Conversation

SBF
@SBF_FTX
Replying to
@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
15) Where should I live? What shouldn't we do? What can I say? Who owns what, and where? What do we do if that happens? What's the most likely response to this? What, really, is the exposure there?
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SBF
@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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Alison | AlisonBob.eth 🔺🇺🇦
@AlisonbobEth
Replying to
@SBF_FTX
and
@SBF_Alameda
People truly underestimate how hard everything is, how many variables go into things, how our financial systems don’t talk to each other, the lack of adaptability due to the lack of agility. It’s layers of bandaid solutions, on top of bandaid solutions.
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Meet A Spartan
@HHenkelson
Replying to
@SBF_FTX
and
@SBF_Alameda
Appreciate you saying this, even if I don't know you. Crypto makes priests and acolytes and heroes, but just as quickly makes pariahs of people. All it takes is any time with a human being to know we're all a little of both and never anything for too long.
ipyksally
@ipyksally
Replying to
@SBF_FTX
@SBF_Alameda
and
@zackvoell
All you said can only be summed up - trading and building a great company even with millions of customers is not enough because you go in for the money and eventually the bets and risks turn back on you. Always this way because you physically exist somewhere in the world.