Offering futures for altcoins within the first few months of operating is not the kind of move a more cautious exchange like Coinbase would make neither is offering 101x leverage given the riskiness of such investments.
How FTX compares to Coinbase, Binance, BitMEX, and others.įrom this list alone, FTX’s product demonstrates admirable creativity, as well as a frightening affection for risk. Winning over serious traders from around the world. How the company differentiated on reliability and creativity. FTX’s fast start and near-instant product-market fit. Today, we’ll explore different dimensions of the FTX empire, with the help of never-before-seen data on the business. Believers will note that the company seems to have the capital, connections, and will to resolve its most significant problems. Of course, only time will tell how effective FTX is in filling the gaps. In particular, the exchange has played fast and loose with regulation, shrugged off accusations of conflicts of interest, and largely ignored retail traders. That makes it one of the fastest companies ever on a value accrual basis, besting legendary businesses like Coinbase, Stripe, Square, and Slack.īut like every speedrunner, to achieve that velocity, FTX has had to make concessions. In just 26 months, the company has secured an $18 billion valuation, becoming one of the most popular crypto exchanges in the world. In both its strengths and deficits, FTX reads like a kind of speedrun. The goal is not to reach the game’s conclusion with the protagonist’s coffers swollen and every sidequest finished, but simply to arrive. As much as being fleet-fingered, speedrunning is about knowing what you can afford to ignore, to miss out on, and still win. While the goal of speedrunning is, explicitly: go fast, it takes a lot more than that to be successful. People have speedran all manner of games including Super Mario 64 (1 hour 38 minutes 21 seconds), Sonic the Hedgehog (54 minutes 17 seconds), and Grand Theft Auto V (5 hours 49 minutes 8 seconds). Savestate and MrCheeze are “speedrunners,” - players that aim to complete games as rapidly as possible, often in the hopes of setting a new record. On July 22, Savestate completed Zelda in 6:59.767. In the end, he triumphed with just fractions of a second to spare. It would take a flawless performance to succeed, he knew - no wasted button presses, or flubbed movements. Savestate, another gamer, took up the gauntlet. A year earlier, the gamer had made a bet: no one would ever finish The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in less than 7 minutes.