Binance CEO says he 'may have been the last thing that poked' FTX into collapse

Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, CEO and founder and the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, believes that his Twitter posts about the now-bankrupt exchange FTX "were the last straw that broke the camel's back," he said at a TechCrunch Crypto conference in Miami, Florida on Thursday. Recall on November 6 when CZ tweeted that Binance would offload the rest of its holdings in FTX token ( FTT-USD ), the coin issued by FTX, "due to recent revelations" likely referring to a CoinDesk story that raised questions about the financial health of Sam Bankman-Fried's trading firm Alameda Research, as well as the overlap between FTX and its sister company Alameda. To put it bluntly, that Twitter post led to FTX's rapid downfall as traders rushed to withdraw their funds en masse after discovering its $8B balance sheet shortfall, resulting in SBF's crypto empire filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. "I may have happened to be the last thing that poked it,” he said, adding "to be honest, even if I didn’t make that tweet, this whole thing could still happen." When asked about whether FTX's meltdown could've been prevented if regulations were put in place, the Chinese-Canadian billionaire argued, “I wouldn't say prevent a hundred percent, but it could have reduced the chance of that happening." The FTX collapse has sent shockwaves through the crypto ecosystem and is negatively impacting some high-profile players in the space already, with a long and growing list of firms disclosing exposures to the once-mighty exchange. Crypto brokerage Genesis, for example, was forced to pause customer withdrawals earlier this week given "abnormal" outflows that exceeded its liquidity. And BlockFi, which has close ties to Alameda, is preparing to file for bankruptcy. Overall, the demise of FTX "will hurt our business and the industry in multiple ways, CZ said. Regulators all around the world will be scrutinizing us very heavily going forward, and getting new licenses around the world is going to become much harder. Short term negative, long term, I actually think many of them are actually going to be positive." Earlier, CZ said the FTX collapse is a setback, but crypto is "actually better in the long run."