Where to begin? Crypto has experienced many crazy days but never anything like Tuesday, when FTX—the company everyone believed was the future—crumpled like a house of cards as its lionized founder, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), got exposed as just another huckster. If you want to understand what happened, Fortune Crypto has the details—plus a plain English Q&A for normies—but for now let's look at who wins and who loses from the implosion of FTX.
The most obvious winner is Binance, which is poised to acquire the pieces of FTX and cement its role as the biggest crypto exchange in the world. In an act of ruthless domination, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) destroyed his rival by undercutting the value of FTX's FTT tokens and pushing the company into insolvency. It was not a nice thing to do, and CZ did it as an act of vengeance after SBF allegedly bad-mouthed Binance to regulators—but it's a safe bet no one will try to mess with CZ again. "If you come at the king, you best not miss," and all that.
