Crypto Confidence Soars After CEO Defrauds Customers Just Like Real Bank | Hacker News Reader

Crypto Confidence Soars After CEO Defrauds Customers Just Like Real Bank

theonion.com

128 pointsdotcoma11 comments

The original Sequoia profile on SBF reals like the Onion article as well: https://archive.ph/GQkCp

Patrick Boyle made a brilliant summary of the FTX situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTFhnpf-IE0

Was the Sequoia article really published just six weeks ago? I figured it must have been a few years at least.

FTX is (or was) barely 3 years old. And Sequoia invested just last year.

That Sequoia letter aged amazingly poorly in just two months. "...FTX—a company that may very well end up creating the dominant all-in-one financial super-app of the future. Nothing is a sure bet in crypto, but just the possibility that FTX could join—or even eclipse—the big four of American banking (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citibank) means it’s already valued at $32 billion." More emphasis should have been on the "nothing is a sure bet".

It's strange that you bring the super app point up. Having worked in one the Sequoia-backed companies with a similar valuation in the past and following a few of their other investments, I could never understand the pressure to make a super app. Yes, I know about WeChat. But I just don't see these types of apps having a success where I live at the moment (not China).

WhatsApp at this point is basic infrastructure in India (even has money transfer) and Brazil. I have no idea how profitable it is, but probably that's why everyone wants a superapp.

I mean something else by a super app: it's an app that has different unrelated parts that can be split into separate ones. Like banking groceries, taxi, etc. Perhaps I misunderstand the term.

Inaccurate.

A real bank would get bailed out by taxpayers and the execs given bonuses.

Only large and connected banks.

Small bank are unceremoniously taken over by the FDIC.

TheOnion submissions to hacker news are rare, which makes this a nice opportunity to look at past ones: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=theonion.com

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