Buterin breaks silence on FTX debacle, says ‘fraud cuts deeper’

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin made his first direct comments on FTX’s spectacular collapse late Friday, accusing former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried of «virtue signaling.»

Unlike past collapses, FTX — and Bankman-Fried — courted, and caught the ear of, lawmakers and regulators in an attempt to burnish crypto’s image. But the events of the past week suggest the exchange was as unstable, and potentially fraudulent, as other high-profile failed crypto projects.

«MtGox ‘looked’ sketchy and never tried too hard to whitewash itself. Luna too,» Buterin tweeted. Mt Gox, a Tokyo-based exchange, failed in 2014, after hundreds of thousands of bitcoin were stolen from its wallet. Luna’s collapse earlier this year brought down the Terra ecosystem.

«FTX was the opposite and did full-on compliance virtue signaling (not the same thing as compliance),» Buterin tweeted. «The second kind of fraud cuts deeper than the first.»

Buterin’s comments come at the end of a tumultuous week for crypto, which culminated with FTX filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and the ouster of Bankman-Fried as its chief executive.

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