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SBF
@SBF_FTX
Replying to
@SBF_FTX
5) Which, I think really hammered into me that running a successful business is about a lot more than just the core product. There's marketing, customer service, regulation, budget, morale, hiring, managing... -------------
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
6) I first met Arthur and Ben a few years ago in Hong Kong. Arthur was always polite, but we never talked much. Ben was more open around me -- and an all around great guy. He was the guy you'd hope was assigned next to you at a dinner party. And he's genuinely altruistic.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
7) BitMEX, too has been upstanding and respectful towards us. It's easy, in this industry, to see each other as competitors. They were always gracious and fair. We'd bullshit together at conferences and meet up now and then to reminisce.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
8) And, of course, they built a great business, at least for a while. BitMEX was truly the king of crypto. It found the product market fit at the right time. And it went for it. And the team knows their shit.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
9) It was clear, by the end, that things had been brewing for a while. And it seems like they probably made decisions I wouldn't have made. It's not clear if they saw the writing on the wall, but it was probably there.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
10) ------ I only met Star once -- I flew to his office to talk about futures. It was an odd talk, not least of which because his scattered attempts at English still eclipsed my total lack of Chinese. But he built an empire in crypto.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
11) OKEx went a few years without much international recognition. But those who knew, knew. It was, for a while, where it all happened. If it was 2018 and crypto moved, you didn't check BitMEX, or Coinbase, or the CME. You checked OKEx's quarterly futures.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
12) EOS rose on a wave of OKEx flow, and BTC crashed on a string of OKEx liquidations. At one point its markets generated more than half of all information in crypto. They always had their issues--risk, and margin GUIs--but they cleaned much of it up.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
13) There was also always something lurking. They did what they had to do, given their position. And they made the most of it. But it was always there, always a risk. They're not alone in that. You either die a hero, or... ------------
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
14) Many people learned this before I did, but: running something is hard. It's hard because not only is there the central hard task: You have to stay on top of *everything*. It's _thousands_ of hours on phone calls, running over plans again and again and again.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
Replying to
@SBF_FTX
16) Sometimes they're boring, and sometimes they seem like they won't matter. They take _forever_ to do. And you can't just outsource them -- they're decisions that can only really be made with the full context of the project. Often people skip infrastructure day.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
17) But in the end, everything rests on it. A company is nothing without its structure, its foundation, its plan. So much of the value comes from that. People often call it 'luck' without realizing that it was planned. And when I feel 'unlucky', I try to take a step back.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
18) What caused me to be in a position where that was possible? Could I have acted different to not be in that position? --- There are competitors in the space. But I firmly belive that we have more to gain from each other than we do to lose.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
19) Because collaboration isn't a 0-sum game, it's a positive sum game when done right, and that overwhelms the competitive tension. And I have no bones to pick here.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
20) So to our colleges and compatriots fighting through a mountain of shit: I hope things work out, in the end. I hope you can come back better than ever. You built something amazing, and beat me to the punch by half a decade. And to everyone else: forward.
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