What's happening at FTX?

When it came to trading the digital currency known as bitcoin, FTX was a major player on the global stage. Over the weekend, FTX's issues escalated and put the entire market at risk. To begin the year 2019 properly, Sam Bankman-Fried established FTX. He rapidly expanded the trading firm by courting Silicon Valley's most prominent backers. This past week, FTX filed for bankruptcy. Bankman-Fried has left his post. The corporation claimed that some funds had vanished. In addition, analysts estimate that hundreds of millions of dollars may have been misplaced.

FTX's downfall is shocking in a cryptocurrency market that has had its share of issues this year. Last week, investors ran away from FTX because they were worried the company didn't have enough money to survive. Also, FTX has settled on a deal to sell itself to Binance, another cryptocurrency exchange. However, when Binance was investigating FTX's finances, the agreement fell through. FTX and a number of its affiliated entities filed for bankruptcy last Friday. The range of valuation was between $10 billion and $50 billion for the company. In its bankruptcy petition, it listed more than 130 international business partners with whom it had partnered. Bankman-Fried, who had saved other bitcoin firms, also stepped down as FTX's CEO.

What will happen with FTX now that it has filed for bankruptcy is unclear. But if it does fail, it will wipe out billions of dollars in wealth and sow more seeds of doubt about cryptocurrencies.
Sequoia Capital is well-known for its investments in companies like Apple, Cisco, Google, Airbnb, and YouTube. According to the company, meeting Bankman-Fried was like "talking to the world's first trillionaire," and the meeting influenced its decision to invest in FTX.

Following FTX's bankruptcy filing, Sequoia wrote off all $213 million of its investment in the company. Similarly, an Ontario, Canada, pension fund wiped out its investment. There was some criticism levelled at Bankman Fried prior to the FTX collapse. The majority of FTX's operations were supervised by the United States, despite the company's headquarters being in the Bahamas. However, Bankman Fried has advocated for increased oversight of the cryptocurrency market. Many crypto enthusiasts are against centralised regulation. It's possible that the downfall of FTX will strengthen calls for stricter oversight.