It should be noted that cryptocurrency enthusiasts do have serious expectations for next year. Still, many technical indicators now suggest that the coin industry may have bottomed out or is quite close to it. Accordingly, investors expect at least a stabilisation of the market, or even the first signs of a new bull run.

Cryptocurrency fans

What will happen to cryptocurrencies in the future?

According to The Block’s sources, Zhao expects the crypto industry to become a “healthier” industry after a “nasty” 2022. Here’s his relevant quote.

I expect a recovery. So I think 2022 was a really awful year, too many things happened in the last six months. The industry is healthier now.

Note that it's easy enough to agree with this viewpoint. Still, centralised cryptocurrency exchanges are now striving for transparency by publishing their own reserves. In addition, the management of such platforms has clearly recognised that user trust can instantly disappear, so they are better off performing their own tasks in good faith and not using other investors' and traders' money for their own needs.

Binance CEO Changpen Zhao

The Binance team now “monitors” trends in the industry and supports what is best for its development. That said, Changpen declined to make any specific predictions about Bitcoin. And that’s probably a good thing: after all, the environment is changing so fast these days that just trying to form any predictions can damage one’s reputation. This is especially true for novice cryptocurrency users, who are often too gullible to all sorts of predictions from industry big names.

Zhao also touched on the topic of FTX’s bankruptcy and compared the collapse of the exchange to the story of Bernie Madoff, the American fraudster who started the largest pyramid scheme in history. In doing so, the court sentenced him to 150 years in prison. Perhaps FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried “should be given” the same treatment.

FTX is like the Maydoff Company, a complete lie and a pyramid scheme. But the fact that FTX happened doesn’t mean that all business in the industry is as bad.

Proof of Binance reserves on CoinMarketCap

The bankruptcy of FTX has significantly undermined investor confidence in other centralised marketplaces. To offset the panic, Binance previously released a Proof-of-Reserves or Proof-of-Reserves backed by crypto tools. Reserve information from Binance and several other major crypto exchanges has also been published on CoinMarketCap. Accordingly, reasons for trusting some centralised platforms have become more common among crypto users in one way or another.

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Meanwhile, the FTX bankruptcy trial continues to reveal new details of former platform head Sam Bankman-Fried’s grey schemes. It turns out FTX was de facto owned by one of the smallest banks in the US suburbs of Washington DC. The bank in question is Farmington State Bank, now renamed Moonstone.

State Farmington Bank

Moonstone ranks 26th among the smallest banks in the US – it has just one branch and three employees. At trial, it emerged that FTX had invested $11.5 million in the bank through a related trading firm, Alameda Research, which was also founded by Bankman-Fried. This investment doubled the bank’s capitalisation, which was only $5.7 million before the investment, reports Cointelegraph.

But why would FTX acquire a little-known bank? The fact is that buying any bank automatically entitles the company to hold a banking licence. In the US, the procedure for obtaining a banking licence is quite complicated, so buying a small bank is considered a technical loophole in the whole system.

The post about the bank purchase was published on the r/Cryptocurrency subreddit. In the discussion thread, one commenter noted that the problem of getting a licence might have been solved by Bankman-Friede’s political connections, among other things. He has previously been an active contributor to Democrat political campaigns and supported the presidential race of current US President Joe Biden.

FTX CEO Sam Bunkman-Fried

Finally, the last interesting detail is that the bank was acquired by Alameda in a deal with FHB, the parent company of Moonstone. FBH’s chairman is Jean Chalopin, who holds the same post at Deltec Bank. After buying the bank in 2020, FBH applied for Federal Reserve approval to facilitate cryptocurrency-related transactions. The bank received federal approval in June 2021, and nine months later FTX invested in it, but now with US Federal Reserve approval.


We believe next year could indeed bring better results for the digital asset industry. After all, many cryptocurrencies have now managed to lose 70-90 per cent of their own value from records, which was previously enough to hit rock bottom. In addition, experts are now predicting a less aggressive key rate hike by the Fed, and this will create a more attractive environment for the economy in the long run. Therefore there is a chance that Changpen Zhao's viewpoint will indeed hold true. However, we will find out one way or another in practice.