What if you bought FTX Token in 2020?
Crypto · Exchange token. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play0× · S&P 500 same money: $2,092
Every dollar is gone. FTX Token became worthless when FTX collapsed in 2022, so $1,000 invested in any of these years is worth exactly nothing today.
The story
FTT was the exchange token of FTX, the crypto exchange founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried, who became the industry's most celebrated figure, with stadium naming rights, Super Bowl ads and political donations. FTT entitled holders to trading discounts and a share of exchange buybacks, and it rose from a few dollars to around $80 in 2021. Much of the supply, however, sat with Alameda Research, the trading firm also controlled by Bankman-Fried, which used FTT as collateral to borrow.
In early November 2022 a CoinDesk report revealed how much of Alameda's balance sheet consisted of FTT and related tokens. Binance's Changpeng Zhao then announced he would sell his FTT holdings, customers rushed to withdraw, and FTX could not pay: customer deposits had been transferred to Alameda. The exchange filed for bankruptcy on November 11, 2022, and FTT became worthless. Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud in 2023 and sentenced to 25 years. FTX's bankruptcy estate later recovered enough to repay customers their dollar claims; FTT holders received nothing.
The lesson: When a token's largest holder and borrower is its own issuer, its value is circular; collateral consisting of your own token is not really collateral.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | $2.00 | $0 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
There was no good entry point: every starting year ends at zero. The same $1,000 in the S&P 500 from 2020 would be $2,092 today.
On this day
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. FTX Token is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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