Financial TimesFinancial Times

Stephen Diehl: Crypto is the ‘commoditisation of populist anger, gambling and crime’

By Henry Mance

21 Nov 2022 · 6 min read

Editor's Note

A crypto-skeptic weighs in on why FTX wouldn't be the last major crypto crash example and how decentralization does not solve incumbent problems, no matter what venture capitalists say.

“Cryptocurrency is a giant scam, although a complicated scam . . . ” So begins Stephen Diehl’s diatribe against the crypto industry.

When he published it in June, Bitcoin and other crypto assets were trembling. Since then, the collapse of FTX, the second-largest crypto exchange, has created a potentially existential crisis. Billions of dollars of customer assets seem to have been incinerated, along with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s status as an altruistic visionary. Is crypto all just a mirage?

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