Alameda doesn’t get special privileges on FTX. While it was initially a major participant on FTX, helping to juice trading activity, it has since dropped to a small share of trading volumes, he said.

Last year Mr. Bankman-Fried resigned from his role as CEO of Alameda, saying he was spending most of his time on FTX.

The firm continues to generate significant profits for him. One cryptocurrency wallet controlled by Alameda—where the firm holds some of its funds—has generated more than $550 million in trading profits since 2020, according to Nansen, a blockchain analytics firm.

FTX amassed a war chest of some $2 billion in a series of funding rounds in 2021 and early 2022, while crypto prices were still high. Investors in FTX included established asset managers such as Singapore state-owned investment company Temasek Holdings Pte. Ltd. and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. The funding allowed FTX to make acquisitions after crypto crashed.

Mr. Bankman-Fried said that FTX has a few billion in cash that it could use for other deals—money it keeps in dollars, not crypto.

—Megumi Fujikawa contributed to this article.

Key Highlights

· FTX saw explosive growth last year driven by its global trading business, according to audited financials seen by CNBC.

The exchange took revenue from below $90 million in 2020 to more than $1 billion last year as cryptocurrencies hit an all-time high. The U.S. business was only a blip on the top line, accounting for less than 5% of revenue.

·CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s empire expanded as FTX bought start-ups across Switzerland and Australia.

The audited financials give a rare glimpse into the privately held company’s finances. FTX was profitable, quickly expanding across the globe and saw breakneck growth.

The crypto exchange’s revenue soared more than 1,000% from $89 million to $1.02 billion in 2021.

Its profitability, like many start-ups, depends on how you measure it. Operating income was $272 million, up from $14 million a year earlier. FTX saw net income of $388 million last year, up from just $17 million a year earlier.

FTX declined to comment on the leaked financial documents

The company brought in $270 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2022, and was on track to do roughly $1.1 billion in revenue in 2022, according to an investor deck shared with CNBC. But it’s unclear how FTX held up in the second quarter as crypto prices plunged during the recent so-called “Crypto Winter.”

By way of comparison, publicly traded Coinbase also experienced a cash boom during crypto’s bull market, with $7.4 billion in revenue and $3.6 billion of net income last year. But in the second quarter of this year, it reported $808.3 million in revenue, a decline of 64% from the year-ago quarter, and a surprise net loss of $1.1 billion, compared with $1.59 billion in net income a year earlier, as retail trading volumes cratered.

FTX was founded three years ago by former Wall Street quant trader Sam Bankman-Fried. The 30-year-old CEO has recently stepped in as the industry’s lender of last resort, looking to backstop companies as liquidity dried up.

On top of multiple loans of hundreds of millions of dollars, Bankman-Fried’s companies also looked to acquire distressed assets.

In July, FTX signed a deal that gives it the option to buy lender BlockFi and was in discussions to acquire South Korean Bithumb. FTX also offered to buy Voyager in August but was turned down for what the company claimed was a “low ball bid.”

FTX had roughly $2.5 billion in cash at the end of last year and 27% profit margins, according to the documents. Margins were closer to 50% if advertising and “related party” expenses are stripped out.

It last raised money in January, collecting $400 million from investors like SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 and Tiger Global, at a $32 billion valuation.

Global footprint

FTX was founded at a time when Coinbase and Binance had solidified themselves as the world’s largest trading venues. 

Coinbase still operates largely within the U.S. Binance, the largest exchange by trading volume got its start in China, later moved its headquarters to the Cayman Islands and is now making a push for the U.S. market with an American subsidiary.

FTX has been quietly building its own fleet of global subsidiaries to compete.

FTX Trading Ltd. is headquartered in Antigua, with FTX Derivatives Markets based in the Bahamas, where Bankman-Fried lives.

FTX Trading recently bought Digital Assets DA AG, out of Switzerland, as well as IFS Group and Hive out of Australia – bringing the total to 15 smaller companies across the world. Its portfolio companies span Cyprus, Germany, Gibraltar, Singapore, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, among other countries, according to the documents.

Crypto companies often acquire start-ups to quickly get the proper regulatory licenses to set up shop in a new country.

Bankman-Fried also founded trading firm Alameda Research, which accounts for about 6% of FTX’s exchange volumes, according to the documents.

FTX’s U.S. business is technically owned by a parent company, West Realm Shires Inc. As of 2021, FTX U.S. made up less than 5% of FTX’s total revenue. Still, the company is making a push to expand in the U.S. with a series of high-profile ads and sponsorships.

FTX spent roughly 15% of revenue on advertising and marketing in 2021, according to the documents. That may account for its 2022 Super Bowl ad with actor Larry David and high-profile celebrity endorsements by Tom Brady and Giselle Bündchen, who are also equity investors in the company.

FTX also bought the naming rights to Miami’s NBA arena, formerly the American Airlines Arena. FTX planned to spend an estimated $900 million in advertising in the coming years, according to the documents.

The crypto exchange is also expanding into stock trading. It launched equities trading weeks after Bankman-Fried took a 7.6% passive stake in Robinhood, fueling speculation that FTX is looking to buy the trading app in a landgrab for U.S. retail accounts. Robinhood and Bankman-Fried have denied that a deal is in the works.

FTX has certainly ramped up its retail expansion efforts. But the documents show that it’s still mainly a venue for more sophisticated traders using derivatives – either futures, or options. About two-thirds of revenue came from futures trading fees, while roughly 16% came from so-called spot trading. Futures and derivatives trades tend to be more lucrative for exchanges.

A number of community contributors participated in the donation to help grow FTT DAO. Through this donation, which will be used as an ecosystem fund, FTT DAO plans to support upcoming community-led projects across areas such as crypto education, decentralized finance and effective altruism for the FTT community.

“As an independent, community-led DAO, fans of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried are encouraged to follow and get involved as a BFF, a Bankman-Fried Fan, Friend or Follower” said contributor 0xMarcJ. “There are limitless opportunities for FTT DAO right now, those interested also have the option to apply for a grant for an idea or project they have in mind.”

“I’m aware of FTT DAO and it’s cool that the community is spontaneously coming together”, said Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX.

Fans can expect to see more crypto educational videos, content, and events. Donations are also earmarked for FTT-related NFT projects and further building the FTT global community and utility.

“Today @BlockFi signed a term sheet with @FTX_Official to secure a $250M revolving credit facility providing us with access to capital that further bolsters our balance sheet and platform strength,” he wrote in a Twitter thread.

Prince said the proceeds from the FTX loan are contractually subordinate to all client balances, meaning that BlockFi will satisfy its obligations on client accounts—BlockFi Interest Accounts, BlockFi Personalized Yield and loan collateral—before paying FTX.

The company has been especially hard hit in the downturn. Last week BlockFi joined the growing list of firms reducing their workforce to weather the crypto winter, cutting its staff by “roughly 20%.”

At the time, Prince said on Twitter that all of BlockFi’s products and services would continue to operate normally.

It’s a timely disclaimer.

Celsius, one of BlockFi’s crypto lending competitors, froze account withdrawals, swaps and transfers last Sunday to help it weather “extreme market conditions.” Yesterday, the company said it needs more time to stabilize before unfreezing accounts.

Meanwhile, BlockFi has hit its own headwinds. Last week, the company made a $1 million payment to the Iowa Insurance Division as part of a larger $100 million penalty that BlockFi agreed to pay to settle an investigation into its high-yield accounts.

‘Future collaboration’

In his announcement of the line of credit, Prince hinted that it could open the door to a partnership between FTX and BlockFi.

“This agreement also unlocks future collaboration and innovation between BlockFi & FTX as we work to accelerate prosperity worldwide through crypto financial services,” he said on Twitter.

The feeling seems to be mutual. Yesterday, Sam Bankman-Fried FTX CEO said the cryptocurrency exchange has a “responsibility” to bail out struggling companies during this unrelenting bear market.

“Even if we weren’t the ones who caused it, or weren’t involved in it,” he said, referring the wave of “contagion” that’s impacting crypto markets. “I think that’s what’s healthy for the ecosystem, and I want to do what can help it grow and thrive.”

The acquisition marks the latest licence acquisition in FTX’s mission to provide its industry-leading products and services to its global customers in a regulated fashion.

The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of 2022, subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions.

“We are delighted to enter the Canadian marketplace and continue to expand FTX’s global reach. Our expansion into Canada is another step in proactively working with cryptocurrency regulators in different geographies across the globe.”

Bitvo is a crypto asset trading platform offering Canadians a secure and easy way to buy, sell and trade crypto assets.

In April 2022, the Company became the first Alberta-based crypto asset trading platform to register as a restricted dealer, allowing it to offer crypto asset trading services across all provinces and territories in Canada.

Bitvo is also registered with FINTRAC as a money services business in the virtual asset service provider category.

Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX, commented on the news, “We are delighted to enter the Canadian marketplace and continue to expand FTX’s global reach. Our expansion into Canada is another step in proactively working with cryptocurrency regulators in different geographies across the globe.”

Following the completion of the acquisition, Bitvo is expected to be integrated into the FTX global team serving the Canadian market in a variety of capacities.

Pamela Draper, CEO of Bitvo, concluded, “Canada has shown a growing interest in digital asset trading, and we’re thrilled to help provide entry into one of the leading regulated crypto asset trading platforms in the world to the Canadian cryptocurrency community. We look forward to transforming Canadian’s access to the digital asset ecosystem as part of FTX.”