The Aftermath of the FTX Fall: Key Lessons We Need to Learn

5 min readNov 15, 2022

The sudden and unexpected collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire, the FTX exchange, still puts the entire crypto industry in deep shock. Many people, including us at Melega, wonder how a multi-billion dollar worldwide company could collapse in just a week. However, we sincerely sympathize with everyone involved in the stressful situation.

The Aftermath of the SBF’s FTX Fall: Key Lessons We Need to Learn

Generally, we believe that cryptocurrencies were designed to usher in a new, revolutionary, and better era of finance, starting from the creation of the primary coin, Bitcoin (BTC), in 2009.

A system that allows people to transact directly through platforms that are brilliantly designed to eliminate the need for trust rather than relying on fragile and often discriminatory banks for savings, loans, and so forth.

Various sources have revealed that SBF blew a $10 billion gash in the financial statements of FTX, once one of the “trusted and reliable” centralized cryptocurrency exchanges in the whole world. There are also beliefs that the curly-haired billionaire donated up to $40 million in the United States midterm elections. On Twitter, he himself acknowledged this fact.

In the crypto space, similar events have taken place. It’s just like history repeating itself. However, we are not attempting to assert any claims or level any accusations in this article.

But before the dust settles and the full extent of the loss is clear, it might take several months. Moreover, we believe it is important to share some key lessons from the collapse of the once-dominant cryptocurrency company with everyone in our community and the wider cryptoverse so that we can all avoid becoming victims in the future.

3 Major Lessons to Learn From the FTX Exchange Collapse

Not your keys, not your coins

One of the most important lessons from the FTX saga is that keeping cryptocurrency in your own hands is the best course of action. In fact, it has always been the best way to guard against unforeseen losses that might not always be your fault.

Therefore, if you don’t already have a custodial wallet that enables you to take self-custody of your crypto assets (like the Trust wallet or Metamask), now might be the best time to get one.

Industry experts have always preached the necessity of keeping one’s digital assets in one’s personal wallet rather than entrusting them to a custodian whose negligence can cost you your life savings.

As mentioned by Changpeng Zhao (CZ), the co-founder and CEO of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, Binance;

Self-custody is a fundamental human right. You are free to do it at any time. Just make sure you do it right.

However, he recommends anyone who would be keeping their cryptocurrency tokens in their personal wallets instead of trusting third parties to start with small amounts to learn how the technology and tools work, first of all, as “mistakes here can be very costly.”

Quit trusting; always verify.

It is believed that trust is everything when it comes to any kind of investment, but it appears that FTX exchange and its CEO have lost everybody’s trust within the crypto space and have made lots of investors lose trust in centralized exchanges.

Therefore, before even opening an account, always make sure to do your research on the cryptocurrency exchange on which you want to keep your assets. You should always be aware that these custodian exchanges are where you are keeping your assets and that they only grant you limited access rights and privileges to withdraw your funds whenever you please.

The fact that many users of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange have been unable to withdraw their life savings from the problematic platform, despite the fact that the majority of them quickly made withdrawals after the tragic news broke in early November, speaks volumes about this.

It’s time to embrace the true decentralization for which cryptocurrencies were originally designed and to move a little closer to the adoption of decentralized exchanges, which allow you to trade a variety of cryptocurrencies while keeping all of your cryptos entirely in your own personal wallet.

We should keep the amount of time our crypto assets are kept on centralized exchanges to a minimum, even though we may only partially need them to transfer fiat money into our bank accounts. We believe a complete decentralized structure of fiat payments will be available soon.

Investing in cryptocurrencies is not a bad idea.

Owning speculative assets like cryptocurrencies is a good idea, but we must all be aware of the risks involved and understand how they operate. We must be aware that established, large businesses can go out of business overnight just as easily as startups.

Risks in the market are not entirely inevitable, as cryptocurrency will always be subject to price fluctuations and phishers will continue to come up with inventive ways to defraud unsuspecting market participants. Likewise, chasing the next hot investment is inevitable as a result of investing out of FOMO. But we must control our exposure to risk and our emotional responses.

We all need to learn.

It is obvious that centralized cryptocurrency exchanges are starting to lose their reputation due to the frequent occurrence of disastrous events. But it appears that we all continue to be victims.

People place such a great deal of trust in third-party custodians that they naively believe they will always keep their word.

However, sometimes they may not be able to control the situation (for instance, in the case of hacking). We must understand fully, though, that attacks of all kinds are most likely to target CEXs and ultimately innocent users.

Crypto blowups, such as those at Mt. Gox, Voyager Digital, Celsius, FTX, and BlockFi, changed the years of the financial crises, and the similarities are obvious. It’s all just one continuous cycle that keeps happening, and we appear to never learn.

Closing Thoughts

Many have already learned that when it comes to cryptocurrencies, the safest place to store your assets may not always be the centralized exchange you purchased them from, but rather to transfer them out to a personal external wallet. This is evidenced by exchanges and businesses experiencing financial difficulties, freezing accounts, and halting withdrawals.

And finally, we still have a long way to go before making cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, and Web3 advantageous for every single market participant. These technologies are going nowhere, as they are the future of almost everything that is currently in existence. We just have to keep building!

To trade cryptocurrencies directly from your personal crypto wallet, Melegaswap is one of the leading decentralized exchanges, offering safe and fast trading and staking with extremely minimal fees and high APR.