FTX CEO on Public Debut Ambitions: “Now is Not the Time”

Sam Bankman-Fried, the Chief Executive Officer of FTX Derivatives Exchange has noted the lack of immediate interest by the firm in pursuing an Initial Public Offering in line with top crypto unicorns today. In an interview with Forbes, the billionaire CEO said that a very deep thought has been given to the idea of an IPO, however, the firm has decided that ‘now is not the time’ for such a move.

In his own words;

“we thought hard about it. And what we ended up deciding, I think, especially with changes in public equity markets, was that now is not the time. But we want to be ready to do it if it seems like it’s the right thing for the business. We don’t ever have to do it, we are profitable.”

Additionally, he mentioned the company is not looking to go public as it is not interested in cashing out from the firm, which is one major use case of a public listing. Beyond Coinbase and Robinhood, Kraken, eToro, and Blockchain.com are also notably setting their gaze on a public market debut.

Bankman-Fried on Crypto Derivatives Market on DEX

Per the interview, Bankman-Fried believes the criticism of the crypto derivatives market is unfair, noting that this is not the first time such a product will be surfacing in the financial market. In his advocacy, he said that the derivatives market helps in adding “liquidity to markets and makes them more efficient in general.”

It is undoubted that the broader decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem which currently harbors over $82 billion in Total Value Locked has re-emphasized the ingenuity of the broader crypto industry. Decentralized exchanges, an offshoot of DeFi, has also seen incremental growth over the past year. 

At their current rate of growth, there are projections that these DEXs may someday outpace their centralized counterparts in which FTX is one. Bankman-Fried has a stance against this projection, stating amongst many things that DEXs may only represent a fraction of global transactions when they grow to their peak.

“In terms of the future outlook of DEX’s, I think that they have really high potential, but I do not want to claim that I think that they will overtake centralized exchanges, I don’t think they will. I think that sort of the upside of them is that they end up with like, you know, 25% of the world’s activity on it, which would be sort of like a tail case upside for DeFi. I think that’d be absolutely enormous.”

FTX, according to Bankman-Fried, is working hard to avoid clashing with regulators. One of the moves in this regard is the lowering of its leverage alongside other top exchanges like Binance.

Subscribe to our newsletter for free